Annual Raymond Williams Memorial Lecture 2017 | Michael Sheen

Raymond Williams Memorial Lecture I'm Carolyne hit it's my pleasure to steer you through this evening's proceedings and introduce you to a very special guest speaker but the evening's about you as well there will be an opportunity at the end of the lecture for you to add your thoughts ask your questions so please do bear that in mind as the evening unfolds but first a little background on this very special event I know there are people here will know all about Raymond Williams but I think it's worth underlining what an incredible man he was and why we hold this lecture every year in his honor one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century a Welshman whose writings on politics culture and the mass media made an impact across the world he also spent many years teaching in adult learning and wrote extensively on education so there's a really nice fit about this evening the fact that the lectures are organized and curated by the Learning and Work Institute the world is leading charity and research organization in the field of adult education skills and employment and of course the event is sponsored very kindly by the Open University I think Williams woulda loved the venue too you look at this place it's steeped in the history of activism community solidarity I think mirtha is a fabulous and fascinating place I know that because I lived and worked here in the early 1990s as a cub reporter on the Merthyr Express I have very happy memories of doorstop in in the goo nose on a dark winter night that's another story but getting under the skin of a town like this taught me a lot about Wales itself how its people a bit like the building we're in have shown immense resilience in adapting to challenging change while not forgetting how important their history is and knowing the real Merthyr has made its misrepresentation in the media's reality she'll mirtha all the more painful but that's again another story but we're in a special place we're in a place where the past and the present collide and that gives an added resonance to the themes of Welsh identity and nationhood our guest speaker is about to explore and on the subject of serendipity if Raymond Williams brought a political perspective to the arts Michael Sheen has returned the favor using his influence working in the new Sencha center of global popular culture to make some of the most articulate interventions in political debate in recent times now as an actor we've been in thrall to his remarkable talent in particular for the inhabiting real-life characters pitch-perfect in many voices Kenneth Williams - David Frost Brian clef - Tony Blair as an activist we've thrilled to his own voice speaking with passion power and insight on the need for progressive change both here in Wales and Beyond across the world and tonight he adds that voice to an illustrious roll call of inspirational speakers who have given the Raymond Williams memorial lecture no pressure there then but I know it's going to be brilliant I've had a sneak preview and it really is a tour de force so ladies and gentlemen please give the warmest of mirtha welcomes to Michael Sheen thank you very much Carolyn and thanks to the learning and Work Institute for inviting me to deliver the lecture tonight and to Open University coming for their support and thank you for turning up on a cold Thursday night and of course thank you to everyone here at the Red House it's a real honor to be able to speak to you here in this building so full of history and indeed this town that holds such a special place within the story of Wales and it is with a great deal of humility that I stand before you today to deliver a lecture that bears the name of Raymond Williams his brilliance his insight and his compassion make his writing as powerful and as illuminating today as it has ever been in preparation for today I went over much of what he wrote specifically about Wales and Welsh identity and culture not necessarily what his international reputation has been based upon and it has been absolutely fascinating in his piece Welsh culture written in 1975 he wrote the feeling for the past is more than a fancy but it's how past and present relate that tells in a culture and it is exactly his grasp of that relationship between our past and our present here in Wales and the challenges we face and exploring concepts like identity a nationhood that is for me both inspiring and in these particular circumstances are shaking Lee intimidating so I'll begin with the only thing I feel I have any kind of authority to be able to stand here and speak to you about tonight which is myself my own personal experience and even that can get a little bit slippery to be honest I've spent most of my life outside of Wales I left my home in Port Albert to go to drama school in London when I was 18 years old and I've lived in one place or another on the other and at various distances from the seven bridge ever since it was only when I left that I even began to be aware that there might be such a thing as Welsh nests like a fish only knowing what wetness is once it's landed on the shore mouth gaping and eye is bulging I'd been so in it but I hadn't known anything different to compare it with thinking back I turned up in London with no real sense of being different no sense of coming from a particular culture or class or anything like that really I'd been aware of events going on around me growing up particularly in the mid 80s of course but I was so myopically focused on being a teenager with all the self obsession that can involve but I haven't really understood the full significance of what was going on in Wales at that time and I suppose I just assumed that it was pretty much no different everywhere else that the world was probably just the same as potala but but just more of it I barely went to Neath let alone any further revealed and then one day not long after I'd arrived in London I walked into a McDonald's and no one could understand me when I asked for milk milk milk I mean it's not that hard is it milk Oh milk come on really is that different anyway I suppose that's where it started the having it reflected back to me that I was different thing but I didn't like that I mean I want it to be different I just wanted it to be in a way that I chose I didn't like how exposing it felt I didn't want my difference to be something that was defined by other people I wanted to be in control of it and so I started adapting shifting my shape to hide that difference so I could control when it was seen or not in the first couple of weeks of being a drama school I remember one of the voice teachers asking if she could record me speaking she said she did that with a lot of students who had quite strong regional accents when they arrived she used them as teaching aids for when someone might need to learn a particular accent for a play she said she had to do it in the first few weeks though as people tended to lose their accent so quickly and then it would be no use I'd be so interested to hear that tape now I have no idea how I must have sounded then three years later when I was just finished at drama school and starting my first job I did my first ever television interview it was for a Welsh news program and all about this young Welsh actor making a splash starring opposite Vanessa Redgrave in the West End and not long ago I was at my mum and dad's house with my daughter and we accidentally came across a video recording of that interview obviously mum and dad had recorded everything that ever referred to me directly indirectly not me but someone who looked a bit like me if you scrunched your eyes up from the moment I left drama school to this very second there recording this right now whilst sitting here in that row just that anyway seeing that interview was quite a shocker as I watched trying to ignore the howls of laughter coming from my daughter I had absolutely no idea who that person was he clearly had absolutely no idea who he was either you're a big hoop earring in his left ear a pseudo confidence bordering on arrogance and he certainly didn't sound Welsh to be honest I'm surprised people weren't constantly coming up to me in the street and giving me a slap it's amazing the effect that not being understood in a London McDonald's can have on someone's life in those three years I clearly done a real job on myself and it wasn't that I was trying to hide where I came from I wasn't embarrassed about being Welsh or any thing like that I think I just realized without it ever having to be said that I was faced with an utterly overwhelming and totally implacable field of other nests all around me towering above me like a huge wave rising up pushed forward by unseen but dimly visible forces that I knew would roll over me without a second's hesitation and I found I had very little to hold on to to resist its ineluctable currents on some level without being aware of it I decided I would turn and swim with the current I would leave negotiating my difference until later once I'd learned how to swim within the racing tide it took me a very long time to even begin to understand the consequences of how you respond to having your sense of difference be defined by others the difficulties it can create around developing a genuine sense of identity the ways it can disconnect you from your past my difference my Welsh nurse was first presented to me in the form of a shock from outside a crisis of recognition and I responded with a form of assimilation and accommodation that I thought I was in control of but actually just confused my sense of identity in such a way that it would take me many years to even begin to come to grips with who speaks for Wales nobody that is both the problem and the encouragement encouragement because the most valuable emphasis in Welsh culture is that everybody should speak and have the right to speak the idea of an equal standing and participating democracy which was their inexperience before it became a eery problem because wales has suffered and is suffering acute economic political and cultural strains and by the fact of history has to try and resolve them in a world of crude power relationships and distant Parliament's that was written by Raymond Williams in 1971 46 years ago he asked that question who speaks for Wales in very different circumstances how different well let's see in 1971 the Conservatives were in government with Edward Heath as Prime Minister of course that same year with Harold Wilson as Labour leader Williams wrote of the long crisis of British socialism now coming to a decisive stage in the condition of the Labour Party across the political spectrum people were struggling to reconcile the decline of traditional industries coal steel with both the promise and apprehension for what emerging technologies might bring so Julian Hodge founded the Commercial Bank of Wales to provide banking services a much needed support to small and medium sized Welsh businesses or if a nuclear power station became operational that year in Anglesey on the back of the Welsh rugby team winning their 6th grand slam John Dawes was voted BBC Wales Sports Personality of the year in that same year that it became legal to register marriages in the Welsh language the CIM died through service Cammeray campaigned to remove or destroy English language roadsigns was ongoing with protesters being dragged away from court proceedings in common against eight of their members know that it bill was one of the locations used for the filming of 10 Rillington place the Ryan irani show is so popular that it's moved to BBC one and broadcast in English the first of three series shown between 1971 and 1973 an heiress Hughes gets a big break on what was to become the hugely popular TV show the LIBOR birds in Port Talbot alone five different newspapers employee eleven reporters between them all based in offices within the town itself and all desperately competing to beat each other to the next big local story two pioneering Welsh political figures leader of glidecam real Ian Wood and Welsh cabinet Education Secretary Kirsty Williams were born and one of the greatest Welsh poets of the 20th century Waldo Williams died the title of Prince of Wales a title bestowed upon an Englishman ever since the defeats of a line up Griffith in the 13th century was as it is today held by Charles of the House of Windsor and the single most powerful position in Welsh politics the principal minister of our Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom with responsibilities for Wales and head of the Welsh office is Conservative