Two views on Welsh history

I recently mannaged to acquire a copy of "When Was Wales?" by Gwyn Alf Williams, a book which I'd had recommended to me by a couple of people that I know as a good overview of Welsh history from a marxian perspective. (The book is sadly out of print, which is a great shame as it offers a a lively and clearly written commentary on the history of Wales.)

During the 1980s, Williams was something of a household name in Wales due to the success of The Dragon Has Two Tongues, a TV series which he co-hosted with Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, in which the two historians engaged in bitter polemical exchanges concerning the way in which the history of their country ought to be interpreted. The casting of Williams the firebrand and the gentrified Vaughan-Thomas as ideological sparring partners was a stroke of televisual genius which drew in a wider audience than most historical programming of the time - I've been told (perhaps with some exaggeration) that the pubs would empty when it was on. Hard to imagine something similar happening for Simon Schama. The first episode of this landmark documentary can be viewed on YouTube. Unfortunately no DVD release appears to be forthcoming.

The book opens with R.S. Thomas' poem Welsh History, which is appended by a caveat from Williams: "This fine poem expresses some historical truths. It also sanctifies a monstrous historical lie." The truths and the lie are not identified by the author. The reader must proceed and attempt to establish these things on their own.

Williams' main preoccupations are "when to begin?", "when, if ever, has Wales been able to describe itself as an independent nation?" and "will it ever be able to do so again?". He sees the Welsh people as a nation emerging from the ruins of the declining Roman Empire - an embattled group of Brythonic speakers who would come to be left isolated in two Western peninsulars of Great Britain. The Welsh people, as they would come to be known, are a people continually in a state of crisis, moulded by a series of shocks inflicted from outside. It's in this aspect of his analysis that Williams' thinking is most obviously Marxist - Marx's famous dictum to the effect that "men make their own history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing" echoes resoundingly throughout these pages. The withdrawal of the Romans, the Anglo-Saxon ascendancy beyond Offa's Dyke, a series invasions from other parts of Britain and Ireland, the instability of the various historical kingdoms of Wales, the "Act of Union", partial industrialisation and Anglicisation are all narrated as a stream of events influencing the development of the Welsh as a stateless nation.

Williams has a gift for witty and provocative turns of phrase, one of my favourites being "those who the Gods wish to destroy, they first inflict with a language problem" - a wry comment on the linguistic divisions that affect Wales. (One of the notable features of modern Welsh nationalism is its traditional difficulty in attracting English-speaking voters from south Wales - given that over fifty percent of the population of Wales resides in south Wales, this is a problem with significant implications for the success of the Welsh nationalist project. Compare the position of the SNP: unafflicted by such a linguistic divide, save for a small number of scattered communities, its succeeded in securing a leading position in the Scottish Parliament.)

In many ways this is very much a book of its time: written in the aftermath of the disastrous 1979 St David's Day referendum on an elected assembly for Wales (in which only 20% voted in favour), the author sees little hope for the future of the Welsh nation - indeed, he concludes by describing the Welsh as "nothing but a naked people under an acid rain".

It's interesting to compare the content and tone of William's work with John Davies' A History of Wales. At over 700 pages, it's a much more weighty work than "When Was Wales?" (in comparison, a relatively concise work at just over 300 pages). Originally published in Welsh as Hanes Cymru in 1990, then published in English in 1993, the new 2007 edition contains a new chapter on developments in Wales since 1997. In contrast to Williams, Davies opts for a more sober reporting of what is thought to have occurred over the course of Welsh history. The first chapter begins with a brief discussion of the various points at which the beginning of the history of the Welsh people have been posited and then, accepting that while there are valid arguments for starting the story at any of those dates, chooses to start with a discussion of the archeological evidence concerning the earliest life in what we now know as Wales.

The scope of the text is amazing; Davies weaves a skillful synthesis of the political, social and cultural history of Welsh life which is undoubtably fast becoming the definitive book on the subject. I think what I most admire about his writing is that it offers a detailed description of events, presenting to the reader a considered analysis that never loses its lucidity.

The point at which the tone of the two books is most noticably different is in their conclusion. As already noted, Williams' book is rather pessimistic about the future of the Welsh. Davies, in contrast, seems remarkably upbeat. In the closing pages of his book, he notes a number of structural and cultural developments that he regards as "the building blocks of a nation" and states that he believes "the Welsh nation in its fullness is yet to be". Can this difference in perception be attributed mainly to the age in which the two texts were published - about thirty years apart - or to one of temperament and political sensibility? Williams states in his closing chapter: "Small wonder then that some, looking ahead, see nothing but a nightmare vision of a depersonalised Wales which has shrivelled up into a Costa Bureaucratica in the south and a Costa Geriatrica in the north; in between, sheep, holiday homes burning merrily away and fifty folk museums where there used to be communities." He sees the economic devastation of vast swathes of his country, plundered over the ages by an extractionist economy. Davies sees a number of symbols of future statehood emerging and concludes that there is hope for the future. Which of these two visions will be realised remains open to question. What is certain is that both of these books are required reading for anyone interested in the subject.
-- Contributed by David H