WELSH LESSONS

Tristan Garel-Jones explains why he is glad

that Labour, his mother's party, escaped from the Valley of the Shadow of Death

THE land of my fathers. More importantly, perhaps, the land of my mother.

Meriel Williams was born in Llangennech in what was then the county of Glamorgan. Her family were coalminers and our local pit — Talclyn — was owned by a certain Sir Evan Williams.

Meriel was a clever, talented little girl. She won the Silver Tongue recitation prize at the National Eisteddfod. So tiny was she that she had to stand on a chair to recite the famous Welsh poem `Gelert ci Llewellyn'. From there to Llanelli Grammar School, and then to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art where, I guess, to the surprise of many — for she was a contemporary of Valerie Hobson and Sarah Churchill — she came away with the gold medal. With generous help from Lord Howard de Walden, later to be my godfather, she founded the Welsh National Theatre, and it was through this connection that she met and married my father.

It was through my mother and her family that I came to know Wales. My father, though Welsh, was sort of quasi posh, at least by the standards of Llangennech: Church of England, educated in England, non Welsh-speaking and a French mother. While he was away in the war my mother took me to the safety of Llangennech, where I attended the Bethesda Congregationalist Chapel, joined the Band of Hope, and thought that my great-uncle William Edwin — stiff collar, lace-up boots, a chapter of the Bible every night at supper — was the most important man in the whole world.

The war over, my father returned and we were whisked off to London. I soon picked up English and shortly thereafter found myself in a prep school in Kent — about a million miles away from the primary school in Llangennech which I had briefly attended at the end of the war. Slowly, Wales became a distant memory. My mother and I might occasionally have used a few sentences in Welsh if we did not wish to be understood. But, by and large, as children do — or did in those days — I tended to regard my mother as an adjunct to and a reflection of my conservative middle-class father, Whenever I questioned her about Wales

she was either dismissive or contemptuous. Gwynfor Evans and Dr Saunders Lewis (heroic founders of the Welsh Nationalist party) were dismissed as small frogs in a small pond. Richard Burton — drunk. Dylan Thomas — drunk and dirty. And when I entered the House of Commons: 'Never tell them you can speak Welsh. They will drag you down into their narrow, envious, inbred little ghetto.'

I slightly assumed — as is often the case with intellectuals (and my mother as a young woman would have qualified as such) — that to be born into a small country with a minority culture and language provides a framework that is too narrow, too constraining. Did not Samuel Beckett live in Paris and even write in French? Joyce used Ireland from afar. Pierre Loti wrote of Breton fishermen — in French. Unamuno and Pio Baroja — Basques to the core — are Spanish writers. Dylan Thomas wrote Welsh poetry — in English. The world is littered with tiny ships from small cultural islands tossed about on a vast ocean of homogeneity.

My mother had turned her back on Wales, and so did I. By the mid-1980s I was a government whip at a time when the Labour party was passing through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The SDP had been formed, and a part of my time was spent devising stratagems to pour more and more humiliation and discredit upon them. So dire was the state of the party that its very survival seemed to be in question. One evening I came bouncing home in a high state of elation. Some new disaster had befallen Labour, and I announced to my mother (now very elderly and staying at my home while she recovered from a brain operation) that we might be witnessing the end of Labour.

I recall that she was wearing a mink coat and rather a lot of jewellery. I am ashamed to say that I always thought that her love of expensive fur coats and faintly garish jewellery was a kind of affirmation — a rejection of the austere working-class background long discarded. She had a hole in the middle of her forehead from the operation and wore a turban to disguise her shorn scalp. She trembled a bit. And for the first time in more than 30 years she spoke to me in Welsh and with fervour. Hwyl, as they would say.

'Don't you talk like that about the Labour party, my boy. I'll tell you about your party. Church of England snobs, that's what you all are. Just like your father.'

Finger now wagging. TII tell you. When I was a little girl I went with your grandfather up to Talclyn to ask for compensation for William Edwin's accident. We saw the manager. Church of England snob he was too. And he showed us in to Sir Evan.

` Beth yw dy enw di?" [What's thy name?] 'Bloody snobs, they all knew a few words of our language.

" Yr un enw a thi — Evan Williams." [The same name as thine — Evan My mother added that she was secretly pleased that the proud impertinence with which my grandfather replied to Sir Evan in the same intimate form of address as he had been spoken to (the French tutoyer) would have entirely escaped Sir Evan.

Well, you may have the same name, my man, but you're not the same class and don't you forget it. Now take your cap off."

'Bloody Church of England snob! As long as there are people like that about there'll be a Labour party. And don't you forget it. The party will live on.'

And she was right. And she was Welsh. And so am I.

Tyd ddim yn gwybod ble wyt ti nawr rnam fach. 'Dwi wedi gadael yr Eglwys. 'Dwi wedi gadael y Gobeithlu. Ond 'dwi ddim wedi gadael y Blaid Geidwadol. Mae fy mhlaid yn mind tray Lyn Cysgod Angau fel oedd dy blaidd di y tro alaf yr oeddem yn trafod hyn. 'Dwi yn falch fod dy blaidd di 'n parhau. A godeithiaf y byddi di 'n falch pam ddaw 'mhlaid l'n oel hefid.

I don't know where you are now, little mother. I left the Church of England. I left the Band of Hope, but not the Conservative party. We are now in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, as your party was when we spoke. I'm glad your party lived. And I hope you'll be glad when mine does too.

Lord Garel-Jones was Conservative MP for Watford from 1979 to 1997.