| "A Big, Bustling, Enlivening Compendium Deserves Wide Reading" |
History Book |
| Richard King- Brittle with Relics , Faber , April 20, 2022 |
The subtitle of "Brittle with Relics" is "A History of Wales 1962-1997". It makes for rich reading, its method distinctive in capturing oral testimony from one hundred voices. Many are familiar from the politics and public life of Wales. Many too have featured in Wales Arts Review over the ten years of the life. Nicky Wire, Rachel Trezise, Iwan Bala, David Hurn, Cian Ciarán, Menna Elfyn, Dafydd Iwan are among the voices from the arts. The book's publicity comes with recommendations from four well-known voices. Indeed three of them feature in the book. Faber's publicists have secured an endorsement from a heavy-hitter from outside Wales. David Kynaston calls it: "oral history at its revelatory best; containing multitudes." Formally it comprises eighteen chapters starting with the language campaigns and ending with New Labour's victory and the second referendum on devolution. The cross-cutting of voices gives this last chapter, even with the ending known, a gripping excitement. The route between takes in, among other subjects, Tryweryn, Cardiff Bay, Aberfan, the Sons of Glyndẁr. It is first a reminder of history in a richness of detail. Sheep on the Rhinogydd Mountains could not be sold because of rainfall and radiation after Chernobyl. Dewi Prysor recounts fourteen months spent in jail before the charges against him were dropped. A thirteen- year old Neil Kinnock is in the Tredegar Workingmen's Hall to see opera stars who were paid at the same level as they received at Covent Garden. A feisty Edwina Hart in the Assembly challenges a Minister who says of opera "we don't want to bother with that, ordinary people aren't interested." Her response: "I know miners who know more about bloody opera than anyone in this room." Oral history comes with a particular vividness. Helen Prosser is in court in Aberaeron, and taken to the nearest prison for women which is outside Bristol. She notes a bath without taps, a precaution against suicide. In 1971 Dafydd Iwan in Cardiff Prison receives a visit from the Archbishop of Wales. In Aberavon the General Secretary of the TUC addresses a rally while a noose quietly descends from a gantry overhead to enclose his neck. These were far-off days. Rosemary Butler serves on Newport Council and talks about reimbursement. "You had nothing, absolutely nothing. I remember making a claim for 50p for a babysitter. There were huge debates as to whether I should have it." Ffred Ffransis recalls the Brewer Spinks episode where an investor banned the speaking of Welsh inside his Blaenau Ffestiniog factory. Lighter episodes mingle. Among the alternative life-stylers a son of Elizabeth Taylor is to be seen at a market stall selling joss sticks and patschouli. Julian Orbach was at Cresswell Quay with Dance Camp Wales. "Nudity was the big thing, and that's what excited the locals." The book gets the flavour of another era. Drugs feature, psychedelics and mushrooms in the Fro, heroin in the Valleys. Dewi "Mav" Bowen on recreational drugs and psychedelic drugs in particular: "it's a different kind of nationalism; it's a different kind of pride, because Wales has a lot more mythological roots than England." Nationalism and language swirl across public and private life. Tecwyn Vaughan Jones says: "Cardiff didn't like the Welsh community in Whitchurch and Rhiwbina." When lemonade was poured down the back of Government computers their value was £50,000, a very large sum. The fire-bombings were not just against properties in Wales but extended to estate agents in Bristol, West Kirby, Neston, Worcester and Chipping Campden. (The last is a rare misspelling in the book. “Camden” is correctable for a next print-run.) Nor was it just property; letter bombs were intercepted that were addressed to several senior police officers Nationalism alarmed at every level. A young Rhys Ifans recalls being locked in a Denbighshire schoolroom by his head master. The occasion, in the 1980s, was a visit by the Prime Minister to view a suite of new computers. In 2022 Labour and Plaid can be in an agreement that isn't quite a coalition. The flavour a few decades back was different. Eluned Morgan: "it was very difficult to be a Welsh-speaker and to be Labour at that time." Neil Kinnock: "nationalists hate everybody else's country". Meinir Francis in return on Kinnock: "he said that the princes of Wales were no more than bandits and this type of thing, there's no pride at all in his Welshness, and he seemed to be ashamed of it". Peter Hain: "the hatred, the antagonism, the sectarianism towards Plaid was very great." Andrew Davies "so you had people like George Thomas- I'm not sure where that visceral hatred of the Welsh language came from." Richard King got to John Barnard Jenkins before his death in 2020. His politics are laid bare: "all actions are acceptable when performed in the national interest." King captures the extraordinary quality of his quasi-Nietzschian language: "I was completely transformed, my blood was thrilled and singing, and I was possessed by a compelling ecstasy which was pure love for my country and people." Andrew