Don Touhig is sending out his acolytes to freeze on Valleys streets by shadowing the road show currently being organised by the All Wales Convention.
The convention has been set up after anti-devolution Labour MPs – eg Mr Touhig, of Torfaen – forced the Assembly to abandon taking any action on the decisions of the Sunderland Commission on how to develop the National Assembly.
In doing so, Mr Touhig and friends forced the Assembly to waste the £1m or more that the commission’s high-standard work cost.
The convention has been sent out currently to ascertain the views of the public on whether it is worth organising a referendum on extra powers for the Assembly.
Mr Touhig’s friends freezing in a car-park in Caerffili earlier today call themselves True Wales. Their core belief is to maintain the current link between Wales and the UK.
In truth, they do not seem to have moved on since the battles of 1978. That particular referendum campaign was characterised by massive disinformation by the anti-devolution party. At its head then in terms of disinformation was the then-MP for Torfaen, one Neil Kinnock.
Disinformation seems to be also at the core of the current campaign from True Wales.
Perhaps we should rename that group, based at Pontypool in the heart of Torfaen, as UNTRUE Wales.
The leaflet handed out in Caerffili (Caerphilly to some of devolution’s opponents) listed two current issues which they allege amount to “independence by stealth”.
The first is that the Assembly is paying a professor to look into the potential of a Welsh stock market.
The pamphlet claims, “There can only be one reason why WAG would want a stock market for Wales – an ambition for an independent and separate Wales.”
Now, I can quite understand why an ordinay Labour flunky from Pontypool might say that. You wouldn’t expect them to know what they are talking about, especially when finance is concerned. But Mr Touhig himself is not so stupid. As a former managing director of a weekly newspaper group, he should surely remember flicking his eyes across the daily Cardiff stock market prices printed in the Western Mail, as well the final editions of the South Wales Echo.
Mr Touhig may not be an expert on macro-finance – who is ? – but surely one reason for setting up a stock market in Wales is to raise money for Welsh industry, and thus create more jobs. It’s got nothing necessarily to do with independence.
The Cardiff stock market was eventually swallowed up by the London market. Good for Wales ? Of course, if you want everything run from London. But that, of course, is the precise intent to True Wales. True to London…
The same can be said about their rant against a Welsh Honours System. “The political elite who now govern Wales are preparing for independence from the United Kingdom”. Oh, horror of horrors. In other words, Wales should be barred from granting its own honours, of whatever merit they may eventually attain, to its own people…
Giving a Welsh honour to Dai Cwmscwt is hardly going to equal the Queen dubbing him on his shoulder with a sword and acclaiming him “Sir”. But we should never be trusted to acclaim even a Dai Cwmscwt award.
Untrue Wales make their ultimate aim clear on page one of their leaflet. “The Assembly … should end its obsession with nation-building.” Perhaps Untrue Wales have failed to realise that the Assembly is hardly a totally inanimate body; it is a body elected by the people of Wales.
If it is engaging on “nation-building”, it is not an inanimate body who should be blamed, but the 60 individuals (or, at least a majority of them) who are elected to its membership, and who promote such an idea.
And this “Welsh nation” which is referred to. The wording used smells suspiciously like an attack on the idea that Wales is a nation. Is Untrue Wales really suggesting they would rather that some other “nation” be supported and built up ?
In which case, which one ? Not the English, surely ? Perhaps the “British” nation ? Or perhaps the British-Irish nation, if it exists ?
The nub of Untrue Wales’s campaign is that Wales is “best served by maintaining its strong position within the UK”.
But what of when a Tory (ie “Thatcherite” to most Welsh people) government returns to power in No 10 ? The alternative – which is the argument which proved successful at the last referendum – is that Wales should be permitted to decide its own Welsh policies, rather than be forced to accept whole and almost unadulterated Tory policies designed purely for England.
So, I am glad to applaud Mr Touhig for standing shoulder to shoulder with his neighbouring MP in hobbling the future of Wales.
And who is his neighbouring MP. None other than David Davies, the wild Tory MP for Monmouth.