MP for Hendon South Peter Thomas a world of crude power relationships and distant Parliament's in which to try and resolve the acute economic political and cultural strains being suffered by Wales as a result of the fact of history as Williams put it it was 20 years ago this year but still 26 years ahead of Williams as he wrote of those distant Parliament's that Wales chose to bring decision-making closer to the Welsh people by voting yes to the creation of an Assembly for Wales with devolved powers before we got there though just eight years after Williams asked this question the first referendum on the issue was held in 1979 after what was by all accounts a toxic campaign the voters of Wales on that occasion gave a resounding no and rejected outright the possibility of their own Parliament a mere 12 percent of the Welsh electorate voted to have their own assembly that first time in 1979 so what changed well one of the other notable events of 1979 was the general election heavily influenced as it was by the recent winter of discontent and the coming to power of one Margaret Thatcher winter came at you in a manner that wouldn't be seen again until season seven of Game of Thrones for the next 18 years in spite of continually and overwhelmingly voting labour Wales watched as successive Tory governments held on to power and it fell again and again to a conservative Secretary of State for Wales to represent Welsh interests and champion the issues important to Welsh people at the seat of power in far-off Westminster for 15 of those years it was an Englishman and one of them was John redwood the man who made a pig's ear of mining to the Welsh national anthem and who seemed to have been put on this earth specifically to infuriate the Welsh but it was during the reign of Nicholas Edwards Conservative MP for Pembrokeshire and Secretary of State for Wales from 1979 to 1987 and after suffering the nightmare of the miners strike and the unforgivable destruction that followed in its wake that Wales seemed to have its eyes opened it came to realise it seemed just how vulnerable a position the country was in when left to the stewardship of a ruthless Conservative government hell-bent on destroying the union's and making an example of the striking coal miners as David Ellis Thomas recent remarked let's not forget where we were and where we've come from and what we had to put up with and so it seems when the chance came around again after Tony Blair and his New Labour Party emphatically swept into Downing Street in 1997 Wales made sure that this time they would seize their opportunity and yet even then even after the country had gone through so much seen so much of what it had built its sense of itself upon be attacked and left to perish even then the vote to take power into its own hands at least to begin that process was still so close 49.7% voted no 50.3% voted yes less than 1% difference clearly a strong sense of fear of caution our taking on greater responsibilities maps of trepidation at the thought of a growing separation across the now clear red water from that already far off seat of power in the Palace of Westminster 20 years on it is seen as one of the great achievements of devolution that it is now generally accepted that of course Wales should indeed have its own assembly for the majority it is now unthinkable to go back to the pre 97 state of affairs and as Kevin Morgan professor of governance and development at Cardiff University described it the ignominious position of being a quango state led by quangos that fear and trepidation seems to have fallen away well if not perhaps about what devolution has so far delivered then at least as far as the underlying principle of devolution is concerned that government closer to the people is far better and more effective than government that is far from the people in fact it could be said that a desire to have decision-making powers brought closer to home was a significant factor in a more recent referendum that will have potentially huge consequences for the people and communities of Wales the brexit vote divided the country yet again even though as one of the most economically disadvantaged places within the whole of Europe Wales is a net beneficiary of the EU budget receiving large amounts of EU structural funding agricultural subsidies and much else besides the majority of the country still decided that on the whole it would prefer to give up whatever economic benefits it was receiving in order to take back control precisely control over what it would be taking back and from whom are slightly more problematic questions but a strong feeling of discontent with the status quo and a long-held and frustrated desire for change were unquestionably prime motivations for the way the vote went in Wales as William said everybody should speak and have the right to speak of course it's always a possibility that if people feel they have long been denied that right and are suddenly given the opportunity to speak what they say may very well not be what it is you want to hear Welsh labor were overwhelmingly for remaining within the EU so why would the very same people who election after election keep returning Welsh labor to power a people who for the last 20 years have had government brought closer to them in the form of their own National Assembly with its own devolved powers headed by the man described as leaving the most invincible electoral machine ever known in the United Kingdom why would those same people feel that they had long been denied the right to speak and in possibly the single most important vote in Wales in generations not only vote against that invincible leader and his party's wishes but unlike Scotland and Northern Ireland vote virtually in lockstep with the country that has historically shown no desire whatsoever to act in the best interests of Wales when it comes to the brexit vote for Wales see England that infamously was all that was written as the entry for Wales in the 1888 edition of the encyclopædia Britannica for Wales see England those four short words are loaded with more history complexity and division than it could ever be possible to unpack here today this is what Williams meant by the fact of history but without some kind of understanding of that story and it's tortured history we cannot even begin to start answering that question so full of contradictions because it is the story of a nation that never was struggling to be the story of a people continually shocked and shaped and acted upon from outside it is the story of a long process of successive conquests and repressions of bitter fighting and raiding and discrimination but also of accommodations and integrations and adaptations from the Romans to the anglo-saxons to the Normans they all came to fracture us to control us to subdue us to bend us to their will they built their roads they built their walls they built their castles they changed our language they changed our faith they changed our sense of ourselves and all the while we tried to live in the shadow of their powers we found ourselves shoved into a people over 1500 years between the Roman invasion and our final annexation under the reign of Henry the eighth there were brief moments where the possibility of something else began to emerge where an entirely different fact of history might perhaps have begun to take shape in 10th century Wales during the time of the anglo-saxons it appeared in the laws of how old are the king of doughy Baath gathered together expert lawyers and priests from throughout Wales to revise and codify native Welsh law the laws of how Eldar were seen as just and compassionate a legal framework that our people with its own language and a unifying leader could use as a basis for nationhood it would retain that promise until 1536 and the acts of Union when the English King Henry the eighth's brought that dream to an end and decreed the law of England was to be the only law in Wales English justices of the peace were appointed throughout Wales and the English language was to be the only language of the courts those using the Welsh language were barred from receiving public office and so a Welsh ruling class fluent in English was able to take a firm hold another moment of possibility appeared in the 13th century under the rule of Luallen at Griffith at a time of savage violence and constant fear of betrayal one Welsh prints among many rolls to a tendency well in the last as he was eventually known became the first and only native Prince of Wales acknowledged as such by an English King Wales once more had an opportunity to begin building its own fledgling state its own language its own laws its own power to raise taxes and form the institutions to carry it on into the future as a developing nation state that moment lasted for 10 brief years the English kings successor Edward the first wanted power over all of Britain for himself after defeating a Welsh rebellion led by through Alan Edward totally crushed the embryonic Welsh state he seized its land and its castles stole its treasures destroyed its churches and Abbey's and imprisoned Fluellen Zaire's the English King put a stranglehold on Wales with his notorious ring of Steel a multitude of hugely expensive stone castles all across the land to keep the Welsh principalities under control and to mercilessly quell any possibility of revolt and in 1301 in a final act of domination Edward bestowed the title Prince of Wales upon his own English heir a tradition which continues to this very day the last and perhaps most passionately grieved of all the possible alternative histories for Wales is the one where we live in a Welsh nation-state directly descended in an unbroken line from the reign of the son of prophecy Windland or at the beginning of the fifteenth century glyn door seemed an unlikely leader of the revolution part of the welsh gentry middle-aged sophisticated moving easily among the educated and wealthy on both sides of the welsh english border you'd studied the law ridden with the Kings armies twice in Scotland and had possibly even served as a Squire to the future Henry the fourth of England but in 1400 he began a ferocious revolt against English rule that would last a decade see him proclaimed the rightful Prince of Wales and bring a Welsh nation's faith closer than it had ever been before as the rebellion gathered momentum the Welsh soldiers within the army sent to stop him change sides England panicked and issued terrible discriminatory penal laws against the Welsh meant to reestablish English dominance they only succeeded in driving ever more Welshman to the cause of oh I England or as he swept across Wales he captured Castle after Castle burnt his way down the TOWIE Valley and on into Gwent there were reports of Welsh students at Oxford University leaving their studies to join him Welsh laborers and craftsmen abandoning their employers in England hundreds of Welsh archers and men at arms leaving English service and returning to their native land to join him in rising up against the English once more in 1404 he makes hala castle his seat of power and his crowned prince of wales he establishes a parliament in mahant Liffe and surrounds himself with talented ministers he establishes alliances with the French and the Scottish and he sets out his programme for the future of Wales a sovereign state with a separate Welsh Church independent of Canterbury national universities in both the north and the south and the return to the progressive laws of how old are it is a stunningly audacious vision for this land that has lived under a vicious heel for so long it lays down the foundations for a future built on common interest and shared prosperity it inspires the Welsh people to great acts of courage and sacrifice finally here is what they had been longing for but never dared hope might one day be turned into a reality not just a people but a nation not just the country but a nation-state but it was not to be nation-building takes time it needs support it needs protection for its institutions to take root for its confidence to grow for its communities to flourish alliances faul resources dwindled and time ran out after many years of grinding the Welsh down of a wine Glyn duel watching his control slowly ever way the country fell into the hands of the English state once again last Welsh Prince of Wales cornered in Halle his wife and family imprisoned and soon to be killed made himself a fugitive the English king hunted him down but he evaded capture ignored multiple royal pardons and despite the offer of enormous rewards he was never betrayed with the last nod to posterity the son