How do we get an independent Wales with a post-1900 POD?

Is Wales an independent country in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Unless there is a tradition at the United Nations of displaying the flags of subnational entities, it seems this is the case.

Untitled-design.png


The big question is how this has happened. By some metrics, Wales is exceptionally distinctive, with a Celtic language still widely spoken and diverse distinctive cultural traditions. Against this, perhaps because of the very late formation of Wales as a coherent entity compared to Scotland, Welsh nationalism was late to take off. Even now, Plaid Cymru and outright separatism are far from having the mass support of their counterparts in Scotland.

Thoughts? Would you need an earlier POD, to make the Welsh language be a bigger cause?
 
Perish the thought, it's bad enough now with positive discrimination in favour of Welsh speakers in Local government, and Television.

If Welsh Nationalism gained so much ground to have the majority of Welsh MPs, controlling many council authorities, a referendum likely to go in their favour.
So, what could happen, the 'language police' would be given free reign. More, and more official business would be conducted in Welsh - if you couldn't speak/understand it - 'a translator would be appointed for'.
Property prices would fall, as many English speakers would emigrant to England, and previous influx of people from England would be curtailed.
Unemployment, would start to rise, as investment dried up .
 

Glyndwr01

Banned
Is Wales an independent country in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Unless there is a tradition at the United Nations of displaying the flags of subnational entities, it seems this is the case.

Untitled-design.png


The big question is how this has happened. By some metrics, Wales is exceptionally distinctive, with a Celtic language still widely spoken and diverse distinctive cultural traditions. Against this, perhaps because of the very late formation of Wales as a coherent entity compared to Scotland, Welsh nationalism was late to take off. Even now, Plaid Cymru and outright separatism are far from having the mass support of their counterparts in Scotland.

Thoughts? Would you need an earlier POD, to make the Welsh language be a bigger cause?

In the South Wales coal fields and Iron Works in the 1880's only Welsh was spoken and workers arriving from outside Wales had to learn the language to work. By the 1900's it had totally reversed and English was required to work, stop that change and you have a start!
 
Perish the thought, it's bad enough now with positive discrimination in favour of Welsh speakers in Local government, and Television.

I would suggest, first, that requiring services to be provided in the Welsh language as well as the English is not so much positive discrimination as basic equity. If a local government employee's unable to address the local population in their preferred language of choice--a language of local origins--is the person qualified? I'm reminded of Canadians who complain that Canadian Francophones are so much more likelier to fill posts in government requiring French language fluency, because they're much more bilingual than Anglophones.

If Welsh Nationalism gained so much ground to have the majority of Welsh MPs, controlling many council authorities, a referendum likely to go in their favour.
So, what could happen, the 'language police' would be given free reign. More, and more official business would be conducted in Welsh - if you couldn't speak/understand it - 'a translator would be appointed for'.
Property prices would fall, as many English speakers would emigrant to England, and previous influx of people from England would be curtailed.
Unemployment, would start to rise, as investment dried up .

You would not get that sort of push unless you had, I would think, a much bigger constituency of Welsh-speaking people demanding these policies. In the cases of Québec and Catalonia, the speakers of the local language seem to have been the biggest communities at the time of their language legislation.
 
The language issue actually limits Plaid Cymru: because they are perceived as Welsh language nuts, they have minimal support outside their Welsh-speaking base. Compare the Scottish National Party, which doesn't appeal to the tiny fraction of Scots Gaelic speakers, and as such can market itself as a party of civic nationalism, rather than language nationalism.
 
The language issue actually limits Plaid Cymru: because they are perceived as Welsh language nuts, they have minimal support outside their Welsh-speaking base. Compare the Scottish National Party, which doesn't appeal to the tiny fraction of Scots Gaelic speakers, and as such can market itself as a party of civic nationalism, rather than language nationalism.

It's actually been both a strength and a weakness - yes it has limited the appeal of Plaid to areas outside it's traditional heartland, but on the other hand a close association with Y Fro Gymraeg meant that throughout the 1980's and 1990's the SNP typically had to get three or four times as many votes to get a similar number of seats (1992 forex saw the SNP on 630K votes getting 3 seats, but Plaid getting 4 seats on 157K votes). It also doesn't help that the Wales Labour Party is not the disfunctional mess that the Scottish one is and so is proving rather harder to push aside.

But a possibility - (something) happens to make the 1979 devolution referendum pass, the 1980's prove as disastrous for Labour as they did OTL and Plaid's move on their core support is more successful than OTL because the Assembly means they have a higher profile and a realistic chance of governing. Mumble, mumble, greater powers, more devolution, etc. after 30 or so years of this an independence referendum starts to look plausible...
 
Thinking some more:

The best bet with a 1900 POD is to keep the Liberal Party as a party of government - and have Lloyd George maintain his earlier interest in Welsh nationalist causes. Constitutional issues are an integral part of Liberal DNA, which means earlier devolution/federalism is more likely.
 
Is Wales an independent country in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Unless there is a tradition at the United Nations of displaying the flags of subnational entities, it seems this is the case.

