Sacred Groves of Siluria

Everybody it seems, loves a Druid. 

Since the 18th century Romantic revival, Druids - the priestly class in ancient Celtic culture - have become inextricably linked with the Neo-pagan movement and a kind of harking back to "the good old days" when we "got down" with nature and the cycle of the seasons. 

The French tip their berets to Druidry with the avuncular character of Getafix in the Asterix comic book series, while in Britain old bearded men in white robes (usually accompanied by much younger women) descend on Stonehenge to celebrate the Solstices and remove orange paint spattered all over the monument by Stop Oil protesters. 

In Welsh popular culture, where we still venerate that other ancient Celtic class - the Bardoi or Bards - we tend to view Druids a little satirically. In the classic cult book noir "Aberystwyth Mon Amour", Druids are characterised as "gangsters in mistletoe" driving round in Montegos with blacked-out 

windows and terrorising the local population. 

Roman Accounts. 

Roman authors wrote that Druids did not meet in stone temples or other constructions, but in sacred groves of trees, known as Nemeta. In his Pharsalia the Roman poet Lucan described such a grove near Massilia in rather lurid terms; 

"no bird nested in the nemeton, nor did any animal lurk nearby; the leaves constantly shivered though no breeze stirred. Altars stood in its midst, and the images of the gods. Every tree was stained with sacrificial blood. the very earth groaned, dead yews revived; unconsumed trees were surrounded with flame, and huge serpents twined round the oaks. The people feared to approach the grove, and even the priest would not walk there at midday or midnight lest he should then meet its divine guardian"

These accounts are likely to have been embellished to justify Roman persecution of "Barbarians"; but the Druids were leaders of resistance to Roman rule. In Britannia, the centre of Druidic learning was said to be Mona, modern Anglesey, Wales. Roman attempts to attack Mona in 60AD were interrupted by the uprising of Boudicea, leader of the Iceni tribe. 

It's quite possible the Silures, further south, had their own sacred groves and indeed modern place name evidence in Silure territory hints at the original location of such places, and indeed at the nature of the deities worshipped by the Silures, a warlike tribe.  

Gwernyfed. 

Gwernyfed is a tiny little community that sits just south of the meandering river Wye, snaking it's way through the heart of mid-Wales. It takes it's name from Gwernyfed Park, a medieval deer park. The Gwernyfed estate is ancient, believed to have been gifted to Peter Gunter by Bernard de Neufmarche, one of the earliest of the Norman Marcher Lords. Intriguingly, there appears to have been a significant amount of Roman military activity in this area; a marching camp sits just outside the nearby village of Aberllynfi; later a permanent Roman fort was built nearby. 

But the other intriguing thing about the name Gwernyfed is that there's actually five of them; all of them situated in and around probable Silure tribal territory. It appears to include two place name elements - "Gwern" - "Alder" and "Nyfed" which is a modern Welsh rendering of ancient Brittonic "Nemet"; a sacred grove. Rendered in Common Brittonic the name reads "Vernemeton". 

Also notable is the strong occurrence of the name element "Llanwern/Llan y wern" - the Enclosure of the Alder Tree. Again, almost all of these place names occur either around Brecon or Gwent. 

Figure 1. Gwernyfed and Llanywern place names (all concentrated in SE Cymru)

As a place name element "Vernemeton" occurs elsewhere in Britain; at Willoughby-in-the-Wolds in Lincolnshire lies the ancient Roman station of Vernemeto. An ancient British site, it sits along the ancient routeway known as Watling Street; later adapted by the Romans, it was probably originally a major Iron Age trade route. Generally Vernemeton is translated as "The Grove of Spring" or "The Great Grove" but the "Gwern" element in modern Welsh suggests that the proper meaning is "Sacred Grove of the Alder Tree." And this is where it gets really interesting, as the Alder tree has strong mythic and folkloric associations with warfare. 

The Mythology of Alder. 

The Alder tree has a key place in Welsh and Irish myth. And it's strongest association is with warfare. 

In the Mabinogi of Branwen, Gwern, son of Bran is plunged by his jealous uncle Efnisien into the fire, provoking outright war between Wales and Ireland. In the poem the Battle of the Trees, the sorcerer Gwydion raises an army of trees, in the vanguard of which is the Alder tree. Curiously in the Irish tree alphabet, the "Ogham", Alder is named in exactly the same way as "Vanguard of Warriors". 

It is a tree pre-eminently associated with warfare. Cut an Alder tree and it's sap is blood red. 