of prophecy mysteriously disappears from the history books and Wales beaten down yet again leaderless and all hope vanquished becomes once more a subjugated people it was only a hundred and twenty years later and Henry the eighth's acts of Union put the final full stop on the Welsh sentence of course history didn't stop there and the story of Wales rushed ever onwards but never again did we come so close to being ourselves fully or at least the promise of it so we adapted we shifted we accommodated for 16th century Wales Henry's acts of Union suddenly opened the door onto a larger English society and many took their chance to rush through it and improve their fortunes the Welsh gentry were allowed to rise through the English ranks marry into it spread its influence and in return they looked away as Wales was robbed of the trappings of its faith newly Protestant Royal coffers filled with old Welsh Catholic riches Welsh relics seized stripped of their jewels and burnt glass and sculptures smashed chalices destroyed altars broken we learn to speak like them to act like them to think like them well some did by 1600 there were more Welsh people in London than in any Welsh town for those living in poverty back in Wales William Morgan's Bible magnificent and transformational the Word of God for the first time set down in the Welsh language a language that could now thrive as a vessels of worship and spirituality and ensured that the Welsh speaking people were bound to the English royalty that had made it all possible so much so that in the English Civil War of the 17th century Wales took the side of the Catholic Royalists hard to imagine that the same people would later become known for their radical non-conformism and socialist militancy as william said it was not the race that changed it was the history and as Gerald Morgan writes in his brief history of Wales while Scotland was still a monarchy with all the necessary institutions of government Wales only had its own language and the history it couldn't quite forget many people tried to forget both institutional life had been completely absorbed into England while there was now a recognizable boundary between English kin and Welsh counties in political terms it was not a boundary at all the Welsh had abandoned the national struggle in favour of English freedoms the future struggle would be for identity for Wales see England so how did that struggle for identity play out a william said that it was here as he was growing up that his education began to display large gaps he wrote that is to say a gap in the welsh history for the four centuries after the acts of Union a gap in the English history or was it also Welsh which had brought the tram road and the railway through our Valley and which was their visible every night above Bryn aru when they cleared the blast furnace at Blenheim on and the glow hung in the sky all the complications all the real difficulties are there in those gaps and it is these that not only i but most of us find so hard to grasp to decipher to connect as we try to make sense of what is called welsh culture because what begins to grow in those gaps is the concept of Britishness with its simultaneous identities and allegiances its head-spinning conflicts of interest and heart-wrenching appeals to loyalty what started as a political union between the parliaments of England and Scotland got a further boost with the Napoleonic Wars and the opportunity for the English and the Scots to bond over definitely not being Catholics and even more definitely not being French things did get a little bit more complicated when the predominantly Catholic kingdom of Ireland joined this new British Union but it turned out the British state was willing to overlook the Catholic bit as long as the really important anything but the French bit was in place in 1832 Irish politician Daniel O'Connell stood in the British House of Commons and declared the people of Ireland are ready to become a portion of the British Empire provided they be made so in reality and not in name alone they are ready to become a kind of West Britain if made so in benefits and justice but if not we are Irishmen again and thereby as they say hangs a tale the years of bloodshed and the Irish struggles for those benefits and justice are writ large in the book of Britishness there was no historic warning speech from Wales or list of conditions which Welsh inclusion in the Union was predicated on because of course Wales was already part of England there was no Welsh Parliament to negotiate with the Welsh monarchy to appease no institutions of a Welsh state with which to bargain because as we've seen none of those things had been allowed to come to life there was no speech because there was no one there to speak it moving forward British national identity was no longer driven on by Protestantism but now instead by the bellowing headwinds of imperialism for some the new and expanding British Empire provided unprecedented opportunities for upward mobility and accumulations of private wealth and that highly lucrative imperialism both fueled and was in turn fed by the coming of what was about to completely transform Wales in every way imaginable the Industrial Revolution in his brilliant introduction to the Raymond Williams collection who speaks for Wales nation culture identity editor Daniel Williams describes it as the transformation of an agricultural people of about 500,000 in 1800 into an urban Galatian of two and a half million by 1911 the shift from a pastoral country with this population fairly evenly spread throughout its regions into a predominantly industrial nation with its urban majority packed into the southern coal field was accompanied by significant cultural shifts that were the making of modern Wales geographically from country to city politically from liberal to Labour linguistically from Welsh to English the British imperial war machine demanded to be fed and the major industrialists of the era fell upon Wales rich in natural resources with the rapacity so great that we are still experiencing its aftershocks today north east Wales had the greatest range of industries but it was the developments in the southeast that were to prove the most significant the Iron Works here in Merthyr Tydfil gabbatha and Dulles in particular gave rise to Wales his first industrial town by 1830 Monmouthshire and Eastvale morgan were producing half the iron exported by Britain the new steam engine technology ran on a steady supply of coal so it made economic sense to concentrate industry in coal fields where engines could be readily supplied and so the transformation of the South Wales coal fields took off there was massive and diverse immigration into those mining valleys communities began springing up all over it sometimes in incredibly harsh conditions instead of people being scattered across a rural landscape as they had been in there in agricultural past these new industries now forced them to work and live shoulder-to-shoulder the communities they developed clustered people together in ways that must have been incredibly volatile to begin with filled as they were with feisty young men come from all over Wales and beyond looking to be part of this new industrial workforce but as time went on those communities the mutuality and the solidarity that they would come to represent would eventually form the basis for a new emerging core of Welsh identity one centered around a political class-based consciousness that developed in response to both the closeness of their communities and the harshness and insecurity of their working conditions for all the promise of a shared British identity and the many benefits that would lead to the vast wealth that was being generated by the voracious extraction from the Welsh landscape was certainly not being equally shared out with the people tasked with doing the back-breaking work aside from the large personal estates built up by the iron masters and other industrial Titans money was spent on creating an infrastructure within Wales but one that was solely based on getting the wealth out beyond the borders the networks of ports and railway lines that came into existence were in no way meant to serve the interests of Wales itself only to suit the needs of the higher British interests with its expanding Empire and the pockets of those who stood to make the most from it even today just try traveling between North and South Wales and you'll see how much energy has been put into making that as easy as possible religion too would take its place at the coal face of this roiling Welsh transformation the Welsh Methodist revival of the 18th century was one of the most significant religious and social movements in the history of Wales from the time of the Middle Ages the established Church in Wales had been the Church of England but the further behind the spread of non-conformism in Wales meant by the middle of the 19th century it had become a predominantly nonconformist country and by 1920 the disestablished Church in Wales was self-governing at one point in this religious shift a new Welsh chapel was being built every eight days in 1850 they outnumbered churches by five to two what had begun in small hilarious spread to the new industrial settlements of the south as the migrants brought their religious devotion with them in places such as here in Merthyr Tydfil and abba definitely uh Neath nonconformity went hand in hand with the rapid industrial growth Williams placed this obsessive fervor that the Welsh displayed in the taking up of nonconformity within the context of the country's long history of repression and frustration he said it made its way into a people and a culture which for other reasons within the general subordination had a great store of readiness and longing and potential energy which came to give the movement quite specific passions and intensities it meant that a new Welsh middle class elite began to grow and dominate public life throughout Wales deacons and ministers shopkeepers and politicians in 19th century Wales the promise of British respectability with its dazzling Empire offered this new elite an elevated place in the world a Simon Brooks argues in his book why Wales never was the very social classes that in other countries formed the backbone of national movements saw in Britishness the opportunity for personal advancement Brooks writes that as Victorian Wales came to be among the most modern societies in the world although the middle class was small it could have spread the gospel of nationalism but it did not in this most turbulent of Welsh centuries it was becoming increasingly understood that as the country was being reshaped around you that transformation spoke a language and that language was not Welsh the infamous government report that came to be known as the treachery of the blue books made it very clear what Britain expects the public inquiry was carried out in 1846 by three English commissioners to look into concerns about the state of Welsh edge they visited and gathered evidence from every part of Wales however they spoke in a Welsh and based their report mainly on accounts provided by wealthy landowners and Anglican clergymen not groups known for their warmth of feeling towards the Welsh language or indeed non-conformism unsurprisingly the official report of the following year was damning in its appraisal it concluded that the Welsh as a people were ignorant lazy and immoral and that the prime causes for this were their continued use of the Welsh language and the noxious spread of nonconformity its message was clear the world is changing your country is changing modernizing there are fortunes to be made power and influence to be accrued you don't want to be left behind do you Brooks argues that had there been a well-organized nationalist movement at the time to ensure that the education acts of 1870 and 1889 had given Welsh its proper place as the medium of education in Welsh schools then at that crucial moment of mass immigration at the end of the 19th century the linguistic disintegration of the coal field need not have been inevitable as it was the blue-books report despite anger and outrage from some encouraged the Welsh middle class to embrace their Britishness and enjoy the fruits of British imperialism if the distinctiveness of their language was ebbing away they could rest a short that their religion and the nonconformist grip it had on their society was a sure source of Welsh other than us as for the working-class men who had left their rural Welsh speaking homes to become part of the new industrial boom they were joining up with immigrants from