Red Radnorshire

 I'm sure a lot of Welsh folk have an image of Radnorshire as a rural backwater, anglicised, probably Tory voting, an extension of Herefordshire protruding into their imaginary radical Wales.

Here's some anomalies to ponder:

Nye Bevan, mother Phoebe Protheroe, her family went to the coalfield from Glasbury

George Lansbury, the Labour Party leader, his mother was from Clyro

Arthur Horner, Communist boss of the Miner's Union, mother a Lewis from Gwystre

Clem Edwards, radical lawyer and MP, from Knighton, one of the organisers of the London dockers strike and the famous laundresses demonstration in Hyde Park

Charles Edwards, MP for Bedwellty from 1918 to 1950, a Labour Chief Whip, he was from Llangynllo

That's enough for now, maybe I'll add some more later.

Reflections on wasted opportunities

As someone with an interest in family history and the science of dna, I've taken tests with a couple of companies.  All very interesting, with hundred year old affairs being revealed and a personalisation of history - migration, war, disease and the like as they affected the extended family.

One surprise were the dozens of Mormon third and fourth cousins who popped up in my match list.  These people all traced back to a clan of Flintshire stone masons who were early converts to the church and played an important part in the development of Salt Lake City, from building the Temple to establishing the forerunner of the Tabernacle Choir.  The link was an illegitimate birth in Llanwrthwl, my great great grandmother being born the child of a visiting mason with the necessary surname.

Anyway this handful of Mormon kinsmen have multiplied so that today literally thousands of folk can trace themselves back to these pioneers.

This made me think what a great opportunity the Welsh National movement missed in the 1960s.  Now I'm not suggesting polygamy but what if patriotic couples had decided to marry and have large families back then.  No doubt their lives would have been less bourgeois but how many thousands of extra Welsh speakers would exist today, how much talent would exist, how many businesses?    Wales would surely be different, richer both culturally and economically ...... because people aren't a problem, they are an opportunity.

Instead we followed the Anglo-Saxon model, Plaid Cymru is just New Labour's little helper, the language figures might look reasonable but less Welsh is spoken in everyday life, the rural areas are taken over by outsiders and locals are priced out of the housing market.  Worse still the Sion Whites are disconnected from the ordinary folk, more interested in American virtue signalling than the everyday problems of the gwerin.

So go on your little marches, put a flag in your twitter profile, virtue signal to your heart's content but what are we doing to actually build alternative structures to the dying empire.