Jubilee, Grip and Eretz England

So Jubilee and Grip, a couple of ravens at the Tower of London have been killed by an urban fox.  I'm not sure why it needed a Freedom of Information request to extract this information, although we are talking about Eretz England - a state which is happily ditching its last remnants of  press freedom.

You can read the official version as to why George Osborne is willing to cough up £4000 per annum to provide bed and board for these London dossers here.  Personally I have my doubts.  After all the English are very good at writing the Welsh out of the history of these islands.

Take the Tudors, the BBC is forever churning out programmes with posh birds chuntering on about Henry, Mary and Elizabeth.   One thing they'll never mention is the Welsh ... oh they might refer to the wonder of a Welshman from the "lower orders" being the grandfather of a king but that's about it.   Dramatised versions are no better, apart from a denigrating joke in A Man for all Seasons and a Welsh extra whispering in Glenda Jackson's ear you're more likely to come across a Martian than a Cymro.

Of course the reality was far different, with Welsh folk, for example, surrounding England's greatest queen.  A. L Rowse even called Bess a "red-haired Welsh harridan"  - but then he was Cornish.

Poor old Rhys ap Gruffudd is one Tudor taff who has been consigned to the dustbin of history.  Rhys was married to that well-connected lass Catherine Howard - sister of Anne Boleyn's mother and aunt and namesake of Henry VIII's fifth wife.   Rhys got the chop for plotting to make himself Prince of Wales in fulfilment of certain ancient Welsh prophesies.  One of the main charges against him was that he had adopted the surname Fitz Urien - a name with some significance in the vaticinatory poetry called brud.

You get a clue to what these prophesies were in a poem by Lewis Glyn Cothi  to Rhys's great uncle Morgan ap Tomas:

Mae digon o sôn gan Sais

Am Rolant Abermarlais.

Maent hwy fal mintai Owain

O fewn brud yn ofni brain.

Mae'n ddarogan i'r frân fry

Grasu wybr Lloegrwys obry.

Dy gigfrain dros lundain lân
ac ar hyd Lloegr y hedan'

There's plenty of talk from the English about the Roland of Abermarlais.  They, like the troop of Owain in brut, fear the ravens. It's prophesied that the ravens will beat down the firmament of the English .... Your ravens will fly over fair London and all of England.
 
Of course all this draws on Owain ab Urien in the Dream of Rhonabwy, who our pal Rhys ap Gruffudd claimed as an ancestor.  The English - a more superstitious race than the Cymry* - would no doubt have taken all this seriously.  What better revenge than to behead Fitz Urien at the Tower and let the hapless ravens feast on his flesh.

Rhys's uncle James ap Gruffudd of Castell Maelgwn, another Welshman who deserves to be better know, escaped to the continent, where he pursued his nation's cause in the courts of Europe for a  fruitless decade and more.

So there they remain, the ravens of Owain ab Urien, their wings clipped and subject to gawping tourists and mangy vermin.  Occasionally one escapes this fate, like Branwen - "he was a bit of a brute"** - who was shipped off to Somerset for attacking the gawpers.

Surely it's time to release the ravens, let Eretz England fall and allow a new England to emerge - one that might aspire to being a good neighbour rather than the destroyer of nations.

*  If you don't believe me just check out how many witches each nation was responsible for executing.

** Yes, I know

Radnorshire from above

A new book of Radnorshire interest.

More details here.

The Dublin Franchise

"Irish fascists? - get away with you."  "Anti-semitism! - don't be stupid."  My interlocutor remained unconvinced by my references to the Blueshirts or Denis Fahey.  If he'd know that my maternal grandfather was from Pontlottyn, he'd have surely put my ignorance down to an innate prejudice born of the Anti-Irish riots of the 19C.

Perhaps I should lend him my recently acquired copy of Professor Ray Douglas's Architects of Revolution, subtitled Ailtiri na hAiseirghe and the fascist 'new order' in Ireland. It's a good read, although I did find myself getting bogged-down with the multitude of unfamiliar Gaelicised personal names.