all over the rest of the British Isles together they found themselves part of a community where both Welsh and English were spoken over time unlike the agriculture-based whales that they had originally traveled from it wasn't language that gave these communities their sense of themselves it was class eventually they would come to feel that at times they had more in common with the mining communities of northeast England than with the Welsh speaking farming ones of North Wales violent Welsh uprisings like the attempted Chartist revolution of 1839 with its armed march on Newport or the bloody and earth-shaking rebellion here in mirtha in 1831 weren't originating from a sense of national identity at least not consciously they were part of a more class-based sense of solidarity and the reaction to localized industrial conditions and outrages three separate threads were now emerging within the Welsh identity one predominantly rural woven together around language and its connection to history increasingly reckoning with the mounting pressures on its very survival another around the emerging politics of a working-class struggling with the exploitative forces of capitalism and rooted in the industrial south and one more steeped in a liberal middle-class nonconformist embrace of Britishness and its pursuit of individualism these threads would only become more problematized and more entangled as time moved on into the 20th century through the great bonding of two world wars and the terrible suffering in between the general strike and the great transformational program of the post-war actly government with its Universalist vision of welfare and health care for all with a Welshman at its very heart a high point undoubtedly for what a truly inclusive Britishness can offer and also the attack on penny Bharath air base the flooding of the true Aran Valley for an English reservoir and the first seat in the British Parliament for played Kamri bomb threats and investitures the destruction of the mining industry and the attacks on organized labor lagoons and racetracks and Simon Glynn devolution and brexit we are today still trying to make sense of how those threads have evolved and are mutating still in the face of outside pressures in his 1975 essay on Welsh culture Williams wrote it is easy to speak of a proud independent people the rhetoric warms the heart but you can be proud without being independent you often have to be in the older epochs of conquest and in the modern era Park of industrial capitalism as I mean that much choice the self-respect the aspirations were always real and always difficult but you don't live for centuries under the power of others and remain the same people it is this always that is so hard to admit for it can be made to sound like a betrayal and so a genuine identity a real tradition a natural self-respect can be made to stand on their own as if nothing else had ever happened coming we made to stand on their own as if nothing else has ever happened well perhaps they can but not indefinitely eventually the past what undeniably has happened will break through it must using whatever pathways it can find and if that has not been reckoned with prepared for then it can come as a wave of fury and destruction possibly even self-destruction as Williams wrote unless in one way or another people can get effective positive control of their own places and their own lives this complex industrial society will smash itself up with increasing hatred and bitterness not in spite of but because of the imposed and artificial unity which the existing system is now fighting to maintain the past is not past it is not after all another country whether we are aware of it or not we walk its busy streets and tread its muddied pathways every day as the Welsh language has been pushed further to the margins its visibility protected but not the communities bound together by its everyday realities as the towns and villages that grew up around the coal fields and the ironworks have been beaten down and forgotten about seemingly even by the political party born out of its struggles as are squares and high streets are littered not only with cheap chicken and pizza shops but also thousands of empty chapels and darkened welfare halls and as the dazzling promises that the offer of Britishness made seem to ring ever more hollow with each passing Welsh budget day we are left with the realization that the world did indeed reshape itself and we were after all left behind no matter what deals we thought we made the Pied Piper of Britishness danced us all down to the river and then left us there and as we wake up to the reality of where we are and the incredibly dangerous position we find ourselves in we open our mouths to warn each other to shout it to the world and find we have no voice because we never got to build one there is a reason we have a dragon on our flag dragon saw a loft on the magic and mystery of the past they terrify with their ferocious power and the savagery of their fiery wroth but most importantly they only exist in our minds and in our hearts never in the real world was it you rub the tore up the laws of how old are or controlled us with a ring of steel was it Europe the made oh England or a fugitive imprisoned his family and crushed his vision for a Welsh future who was it that stole our relics and smashed our altars did you repel us who to worship on what language we were allowed to do it in who set the wages in the ironworks who opened fire at the Westgate hotel who set the tolls that forced Rebecca who sent their troops to mirtha or to smash the N um who drowned Capel Kalin was it Europe no we know who it was but if we want to stay British we have to forget or act like it doesn't matter so don't teach it in schools don't talk about it in public don't connect pull down the newspapers keep the television quiet hollow out the language make us a theme park make us a gift job accommodate accommodate accommodate as if nothing else had ever happened before trying to answer the question of why Wales unlike Scotland or Northern Ireland would vote almost identically to England let's go back to the one Raymond Williams asked in 1971 who speaks for Wales because they are essentially both questions about the same thing where is the welsh voice and how does it make itself heard well there is no single welsh voice of course there are as many voices as there are people as there are communities as there are histories but if a voice speaks and there's no one there to hear it does it make a noise in March of this year as Theresa May prepared to trigger article 50 Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones warned if they are not careful people's sense of disengagement with Brussels will simply attach itself to London they are giving the impression sometimes that they do not listen and what kind of message is that to the people of Wales people in Wales are going to start saying well the government is listening to the Scots we need to be like them now I assume the First Minister wasn't referring to the launch of a new Welsh time machine program there and that it was more a Koi threat about the Welsh people taking a greater interest in the subject of independence that appears to be as strong as it gets from Welsh labour because of course any further down that road and they're straying onto opposition territory and as we all know the Welsh people divided as they are by their own language with many still scared to death by the idea of cottage burners taking over don't yet seem to regard plight Camry or indeed the idea of independence for Wales as something they're prepared to get on board with in any great numbers and for played itself the tight rope they have chosen to walk seems to be between pursuing the respectable path of a civic nationalism that all too often isn't delivering and a full-throated cry for a cultural nationalism that just seems to offer its opponents a stick to beat them with as far as feeling not listen to and people's sense of disengagement with Brussels simply attaching itself to London I would suggest the First Minister looked a little closer to home bringing government closer to the people was never meant to stop at castle Cardiff communities beyond Cardiff have to be able to feel that they too have a stake in the Welsh state there has to be greater engagement with local communities when it comes to the question of public engagement in the democratic process don't just keep asking how you can get people to join you or how you can get people interested in what you're doing you're asking the wrong question ask how you can get interested in what they are doing how can you join them I've heard so many people since the breaks a referendum people in all kinds of positions of authority and responsible for delivering all kinds of services talking about how it's really important they all listen now we must listen to people we have to listen more to the communities we represent we haven't been listening enough as if listening is something you can suddenly do with a flick of a switch you have to learn how to listen it's not just a question of standing there with a clipboard and asking questions with the right look on your face you have to show up and stay around after let go of your assumptions and your biases and your agendas and your prejudices it's really hard speak to the people who are on the frontline of working in communities the ones doing the really tough work of giving support where it's desperately needed where their resources are getting smaller all the time but the need for what they're doing is getting greater every day ask them about listening because they're really good at it but they're also the ones who'll say that they're not being listened to the body of this country is made up of passionate brave creative innovative resourceful selfless people in our church halls and in our universities in our hospitals and in our charity shops in our women's Institute's and our labor clubs and our voluntary organizations and our small all businesses and our emergency services and our youth clubs and our rugby clubs and our school staff rooms that is who makes up the body of this country and they're being forced to wear the clothes of mediocrity speak to them and learn how to listen to what they tell you and then develop your policies and when you've developed them have the courage to see them through or if you ask for a report to be done and recommendations to be made then act on those recommendations or people will feel you're just wasting their time as Kevin Morgan said to assume a new power is one thing but to have the capacity the competence the confidence to deploy it effectively is something completely different having groundbreaking progressive policies like the future generations Act or the social value Act is one thing but it means nothing if you're not prepared to drive them through and deliver them on the ground you have to be stronger with local government the number of times I've heard community groups saying that they had a much-loved local amenity threatened with closure because of budget cuts and then when they tried to take over the running of it themselves it was their very own local council who became the biggest obstacle to them and the council those themselves are in an impossible position need support all the council of abject budgets cut by more than 77 million pounds since 2010 they're faced with another cut of ten point two million pounds for the next financial year more services cut more opportunities reduced more pressure put on overstretched people you start to see ye perhaps there's not a great deal of incentive for government to listen to people because increasingly they know what they're going to say and when government responds with the inevitable excuse of Westminster ultimately being to blame then the conversation has to end because there's only two places Welsh labor can go from them either they have to admit that they're too incompetent with what budgets they're given by the Westminster / solders and too weak to get any more out of them or the whole relationship is systemically flawed and needs to be totally reformed and neither of those responses is an option for us labor so we just don't have the conversation there is a calcification at the heart of the Machine here in Wales it's jamming up the gears and it's stopping us from moving forward we are stuck our economy is going nowhere fast and we just seem to tinker around the edges unemployment levels are down but in work poverty is soaring low skilled and low-wage jobs are all the seams available for many and ideas that could