But the Battle of the Trees also hints at a hidden calendrical role for the Alder tree. Alder is placed at the vanguard because it is the first of trees, associated with the Spring, and in fact proto-Celtic "Werna" is cognate to latin "Ver" "Spring" which would explain why some translators have trouble with the name "Vernemeton" and assume the first element is Latin, translating the name as "Sacred Grove of the Spring". 

But the Alder wasn't just a tree; it represented a God. Romano-British altar stones found in the north of England attest to the Celtic deity Vernostonus - the god of the Alder tree. This figure in turn is linked to the deity Cocidius - the "Red God", equated by the Romans with Mars, the God of warfare.  

The Romans further associated Cocidius with Silvanus, god of forests, groves and wild fields. 

Gods of Forest Warfare

The Romans equated Mars with many native divinities. However it seems from the record that the divinities in question represented different, specialised functions of Mars. At Caerwent, the remains of a statue with a pair of human and a pair of goose feet bear a dedication to the god Mars Lenus or Ocellus Vellaunus. It's believed that Brittonic Lenus in modern Welsh is "Llwyn" which means "Mars of the Grove". Caerwent sits just below the forest of Wentwood, which back in the Iron Age would have covered a vast area of modern Gwent. 

Perhaps it's no surprise that the Silures, a notoriously warlike tribe, venerated martial gods. However it seems they revered divinities that smiled upon a particular aspect of the martial tradition - forest warfare. These sacred sites tell us much about the nature of the landscape in which the Silures waged war upon the Roman invaders. While much of coastal and upland Wales in the Iron Age was probably not dissimilar to the modern Welsh countryside, the myriad smaller valleys of the interior were likely heavily forested, ideally suited to the "hit and run" guerilla tactics waged even up to Glyndwr's day.  

However, what these sacred spaces also hint at is social organisation, as in some cases they are closely located next to powerful hillforts that further demonstrate their significance to a powerful military elite.

 

           Figure 2.      Llanwern Church - note it's central location in relation to the surrounding hillforts

               Figure 3. Gwernyfed (Vernemeton) - note it's location behind Castell y Dinas hillfort. 

All of which begs the question really. If we have the sacred groves, and we have the military leaders...where were the Druids? 

Nidum: The Last Silurian Frontier?

 

 When the Romans invaded Britannia in AD43 they swept across the south-east of the island in the space of four years, conquering tribe after tribe. Until that is they got to the Severn Estuary and met the Silures, who were to prove a major headache for the Rome for the next 30 years. Initially led by the famous British leader Caratacus, his subsequent capture did nothing to deter them, and they continued to wage war against Rome for another quarter of a century. 

Our primary source for the Silures is the Roman historian and politician Tacitus, who tells us that the Silures waged guerrilla warfare against the Roman legionary forces, causing one Governor of Britain to have a complete mental breakdown and pop his clogs before subsequently chewing their way through another three Governors, only to be "subjugated" in AD75 by Sextus Julius Frontinus, except...

This standard narrative is built around the establishment of the town of Venta Silurum in AD75,      marking the final alleged conquest of the Silures and their incorporation into the Empire as a Roman Civitas, but in fact the archaeological record tells a slightly different story, as we shall shortly see...

Nidum. 

This last stage in the subjugation of the Silures is marked by the construction of a number of forts during the reign of Frontinus in the western regions of Silurian territory. One such fort, Nidum, sits at the bottom of the Neath valley in the heart of Neath itself. But excavations undertaken by the Glamorgan and Gwent Archaeological Trust (GGAT) in 2012 raise questions about the extent of Roman control over the tribe at a time when the Silures had supposedly been pacified with the construction of Venta Silurum, far to the east. 

Plan of Nidum Roman Fort (Source: GGAT)

Nidum sits on a low plateau overlooking the River Neath, and dating evidence suggests that the fort was built and rebuilt through a number of phases extending from AD75 right through to the first decades of the 4th century. It follows the classic square configuration of Roman forts and evidence suggests 4 centrally placed entrances in each face of it's four walls. However due to the defensive configuration of this fort it's believed that it "faced" the north-west and that this is where the greatest threat was perceived to lie. 

And in fact the really intriguing thing about Nidum is that further evidence indicates that part of the fort was destroyed during it's construction. It appears that a huge fire consumed the north-western corner of the fort even as it was being built - precisely where an attack would be expected. Other evidence suggests that the north-western gate was either reinforced, or that work on the gate was also interrupted. Finally a whole series of defensive ditches were constructed to the north-west, but later filled in to be replaced by a single ditch and huge projecting tower. 