In truth hAiseirghe and it's would-be Fuhrer, Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin, might have deserved an extended essay rather than a 320 page book but the background against which the movement grew, and finally failed was fascinating.

hAiseirghe's policies seem crazy now, but at the time that was not the case.  Hitler was fighting, and seemingly winning, a war to make the world safe for totalitarianism.  hAiseirghe and Ó Cuinneagáin saw themselves as obvious candidates to take on the Dublin franchise.

Many Irish people supported the Germans and anti-Semitic views were widespread.  Democracy had shallow roots, let's remember that Britain had ignored the result of election after election and even locked up most of the victors of 1918.  The 26 Counties had been liberated by the gun rather than the ballot box and many were disappointed with the party bickering that had soured the hopes of independence.  The economy stagnated and emigration reached ridiculous levels - four out of every five born in the 26 counties between 1931 and 1941, for example, would eventually leave the country.  A youthful movement that:

despised democracy;

sided with hated England's German enemy;

wanted to expel the Jews;

hoped to form a standing army of a 100,000 to march on the north;

planned to organise an economy based on the corporate state;

advocated that emigration be made illegal - this was also contemplated by De Valera,

declared it would pass laws against the public use of English

and that ultimately aimed to create a "missionary-ideological" Catholic state acting on the world stage

Well it wasn't quite so wildly out of touch with contemporary Irish realities as we might nowadays imagine.

To be a little controversial I'd say that in some ways hAiseirghe resembled the 1970s Welsh group Mudiad Adfer.  Both had grown out of the mainstream language movement, both appealed to idealistic young men and women and both rejected Anglo-American culture in its entirety.  Of course there were huge differences, stemming from time and place and the religious and cultural backgrounds of their members.

A couple of surprises.  Ó Cuinneagáin, who was no soldier, turned to the British general Dorman-Smith for advice on invading the North.  An interesting character I'd not come across before.   On another occasion  in the cause of Celtic solidarity hAiseirghe plastered South Dublin with posters proclaiming Rhyddid i Gymru!

In the end the author says hAiseirghe missed the boat, largely because of  Ó Cuinneagáin's failings, and that with better leadership they could have garnered the electoral success that went to Clann na Poblachta in the 1948 Election.

Welsh-Speaking Radnorians in the 1911 Census

According to some of our leading historians the Welsh language died out in Radnorshire centuries ago. Take Glanmor Williams for example, who wrote of "border counties like Radnorshire which have been English in speech for some centuries" or Geraint H. Jenkins who, referring to the mid 18C, explained that "the language had receded westwards so rapidly in Radnorshire that it had vanished from the lips of all but the most aged inhabitants of the county."

Well there must be something about the Radnorshire air because some of those "aged inhabitants" were still alive and kicking  at the time of the 1911 Census, a handful were even teenagers.

Regular readers will know I'm going over old ground here.  It's quite correct that the Welsh language disappeared at an alarming rate in Radnorshire, as quickly as in Ireland where three generations could see a parish move from a 100% Irish speaking to virtually nil.  Where the experts - beguiled by the language of church services - go wrong, is in placing that process of language shift a hundred years or more too soon.

One wet afternoon I spent a couple of hours noting down Radnorshire-born Welsh speakers in the 1911 Census, I gave up at around 600.   Not all that 600 actually lived in Radnorshire, although there were still a fair number of locally born, let's call them indigenous, Welsh-speakers in the parishes of Cwmteuddwr, Rhaeadr and St Harmon - with the occasional Ned Maddrell and Dolly Pentreath in parishes further east.