Untitled-design.png


The big question is how this has happened. By some metrics, Wales is exceptionally distinctive, with a Celtic language still widely spoken and diverse distinctive cultural traditions. Against this, perhaps because of the very late formation of Wales as a coherent entity compared to Scotland, Welsh nationalism was late to take off. Even now, Plaid Cymru and outright separatism are far from having the mass support of their counterparts in Scotland.

Thoughts? Would you need an earlier POD, to make the Welsh language be a bigger cause?
Thinking some more:

The best bet with a 1900 POD is to keep the Liberal Party as a party of government - and have Lloyd George maintain his earlier interest in Welsh nationalist causes. Constitutional issues are an integral part of Liberal DNA, which means earlier devolution/federalism is more likely.

Unfortunately, if we want an Independent Wales, and definitely a Welsh-speaking one, we need a nineteenth century POD and not a 20th century one.

This book explains how and why:
why-wales-never-was-186383852.jpg


The book's main argument is this: That whereas in the rest of Europe, the period from the 1840s to the First World War was one of national awakening - increased nationalism and language movements, this did not happen in Wales - at least not to any comparable degree. Instead of nationalism and language conservationism like in Finland, Poland, Estonia or Ireland, in 'Liberal Wales' the dominant political belief was liberalism, and with it utilitarianism and assimilatory liberalism.

This led directly to the collapse of the Welsh Language in industrial South Wales, as there was no thriving Welsh nationalist movement producing a will to assimilate the English incomers into Welsh culture. Instead the prevailing philosophy was that incomers should have no obligation to learn Welsh, and that English should be the common language and the language of education. When the Welsh nationalist Emrys ap Iwan objected to building English language chapels for incomers to then Welsh-speaking areas, he was shouted down and the Calvinistic Methodist church refused to ordain him.

Thus, in the 19th century, you had individuals who were Welsh-nationalist but no Welsh nationalist movement. Yes you had a thriving Welsh language press with newspapers, but the ideology expressed in these was mainly liberalism, not nationalism.

This changed somewhat in the 1890s when a group of Liberals, led by Tom Ellis and David Lloyd George, tried to set up a Welsh nationalist movement called Cymru Fydd with some aiming to make it into a Welsh nationalist political party just like Parnell's Irish Parliamentary party in Ireland. However, the Liberal leadership in Westminster refused to back this move, and neither did the Liberals in an increasingly anglicised South Wales. Cymru Fydd was killed stone dead, and although there was a Welsh Nationalist League set up in 1911, and a single Welsh MP introduced a Private Member's Bill for Welsh Home Rule, the latter failed.

It wasn't until the 1920s that Plaid Cymru was founded, although by this time it was too late - Welsh had become a minority language in Wales, and it was socialism, not Welsh nationalism that was replacing Liberalism in industrial South Wales. Even in the Welsh-Speaking heartlands in North and West Wales, Plaid Cymru would not win its first parliamentary seat until 1966, and it was from then that the subsequent national awakening happened, but for Plaid Cymru, it only really affected the Welsh-Speaking North and West, the South not so much. In 1997, the people of Wales voted for Devolution and a Welsh Assembly, but only by a narrow margin, having rejected it in 1979. Although Plaid has on and off won seats in the heavily populated South Wales in the Welsh Assembly, it remains to be seen if there are any breakthroughs.

Meanwhile, the decline of the Welsh Language has been extremely sad, and the lack of Welsh Nationalism in the 19th century undoubtedly was a key part in its demise in industrial South Wales, making Welsh-speakers a minority in their own country today:
Welsh Language in 1810:
upload_2018-2-27_11-48-28.png


1900:
upload_2018-2-27_11-50-48.png


1961:
upload_2018-2-27_11-52-19.png


2011:
upload_2018-2-27_11-54-38.png


So, as you can see, to have an Independent Welsh-Speaking Wales like Finland or Estonia, we need a 19th century POD whereby a Welsh nationalist movement emerges like in Finland or Poland. This would a) Save the Welsh Language and make it the language of education and assimilate the incomers, and b) push for Home Rule, like in Ireland.
 
I can't speak for Poland or Estonia, but trying to squeeze Wales into a Finland or Ireland analogy doesn't work.

Finnish nationalism was (early on) actually encouraged by Russia, as a cultural means of separating Finland from its centuries of Swedish rule. Finland also had its own legislature (albeit one that was in hiatus until the 1860s), and later its own currency within the Tsarist Empire. You thus had a base for nationalism long before Russification and Revolution forced the issue.

Irish nationalism was associated with extreme historical grievance, and with persecution of religion.

Nineteenth century Wales had neither Finland's rudimentary political framework, nor anything like Irish grievances, nor religious issues. Also, in contrast to Finland and Ireland, (South) Wales was industrial: people were moving there, rather than away from there, which was always going to advantage English. It's much easier to save a language when you're a backwards, agrarian place with vanishingly few newcomers.

I don't think you can have a Welsh-speaking independent Wales without killing off industralisation, but I think you can at least make a federal Britain a possibility with a twentieth century POD.
 
Top