be used to generate local wealth building like the use of public procurement and cooperation between anchor institutions goes undeveloped our Civic institutions are in danger of becoming as restrictive and constraining as the ring of Steel ever was one centralized stranglehold in London just looks like it's being replaced with another one in Cardiff and politics has been reduced to management and admin rather than anything to do with bold vision and brave leadership a government and its opposition have no-go areas in what they're prepared to talk about because of protecting their own political space and the fear of either scaring people off or not being seen as different enough we have a distinctively Welsh English speaking working class that grew up around industries that have long since disappeared their loyalty to the Labour Party that they themselves were instrumental in creating has become more and more strained as the party itself struggles to stay relevant to its grassroots communities as Peter Mandelson is supposed to have remarked the people of South Wales will always vote Labour because they have nowhere else to go in most regions of South Wales at least whoever you vote for in Wales labour wins on the UK level the electoral maps of the British system means whoever you vote for in Wales ultimately it can't really impact the UK elections but so many people across Wales felt that an English Nationalist Party like you Kip were able to articulate their own sense of frustration and resentment says much about where we find ourselves today walk down any high street in Wales and barely anyone could tell you what areas have been devolved to us let alone what's going on at the Assembly from day to day within government you have an opaque civil service divided up and isolated in their own silos with no incentive for joined up thinking in the public sector budgets continue to be cut services to be diminished morale to nosedive with no end to austerity insight and the ramifications of brexit still to unfold and a voluntary sector increasingly being asked to pick up the slack whilst at the same time having to fight each other for the same small and ever dwindling pots of money available totally disincentivizing any sort of cooperation or solidarity amongst themselves it turns out that there are indeed large sums of money available for Welsh projects and enterprise but the publicly funded national grant funding organizations that have a responsibility to share that money out across the whole of the United Kingdom can find it difficult to get across the seven bridge a lot of the time and perhaps most significantly underpinning it all is an almost total inability for us as a nation to be able to talk about all this with each other as Simon Brooks noted the parameters of discourse limit the possibilities of what can and cannot be said the parameters of our discourse in Wales are limited from both without and within from without because media policy in Wales is a reserved matter under the direct control of a disinterested UK government and from within by both an avoidance of certain conversations for political reasons and the fact that the platforms for where those come stations can take place a solo fully absent a few bits and bobs of news and analysis here and there tacked on to the end of what gets sent to us from England an extremely rare one-on-one interview of any depth with a Welsh politician born Roderick on a Sunday morning the Institute for Welsh affairs podcasting their conferences and lectures occasional bits of investigative journalism current affairs or advocacy on the big public broadcasters the Wales that gets reflected back to us from our broadcasters through drama entertainment documentary or reporting in no way represents who we are or the plurality of our experience or the range of our interests and concerns and have you tried looking for books of our Wales Wales online sites healthy numbers in terms of clicks but as enemies media and training development manager a Cardiff University pointed out recently if you look beyond that and instead at the actual amount of time those people are engaging with the stories it seems little more than a peremptory glance at the headlines and that's it now this is not to denigrate the work that is being done by individuals within the existing framework many of whom we have here today and I include myself in that but just to say that the opportunities for that work to get done and be amplified and engaged with by the entire country are so meager it's how we get to connect with each other show who we are where we've been explore who we might be challenged and change each other discuss argue provoke it's how we show the rest of the world who we are and who we can be without it we recede into darkness and isolation we are all too easily drowned out and engulfed when the big broadcasters do get involved with more in depth than extended pieces of reporting around issues like homelessness as ITV Kamri Wales did recently it can have a real impact the six-part BBC Wales series the story of Wales gave me the edge I wish I could have got in school series like hinterland bang and Stella do a lot of heavy lifting and it's been heartening to watch new exciting projects emerge like nation Camry and the always inspirational desolation radio podcast but these are rare oasis in a desert of stunted discourse Lee Waters and Angela Graham in their introduction to the IWA Wales media audit in 2015 said it is essential that the UK government recognized the particular media needs of Wales and that the Welsh government - should act to the full extent of its capacity in this area an improvement on the current media provision in Wales is a democratic social and cultural necessity exactly how much incentive there is for our government to support the strengthening of a sector that would of course result in them being put under far more pressure and made more accountable is up to question but perhaps most dangerous of all is what happened to our local journalism until recently when it finally shut down dr. Rachel Howells was a founder director and editor of the portal bat-magnet newspaper last year she submitted a report to the assembly committee inquiry into news journalism in Wales which summarized her five-year PhD research into local news and democracy in portal Bert and Wales in it she revealed that at a local level staff numbers in newsrooms across Wales have dropped by 60 to 90 percent in the last decade for example as I mentioned earlier in 1974 Talbot had five newspapers employing eleven reporters all permanently based within the town itself today there are none South Wales Evening Post employs one reporter based ten miles away in Swansea to cover the whole Neath Port Talbot patch all across Wales offices are closing and the few reporters that remain are being asked to do more cover larger areas fill more pages provide breaking news online and respond to social media time was the offices provided an important and regular point of contact between journalists and the communities they served and reporters could leave the office regularly to uncover investigate or report on nearby stories that time is gone now there is a much greater reliance on press officers and press releases triggering stories instead of reporters actually being at public meetings or conducting interviews the localness of stories is diminished fewer local voices are heard from and more likely to be high status where they are so the views and agenda of institutions and authority are being given undue weight while local campaigners and residents are getting sidelined scrutiny of those in power is being left to local residents who find it difficult to get answers from opaque and difficult institutions if they do manage to find anything out then they face the challenge of how to get it to a larger audience dr. Howells is data suggested that a significant number of people in the absence of a local news source are finding out about important issues by stumbling across them in physical spaces planning application signs protest notices campaign stalls barriers on thoroughfares and even graffiti with news going unreported and activists unable to gain the year of journalists the lack of information is leaving residents feeling powerless to act or to have their voices heard rumor and speculation is rife people become angry and disengaged what's the point nobody ever listens to us anyway she found that the lack of those three vital things information representation and scrutiny clearly did have a large impact on pratik engagement there is evidence to suggest that without them being in place voter turnout figures both the local and national elections can drop as a result significantly though the key marker for that in Neath Port Talbot may not have been when the newspaper itself closed but years earlier in 2000 at the moment when reporters were no longer based within the town itself this was when the sources became less local when stories became more reliant on PR when real engagement with the community being reported on began to fall away her report ended with a stark warning there is likely to be a large network of news black holes caused by the withdrawal of local journalism and masked by the continuation of local newspapers that resembles zombie newspapers with scaled back staff numbers and a much smaller amount of locally relevant content that is truly frightening a Welsh population at a local level with little access to information about their communities their views and concerns not being adequately represented to those who have authority over them and knowing that those authorities are barely being scrutinized or held to account yet with the true extent of the damage largely going unnoticed because these hollowed out zombie newspapers make it look from the outside like there's something meaningful still in place nature abhors a vacuum empty spaces will always get filled in the absence of our own journalistic infrastructure the majority of our news and opinion comes from the British media filled of course with British concerns but England has always been the dominant component of the British Isles in terms of size population and power it was inevitable that over time that which was important to England would become what defined British since with the decline of its empire and particularly since 1973 when the UK joined the EEC the very concept of Britishness has been under threat or as Raymond Williams said with them becoming increasingly economically and politically penetrated themselves many of the things that happened over centuries to the Welsh are now happening in decades to the English the consequent the consequent confusion and struggle for identity the we in Wales have been wrestling with on and off for the last 1,500 years has now become part of the English experience and that experience with all its attendant emotional crisis has been amplified through the British media and then on into a country where as we've seen discussion of Welsh identity and its connection with a history of repression and thwarted nationhood has been greatly restricted the frustration and the anger and the resentment articulated within that English experience by the likes of you Kip and others seemed to connect with a deep reservoir of those same feelings within many here in Wales feelings that have been there in people laying dormant perhaps for a very very long time but unable when the moment came to find expression within their own national framework whether historically culturally or politically now I'm not saying that the reasons people had in Wales for voting to leave the EU are not totally valid reasons in their own right and I'm not commenting on the rights and wrongs of voting in that way concerns about wages being driven down by European workers in areas where low-skilled and low wage jobs are already scarce can't be simply dismissed as racist people feeling anger at the status quo being something that seems to actively work against them and their interests is not anything to be trivialized or ignored and whilst there can be darker with in it a desire for a more level-headed and rational approach to immigration both its benefits as well as its drawbacks is clearly needed but when a lot of the reasoning revolves around issues like control and identity as we've seen issues that have long been central to Welsh experience it's unavoidable not to think there may be some displaced motivation at work especially when those issues are being framed within a specifically English context and delivered by a predominantly English media unavoidable and very