Anyway let's get to the point of the post.  There's a theory which gets repeated now and then that language shift in Radnorshire was facilitated by incomers, sometimes said to be Cromwellian soldiery settled in the county after our neighbour's Civil War.  I don't think this theory stands up to much examination.  Firstly because some of the most common 'English surnames' pre-date the civil war, while others belong to the very real 16C plantation in West Montgomeryshire.  Look back at tax returns, wills etc and you'll find that the numbers of incomers settling in Radnorshire parishes were nowhere near enough to facilitate a language shift of their own accord.

And here my couple of hours spent noting down those 1911 Welsh-speaking, Radnorshire-born citizens might have had a purpose.  Amongst the 600 we find long-established local surnames of English origin like Bound, Bufton, Bywater, Hamer, Hope, Ingram, Mantle, Mason, Webb, Wilding, Worthing and Wozencraft.  Oh and Scott, descendants of a Renfrewshire family who turned up in the county in the early 19C and were perhaps the last incomers to be Cymricised in Radnorshire before the current revival.

Something for the Weekend

A Very Old Radnor

OAPs (those aged 65 and over) make up some 18% of the population of Wales, while Conwy on the Costa Geriatrica is the authority with the most old codgers at nearly 25%.  If Radnorshire County Council still existed then it would overwhelm a sprightly Conwy with the sheer number of its zimmer-framed masses.

17 of the county's 27 communities exceed that Conwy total  - Llandrindod, for example, with over 25%, Rhayader a whopping 30% and Diserth, topping the poll, with 34.2%.  Now you don't really need the census to work out that at least half these oldies come from across the border. Without them we'd be nearly as youthful as Cardiff - just 13% potential Dignitas customers there.

Cliches Galore

The Tory conference provided a few belly laughs with every speech containing the phrase "hard working people."  Now it's Cameron's turn, wait for it, here he goes "hard working people."  It must have gone down well at some focus group, but now it's just a joke.

Meanwhile BBC TV goes overboard with programmes trumpeting Britishness.  Just this week we've had:  Britain's Big Wildlife Revival, James Martin's Food Map of Britain, The Great British Bake-Off, Great British Railway Journeys, Fabric of Britain, Great British Menu, A Very British Murder, Britain on Film, The Great British Year, Britain Caught on Camera, For Britain and the Hell of It, oh,  and Science Britannica.

How the Beeb hierarchy must be yearning to get this Scottish referendum out of the way. Then they can get back to making programmes about Tuscany and Provence and places that really interest them.  

Workers of the World Unite?

Labour may not be very good at running an economy but - hats off to them -  they certainly know how to get their own slant on history accepted as gospel.  We're coming-up to the centenary of the Senghennydd disaster and I'd be interested to learn how the left might explain the following snippet:

At the subsequent council elections, the Senghennydd seat was won by the Universal Pit's then manager one William Kestell, standing as an Independent but with Tory support.  He gained 1132 votes.  Labour were a distant second with 368, while the Workingman's Candidate trailed in third with 290.

Little Donkey

Readers of this blog will know that I'm somewhat in awe of the Rebeccaites of Victorian Radnorshire and their low-intensity war against the county establishment.  One of their least attractive features - certainly to our modern minds - was the practise of  mutilating animals belonging to any landlord who over-stepped the mark.

One such event occurred in November 1876 with an attack on St Winifred's church in Cwmteuddwr.  Chairs were smashed, the harmonium broken and the sacistry table placed outside.  To add to the mayhem the throat of the vicar's donkey was cut - newspapers report that the unfortunate beast survived.

Now it seems this was no act of petty vandalism, rather it was a Rebeccaite attack aimed at the local vicar. He was deemed to have insulted the community by allowing his donkey to graze the churchyard, and had ignored previous warnings to desist.

Musical Interlude

Wikipedia tells us that Mandy Rice Davies was born in Pontiets, although her birth certificate is more likely to read Wiltshire.  Ms Davies was, though, a product of that largely forgotten diaspora of half a million Welsh folk who left our country in the "locust years" of the 1920s and 1930s.