Interestingly, this tower projects into the ditch, meaning that Legionaries could direct "enfilade" fire along the axis of the ditch on either side. It appears that the original ditches were not enough to deter determined attackers, and so the Romans took a different tack. Unusually, while Roman forts are generally enclosed by ditches, there is no evidence whatsoever for ditches on the north-east of the fort. It appears that priority was given to the north-western defences, and this is precisely where attacks originated. 

Another unusual feature of Nidum, and which has wider ramifications, is the fact that the largest excavation in the fort's history uncovered no evidence of a road connecting the fort to the next fort in the chain - Leucarum, 15 miles to the west. A small surfaced area outside the north-western gate terminates abruptly. Even up to the second phase of remodelling of the fort in 90 AD there is still no road to be found. 

It seems that 15 years after the establishment of the massive Legionary base at Caerleon, 40 miles to the east, the region to the north and west of Nidum remained wild and contested territory. 

So what exactly was going on? 

To the north of Neath, at the top of the small Dulais valley, sits the small ex-mining community of Seven Sisters. In 1875 a group of children playing outside the village made a fantastic discovery after a great storm; they stumbled upon an ancient hoard of metalwork, washed out of the banks of the nearby river. 

The Seven Sisters Hoard 

Gradually over the ensuing years this hoard made it's way into the hands of what is now the National Museum of Wales. It contains a tantalising mix of Roman and Native British items. Intriguingly the Roman equipment is all military and questions have been asked as to how it ended up deposited with Native material, including 5 tankards, indicative of some kind of celebratory activity. 

Both Roman and British items are horse-related, including items for horse-riders, chariots and carts. 

Interestingly, the Dulais Valley runs parallel with the larger Vale of Neath, exiting just 2.5 kilometres to the North-East of the Fort. While the upland ridgetops of Wales had largely been cleared by the Bronze Age, the smaller valleys below were likely still extensively forested, providing perfect cover for guerrilla activity. 

And in fact Roman accounts themselves corroborate the archaeological evidence; Tacitus also tells us that the Silures took Roman hostages and used them as collateral to secure the support of neighbouring tribes. So it's possible that the presence of Roman artefacts can be explained by the capture of Legionary troops by a raiding party. But if that's truly the case then the obvious target for such a raid is Nidum, conveniently located a mere 2.5 kilometres from the bottom of the Dulais Valley

                   The Hirfynydd signal station...sits directly above Seven Sisters and links down to Nidum to the South

Of course, it's largely conjecture that the Dulais and probably Tawe Valleys were used as cover for such activity, targeted at the fort in Neath. However what's notable is that the Romans constructed a series of beacons along the ancient ridgeway route directly above the Dulais Valley - known today as Sarn Helen. These beacons form part of a communication network between Nidum, at the bottom of the Neath Valley, and the other Roman Fort at Coelbren, at the top. Any significant movement at the top of the Dulais Valley could be relayed down to Nidum to alert the fort to incoming attacks. The fact that the Romans felt the need to construct beacons at this location suggests that special significance was ascribed to this region. 

All of which begs the question; from where was such determined resistance orchestrated? And it just so happens that a very potent local candidate sits right at the top of the Neath Valley. 

At Pontneddfechan, at the confluence of the rivers Mellte and Sychryd, sits the powerful hillfort of Craig y Ddinas. Constructed on a high imposing spur of rock, jutting out into the valley below, Craig y Dinas would have been nigh on impregnable. However it remains unexcavated. 

But Craig y Dinas is also associated with a powerful ancient legend linked to King Arthur. This legend states that Arthur and his warriors sleep beneath the mountain and will only awaken when the Black Eagle and the Golden Eagle go to war. Victory would lead to the re-establishment of Arthur's kingdom at Caerlleon - the "Fortress of Legions". 

But it's possible that the legend of the Black Eagle predates King Arthur and has it's roots in the great Silurian War. For the Black Eagle "Valeria" is a byname for the Legio Valeria Victrix - the Roman XXth Legion that invaded Silure territory. And the Golden Eagle? None other than an ancestral sigil of Caratacus himself, as depicted on coinage issued in his name, and those of his forebears. 

