They Haven't Gone Away You Know.

This blog is supposed to be about Radnorian history, spiced up with a bit of old time motor sport. Trouble is I always have to guard against an urge to rant about some political issue or other. The other day I thought about posting something about Glanville Williams, one of the more influential Welshmen of the last century. Trouble is I could find no Radnorshire connection and he surely wasn't a Brooklands devotee. Of course as the President of the Abortion Law Reform Association and the legal brain behind the 1967 Act, I guess you could accuse him of the non-appearance of around 2000 potential Radnorians, but it's not much of a link I have to admit.

Glanville Williams was also a leading member of the Eugenics Society, a body that concerned itself with such issues as opposing racially mixed marriages, sterilising unemployed people and other "unhealthy seed". Although all that "good seed" baloney smacks of the 1930s, the Eugenics Society never went away, it merely changed its name. This popular broadcaster even ended up as President, I except you know him. Anyway I decided that this was not a suitable topic for a Radnorian blog and deleted the post. However ........

This morning the BBC News site is making much of the fact that the BNP are pals with American racist David Duke. Hardly surprising of course but maybe this is, the foreword to David Duke's book My Awakening by American geneticist Professor Glayde Whitney. That's the same Glayde Whitney who our present day eugenicists invited over to the UK to lecture, David Aaronovitch wrote about it in the Guardian.

So there you have it, the obviously racist BNP, the less-obvious haters of the SWP posing as "anti-fascists" outside the BBC and those highly respectable scientists seeking to rehabilitate eugenics. Wonder which are the greatest danger? Wonder also how long it will be before someone suggests sterilising the less talented "seed" in order to save the planet from global warming?

Treason

Has the world come to this, Stirling bigging up a red car!

Fascist Advance Turned Back in Radnor

The latest BNP membership list is a bit of a mess but from what I can make out they've picked up one new member in Llandrindod, while losing their two previous Radnorian sign ups.

The pleasant Wyeside town of Llanfair-ym-Muallt also gained, if that's the right word, a member, although my guess is that this one thought BNP stood for Builth National Party.

Go Figure

Top picture is the A483 at Howey, 7 busy junctions, 2 residential caravan sites, 4 housing estates, a narrow pavement used daily by dozens of folk, a couple of accident blackspots and a village.

Below is the A44 at Llanfihangel Nant Melan, a pub and a couple of farms and that's about it.

Now guess which one has a 40 MPH speed limit and which has the 50 MPH limit.

Yes, that's right .......

Here Today

Just a reminder that my Innes Ireland website will disappear into cyberspace later this month. Yahoo are taking down all their free sites and I don't feel like paying to keep it going. I guess in some ways the internet is like the manuscript age before the printing press and the permanency of books. Some things will last, some will be copied and survive in part, but most will just disappear.

Simmering Discontent or Hyperbole?

As one of those Radnorians who still think of Llandrindod as something of a Johnny-come-lately on the local scene, I can't say that I am at all well-informed about the storms that occasionally boil over in that particular tea-cup. Wilfing around the internet I was surprised to discover that back in the summer the Spa town was simmering with discontent. As things turned out this "groundswell" amounted to no more than a couple of dozen votes, as Mr Gary Price romped home to an easy victory.

Anyway it now seems that Mr Price has joined the "ultra-right" Montgomeryshire Independent group on Powys County Council. Wow! I knew that Nick Griffin lived in the Welshpool area but I hadn't realised that some Montgomeryshire version of the Iron Guard had been elected to the County Council.

Of course it could be that this is just hyperbole and that the Montgomeryshire Independent Group are merely a bunch of well-meaning souls who happen to disagree with the Liberal Democrats.

Secure in Valour's Station?

No part of Wales welcomed continued membership of the European Community more than Radnorshire in the 1975 Referendum. With Powys voting 74% YES, a figure doubtless depressed by NO votes in the old Breconshire coalfield, the more rural parts of the county would surely have outstripped the most pro areas of England in enthusiasm for Europe.

Your correspondent was one of that small minority of Radnorians to vote NO in 1975, so it was with a degree of sadness that I noted the YES vote in Ireland over the weekend, the good voters of Donegal excepted. The main reason voters gave for giving up their country's hard-won independence seemed to be money. Unlike the Scottish Parliament in 1707, the Irish voters were admitting to have been bought for European rather than English gold.

Now I realise that the chances of a referendum in the UK are fairly remote, but if by some mishap it should happen, how should Radnorian vote? As a supporter of Welsh Independence it seems somewhat eccentric to vote to give away that independence before it has even been won. At the same time a victory for the NO side would be a massive fillip to the old myopic English Nationalism that defines itself by what it doesn't like, the Welsh and Scots in particular, rather than what it does.