Back in the headlines, I've been reading some of the old reports of her court appearances in 1963.  What a clever and spunky eighteen year old Mandy was; fair play to the education she must have received on those occasions when she actually turned-up at her Birmingham Sec Mod.

Nowadays we might have insisted that MRD give her evidence via a video-link, being legally a child when many of the shenanigans were on-going, whether this would be for her protection or that of the court is another matter.

A Forgotten Referendum

The current talk of referenda and national identity reminds me of a largely forgotten referendum, that of the Radnorshire border parishes who opted to stay with the Church of England at the time of Welsh disestablishment.

There's a fair bit of disinformation out there about these votes:  when were they held, who took part, which parishes were involved.   First off any parish wholly within Wales but which had previously been part of an English diocese was transferred, without a vote, to the Church in Wales.  This was the fate of Knighton and New Radnor for example.  Likewise parishes which were wholly within England but had been part of a Welsh diocese were transferred to the Cof E.

The vote was restricted to parishes that actually straddled the border.  Presteigne parish for example covered quite a sizable chunk of Herefordshire, as did Old Radnor.  Brampton Bryan must have strayed over the border to include a few Welsh acres, so it, too, was given a choice; as was the parish of Brilley (England) and Michaelchurch (Wales).

The vote for seventeen cross-border parishes, including those in Radnorshire, was held in February 1915; everyone within the parish being allowed to vote - although there were plenty of moans about the fairness of the process:

Brampton Bryan:  For Wales 23, For  England 168
Old Radnor: For Wales 99, For England 344
Presteigne:  For Wales 289, For England 595
Brilley and Michaelchurch: For Wales 27, For England 168

Keen eyed patriots travelling into Wales along the A44 can blame this vote for the sight of the flag of St George brazenly displayed on Old Radnor church.

The full results for the seventeen cross-border parishes voting in February 1915 can be found in a parliamentary reply shown here.   The two parishes who did not declare were Rhydycroesau which voted for England and Llansilin which, uniquely, voted for Wales 255-228.  Two other parishes, Whitewell and Trelystan, were also subsequently adjudged worthy of inclusion in the English church.

Are Scots Lazy and/or Stupid?

I didn't see last night's Newsnight but according to twitter the eminent psephologist Professor Curtice came up with an explanation as to why the 2011 Census showed a majority of Scots opting for the Scottish only box.  It seems they only did this because it was the first option on offer.

Unionists can get away with such claptrap because the Scottish figures are only broken down to local authority level.  In Wales, where the census is available at a community and ward level, its accuracy becomes apparent.

In Wales, too, the "Welsh only" choice was the first on offer.  This did not prevent 79% of the population of the historic border town of Presteigne ignoring that welcoming "Welsh only" box.  In nearby Knighton 72% skipped the inviting first choice and in New Radnor 76%.   Are the residents of these border townships really more conscientious at form-filling than the Scots?

In parish after parish the figures reflect the reality on the ground. For example in the community of Diserth, with its two large retirement parks, we expect a low "Welsh only" figure (33%) while in the neighbouring market town of Builth a higher 52% comes as no surprise.  There is a quite obvious correlation between birthplace and national identity.

Isn't this an example of how Unionism views the mass of the Scottish people .... too lazy and/or stupid to fill out a form accurately never mind run a country?

Scottish Identity

I wonder if the unionists regret including a national identity question in the 2011 Census?  Little-England-Beyond-Wales?  Completely shot out of the water by the revelation that folk from southern Pembrokeshire feel just as Welsh as the rest of us*. Likewise the locals in Maelor Saesneg, an area which in the 1880s was considered so anglicised it was planned to hand it over to Shropshire.