important to understand if and when outcomes don't match expectations earlier this year lmao Hagin wrote in The Guardian the myth that the Welsh electorate which consumes basically the same media as the English would somehow hold on to an inherent progressivism in the face of industrial decline was always absurd I would add that it was also in the face of being disconnected from its own history and denied opportunity to explore its own modern identity in the context of that history the dragon had no voice so it spoke through the mouth of st. George and we know how he felt about dragons a Simon Brooks wrote the practical outcome of not promoting a Welsh identity is to entrench a British one and for Britain see England and here I want to be clear when I say England I mean the English state Williams began his 1983 essay wills an England like this it can be said that the Welsh people have been oppressed by the English state for some seven centuries yet it can then also be said that the English people have been oppressed by the English state for even longer in any such general statements all the real complications of history are temporarily overridden one of the complications for me is that most the time I loved being British parts of it anyway I think the majority of Welsh people probably do I just wish it loved us a bit more it's just on a level playing field never has been the English really do need their own devolution it is entirely possible that without it especially if Scotland were to leave the UK the English would start to see the UK as they did the EU and start asking why should they be subsidizing the underperforming Welsh we could be forced into a form of independence created to suit the English rather than one instigated by and designed to meet the needs of ourselves the other aspect of all this that worries me is that when government is desperate to improve the economy and journalism is unable to give the powerful the scrutiny necessary including powerful corporations and industry then communities often the poorer communities can be left extremely vulnerable ask the people of the lowest suruí Valley who were fighting against the has rem environmental waste recycling plant planned for their area an area with an industrial past that has left its community with higher than average respiratory problems and already appears in the lowest 6% of the Welsh index of multiple deprivation they worry about what the increased levels of nitrogen dioxide and the poor air quality will do to them and their children the people of Neath Port Talbot worry about what effects the proposed super prison will have in their area planned as it is to be so close to their schools and communities ordered by Westminster with as yet no consultation with the community it will affect and scant evidence that Wales needs it at all no one can say with certainty how many people may be affected by the proposed dumping of hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive mud into the sea of Cardiff's coast in preparation for the brand-new Hinkley Point see our station EDF Energy is planning on dredging mud from the now abandoned sites at Hinkley Point a and B and dumping it off the bay even though the Welsh government have already approved the plan people like marine pollution researcher Tim Deere Jones have huge concerns that the waste has not been sufficiently tested and the levels of radioactivity could be much higher than is being currently stated multiple studies show that waste dumped into water like this can transfer to the land via coastal flooding and sea spray so being sure about those radioactivity levels seems pretty important these stories get bits of coverage here and there but they rarely break through there just isn't the support for reporters to do the kind of long-form in-depth investigative reporting but I know they feel many of these stories deserve the pressures on them we've already discussed simply don't allow them the resources to do it one thing to attract foreign investment and to welcome new industry with all the jobs for Welsh people that can bring is completely understandable especially given everything I've talked about here today but we have to be vigilant that it is not at the expense of communities who have already dealt with so much and whose voices can all too often either not be heard or too easily be drowned out there's one story that we should keep in mind when thinking about how all these elements can come together it's a story that has been going on for 50 years the story of brofist keen quarry and a man named Douglas Gowen now you won't find much written about this story certainly not within Wales and certainly not given how long it's been going on who it involves and what its implications are brofist keen quarry is a disused limestone quarry not too far from here in gross vein near Trant recent and Douglas Cowan is now a 74 year old disabled man with a lot of different and complicated health issues but in 1967 when he first visited brofist king quarry he was 24 and working for the National Farmers Union he'd been called out to investigate mysterious deaths and abortions among the livestock of farmers in the area around bro Fiske in this led to him discovering that brofist King quarry was being used as a toxic waste dump and that it had been going on for a couple of years already us-based multinational corporation Monsanto had a plant in nearby Newport who had been stopped from routinely dumping chemical wastes into the river 7 and public waterways and sewers so with the help of a local haulage company they identified the site at Pro fisken secured planning permission and without capping or lining it against rainfall despite the quarry being permeable they started dumping their toxic chemical wastes there instead wastes which included large amounts of polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs as they're more commonly known little was publicly known about the adverse effects of PCBs at the time and according to the most in-depth reporting on this story that I've managed to find which is in the British environmental journal the ecologist what was known had been discovered by Monsanto and kept secret the ecologist rights company papers subsequently released in America show that for more than 30 years Monsanto had sat on lab test results that showed PCBs were fatal to rats and other animals causing exactly the symptoms and deaths that had been seen in the brofist Keene cattle production of PCBs was eventually banned in America by 1979 and seven years later the UK government followed suit but according to the ecologist they are not safe and they do not become safe over time their long living and their effect on human and animal health is cumulative as a consequence their impact might not be immediately felt the dumping of PCBs went on at brofist King quarry until at least 1972 despite Douglas Gowans investigation his findings about the connections between the dumping and its effect on local livestock his concerns for the local populations health his warnings to the local council the Environment Agency's the government and Monsanto itself nothing was done to even attempt to clean it up until 2005 in the years between Gowen has been ridiculed threatened beaten up publicly discredited he's had numerous attempted break-ins he's been sued in court denounced in Parliament and forced into a witness protection program documents have been mysteriously lost witnesses silenced scientific data ignored the ecologist reports that the then Secretary of State for Wales Peter Thomas MP labeled him scientific luminaries such as Sir Richard Dahl a pioneer in linking smoking to health problems said PCBs were perfectly safe and Gowen didn't know what he was talking about only later to be found that he was actually receiving payment from Monsanto the Minister of State for the environment at the Welsh Assembly at the time Carwyn Jones chief executive of the Environment Agency Baroness Barbara young and Lord Rucker the Defra Minister responsible at the time according to the same report all said that the water of Bro fisken was safe and the dumping only took place in a very small and isolated section of the quarry all claims refuted to this day by Douglas Cowen according to the Guardian newspaper by 2011 officials had concluded that dangerous toxins within the quarry had the potential to pose a significant health risk to local residents and that indeed Monsanto was liable for the contamination and should pay the cost of cleaning it up Monsanto has never accepted liability and has only ever offered a contribution towards the cleanup costs in spite of hundreds of millions of dollars being paid out by Monsanto over court actions brought against them in the US for doing the same thing there to the likes of poor african-american communities of Anniston Alabama no such actions were ever taken by the Welsh or UK authorities in spite of pressure from Douglas Gowen and others a cap has since been placed on the quarry but Gowen whose own body tissue has been found to contain high levels of PCB still has grave concerns in an email I received from him recently he said brofist Keene quarry is the site of the worst ever dumping of PCBs in raw form in used products or in contaminated waste it is generally accepted that over 80,000 tonnes of PCB will have been forced down into the aquifer below the porous limestone quarry the cap over the site has reduced the problem on the surface but only to cause all the waste to now be flushed down into the aquifer this aquifer is the reserve water supply for Cardiff and Birmingham the contaminants will add er-2 minut solids and travel and inevitably will one day become a health problem so far such concerns have been met with claims of any investigation being too expensive at a time of austerity and with problems not likely to be seen for another 50 years it's a problem for them not now and I'm fairly certain that not many of you if indeed anyone has heard or read about any of this in 1985 Williams wrote a review article in titled community in it he wrote about two books by different authors each about a different aspect of Welsh history at one point he uses a phrase that has stayed with me ever since I first read it it's become a sort of touchstone for me it was it was only recently that I realized I'd actually misunderstood what Williams meant pay it he wrote the more profound community is the area of its discourse now what he meant in the context of his article was that each writers subject the area of their discourse was which of the communities that they each were writing about was the most profound the most profound community is the area of their discourse but the reason why that phrase has stayed with me and has become so meaningful for me is because to me it's saying that the place where we meet where we share who we are what we dream of where we've been what we suffer how we find joy it's that place that is the more profound community the area of our discourse what can and cannot be said the scope we allow ourselves to have the conversation and how many of our people are able to have their voice be heard in it that's what makes us not just a community but the more profound community we don't have to agree but we do have to engage we must not let the parameters of our discourse become so limited that we cannot see where we really are historian Martin Johns reminds us that it is truly remarkable that a small country like Wales with no real political identity or or clear legal status to our nationhood has managed in the face of being enveloped by a huge imperial power like Britain some how to hold on to our sense of being different with our own cultural identity in all its complexity and our own language in spite of everything remarkable seen in this way it is a story of extraordinary resilience but if we are to have any kind of a future then we must face the reality of our present and that means a reckoning with the legacy of our past Williams wrote what is it that has happened it is nothing surprising it is in general very well known to the extent that we are a people we have been defeated colonized penetrated incorporated never finally of course the living resilience in many forms has always been there but its forms are distinct they do not normally include for example the fighting hatred of the Irish there is a drawing back to some of our own resources there is a very skillful kind of accommodation finding a few ways to be recognized as different which we then actively cultivate while not noticing beyond them the profound resignation these are some of the signs of a post-colonial culture