Only Nixon could go to China . . .

Prior to the Norman Conquest, Wales had managed to largely preserve its independence, albeit in a somewhat chaotic form. It had its own language, literature and legal system. The country’s weakness lay in its political fragmentation, a situation the Normans were quick to exploit.

In the south, the invaders were held up for a time by the policies and military prowess of the Lord Rhys and his successors.  In the north, various attempts were made to create a unified Welsh state. Unfortunately, the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd in 1282 marked the end of that venture and for Welsh independence in general.

But not of Welshness.

At first, the new regime appeared to work. The language continued in common usage and while the English criminal law was introduced, the Welsh civil law was not abolished.

Nevertheless, the fourteenth century was a time of growing social and racial tension in Wales. The crisis had many contributory factors: a recession in agriculture, the aftermath of the Black Death with its horrific death toll, and a heavier burden of taxation following the commencement of the Hundred Years War. In addition, the Welsh found themselves increasingly excluded from clerical appointments and from public office. Meanwhile, the Welsh bards, always a powerful cultural and political force indulged themselves. They looked forward, in song and prophetic poetry, or darogan, to the coming of a deliverer, to someone who would drive out the English invader.

National consciousness increased, culminating in the outbreak of rebellion under Owain Glyndwr, shortly after Henry IV’s usurpation of the Crown of England. The rebellion’s eventual defeat meant that the Welsh were confronted with a harsh Lancastrian penal code, including restrictions on property rights and freedom of assembly. Nonetheless, Welsh national consciousness did not die and was fully utilised by the propagandists of Henry Tudor when he landed unopposed near Milford Haven in the summer of 1483. The long prophetic tradition was skilfully used by Henry’s men to mobilise the Welsh. Henry portrayed himself as the mab darogan, or Son of Prophecy, the heroic figure who would free Wales of the Saxon oppressors. He went into battle against Richard III with the red dragon as his standard, and named his first-born son Arthur, the king who would one day return, as suggested by such writers as William of Malmesbury and Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 1100s.  

Some of the more starry-eyed bards saw the Tudor victory as a chance to establish Welsh control over England. The more realistic among the Welsh, however, saw the accession of Henry VII as a chance to grab hold of the same opportunities for enrichment as the English. In the event, no one foresaw just how bad the new dynasty would be for Wales.

Under Henry VIII a number of measures were passed between 1536 and 1543. The impetus for these Acts of Union was the perceived widespread lawlessness in Wales.  Justices of the Peace were established along the English model. The whole country was divided into shire counties, and, while most of the land was under the Court of Great Sessions in Wales, Monmouthshire was put directly under the courts at Westminster. English was henceforth to be the language of the law, while English land law took precedence over Welsh custom and practice.

Commenting on the changes, Scottish historian J.D. Mackie declared “that they took little account of considerations of geography, history, race and language.” More damningly, he concluded that “whether such a policy could have been carried out by any king save one whose descent commended him to Welsh sentiment may well be doubted.”

It used to be said, in the context of American politics, that “only Nixon could go to China,” meaning that only a President with impeccable anti-communist credentials could have carried through any policy of rapprochement with that totalitarian state. The parallel with the Tudor policy towards Wales seems obvious to me.

Nigel Lawson, one-time Chancellor of the Exchequer, is on record as saying that “the National Health Service is the closest thing the English have to a religion.” That being so, how is it that the Welsh, for whom the attachment to the NHS is as great, have been willing to put up with the destruction of the NHS in Wales since the implementation of lockdowns began in March 2020? I suspect they wouldn’t have tolerated an English prime minister like Boris Johnson doing it, but they were acquiescent when it was carried out by a Welsh leader like Mark Drakeford sitting in the Senedd at Cardiff Bay. Only Welsh Labour could have dismantled the NHS.