There'll be a welcome in the valleys
Kenneth 0. Morgan
HANES CYMRU by John Davies
Allen Lane, f30, pp. 710
The 1980s have been a time of torment for the Welsh. Their coal industry has been emasculated; their language continues in slow decline; there is a crisis of morale in the state schools, for a hundred years one of the national glories; on the rugby field, the abject humiliation of the wooden spoon. Cherished landmarks seem to be evaporating. The advance of the Conserva- tives in Wales in the early Eighties heralded a cultural shift, though there are now clear signs of a reversion to familiar radical type. In his parliamentary centen- ary year, Lloyd George's pride in the debt owed by mankind to 'the little five-foot-five nations' could prove as ill-founded as his pledge of 'homes for heroes' after the first world war.
Yet, if the present and future remain uncertain, the Welsh past has been a triumphant growth industry, as in the past 25 years and more. Welsh historians have ranged confidently over the whole span of their nation's history. Further, as the Welsh Labour history group Llafur shows, it has been an approach to history that engages with the issues of the present, free from the post-industrial ambiguities of the `heritage' industry that flourishes in cathedral cities in England. Almost all this renaissance in history, however, has occur- red through the medium of English. John Davies's astonishing tour de force now brings to the Welsh-speaking public a comprehensive, synoptic view of the Welsh people and their culture, from the Ice Age to the 1987 general election, from the Red Lady of Pavilland to the Blue Maiden of
Downing Street. Beautifully written, sup- erbly paced, stylish and sophisticated in its judgments, it reflects immense credit on the author — and also on Allen Lane, whose confidence in launching out in a language other than English for the first time is amply rewarded.
The most interesting feature of this book is its balance. The author deals fairly with the landmarks of the remoter past — the `Age of the Saints'; the law-making of Hywel Dda; the fragmentation of mediaev- al Wales contrasted with the growing unity of Plantagenet England; the impact of conquest in 1282 and of Union in 1536; and always the essential thread of a distinct cultural identity, given new popularising force through religious expression in the native language, unlike the experience of Ireland. But the main emphasis of the work, and its main area of original research in an enterprise that necessarily draws on the scholarship of previous writers, lies in the period subsequent to the coming of industrialism after 1770. The implications of this are subtly drawn out — the massive displacement of population and the growth of towns; the messianic explosion of non- conformist religion; the advent of demo- cratic politics from the 1870s; a new indigenous leadership in government, reli- gion, education and literary culture, reaching a kind of climax in Lloyd George's ascendancy during the first world war. John Davies is able to include some intriguing incidental comments. Thus the opening of Barry docks by David Davies of Llandinam in the 1880s, so often seen as a commercial triumph, is shown as heralding the ultimate downfall of King Coal through an over-expansion of an industry depen- dent on the export trade. The author deals more briskly with the transformation of Edwardian society after 1918, but is able to balance the stagnation and unemployment of the Thirties with the advances in social welfare and renewed national awareness after 1945.
The book is a model of accuracy. A yen' rare slip is that Neil Kinnock is in fact the fifth Labour leader to sit for a Welsh constituency (Hardie, MacDonald, Cal- laghan and Foot being the others). There might have been more on sport and art, and particularly on Welsh-language liter- ary developments, in what is largely a socio-political account — but the mastery there is complete. The tone is commend- ably measured. This is indeed a sober work of history, fit to please the Band of Hope. Welsh historians tend to divide into the preachers and the pragmatists. Some see the Welsh past as a series of schizoid lurches and near-revolutionary upsurges by a people forever ranting and rioting, smashing toll-gates and burning aero- dromes. Others, the majority, rather emphasise the continuities, and the solid, if incomplete, achievements. John Davies clearly falls into the latter group — hence his concentration on 1880-1914, the Liberal era of county councils and county schools, Wales's Antonine Age. Even when dealing with modern nationalism, the importance of Gwynfor Evans and Saunders Lewis, the author remains restrained, for all his evi- dent sympathy. Events, in fact, have justified him. In the time this book has been in the press, nationality has re-emerged, phoenix-like, as a unique force for historic change. It has undermined the dominion of Marx as it did those of popes and emperors in the past. Even in Russia, `unhistoric nations' similar to the Welsh have sparked revolt. We may yet hail 'gallant little Lithuania' as the harbinger of a new pluralist world. Lloyd George's triumphalist rhetoric about 'little five-foot-five nations' may not be so absurd after all. In which case, John Davies's book may prove to be as powerful a work of prophecy as it is of history.
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