It was in Cambria, interviewed as a rather earnest young-ish man-in-a-hurry by the then editor, Henry Jones-Davies, that I declared to all the world that I intended to limit myself to just two terms at Westminster. I was not a “House of Commons man”, I remember opining, a little self-importantly.
Wind the clock forward and I am indeed a fully decommissioned ex-MP after just two terms – shock horror, politician fulfils promise! – and the now ex-editor has himself planted his own flag among the massed ranks of would-be parliamentarians. That turn-around is surely what politics in a democracy is all about: a constant turnover of people and ideas. The weak are a long time in politics, too long: three cheers for two-term limits!
There are times, of course, when anyone must ask themselves, why bother at all? The lot of an MP was famously described by the late Julian Critchley as long hours, low pay and no sex. Of course, if Julian Critchley ever visited West Wales then he might have known what low pay really meant, but he was probably on safer ground when he said that the only safe pleasure for a politician was a bag of boiled sweets. To aspire to be a public representative is to expose yourself to ridicule, contempt, prurience, and worst of all, indifference.
So why do we do it? Each party has a different answer to that very searching question. In the case of Plaid which in any event as always seen itself as more than a mere party but a movement, we do it because we feel we must. In the words of T.H. Parry-Williams: Ni Allaf Ddianc Rhag Hon! Many of us who are Welsh Nationalists dream of what life might have been like if we hadn’t been born into a country that lacks the basic dignity that can only come through the freedom to make one’s own mistakes and, succeed by learning from them; whose economy hadn’t languished so long in the doldrums our people learn that it is normal to be poor;whose very language and culture hadn’t been under threat for so long that our collective consciousness has all the carefree vitality of the terminally ill. But we’re Welsh.

Denying the political implications of Being Welsh for us Welsh Nationalists is no more feasible than sloughing off our own skin. Here We Stand: We Can Do No Other.

Ordinary politics can be reduced to that mechanistic formula: who does what to whom. But in Wales this takes on a different meaning as we have always ended up on the sharp end of that particular equation: our country raped, our valleys drowned, our industries and railway lines closed, our people defeated and dispossessed.
In Westminster at best, it all too often seems, we are in the business of merely softening those blows. Did I do my bit during my time of “doing good and resisting evil” in that prodigal Irishman Burke’s well-worn phrase. I hope so. Three thousand Welsh steel workers and their families have at least the lion’s share of their robbed pensions – though certainly not the 100% they deserve – thanks to a long forgotten European directive that this insomniac found via Google in Ammanford at three in the morning. Important though they undoubtedly are in their own right, it is also through these little victories that we reawaken in our nation our belief in ourselves as a nation. For surely politics must be for us more than just a dented shield, but the sharpened sword that cuts a swathe through history. Our history. Our future, if we choose it.
One of my final ambitions I achieved only a few weeks ago and that was to get Brecht quoted in a paper I have known and loved since I began to read newspapers:the South Wales Guardian. Asked if I would like one day to lead my party then I quoted Galileo at the end of the play of the same name, when one once character bemoans: “pity the land without heroes”, and Galileo deftly replies, “no pity the land that needs them”. What we need is not a Mab Darogan, but three dozen maiden speeches that make a stand for Wales: David Jones – the poet not the politician – was right, it’s we-the-people that are the sleeping lord.

So draw Caledfwlch from its sheath, Like destiny itself, it lies in our hands.

By Adam Price

Article republished from Cambria Magazine with permission.

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Jonathan EdwardsWe predicted on Cambria Politico a few weeks ago that the young gladiator from Ammanford, Jonathan Edwards, Plaid uberstrategist and widely acknowledged architect of Adam Price’s long march to consolidated victory in Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, would win the nomination as parliamentary candidate to replace Price at the next election. And we were right.

Edwards romped to victory in the first ballot at a hustings convention attended by over 200 party faithful in Llandybie this evening, after a contest between four strong and convincing candidates, all with roots in this staunchly patriotic heartland constituency. After bravura performances by all four, Edwards was victorious after being described by many activists to your correspondent as the “man with real fire in his belly“.

It is a development Welsh Liebour will dread. Edwards is a political strategist who does not take prisoners. In the short term he will go for the Labour jugular next year but plans carefully for the future. The endgame is the emergence of a new democratic politics based on principled economic development and social justice ­ and the ruination of the discredited London parties in Wales.

An already disillusioned and disheartened Labour Party faces almost certain humiliation at the next General Election. Edwards ‘the matador’ will seek to administer the coup de grace. With relish.

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Cambriapolitico can reveal.

The front-runner to take over as parliamentary candidate from retiring Plaid MP for Carmarthen and East Dinefwr Adam Price is Jonathan Edwards, thirty-something political whizz-kid from Rhydaman and Mr Price’s former adviser Jonathan Edwardsand strategist.

With possible contender Mabon ap Gwynfor out of the running, the wise money is on Edwards who, sources close to the constituency party say, has the tacit (though undeclared) backing of both Price and AM Rhodri Glyn Thomas.

Masterminded Price’s victory

Edwards, who has recently been working for the Citizens Advice Bureau in the Valleys to broaden his experience, has some powerful backers both within the constituency party and in Cardiff. Many credit him as the mastermind behind Mr Price’s spectacular career as MP, his initial victory over diminutive Labourite Alan Williams, and the consolidation of Carmarthen and East Dinefwr into a strong Plaid seat.