Davies has emerged as an insightful critic of Cardiff Bay. That the Welsh Government leans toward micro-management and is strategy-light is his most common theme on outlets like BBC Wales' Sunday politics programme. In the book he is a strong presence. The book's climax is the referendum of 1997. "Ron [Davies} could see", says Andrew Davies, "that, unless you had a form of PR, it would be full of superannuated labour councillors from the valleys; it would be very conservative with a small c....proportional representation in the Labour group was hated, absolutely hated." Davies is frank on his party. "It was quite extraordinary, really, this idea that Labour was Wales and Wales was Labour and it was said in an unconscious way, but I think it was very revealing, almost a sense of entitlement." As for the quality of government "local government corruption was quite endemic." Rosemary Butler remembers: "It was an era when people who you wouldn't have automatically assumed to be of the highest ability emerged as head teachers at local schools and then, lo and behold, they were members of the Labour Party." The economics of the period are not remembered favourably. Kim Howells: “all those Valleys Initiatives were rubbish, bloody rubbish." The common story of the Welsh Development Agency is that it secured 22% of Britain's inward investment for Wales. After devolution more and more effort was spent in servicing the Government's call for information. It was instructed to spend a chunk of its budget in Julie Morgan's constituency, which the CEO advised was not an EU-Assisted Area. Ten minutes later the CEO received a call back to say the Agency was being dissolved. Wales' share of the UK inward investment pot, runs the story, plummeted to 2%. Richard King himself tells a different story on the WDA's record. The only criterion applied was job-creation. It was principally assembly work on products near the end of their life-cycle, the pay moderate, the skills basic and non-transferable. As for the consequence Ian Courtney: "it struck me how hopelessly equipped was the civil service to deal with these kinds of industries." In the fall-out of the Lucky Goldstar episode Andrew Davies recalls securing "the largest ever grant repayment of £75m." But elsewhere the Felinfach cheese factory was to come and go with a £20M bung from the Government. "Brad" ["treason"] read the graffiti at its abandoned entrance. Some of the words linger. David Hurn: "My feeling is that we don't ever progress." Michael Sheen refers to "that kind of stasis, that stuck thing." Cynog Dafis recalls that 90% of the children at school in Aberaeron in his time left Wales. "Some of them came back, in dribs and drabs" but lost went "a whole series of generations of very clever, very talented and very well-educated people." In 2022 it is not 90% but it is still the brightest tranche. The destination is just as likely to be Cardiff. Wales is eerily similar to England in its dominant south-east. The wafer fabrication jobs, the cloud computing, the Netflix productions are all clustered around one of Europe's most concentrated politics-finance-media centres. Richard King himself is present as the author of elegant and concise passages of explication between his voices. He ends with an epilogue of six pages that leans towards the abstract: "the Assembly demonstrated a willingness to assert a bold vision of Wales." Policy is largely absent. Inequality is pinned elsewhere. The unemployment rate is cited with favour, Wales' low rate of participation in work omitted. The education of Germany has been admired by policy-makers for the last sixty years. Adam Price refers yearningly to how it all works in Swabia. But education has been rooted here for a generation. Look at the apprentice roster on the Careers Wales website. The reader wonders just long it is going to take for the Bay to be responsible. King cites one item of legislation. "The Wellbeing of Future Generations Act provided (and provides) Wales with a unique means of constructing a unitary sense of belonging." It is the on-message view. Rhys ab Owen, Senedd Member for South Wales Central, takes another. He reported recently about the Act that attempts to use it to protect wildlife, natural reserves, schools all fail. Rhodri Williams, a QC, terms the Act inherently “toothless,." It is a mechanism "to do away with the concept of representative democracy." Certainly lawyers from England have found it of great help, using it to over-turn local planning decisions and create yet more holiday accommodation. How regularly this occurs is unknown in Wales' fog of news. This book could be followed with a companion of equal richness to capture the two decades of experience since devolution. The census of 2021, it is said, is set to record more depopulation of the west, the unbroken erosion of bilingualism. Meanwhile "Brittle with Relics" is a big, bustling, enlivening compendium that deserves wide reading, the veracity of its picture of history to be admired and absorbed. An edited version of this review appeared in Wales Arts Review 4th April 2022. |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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