CELTIC, Trinovantes & Catuvellauni. Caratacus. Circa AD 43-51. (Source: CNG)

This might also explain why Craig y Dinas sits next to a community called "Penderyn" - "the Chief Bird" - preserving a possible memory of Caratacus himself while Nidum, sat at the other end of the valley, is also Latin for "Nest" - a fitting name for a fort occupied by the Legion of the "Black Eagle"! 

From Wuhan to Wallia: Why We Need a Land Army for Wales.

Born from the plight of illegally traded animals in the "Wet Markets" of Wuhan, Covid-19 has unleashed catastrophic economic and social consequences on the rest of the world. But from panic-buying in supermarkets to the prospect of summer food shortages as farmers and growers struggle to deal with the loss of a seasonal workforce on lock-down abroad, there's one thing that ties all these disparate elements together: food.

In Wales and the rest of the UK we sit at the end of a long and surprisingly delicate food chain. We import around 50% of our food supply. A recent article in the Guardian flagged up a warning by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation that protectionist measures on the part of exporting nations could disrupt food supplies and lead to food shortages. In the UK we now face a potential double-whammy; we can't pick everything we grow, and we can't import what is picked elsewhere either.

In response, farming leaders and land-owning interests and even Prince Charles are pushing for the formation of a "Land Army" to make up the shortfall of up to 60,000 seasonal workers. Such an army would be drawn from the rapidly growing pool of unemployed, redeployed from industries that have gone into cold storage as the crisis bites. But putting aside the practicalities for a moment, the question has to be asked, why rely on the the UK government, or the farming lobby? Should a Land Army really be a creature of that bastion of the ordinary man on the street, the Country Land and Business Association?

In a Welsh context, the Land Army concept has been given a modern twist in a fairly recent Plaid document, the Greenprint for the Valleys. But what was envisaged there was just that, an organisation dedicated to re-localising food production in the Valleys. What we're talking about here is a bit bigger; a truly national organisation covering the whole country. For my part, I have a personal interest; my Irish granny was a "Land Girl" conscripted into the Land Army in it's original incarnation during World War 2.

But this is 2020 and we need an organisation for everyone. 

There are those who will say that it's just not possible to build such an organisation when we're all on lock-down. My answer is simple; just take a look out your back garden. In Britain during World War Two, "Digging for Victory" didn't just happen in fields and farms around the country; it happened in back yards too. And it was good for morale. And in much the same way that thousands of neighbourhood mutual aid groups are being organised via Whatsapp to support the most vulnerable in our communities right now, so "Squads" (or whatever we want to call it!) covering discrete geographical areas can be organised in exactly the same way.

The basic building blocks of our army are already here.

If we're serious about food security and re-localising food supply, then we need to start as close to home as we possibly can. And lock-down presents us with a golden opportunity to make a start on our own doorstep. And that means doing gardening the way our grandparents did it. It means raised beds and greenhouses and veg patches, and even humble window boxes if like me you live in a flat. We can all do our part in some small way, and who knows? Maybe families - parents and children alike - will find a new sense of purpose in that short distance between the cabbage patch and the dining room table.

Beyond lock-down, there's one other fruitful avenue of opportunity to build our new army which observes the requirements of physical distancing; Council Estates. Council estates are littered with random green patches of land, many of which are too small for a kick-about, but still big enough to grow food. Such patches could be transformed into "micro-plots" and households could be encouraged to "adopt a plot" on a first-come-first-served basis. Because such plots are dispersed all over estates it allows residents to retain physical distance but still co-ordinate through Whatsapp. Turning these little patches over to food production further offers the potential to generate employment and even save cash-strapped Councils money which can then be re-invested in maintenance and maybe even new build.

There are hundreds of such estates of varying sizes all over Wales.

For now, many of us are adjusting to life under lock-down. But life on the other side of lock-down promises much deeper and more long-lasting social and economic changes. Is it really good enough to simply plug gaps in a seasonal labour force and then expect things to revert back to business as usual when the dust settles? If we want to insulate ourselves from future food supply shocks then we need to re-design a system that is broken, and here in Wales we can make that much-needed change now.

In a world of spiraling climate chaos and ecological degradation, land armies could well be the armies of the 21st century. And in Wales we’ve been here before. In the 1960s a massive “army” of local volunteers cleaned up over a century of industrial devastation and reforested the lower Swansea Valley. Fast forward to 21st century China and 60,000 troops in the People’s Liberation Army were recently enlisted in an even larger tree-planting scheme; the area they planted was roughly the size of Ireland, from where my dear-departed Granny came to join the original Women’s Land Army all those years ago.