conscious all the time of its own strengths and potentials longing only to be itself to become its own world but with so much too much on its back to be able consistently to face its real future like I said at the beginning of this I have spent most of my life outside of Wales so what right have I to stand here and speak about these things no right no right at all I'm just one of those many Welsh voices but I do have a voice and unlike many my voice can be heard many of us in this room today can have our voices heard and I have come to feel the responsibility of that and the opportunity of it when I walked into that McDonald's all those years ago newly arrived in a strange familiar land little did I know or care that vast currents of history were swirling around me unseen but pushing and pulling like the ocean against a small ragged piece of coastline an incident without importance or meaning to anyone but me and yet at the same time a moment repeating back over and over through the past and on and on into the future experienced by multiple generations and continually shaping with each response and reaction to it the possibilities for our self definition and shared identity I felt my difference and shifted drew back as William said skillfully accommodated found my few ways to be different and cultivated them when the door was opened to that larger society as it was in the age of Henry and his acts of Union I ran through it when the promise of British respectability and the fruits of individual opportunity were offered up to me as they were to those in the 19th century I took them gladly and without a second thought but slowly over time through becoming more engaged sometimes by design but more by accident and always because of the example of others I have come to feel differently I begin to understand now what an item Bevan said what an irony Bevan meant when he said the purpose of getting power is to be able to give it away and when Raymond Williams wrote as so often in Welsh history there is a special strength in the situation of having been driven down so far that there is at once everything and nothing to lose and in which all that can be found and affirmed is each other we must affirm each other that is where our real future lies that is where we build from each other use what voice we have in the service of each other whenever we can join our voices together to help create a wales that is our own world as Williams described it a world that can argue and challenge and question and explore a world that can encompass multiple histories and diverse experience a world that does not avoid its past or ignore its divisions a world where our difference can become the source of our strength confident enough to take control of our own energies and our own resources connected to each other and taking responsibility for ourselves that is how we build our dragon put real flesh on its bones and hope that one day it will fly thank you ah so much to take home and think deeply about Michael is just one simple question I want to ask before I open it to the floor you've talked about ball vision you've talked about brave leadership talked about speaking for Wales which you've done with such incredible eloquence would you consider entering politics in a war formal capacity I think that there was a point probably about two years ago when I said to myself as I was increasingly becoming more involved in different issues and organisations in Wales but mainly because of the legacy of when I did the passion in potala Bert in 2011 six years ago now I since then really have got more involved with different things and then it got to a point where I thought am I in any way being as effective as I possibly can and so from that point on I just started thinking about how could I be most effective and that has led me to the point where I feel at the moment the way I can be most effective in using what resources I have you know the sort of you know whatever influence and leverage the bit of celebrity that I have has and the kind of media platform that I'm able to have and the ability to bring people into a room together even if it's just to have their kids Twilight DVD signed at the end of it at least I can get people in a room you know that that that seems to be the most effective thing at the moment and if there came a point where being a member of an official political party seemed to be more effective mm-hmm then I would but I sort of feel like that the sort of freedom that I have really to say rightly or wrongly whatever I want you know and not have to worry too much about a political party line that I have to keep to or an employer you know that I have to worry about whether I'm gonna still be paid for you know that allows me a freedom to have maybe hopefully a voice that can express what people who would don't have their voice heard so much maybe you know can have a way for them to be heard so I think at the moment the way it is is most effective but if that were to change then here Never Say Never Never Say Never but I don't really see it up there we have some microphones I think don't we so could we take a question or a comment gentleman here hello there hello my name is Mansell Elwood I'm a little boy from mertha and always will be you gave the most compelling exciting and enthralling diagnosis if I may use a medical metaphor of what the problems are and you articulated in a very convincing way to an audience which unfortunately to be a bit receptive are self selected yeah we know what the diagnosis is you've made that very clear we probably know what the treatment or elements of that treatment might be but we don't know how to apply it there are not many people like you that can actually move an audience like this we don't have to get it at the people that are here today we have to get at far anymore perhaps 10 to one more that need to get your message need to understand it but need to act upon it this is a very profound question and I don't expect you to answer it but how do you feel how do what do you think you can recommend that's probably the most important way in which the message you give and the message that is received by this this audience can actually propagate it to people who are not likely to come along and listen to you or listen to me or listen to anybody else and certainly not going to be listening to politicians whether it'll be so what is it that you've picked up that might help us get your message which is a true and honest message across thank you for that in the in the period of time that I've been suppose of the last sort of two or three years that I've been consciously trying to go to where this sounds like there are effective projects happening or people or organizations whether they're individuals or organizations actually being effective in communities I've gone to visit them and I've gone to look up what they're doing and try and learn from them and in every single instance whether it is an individual or an organization it there is no quick answer there's no simple fix obviously but there is an engagement with the community that is that has a consistency and a continuity and is very much based on listening to that community and not going in there and telling them what they you know what they need and what's right for them is genuinely listening to the needs of that community and responding to it and working with it and having a proper dialogue a proper dialogue with people and out of that I think certain values just manifest themselves out of that so what I've been expressing today you know there are ideas within it and there are opinions but under underneath everything I hope there is a set of values and those values are what Mead I what I want to be able to use as a as a basis for what I do I don't necessarily have to express anything of what I said today hate to anyone else but what I do need to do personally my personal responsibility is go and act on those values go and act on those beliefs and engage and so I think anyone who in any way feels and I don't expect anyone to agree with everything I'm saying you know part of the point of what I was talking about is that it's not about agreeing necessarily but it's about engaging and about having that argument and allowing that the the space and the oxygen to breathe you know and then expand so I do believe that getting out into the communities and working with people you know whether it's Sue malson a track to charity shop in in Tibetan or whether it's Bromley Bible Health Centre in of London you know it has all kinds of challenge these things are all things that have developed over time and a fully engaged with their community and that I take as a personal responsibility for me to do the same thing and bring like I say what resources I have and it's not just celebrity and I mean I have money as well I'm my own money which I am spending I can bring other people's money to things as well now not everybody can do that but each of us can look at what what have I got that I can help with you know whether it's the ability to to speak or anything no matter what it is everyone has got you know talents that and resources and that's partly why the people who are here in this room today are in this room today because everyone has either the opportunity to amplify a message or to you know part of what I said is about connection it's very difficult I think for Wales as a nation to be connected with each other whether that's geographically or culturally because of the different strands of identity within it or or through media or whatever it is it's difficult for that to happen again one of the things that I'm most trying to look at aware of the opportunities that I can get involved in in order to bring the country together in some way you know I mean we're looking to bring the homeless World Cup to Wales because in that maybe is an opportunity to start a kind of a national dialogue around you know something like sport and the fact that it's to do with you know not just the national game where you've got multi billionaires playing on a field you know that there's something actually there for people to get involved in and learn more about I'm trying to find as many ways as possible to do that that's me personally but everybody has something they can do and the more we can work together with it you know like I say there's not a lot of incentive at the moment in terms of the kind of structures that we all find ourselves in to work together well you know the more in said the bigger incentive is to always stay separate and keep your own thing going on and not share information and you know so the more ways we can find to come together and part of that is I think you know adilyn welsh history was meaningless to me i didn't know any of it when I was a school the only well sister I thought this is the only thing I can remember was an essay that you were asked imagine you are a Roman soldier on patrol on a hill fort in cleared what do you see and now I think who gives a what the Roman soldiers see what are the Welsh people see or living don't like well how can we not be looking at our history through our own point of view you know like it seems now I mean I'm you know I'm I'm very late to the game and I'm learning and I'm making awkward clumsy you know attempts at certain things but it seems extraordinary I'm not just extorting I feel so sad that I didn't have that education growing up I didn't know about a lot of this stuff you know it meant nothing to me and so I felt like and like I said I sort of indirectly referred to it at the very beginning when I said when I got to London and you have this kind of like oh my god no one speaks like me and that kind of stuff going on I had so little to hold on to and and I was sort of adrift for many many years and I don't you know professionally I've done well and all that I said but something inside me was adrift for years and years and years because I had no ballast to hold on to and I am finding that ballast now and it fills me with joy and an excitement and anger and you know all kinds of emotions and I'm so glad that it's at last I'm I'm you know having the opportunity to get involved with that stuff but it makes me so sad that so many people don't you know and as well opportunities you know I think about the opportunities that I had when I was growing up I had a very supportive family I came through a Youth Theatre system you know that was funded by local education I went off into drama school because I got a grant from my local of all of that has got all of it has got none of that exists anymore you know we're now at a point where