LETTERS
From Gwynfor Evans, MP, Kenneth Williams, R. C. Saxby, Roger Calvert, Dorothy Usher, David Woolf, S. M. Stewart, the Rev Allan R. G. Hawkins, D. G. Davies, Stanley G. Woolfson.
A policeman's lot
Sir: Your leading article (11 October) aski, the Tories to explain 'to the nation what it is the Conservative party stands for'. May I suggest that the party also makes explicit for what nation it stands. Its history makes clear that it does not stand for the Welsh nation, though it has stood often and heavily on it.
The Conservatives' claim to be the patriotic party could never be made in rela- tion to Wales, where for generations 'criminals' have been 'attacking the very foundations of our society, our civilisation and the traditions and institutions which em- body them'. Their attack has been so ferocious that our national language, which was spoken by 90 per cent of our people in the middle of the last century is spoken now by only about 15 per cent of our chil- dren ; and the population of nearly half our counties is less than it was a century ago. The majority of the 'criminals' who in recent generations have led the attack on the old values and traditions of this ancient nation have been prominent in the Conservative party.
The majority have been Conservatives because most governments have been Con- servative. It goes without saying that the Labour party has given no more thought than their sister unionist party to the quality of life in Wales. The policies of both parties have savaged our economy and ravaged our traditional life because neither gives a damn for the effects in Wales when they frame those policies. For both 'the nation' is Eng- land, when it is not the British state ; and Wales, without even the powers of a Swiss canton, sees her great possibilities unrealised and her character destroyed by assimilation. If there is one thing I hate more than the pusillanimity of my own people it is the arrogant complacency of the establishment who have sapped their confidence and will to live as a nation.
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