But what we need now isn’t a useful tool in hock to government, toffs and big landowners, but a genuine grassroots movement of volunteers. And the battlefield will be what it’s always been; land - who owns it and who controls it. Battles will be fought plot by plot, field by field, estate by estate. And victory will come to those prepared to dig for it.

So let's get our hands dirty.

The Mount Estate: Sitting on a Gas Goldmine

Having moved to Sir Benfro from Swansea I already knew about the Mount Estate as it seems to have a poor rap in the County, as indeed some parts of Swansea do or anywhere else for that matter. A BBC documentary a few years back highlighted the high unemployment and social issues on the estate, which is mainly council stock, and in typical sycophantic fashion, couldn't resist squeezing in a plug about "Will and Kate's" Royal Wedding just to show how enthusiastic her Maj's poor but loyal Subjects are for their feudal overlords. But I wonder how many residents on the Mount could really give two hoots about the Royals who might as well live on another planet.

In any case I knew about the Mount for different reasons, as a few years prior to that documentary I was involved in protests to do with the LNG plants in Milford Haven, protests in which the Mount had a curious role.

Now of course ten years down the line South Hook and Dragon LNG are thoroughly embedded in the community and a big part of their PR drive is "getting down with the yoof"; a recent press release highlights the support South Hook have given to a youth club on the Mount. Great kudos for South Hook you might think, but peanuts given that the Mount, in point of fact, is sitting on a taxable goldmine worth millions of pounds per annum, not just to Pembs, but Wales as a whole.

Many of the kids attending the club will be too young to remember that relations between the community - in the form of the Mount Community Association - and the titans of LNG were not always so peachy. While the Terminal operators have gone to great lengths to ingratiate themselves with the local community, the Terminals were simply the most obvious part of an even bigger project designed to plug the UK's growing energy gap. The other key part - the giant pipeline - is buried a metre underground and runs for a length of 316 km to it's final destination in Gloucestershire.

But 13 years ago, residents in the Mount woke up to find that National Grid - who were responsible for the pipeline - had ploughed a swathe of destruction through a section of woodland managed by the community. I can still quite clearly recall speaking to one of the Association members on the phone - considering the reported outrage he was curiously reluctant to talk and it soon became clear why - the Association had been made to sign a gagging clause, in exchange for  "compensation" for all the trouble. Having silenced protesters and dissenters through bribery and bully-boy tactics all along the pipeline route National Grid got their pipe in and within a few years it was all forgotten about.

But here's why it's worth refreshing our memories.

Having squished all dissent, the Terminals came into operation in 2009. And then a curious thing happened. The next year the Tories got back into power (Labour were the architects of the LNG project), and having done so promptly abolished Import VAT on gas imports in their emergency budget of June 22nd, 2010. This change included Import VAT on Liquefied Natural Gas.

Now, LNG hasn't lived up to the hype or hysteria and in fact the Terminals have been significantly under-utilised since they came into operation, but it's still worth doing the math. The UK government in fact very helpfully compiles statistics on gas imports for each individual LNG Terminal in the UK, including South Hook and Dragon. These stats allow us to calculate the amount of revenue that has been lost. So for example in 2017, South Hook imported 52,808 Gigawatt Hours worth of gas which was then pumped into the UK's national gas transmission system. The UK now has a free-market in gas, and the value of gas on the wholesale market is calculated on a kind of virtual gas trading exchange known as the "National Balancing Point" . Not surprisingly, demand is higher in the winter which is the point at which LNG tankers roving the high seas alter course and head for the UK to cut a tidy profit.

So based on the average price of gas on the UK wholesale market in 2017, around £160 million of lost taxable revenue docked at Milford Haven and bypassed a council estate with around 70% unemployment, on it's way to the big centres of demand in the rest of the UK. For 2018, that figure increases to around £200 million. Currently, the Terminals are significantly under-utilised as the UK makes up a lot of it's shortfall in gas from Norway (UK North Sea reserves peaked and have been declining since 2001), but Norwegian gas production is projected to decline shortly which means that LNG will become a bigger part of the equation as the years go by. The South Hook and Dragon LNG terminals have a minimum 25 year lifespan and have the capacity to meet up to 30% of UK gas demand. So the figures laid out above are only going one way: up.