even only certain pupils are getting taught English literature in schools because you know it's seen as oh well that's not for them you know yeah how are our children how is some kid on an estate in mirtha what's the pathway for them you know there's so much against what's going on so I again I'm just talking about I'm diagnosing it but what I'm looking at is how can we create those paths how can I be a part of that and how can I join together with other people who want to be a part of that how can we get rid of these blockages because we have everything yeah you know I've never I've literally been you know I've been around a lot of the world I've never come across a people like ours the quality I must you know I'm sure I'm biased and all happen but I've really there is like William said about the spread of non-conformism into Wales also the spread of unionization in wealth these things were taken on with a fervor and a sort of obsession partly because of what had long been held back and the longing and the frustration and the energy and you feel that in most people I particularly feel it in women over a certain age in Wales that there because they am so long you know we saw during the miners strike who was the strongest ballast for those communities it was Welsh women know over fifty usually you know and and I could have Women's Institute I my mother's towns Women's Guild and all and you just it's you know a lot of when I go to these communities and organizations and different projects there's usually a woman of about between 50 and 60 at the heart of it usually and you know after a while you kind of go is something going on here so there's that longing that potential that energy there it's just about getting rid of the things that are stopping it from from flowing you know caris furlong and that was wonderful thank you very much for giving the lecture don't enter Welsh politics yet because one of the things that's lacking in Welsh politics is independent voices outside political parties and particularly independent voices outside of political parties that people will listen to and care about what they say so maybe save that one for a few years time and I'm I'm looking forward to joining the ranks of these wonderful women over 50 who are going to disrupt the future of Wales but but in the meantime I wanted to come back to one of the things that Raymond Williams was so passionate about which is lifelong learning and you talked about how we can build communities together and educate each other and find our collective voice and part of the history of Wales has been doing that in places like this where people came together to learn and to educate themselves and and that's what's driven us on to become to actually punch above our weight in the way that you you describe but as you also describe the the number of empty chapels and empty working clubs around our nation how do we reinvigorate that so it's not the responsibility of the state because we know that's not going to happen to educate and offer second chances but somehow we take more of a collective responsibility to do that and and we feel that responsibility that you clearly feel to use our own voice to make a change yeah it's great I mean the point you made a night you know and I talked about in the in the speech but to see all these extraordinary buildings chapels and welfare halls and miners Institute's you know all across well so now when I go to different places or unwell I'm so much more aware of it as well you know I'm looking for it and not only are they extraordinary buildings just architectural II and but the significance of them you know this symbolism of them these were hearts of the community these were places those spaces that I'm talking about about where are those places for us to come together and explore those were those places they were what local journalism ended up being a part of and you know what what what social media now where people get you know those were those places and to see them so many of them just sitting there with nothing just dead you know is terrifying as so sad and when the more I hear major metropolitan institutions not just in wealth but in in London particularly London talking about you know we must engage with communities out there I sort of feel that well why don't why don't we start a buddy scheme where major institutions in London or Cardiff pair up with one of those buildings in one of those communities and sponsor the redevelopment of it and then we have potentially a network of buildings in communities all around Wales that is immediately a place that can have travelling exhibitions you know something can be going around all those places and then the rest of the time they can be used by the community themself again you know and it's a way of engaging and and rather than looking for how can you get people from communities that don't normally go to museums or art galleries or whatever it is to those places what go to them go and you know maybe there's you know there's some idea but um how did they respond to that cuz that is a brilliant concept well you know you do what you can and find out people involved and if you can get the right person to begin it I mean Grayson Perry talked about how his last exhibition he about masculinity he you know was in a gallery at the serpentine I think or something and he said you know I wish I could actually take it to all the miners Institute's around you know I mean come yeah okay let's make that happen then let's do it so it's a case of you know getting all that together and getting the first person to agree to it and that kind of stuff but um you know the it takes a bit of thinking about those sort of things and you're right you know it's not about waiting for the government to do it but also at the same time you need help it's about getting everyone to collaborate on it because there is a place for government and things like that as well and there's a place for private public partnerships and you know and so we build it up but it's adding the idea at first and having the ambition ambition is critical you've got a you've got to have those ideas I suppose them and and have the confidence and the belief that you can see them through and make them happen and not feel still I mean I feel stupid a lot of the time saying those things so god knows what someone who you know isn't got the opportunities that I've got Jill's conscious of the toy bit against us but we could take one more question I've got to tell you this right I'm Liz McClane and I live imitated Viacom from visited Ville on my life I'm also Welsh speaker and I'm 52 I just want to tell you about Carnarvon ZOA which is a Welsh nonconformist chapel just up the road that I spent five years raising 1.8 million pounds to transform into a community theatre in Welsh language centre so what we actually do is we promote the Welsh language in the community we deliver Welsh language awareness sessions which talk about exactly what you were talking about today what you've said today is completely inspirational to me because it's what it's all about what I've been doing for the last 15 years of my life so it's unbelievable and one of the questions I wanted to ask you today is though and I've been sent by mirtha community to ask you this right it's very important there we ran a festival EMU and we have them for the last few is called militarizing alright which you've probably heard about and the myth arising committee which I'm not allowed to be on and I think that's because I'm a woman actually funnily enough and a Welsh speaker but anyway that committee is asked me to ask you could you possibly raise the red flag to open the festival this year I mean if I can I would love to yeah so we'll we'll get in touch and we'll try and sort it out I may steal the right good I may not stop yeah I know there was another hand raised and I would feel guilty if I didn't give the gentleman there the last question when they go I think I'm I'm the newest person here I'm George Caird representing the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama I've been working in Wales just two months but I should first say I'm completely inspirational speech and your point about working across communities is what we really are thinking about now that's spot-on but my question is this is identity is one thing you've spoken eloquently about the worlds identity and we think about England but what about the power of London culturally somehow we are doing so brilliantly in Wales with all our cultural institutions but how do we attract people here to Wales and away from London perhaps because it's such an enormous and obviously recognisable powerhouse let's applaud that but what shall we do about Wales yeah well I suppose you know like I was saying we we've I think the more confident we are the more we're able to own the complexity of our identity and and and all the contradictions within it the less the let the more opportunity we have to share who we are with each other and what we mean to each other I think that attracts people you know confidence is sexy and talent is sexy and and knowing who you are and not being frightened of of exploring that and arguing and you know and that that attracts things I think you know and someone like we've got one of the best journalism schools in the world in Cardiff University but how do we keep our journalists in Wales you know some of one of them you know one of there are some great reporters out there at the moment Welsh reporters like Carol Cadwallader doing some the most extraordinary work at the moment around data and how do we keep people like Carol in Wales you know how do we do that but I think the more that we it's going to be a slow process but the or we can build that sense of confidence and that sense of you a sort of a unity based on division in a way you know we've let IR division the fact that there are these different strands within our identity keep us separate there's a lot of things that do that but you know we've allowed that in some ways we have to work against up how do we find a way to make what is different about my South Whelan non Welsh language speaking non Welsh history knowing you know my history how do we how could I connect with someone who's come from you know North Wales a rural background speaks Welsh and knows everything that I've talked about today how do we not let that become something that goes no you're not Welsh I'm you know how how do we find a way to come together share that not feel threatened by it you know Mike for a long time my own sense of I'd say guilt and shame about not speaking my own country's language manifested itself as oh bloody well speakers no they won't you know they won't serve you if you're up you know come on and all that kind of stuff and I it took me a while to go you know what that's because that's as my friend says to me that's yours and he puts me there but that's that was my stuff going on that was my own sense of guilt and not really wanting or not for whatever reason not able to do something about it positively so when you don't have the opportunity to do something positively about it it tends to turn into a negative because then you can kind of stay where you are in it and there's a lot of that I think that goes on you know I can say we're a country divided by a language and there's no reason for it it gets blown up out of all proportion about oh my god they're forcing our children it's to be celebrated I think when we can do that and take ownership of that not just about language about all kinds of things when we can do that we will become very attractive people already find Welsh people attractive you take it from me you know we've got a lot going for us so I think the more we can develop that kind of thing that attracts people I think that's a brilliant point in which to end let's feel sexy let's feel confident let's feel a house ladies and gentlemen you're all invited to join us back in the gallery for drinks all it remains for me to say is thank you the Red House for being such a fabulous host thank you to the Lord in a work Institute in the Open University who enabled in this whole event to happen but most of all to Michael Sheen for honoring the memory of Reba Williams with such erudition and passion thank you [Applause]

Channel: Learning and Work Institute Wales

Views: 223,963

Keywords: Michael Sheen, Raymond Williams, lecture, wales, Redhouse Cymru, Learning and Work, Livestream, Tantrwm, Politics, learningandworkinstitute, education, learning

Id: bbVdA7zS8dE

Length: 126min 51sec (7611 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 18 2017