PLAID CYMRU’S gathering in Carmarthen on Saturday (Jul 16) was highly symbolic, combining as it did the unveiling of a memorial to Gwynfor Evans, elected 50 years ago in July 1966 as the party’s first MP, and a special party conference addressed, among others, by two of his successors, Adam Price AM and Jonathan Edwards MP.
The party conference agreed priorities for protecting Wales’ interests as the UK government negotiates how to exit the European Union, including a proposal for the ‘radical confederal rewriting of the UK constitution, the abolition of the House of Lords in its present form, and the establishment of fully sovereign parliaments in each constituent nation’, the parliaments freely choosing ‘where to pool sovereignty in areas of common interest’.
The idea of confederation was important to Gwynfor Evans, who died in 2005. He wrote, in his 1988 pamphlet ‘Wales: A History Community’: “We want to see the nations of these islands co-operating in a Britannic confederation of free and equal nations, in no way subordinate one to the other in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs: an association similar to, but tighter than, the Nordic Union of the Scandinavian nations. A Britannic confederation is our aim – a confederation of free and equal nations in which Ireland might wish to be a member.”
The Plaid approach to Brexit includes much more than a ‘confederal rewriting’ of the constitution, but Gwynfor’s lasting influence is clear in the party’s policies today.
His memorial in Guildhall Square, in the centre of Carmarthen, is a large brass relief plaque by sculptor Roger Andrews from Llantwit Major, showing Gwynfor on winning the Carmarthen seat, with a sea of loyal supporters in the background. The unveiling on Saturday, by Gwynfor’s son Alcwyn Deiniol Evans, one of seven children, and his political agent Cyril Jones, was a popular event introduced by Peter Hughes Griffiths, immediate past chair of Carmarthenshire County Council, and attended by dozens of delegates to the Plaid conference including leader Leanne Wood, Lord Dafydd Wigley (who served as an MP alongside Gwynfor), MP Jonathan Edwards, AMs Adam Price and Simon Thomas, recently retired AM Rhodri Glyn Thomas, and County Council Leader Emlyn Dole.
Folk singer Dafydd Iwan, a former Plaid Cymru president, performed ‘Bod yn Rhydd’, and the gathering of some 300 people, flanked by fascinated shoppers, sang ‘Hen Wlad fy Nhaddau’.
Back in the conference at the Halliwell Centre, University of Wales Trinity St David, attention turned to finalising the plan to protect Wales’ interests during and after Brexit negotiations, including a ‘Marshall Plan for the Welsh economy’, an ‘autonomous solution’ for Wales if the UK is excluded from the single market, and a National Convention on Wales’s future.
With an eye to future independence, Plaid Cymru would push for constitutional and legal arrangements to enable a speedy independence referendum for Wales, should a future referendum in Scotland result in a vote to leave the UK.
Although Gwynfor Evans was elected to Parliament for Plaid Cymru the year before Winnie Ewing became the first Scottish Nationalist MP, the SNP has come to dominate Scottish politics, winning 54 of 59 Westminster seats in May 2015, while in Wales, Plaid Cymru won three of 40. In the EU referendum, Scotland voted to remain while the majority in Wales wanted to leave.
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