To those of us concerned with the economics of Welsh Independence, these figures matter. Consider for example that the entire deficit for the Hywel Dda Health Trust, which covers the whole of west Wales, is £69 million, a figure which could effectively be wiped out, with quite a bit of spare change. Hywel Dda of course proposes to downgrade Withybush Hospital's A&E department, and many people in Pembrokeshire justifiably ask why their A&E is being downgraded when they have heavy industries with all the attendant safety risks. Heavy industries that include LNG. If Pembrokeshire shoulders the risks, it should also be able to reap the rewards. Rewards it could capture - as part of an Independent Wales.

Pembrokeshire is a proud and independent county, but sitting on the western extremity of Britain, many residents justifiably feel marginalised both by Cardiff and London. I would argue that they are only marginalised because they vote for Unionist Parties and a corrupt Westminster establishment and it's little doggie in Cardiff. Take them out of the equation and those LNG tankers show us what Pembrokeshire really is; Wales' gateway to the rest of the world. A world that we are perfectly capable of taking our place in.

The figures are there, and the choice is ours. Let's take it.

Air Passenger Duty: Wales grounded by Westminster as Scotland and Northern Ireland take off

  There's nothing more useful than a major international controversy as an opportunity to bury a whole host of smaller domestic problems. So while Britain was busy voting to make itself "Great again", George Osborne, now former Chancellor of the Exchequer, quietly caved into English aviation interests and reneged on a commitment to devolve control over Air Passenger Duty (APD) to Wales.

  On the face of it, APD is such an obscure little tax that readers might be inclined to wonder what the fuss is all about. But the interesting and revealing thing about APD is not so much the support it engenders in Wales (an online poll for the Western Mail showed 78% in favour) but the reaction it has generated on the other side of Offa's Dyke.

  So, for the uninitiated (author included!), what is Air Passenger Duty? It's broadly defined as "an excise duty which is charged on the carriage of passengers flying from a UK or Isle of Man airport on an aircraft that has an authorised take-off weight of more than ten tonnes or more than twenty seats for passengers". To get a sense of the wider importance of APD as a tax it's worth quoting the UK Treasury itself;

         "Air Passenger Duty is primarily a revenue raising duty which makes an important 
          contribution to the public finances, while also giving rise to secondary environmental 
          benefits"

                                                                                                                     UK Treasury, 2011

  Ironically, APD was put on the political agenda in Wales by the very same Tories that have just put the kibosh on it. In 2011, the Silk Commission - set up by then Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan - recommended devolving control over APD to the Welsh Government, It should be noted at this point that both Scotland and Northern Ireland both already have control over this tax.

  The Silk Commission took their data from the Civil Aviation Authority, who estimated that APD raised just over £7.5million in Wales in 2011. This figure might sound like a drop in the ocean in the context of identifiable public spending of £30 billion in Wales in 2010-11 but it's not quite that simple. So read on!

  Needless to say, having let this particular taxation genie out of the bottle, it rapidly proceeded to magic up a considerable amount of support across the political landscape in Wales. Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies stated it was "perverse" not to devolve control over APD to Cardiff, while Comrade Carwyn agreed that it was "completely unacceptable" for Scotland and not Wales to get powers over the tax. Plaid, of course, want rather more than just control over APD.

  Outside of the Cardiff Bay bubble, support has also steadily grown across the aviation industry in Wales. Not surprisingly, Wales' only major airport is a firm supporter of devolving APD. But a spirited online campaign also finds focus with websites such as APD4Wales calling for the "punitive tax" to be scrapped. 

  Meanwhile, on the other side of the Bristol Channel an equally spirited campaign has sprung up in defence of the status quo. Needless to say, this campaign has won a temporary victory, at least. At the forefront of this campaign is Bristol Airport. But in making the economic case for the status quo, Bristol Airport has also helpfully outlined the economic benefits for Wales too. The airport's Chief Executive has been quoted in the press as stating that devolution of APD to Cardiff could cost the south-west economy 1500 jobs and £843 million. in GVA (Gross Value Added) over the next decade. This puts our previously-cited £7.5 million figure in a rather different light...

  Perceptive readers will note that Labour, the governing power in Wales, have largely been left of the hook so far in this piece. In the run-up to the Budget, Welsh Finance Minister Jane Hutt blasted the Chancellor's "unacceptable procrastination" and went on to say that; 

        “It would pave the way to improved international air links with the rest of the world, which                  would bring economic benefits not just to Wales but also businesses and citizens in the South 
         West of England, helping to stimulate business and trade"

This very magnanimous sentiment didn't cut any mustard with her Labour colleagues on the other side of the Channel, however. Bristolian Labour MP Karin Smyth congratulated the Tory Government's decision as "very welcome news for the South-west economy". Which just goes to show what a mendacious game the Labour Party is content to play with Wales, it's traditional playground. 

