City and Suburban BY JOHN BETJEMAN I HAVE not been able
to sleep lately for thinking of Mon- mouth. Is it Welsh or English? If a Welsh Nationalist puts up for it in the coming election, how will the Men of Gwent, as Monmouth people are called, receive him? James Hanley told me that every year, by an old treaty, the conquered country of Wales yields up a certain amount of acres to England and that these acres are taken from Mon- mouthshire. I rang up the Welsh Department of the Home Office to find out if this were true. They were most courteous and said they would let me know later. When they did so, it was that they could discover no record of, such a treaty but they would be pleased to hear whether I could. So I telephoned to the Clerk's office of the Monmouth County Council. 'Is Monmouth Wales or England?' I asked. He said it was a very difficult question to answer and put me on to the County Archivist. I asked him about the treaty, which he said was a popular belief with no signatories. He said Monmouth was neither Wales nor England, but the county motto was Utrique Fidelis. In order to get the Welsh view, I spoke to the London offices of the South Wales Evening Post and the South Wales Echo. The former, after waiting for a bit, definitely said Mon- mouth was part of Wales. The latter said that culturally it,was Welsh, but that the Men of Gwent regarded themselves as neither Welsh nor English. Ecclesiastically it is Welsh. As a keen Manx Nationalist I am in favour of total inde- pendence for Monmouth, Berwick-upon-Tweed and the Soke of Peterborough.
SLAUGHTER AT SALISBURY
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