Boadicea or Thatcher

Who is the greatest female politician Britain has produced ? Is it Margaret Thatcher or Boadicea, writes Clive Betts from the National Assembly press gallery ?

The question was posed by First Minister Rhodri Morgan to indicate how the press, public and politicians can easily write off someone who goes on to be an enormous force (he did not say, whether for better or for worse).

The issue arose during a discussion of unemployment rates, and the amount of time it takes for an economy to produce extra jobs in the wake of a slump. We are already hearing reports that the end of the economic depression is at hand.

The economic disaster of the early Thatcher years led to massive unemployment, Mr Morgan reminded us. With the result that her political future was written off. Perhaps, in history, she would justify a footnote, considered the First Minister …

But then, among other things, came the Falklands war.

In the general election which followed, Mrs Thatcher scored a heroic victory. Who then was the greater female politician, Maggie or Boadicea, mused Mr Morgan. The muse was quickly called by an HTV journalist. And which one was it,  asked Nick Speed ?

Swift collapse of Mr Morgan, who must have immediately realised the headlines if he went ahead and praised Mrs T. But this was followed by an equally swift rescue by a politician who thinks superbly on his feet. Boadicea might have been “ a blood-thirsty sadist. But at least she was Welsh”.

Or was she ? To the shame of the compilers of the normally authoritative Dictionary of Welsh Biography, she is given no entry. But then she wasn’t a Welsh-speaking nonconformist minister. And no less than the First Minister’s father, Prof T J Morgan, was one of the authors of that work. Although no doubt he was kept to literature, rather than being let loose on pre-medieval history.

It seems as if a couple of decades ago, the queen of the Iceni, the Welsh- ( British-) speaking living in northern East Anglia, was hardly ever given the accolade of being Welsh. ieIt could hardly be because in her revolt against the Romans she sacked Londinium, the eventual capital of England. Most of the current English would be find it hard to consider her Welsh. But then the English harbour some extremely strange ideas about how the British Isle were run, and who lived there, before the Germans (ie. the English, or Anglo-Saxons) arrived.

Visit the prestigious and well-handled Museum of London and you will find it extremely difficult to find any mentions at all about who lived in the South East of England before the Romans arrived. If you are very lucky, you might find the word “Britons” mentioned. But hardly anything about them.

But the English don’t like being reminded that someone lived in the London area before the Germans arrived. And least of all that they possessed any abilities.

And, of course, the idea that Christianity existed in England as a locally-grown force before it was killed off in many areas by those heathen German immigrants is hardly one that you will find in any history books about England. After all, those books are all written by the English. And the English are as nationalist as any other people, which means they boost some elements of their own history, and try to ignore or smother elements which do not fit into their own personal world-view.

But amends have been made in Wales. That truly-nonconformist litterateur Meic Stephens gave her a deserved welcome in his epoch-making Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales.