The Gathering Welsh Storm
As we enter the final lap of Welsh Labour’s leadership election it’s apt to reflect on what’s at stake, not least for the nation’s language.
Many of those brought up in the north of Ceredigion are familiar with the tale of Cantre’r Gwaelod. A land of abundance that stretched across what is today Cardigan Bay, legend has it that its fertile pastures and rich communities were protected by a series of dykes and embankments — with sluice-gates that were opened occasionally for the benefit of its agriculture. Responsibility for their workings lay with Seithenyn, who one fateful night forgot his duties in his drunken revelry and the excesses of a self-indulgent society; the gates remained open and the land was inundated, lost forever under the seas.
To recognize the contemporary relevance of this legend hardly needs much prompting, an allegory even more overt than the film Don’t Look Up. As this year hurtles towards an omniapocalypse (a phrase that would previously have felt tautological, but seems apt for 2024) the climate crisis parallels are obvious. More generally, however, Seithenyn serves as an embodiment of a political class asleep at the gates, as other multiple crises gather: those of democratic legitimacy, economic stagnation, the rise of the far-right, and geopolitical instability.
It is in such an atmosphere that the leadership race for Welsh Labour has been run, in a manner that seems curiously detached from the grim global realities enveloping us. One can’t help but worry that this merely reflects the politics of a party, and a political culture it dominates, that has never truly considered itself as a meaningful force for change. As a former member, who left not so long ago, the attitude I have forlornly tried to foster is that this is not my funeral, so to speak. The truth of course is that it very much is, and for all of us in Wales — inasmuch as the leader of Welsh Labour will be the country’s First Minister. Arguably this electoral race, in our one-party polity — and one which has happened only twice in the last twenty or so years — is the most important election in Wales. I won’t ponder here the many problematic implications of that prospect.
Among the many domestic crises that we should be discussing (self-inflicted to some extent, especially with regards to the grim cuts visited on our cultural institutions and rural affairs), there is one of particular significance that won’t have been much touched upon during the debate. This is of course the Welsh language, a subject that for very different reasons both candidates are probably happy to gloss over, one because it might be regarded as too much of a preoccupation, the other because it might be regarded as a weak spot. Another of the problems here is that the language, as with many issues in Wales, is broadly accepted in what passes for the Welsh public sphere as being a story of relative success. Relative, one supposes, if you take into account predictions regarding the loss of thousands of languages by the end of the century; less successful if you look at the realities on the ground. I have argued elsewhere that given the prevailing winds, really what is needed in our various institutions is to ensure that we are in a state of perpetual revolution.
In this context if language decline is to be arrested (let us dispense now with the fantastical rhetoric of a million speakers by 2050) it will require personal commitment, institutional reform and structural change across a plurality of bodies in Wales that will ultimately need driving from the top. Mr Gething, unfortunately, is not that man. I assert this on the basis of my first-hand experience of campaigning for a Welsh-medium school in his constituency, where to put it somewhat facetiously, he did not exactly ‘clear the path for us’ in a manner reminiscent of his apparent efforts for Signature Living, in their acquisition of the Coal Exchange. I have told the story elsewhere, but essentially his motivation — or more correctly his lack of it — was in my view highly significant, when strong action was called for.
Some of his formative experiences as a student in Aberystwyth may provide context for this, and he would not be the only one of us to have complex, mixed feelings about the language — but for matters to move forward regarding Welsh we can ill-afford anything except resolute support and leadership from our First Minister. For these concerns to be assuaged, and for Mr Gething to be taken seriously on these matters, he will need to prove his commitment to the language through concrete actions, not words. Indeed, without the political class and its numerous apparatchiks across Wales fully embracing the language project, it will falter and ultimately be swept away in the face of ceaseless torrent of forces that threaten and corrode minoritized and indigenous languages across the globe (a situation recognized with the establishment of the UNESCO Decade for Indigenous Languages).
Languages, as with any human, social phenomenon, do not exist in a vacuum however, and likewise the challenges facing Welsh are not discrete from all the other issues facing Wales today. Mr Gething’s language politics reflect the wider nature of his and his party’s methods, a kind of superficial politics focused on bailing out the surface water, rather than dealing with the cause of the breach. More generally what we have seen in this campaign is the flailing around of a failing regime that has been corrupted by a lack of scrutiny, a lack of political opposition and therefore jeopardy, and a voting constituency that gives everything but demands little if anything in return. Accusations of vote fixing in an affiliated Union; the highlighting of millions of public funds going to waste; the proximity of politicians and business interests; convicted polluters contributing huge sums of money; rules and guidelines as rigid as a wet paper straw.
These events have turned around Mr Gething, but it is notable that Mr Miles has not responded with promises around cleaning up our politics. It is my suspicion that it is one promise he knows he cannot keep. For those who have been observers of Labour politics, whether local or national, know how deep these waters run. This contest, largely through the efforts of one journalist, has brought to the surface the everyday realities of Welsh Labour politics that usually remain submerged — to the extent that we’re hearing a clamour from within that Mr Gething’s leadership, and the party, are fatally tainted before his anticipated tenure even begins.
What Wales, its people, and for that matter its language need is renewal, a new progressive force to replace the one that has now, in the fashion of the Liberal Party over a century ago, lost almost its entire ability to represent the interests of its people. The lacunae that has been emerging is where the forces of the populist right and neofascism insinuate themselves. The party stumbles on, however, intoxicated on its own pre-eminence, ignoring the advancing tidal waves that threaten us all. In the words of the song, we might implore Seithenyn to wake up — Seithenyn, cwyd — but after this election, we would be better served looking for a guardian of a different kind.