Today we got the results from Scotland.  How often have the unionists banged-on about how it's not Scotland's oil because the folk in Orkney and Shetland aren't even Scottish?  The reality revealed by the census: Orkney 62% Scots only identity, Shetland 60% Scots only - and remember that some 20% of these islands' population weren't even born in Scotland.  Oh and before someone claims there was no Orcadian or Shetlander box to tick, well there was no Cornish box either, but more than 73000 of its citizens took the trouble to write-in a Cornish identity.  Nothing similar to that in the figures from the northern isles.

Comparing Wales and Scotland we find that 62% of Scots opted for a Scots only identity while 57% of those in Wales chose Welsh only.  We have to remember that more than 20% of our population was born in England whereas this applied to less than 9% of those in Scotland.  If you compare the Welsh-born total with Welsh-only identifiers you get a figure of 80%.  The Scottish equivalent is 75%.  One up to Wales.

Another difference is the figure for Welsh/Scottish and British identifiers 18% in Scotland, just 7% in Wales.  I'd guess that the independence debate has polarised things a bit, you can imagine tribal-Labour supporters ticking this box.  In Scotland just 8% opted for a British-only identity while in Wales the figure was nearer 17%.  This is easily explained by the fact that twice as many in Wales were born in England.  People who may for example feel like the author of this blog comment:

"Maybe it's Englishness that no longer regards itself as such and yet doesn't think it has earned the right to call itself Welsh.  Take me, for example. I was born and raised in England, yet I and my children speak Welsh (extraordinary though that may be in Maesyfed), and regard Wales as 'our' country. Indeed, later this week we will all be spending a few days at the Urdd Eisteddfod as we do every year.  Did I list myself as Welsh on the census form? No: I felt the obligation to tick the British box, simply because it was the closest approximation to what I am"

Around 11% of the population of Wales had no such well-mannered qualms, listing themselves as English-only.  Here is another major difference with Scotland where just 2.3% distinguished themselves in this way.

*  This doesn't mean I believe in an homogenised Wales, far from it.  I get as annoyed as the next when someone claims, for example, that Cwmteuddwr isn't the correct spelling or pronounciation of Cwmteuddwr.  Regional differences within Wales should be celebrated, they're what make us a nation and not, well, a region.

Radnorshire, the South, Senghennydd

Visit Llandrindod during its Victorian Festival and you'd think that the average Radnorian of the period must have been a swaggerer with a top hat and a cane.  Those not given to such fantasies might guess that the agricultural labourer would be a more honest representative of the pre-World War One county.  Up to a point they'd be right, but would also be forgetting that just as many, perhaps more, Radnorshire folk had found work in the mines and ironworks of South Wales.

A small county - even the next smallest Welsh county had twice as many people - Radnorshire cannot be expected to have had much impact* on the Valleys, but the coalfield would certainly have had a great impact on Radnorshire.  Look at the 1911 Census and you'll find that nearly a quarter of family heads born in Radnorshire lived in industrial South Wales, mainly in the Merthyr, Pontypridd and Bedwellty registration districts

Far from being a world apart from industrialised Glamorgan and Monmouthshire - as modern-day seekers after tranquility might imagine - there can have been few Radnorshire families without close relatives who had gone off to work in the south.

Over the next month or so we'll hear a good deal about Senghenydd and 1913.  It was not a village that had attracted many Radnorians.  Certainly among the 41 victims of the disaster who had a home in Commercial Street we find 21 year old George Herritts of Presteigne and Edward Thomas, a 51 year old from Old Radnor.  Evan Jones (32) of Kingsley Place, a native of Rhayader, was one of 43 with that surname to be lost.  There may have been others amongst the victims with Radnorshire connections not so easy to spot.

The local MP for East Glamorganshire was Knighton born Liberal Clem Edwards.  He played a frustrated part in the rescue work - offering to organize a trainload of much needed sand to fight the fire, the offer was turned down - and subsequently representing many of the relatives at the public inquiry into the disaster.  It's interesting to note that when Edwards won his seat in 1910 he had pushed Labour's syndicalist firebrand C B Stanton into third place.  Both would end up as National Democratic Party MPs after 1918, with Edwards defeating Arthur Henderson in East Ham.  No doubt disasters like Senghenydd did much to win support for the emerging Labour Party and its centralist,  top-down version of socialism.  Salopian Alfred Onions would win the new Caerphilly seat in 1918, with Radnorshire native Charles Edwards, he was from Llangynllo, topping the poll in neighbouring Bedwellty.