Committed to broadening Plaid’s appeal

Jonathan Edwards and Dafydd IwanEdwards is know to be a staunch and uncompromising nationalist committed to the cause of Welsh independence, with a broad knowledge of economics and considerable experience in public affairs. However, he is also known to be committed to widening Plaid’s appeal beyond its perceived Welsh-speaking heartlands, and building the party into a powerful force to challenge Labour in its traditional strongholds as that party’s core support goes into freefall.

Although other challengers have yet to declare their hand, Edwards’s supporters are moving fast to set up a winning campaign for the Rhydaman gladiator.

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Ieuan Wyn Jones seemed surprised – but far from dumbfounded – when approached by Cambria with news that some people are after his job.

The individual, of course, is Adam Price, the Carmarthen East and Dinefwr MP. To bid for the leadership of the Plaid group in the Assembly, he would of course have to become an AM.

Informed that the current incumbent for that seat – the former rev-min Rhodri Glyn Thomas –  had dryly responded that he had yet to be approached with the suggestion that an early retirement might be in order – and the underlying feeling is that his reaction to any such suggestion would be along the lines of, “Piss off” – Mr Jones gave the sensible reply, “That is all totally hypothetical.”

And yet why should one of the most senior figures in Plaid have commented to Cambria that it was exceedingly interesting the amount of public speaking that Mr Price is currently managing in Wales.

“He is speaking so often that he is even managing to contradict himself,” I was told.

What was interesting was that Mr Jones seemed totally unaware of what was going on.  As there have been stories around for some years doubting his continued hold on the group leadership, one would have expected to have found antennae specifically tuned in that direction.

Of course, the truth is probably that the party sometimes seems so unsure of itself that rumours of this sort are totally censored by party officials, even when speaking to the party’s own leaders.

If Ieuan is eventually to get the chop, you can be sure of one thing. The execution will be defered until after the election. It’s only juvenile right-wingers among the Tories who can risk jeopardising election support with a contest before the polls.

Labour plans to replace Rhodri Morgan in advance of the poll – giving the new incumbent ample time to settle in before the 2011 election. Mr Morgan himself is going to extreme lengths to dampen advance speculation about his own party’s  contest.  Asked about the poll at the first cabinet briefing of the new term, Mr Morgan refused point blank to add anything to what he had said earlier.

And to minimise the resulting story, he refused to remind journalists of what he had said earlier.  Of course, one reason  he refused to give a reminder might be just in case his new reminder might turn out to be slightly different from what he had said earlier !

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Nick Bourne and the Welsh Tories seem to be storming to political advances within the next year after the collapse of the Western Mail concatenation of attacks on the propriety of the expenses he has received for being an AM and living in a flat in Cardiff during Assembly weeks.

We can expect an annual sluice of such journalistic stories each time the details of expenses paid – which almost descend to the issue numbers on receipts – are released. Normally, the not-so-hidden agenda among the public is – don’t give taxpayers’ money to politicians.

The agenda with the Western Mail, however, seems rather to serve the interests of the anti-Assembly far-right in Welsh politics.

The Mail was founded to serve the Tory Party; it then killed off the opposition which stemmed from the majority party of Wales (the Liberal-supporting South Wales Daily News); after which success it ridiculously claimed that a “paper created to serve a party now serves a nation” (Nye Bevan didn’t think so; he accordingly burned it above Ebbw Vale); and the resultant current effective monopoly (how often is the Daily Post referred to in Cardiff Bay ?) continues far too often to curry its own favourites, usually right wing Tories.

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Wales is in grave danger of being considered a nation of narrow-minded hypocrites in the wake of the Rev Rhodri Glyn Thomas being forced to resign as culture minister after mistakenly walking into a Bay public house with a cigar in his hand .

Apparently, the resignation followed a tete-a-tete on his future with party leader Ieuan Wyn Jones.

Yet it could all be for a future good – which could propel Plaid Cymru towards the Assembly stratosphere, and Labour towards the exit almost everywhere in Wales.

Mr Jones often seems buttoned up, sometimes even the first minister’s poodle, as if he’s keeping an ear open only for what emanates from the fifth floor Ty Hywel room occupied by the FM overlooking the Pierhead building.

But I feel the DFM is much wider awake to the world than he seems.

The minister’s son must know a bit about sin (when performed by others); the former solicitor should know about the importance of keeping away from the clutches of the hypocrites-in-chief who run certain London newspapers; while the political leader should have been asking himself whether his selected minister was handing far too many votes to the Conservative and Liberal Democrat opposition through his decisions and opinions on the (now-vanished) Welsh language daily paper.

In other words, the Rev Min was ruining his own future. And it was no help that he was doing so in an arrogant fashion – possibly in a worse way than even health minister Edwina Hart.

The cigar was a quickly-corrected mistake; the misread literary prize-winner was because of vanity (refusing to wear glasses); and the arrogance a human failing.

But the possible eventual interest of certain newspapers is a different matter – London hypocrites of that type, we know, always exaggerate beyond truth, so it’s far better not to attract their attention.

This is where – rather ironically – we reach another world…that of the future of Plaid Cymru.


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