'A naked people under an acid rain" Wales post Would Gwyn Alf say?
"Wales
– particularly south Wales – was the very anvil on which the
progress of the whole urban working class had been first hammered
out." Gwyn Alf Williams
He
came to believe that the central British state – by which he meant
English control and domination of Britain – had to be undone or
broken off if Wales was to survive as a united community. All
his life he was fascinated by the struggles of the working classes,
particularly in Wales. Gwyn Alf Williams was a Marxist, a Welsh
Republican Socialist. It was his work that convinced me that the
destruction of the English State was essential for the transformation
of Wales and Scotland. That for Ecosocialism to triumph the
English state must go. Now I fear that Wales will be left as
the last colony of a rump British state.
These
words echo the dangers of about what is to happen. Farage, IDS and
Michael Gove have hypnotised the Welsh Working Class with the
pendulum of racism.
I
have seen them lurking within the ranks of the leave campaign. They
are the middle class hard right activists. They are looking
beyond June 23. They want a market based north American
solution to the British state. Scotland will be gone and we in
Wales will be left in the country of Johnsonia. Wales the last
of the colonies oppressed by them.
Once
those who have been led to Brexit wake up they will see and
understand that the EU referendum and the migration issue are
unrelated. It will be too late to stop the bonfire of workers
right that will begin.
In
1983 Gwyn Alf Williams surveying the Tory election victory that year
commented that Wales was never as vulnerable as it was then. It
is vulnerable again....What would Gwyn Alf Williams say..?....he said
then that the Welsh were
'a naked people under an acid rain".
Gwyn
Alf Williams was – and probably still is – one of the most
renowned, admired, even loved, historians of the last 100 years. It
is unusual for academics to gain popular public appeal but that was
something Gwyn Alf certainly did. He attracted a following of
academics and lay people alike, not only through his television
broadcasts but also through his lectures and books. For anyone
who has ever sat through one of his remarkable lectures there could
only ever be one Gwyn Alf and there will never be anyone quite like
him again.
Gwyn
Alfred Williams – Gwyn Alf as he was invariably known – was born
on 30 September 1925 in the iron town of Dowlais, just outside
Merthyr Tydfil. Educated firstly at the famous Cyfarthfa
Grammar School in Merthyr, he went on to study history at the
University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
He
formed his political opinions during the dark days of the Depression
and the Spanish Civil War and those opinions, garnered when he was no
more than an adolescent, were retained – with minor alterations -
throughout his life. He became a Marxist, albeit one who was
driven by a dynamic and heart-felt concern about his own people, the
Welsh.
During
World War Two, Gwyn Alf served in the army and fought in the Normandy
campaign following the D-Day landings in 1944. After his
discharge from the army he turned, once again, to academia and
completed a doctorate that was later, in 1963, turned into the book
Medieval London: From Commune to Capital.
From
1954 until 1965 he worked as a lecturer at Aberystwyth, then took up
a post as reader in York. He was later Professor of History at
York before, in 1974, returning to Wales where he became Professor of
History at the University of Wales, Cardiff. He retired from
this post in 1983 to concentrate on writing.
A
dynamic and exciting lecturer, Gwyn Alf Williams was astute enough to
use his slight speech impediment or stutter to emphasise and
reinforce his points. It was a great technique. People
from various faculties in the universities where he worked flocked to
hear him, sitting enthralled as he made his pronouncements and
offered his point of view.
He
was particularly passionate about Wales and her people, seeing
himself – in his own celebrated phrase – as 'a people's
remembrancer'. Gwyn Alf, however, was also a passionate
republican and soon found himself a place on the left-wing of Plaid
Cymru.
As
Meic Stephens wrote in his obituary in the Independent, Gwyn Alf was
clear that: "Wales – particularly south Wales – was the very
anvil on which the progress of the whole urban working class had been
first hammered out."
After
his retirement Gwyn Alf moved to Drefach Felindre in west Wales, to a
home that he shared with Sian Lloyd. He continued to write and
to make television programmes and films.
Notable
amongst his books were Merthyr Rising, the story of the 1831 riots in
Merthyr and the martyrdom of Dic Penderyn, and Madoc, the Making of a
Myth, which was the story of how the legend of Madoc and his supposed
discovery of America came into being.
His
book When Was Wales was written while he was making an extraordinary
television programme with Wynford Vaughan Thomas. The TV
programme was the famous The Dragon Has Two Tongues a 13-part series
that took the form of discussion, often heated debate or
confrontation, between the two men.
Gwyn
Alf made films about Welshmen including Saunders Lewis and Iolo
Morganwg but also tackled other subjects and people such as Mary
Shelley and Sylvia Pankhurst. He had a fondness for the
dramatic, something that helped his television work reach a wide
audience, enthralling people who would otherwise never have
considered watching a history programme.
Gwyn
Alf Williams died on 16 November 1995, a Marxist, a Welsh republican
and a writer of great skill. But it was in his superb and exciting
lectures and in his wide range of television programmes that he
really made his name.
He
would see the acid rain of Trump and NAFTA, eating into our hopes,
dreams and pol
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