Which all goes to show what a raw deal we have in the so-called "United Kingdom". We are the only constituent part of the UK not to have control over this small tax. The economic benefits to Wales are clear, and in ignoring Welsh interests, it should be clear that Westminster is holding the Welsh economy back. We're better off out of the Union altogether. But in making the case for being out of it, it's worth articulating a basic point of principle; as APD4Wales put it;

             "A tax on flying from Wales should not be set by an English government"

To be continued....

You Get What You Ask For

The penny dropped for me when I was coming home one day and, cutting through the Council estate, I spotted a series of Tory placards in someone's garden. Taken aback, gawping, and bogged down temporarily with the perennial Welsh question "Who are you?", I almost crashed the car. The realization soon dawned on me that the house belonged to the former Chair of the local Workingmen's Club, the Brighton Road.

Over the next few weeks as the election campaign proceeded apace, a few more Tory placards sprang up around "North Gower". But they weren't just springing up in fields or on well-to-do housing estates, they were popping up on terraces, and in former mining villages. It occurred to me that something was up, and I suggested to my partner that Labour could lose the Gower seat. She didn't buy it. I went a little further. Labour have held Gower since 1906. If they lost a seat like this, they would be in trouble nationally. If Labour lost Gower, we'd have another Tory government. Which as it happens is exactly what we've got.

And there's nothing magical, mystical or mysterious about how we got here either.

You see, in Gower, the Tories got on in the back of a working class protest vote from the northern part of the constituency, where Labour have traditionally drawn their vote. Underneath the lazy rhetoric of the "Tory tide" surging across Wales is a complex mosaic of local stories. Labour have sat on this area for year after year after year while funding has been pumped into Swansea city centre on grandiose vanity projects. Ironically, in a climate of "Tory" cuts, local patience with Labour has run out. Why vote for Labour when they only offer more of the same thing?

This city-centre/periphery conflict was made all the worse by the disastrous decision to centrally impose a female candidate on the constituency, drawn from an all-woman short list. Parachuted in from the Hafod in Swansea (so we're told, although she didn't have a Hafod accent), the reaction of the local Party organisation was predictable. A large chunk of the local Labour Party effectively boycotted the election campaign.

Many on the Left of politics in Wales are deeply uncomfortable with the idea that people from communities that were hammered by the Tories in the 1980s could bring themselves to vote for "The Nasty Party". There is even a school of opinion in Left-leaning Nationalist circles that the Tory vote in Wales is made up largely of English incomers, as though migrants from over the border are some kind of "Fifth-column" for the Tory invader. Toryism in Wales, you see, is not an indigenous phenomenon. There may well be an element of truth to this perception, but it's not the whole truth.

For many in Wales, there's a kind of visceral reaction to the Tory Party that paradoxically leads them to defend, or at least refrain from attacking, a Party that has shifted so far towards the pro-business agenda of the Tories that it's almost indistinguishable from them now anyway - Labour. A madman runs towards you wielding a bloody great axe. It's a Tory, Run away! The chips are down and you suddenly feel the twist of the knife in your back. That's the modern Labour Party, who will then tell you it's for your own good, and if the Tory had done it, it could have been a whole lot worse...

And for that precise reason it shouldn't be hard to see why Labour and the working class are no longer synonymous in Wales, and why many people have given up on even the pretense of voting for Labour. For people who have been hammered by a recession Labour dragged us into, the Tory message of economic competence, whether you believe it or not, has some resonance. Those placards are a big "fuck you" to a Party that bombed the hell out of Iraq, fucked up the economy and embraced Neoliberalism even while arrogantly assuming our continued tribal loyalty.

Plaid Cymru, meanwhile, actually did alright in Gower. It upped it's vote despite running the local campaign on a shoe-string. Yet I have colleagues in Plaid who tell me they'd rather see Plaid lose it's deposit than let Tories get in. The rationale is that Labour voters will never forgive Plaid for splitting the vote and letting in the evil Tory bogeyman to steal our first-born children. What they neglect to understand is that many of these Labour voters have given up on Labour - and switched to the Tories anyway.