You’re so right and “Untrue Wales” is a perfect epithet to describe this group of unreformed Londonphiles who are still stuck in the anti-Welsh Kinockite politics of 1979.
Misinformation and fear seem to be the order of the day (again as in 1979).
True Wales is based on a Victorian-Post Victorian, Labour Mining/Mills, grovel/work-with London to get jobs for the boys culture. A culture that is only a couple of hundred years old, and a culture that has been dead for decades. So it isn’t TRUE Wales. TRUE Wales existed for 1200 years before that malarky. These TW people don’t even know where they’re coming from, have no idea where they’re going, so they just want to ride on the back of London and let them do all the work.
Sorry TW, Wales has found it’s feet at last, is a vibrant, fast-moving country that is capable and wanting to do things for itself. TW are dinosaurs that will die out eventually – give it 30 years and everything TW are spouting will be irrelevant. TRUE Wales will win, eventually.
Clearly Untrue Wales have a deep dislike of ideas from the Welsh public – unless, presumably, they emanate from the public bar of Pontypool Labour Club (has it gone bust yet ?).
The idea for a Welsh honours system came from a petition presented to the Assembly. Petitions can, of course, be submitted to the Commons. Presumably, they are fed into the boilers to keep the place warm.
But the Assembly has a petitions committee which has discussed the issue four times, and the matter is ongoing. Tory Andrew Davies did indeed point out that a UK system exists. At the last committee meeting, Mike German, Lib Dem, commented, “There is genuinely a big interest in Wales in this at the moment.”
I can understand Untrue Wales ridiculing the issue. But by so doing, they are only ridiculing themselves.
Cough. Islwyn. Although it used to be called Bedwellty when Mr Kinnock started out.
Anyway, I will be (predictably) disappointed if there isn’t a massive protest vote against Don the Dinosaur in Islwyn next time. How can the Islwyn turkeys vote for Christmas again and again and again?
We often hear the argument of what would happen under a Tory government, this wouldn’t be representative of the people of Wales, we’re told.
However, if my memory serves me right, didn’t Wales return many more Tory MPs under Thatcher than they returned Plaid Cymru MPs?
So couldn’t it be argued that Tory policies are more representative in Wales than Plaid Cymru’s policies?
Oh yeah,last time I looked, Don Touhig was the MP for Islwyn.I also think that Touhig, Murphy and Davies got many more votes than the SE East Wales AMs from the list. So who speaks for the people of Wales?
This blog is, if anything, getting even more erratic. Don Touhig is MP for Islwyn. Islwyn doesn’t border Monmouth. Torfaen does, but its MP is Paul Murphy. He’s actually Secretary of State for Wales, so I’m sure you must have heard of him.
The thing I find astonishing is that you never correct these mistakes, but plough on regardless. Is there no professional pride? Aren’t you ashamed of constantly talking codswallop?
The Sunderland Commission was the Commission on Local Government Electoral Arrangements in Wales.
I suspect you are thinking of the Richard Commission, otherwise known as the Commission on the Powers and Electoral Arrangements of the National Assembly for Wales.
Regards.
Adam
(resubmitted due to a link error above)
We can’t expect anything better from Untrue Wales. Back in the 1979 referendum campaign we were treated to some truly inspired lying from the anti-devolutionists.
Kinnock never tired of telling us about children on Ynys Mon forced to wet themselves because they couldn’t ask in Welsh to go to the toilet. This ‘nationalist’ evil he made sound just one step short of gas chambers.
Then we had Wyn Roberts going around the rural areas frightening the thick woolly socks off farmers by telling them that if we had devolution then Wales would be run by those frighful, communist miners in the Valleys – who planned to nationalise all Welsh land.
Contemporaneously, George Thomas was telling those miners, and others in the south, that a devolved Wales would be run by sheep-shagging hill folk who spoke not a word of English.
Looking back, it was the best comedy show in town. It looks as if they’re back, with a new cast but the same old lines. I don’t think our people will fall for it again.