And there is the simple reality. Many Welsh people vote Tory. It would seem that the Welsh are more promiscuous than ever, and not only have they abandoned the Chapel in droves, they are even happily indulging in a little sado-masochism in the privacy of the polling booth a la UKIP. But there is a line it seems and that's where you aren't likely to see many defiant placards broadcasting a newly found conviction to the wider community. A source of some frustration to pollsters and Party activists, but also of hope for the future.

For UKIP, while articulating the very real economic and social concerns of ordinary people, demarcates the furthest reaches of Wales' flirtation with the Right. Beyond that point is the terra incognita of Welsh Independence. A prospect we're not quite ready for yet, but the only real alternative in a country that faces the prospect of being dragged out of Europe by Isolationist England.

In Scotland, the Scottish National Party have articulated a clear and well-worked out vision of what an Independent Scotland would look like. In Wales, Independence is, er,...a long-term aim. A collection of policies is no substitute for a coherent vision of a future society. The SNP have grasped the thistle and realised that only Independence will give Scotland all the tools to do the job.

Yet who is really articulating the arguments for Welsh Independence?

Until they are made, you can expect the Tories and UKIP in Wales to continue filling the void left by Parties - Labour and Plaid included - that are not offering a compelling vision of the future. A vision strong and coherent enough to motivate people into taking that leap of faith into a future of unquantifiable but tantalising possibilities. A future that only we in Wales can make. Regardless of where we originally came from...

Power to the People?

 

 

  A decision to consider closure by the operator of Scotland’s largest power station tells us much about the way the so-called “National Grid” is designed to serve the needs of the big English cities, rather than the thinly populated “Celtic periphery”.

  Scottish Power, the operator of Longannet power station, has announced it will not be bidding to connect to the grid in 2018. The reason? Even though Scotland exports a large proportion of its electricity to the big centres of demand down south, it also pays the highest transmission fees. Consequently, Scotland suffers a double whammy – it loses the benefit of being able to profit from the export of a valuable 21^st century resource. And Scottish consumers pay higher bills because they sit at the tail end of a network built to serve the needs of over-populated, over-built England.

  But as a story highlighted in the “Western Mail” last year shows, the same dynamic applies to Wales, too. For in October of last year, the Mule pointed out that Welsh consumers pay the highest electricity bills in the whole of the UK. Even higher than Scotland, in fact.

  This is despite the fact that Wales, much like its Celtic cousin up north, also exports electricity. But this simple fact however obscures a more complex picture than Scotland. Whereas history has bequeathed on our northern brethren a network that treats them as a discrete entity, in Wales the network splits our country in two. This split is readily acknowledged even by English companies with a major stake in Wales, but the consequence is that whereas North Wales is a net exporter of electricity - by a pretty comfy margin too - up until recently South Wales actually had to import electricity from England. Hence the higher bills.

  For Wales, much like Scotland, this has a number of consequences. In the first instance, Welsh consumers have less spending power because a greater proportion of income is eaten up by fuel bills. In Wales, a country that exports electricity, a staggering 41% of households are now classed as in fuel poverty. And of course high bills have consequences for business as well. As Miller Argent pointed out in their submission above, high electricity prices hold back the Welsh economy in other ways, as they affect Welsh competitiveness, particularly the manufacturing sector.

  Since Miller Argent’s submission, things have changed a little bit in South Wales. With the construction of the massive Pembroke 1 power station, South Wales is now a net exporter of electricity to England too. Yet as National Grid’s own tariff charges show, RWE, owners of the station, will be paying something on the order of £35 million a year to export all that electricity down the line to Gloucester. Because of the iniquitous way the Grid works, much of that cost will be shouldered by struggling Welsh families, who are effectively subsidising their wealthier neighbours next door through their higher electricity bills.

  Better Together, I hear you say?

  Of course, Devolution of power consents came under the purview of the Silk Commission, set up by the Tory Government to look at more powers for the Welsh. But as Gareth Clubb, Director of Friends of the Earth, pointed out in a post earlier this year, there was never really any intention to give Wales substantive powers over consenting for large power stations. Wales has always had a slightly unruly relationship with our bigger neighbour next door. We’re just too unreliable to be trusted to plug England’s yawning energy gap.

  As the Commission itself put it:

“Wales is a net exporter of electricity, and an energy strategy that focused on Wales would not perhaps fulfil the needs of the wider United Kingdom, and England in particular” (translation of Welsh language version of the Silk Commission Part II report, section 8.2.13).

  Say no more...