It will be interesting to see what the remembrancers make of the Universal colliery's manager Edward Shaw, he was certainly fined £24 for eight violations of the Coal Mines Act in the aftermath of the disaster.  A 41 year old Welsh speaker and Baptist, Shaw must have been popular with the villagers since as an Independent he had recently topped the poll in the local council election.  Shaw too had a Radnorshire connection, recently married, his wife Jessie Lloyd was from Llandrindod.

*  We shouldn't forget the Radnorshire family background of movers and shakers like Arthur Horner and Nye Bevan.

Welsh Slackers

Head out of Crossgates on the Aberystwyth road and you can't fail to notice a rather pretty building in the mock Tudor style.  Originally called Glanclywedog, it was rebuilt by a Wolverhampton industrialist - one Luther Greenway  - and imaginatively renamed Greenway Manor.

In June 1915 Mr Greenway threw open the doors of his Welsh pile to the general public.  A problem had been identified and the great and the good wanted to do something about it - the youth of Radnorshire were failing to rally to the colours in sufficient numbers.  Parents were said to be encouraging their sons to stay at home, indeed married men were more likely to come forward than the single - what does this tell us about Radnorshire wives.  Many young men were echoing a popular local refrain "they would not go, until they were fetched."

After the public meeting had been entertained by the bands of the Shropshire Light Infantry and the Montgomeryshire Yeomanry, Radnor's Lord Lieutenant and former Tory MP Sir Powlett Milbank reassured the mothers present that it was "better to be the parent of a dead hero than a living coward."

Not to be outdone the prospective Liberal candidate for the county, a Liverpool based shipowner, William Lewis launched into a fierce attack on his potential constituents.  Young men who needed to be fetched "were not worth fetching", they would only "soil a soldier's uniform" and were "cowardly and unworthy of the traditions of their race."

The star speaker of the evening was Mrs Lloyd George herself and there is a familiar ring to her comments.  She had been reading the Bryce Report - a government concoction of alleged German rapes and child murders in Belgium.  There were some who were reluctant to believe such tales, the good lady admitted, but the report proved that a "wild beast had been let loose in Europe" and "such deeds of cruelty had been wrought, that had not been seen for 300 years."  The Germans had, Maggie Owen declared, "gone back to the dark ages."

At the end of the meeting "several" new recruits came forward to the colours.  It seems small reward for the expenditure of so much hot air.

From Ramallah to Radnorshire

It's well-known that the Catholics include Hereford within their Cardiff archdiocese, although that may be because of  the West-British outlook prevalent at the time of its formation. Another institution with an ambiguous attitude towards Hereford's identity was the British Army.  Why else would the Herefordshire Regiment - whose ranks included many young Radnorians -  have campaigned as part of the 53rd Welsh Division in both World Wars?

So it was that in December 1917 two Llandrindod brothers - Frank and Tom Edwards, sons of a local watchmaker -  found themselves engaged in the Battle for Jerusalem.  During a break in the fighting, the brothers took the opportunity to visit the newly 'liberated' town of Ramallah.  They wanted to meet the town's mayor, one Elias Audi.  The Sheikh was of interest to them because they knew his brother Joseph Audi Debeni, a popular Llandrindod figure and owner of the Spa's Oriental Bazaar.

By his own account Joseph Audi was born around 1860.  He was almost certainly educated at Ramallah's Quaker school and had originally come to Europe in order to study medicine in Edinburgh.  When Audi's daughter Zarifeh visited England in the early 1890s, she and her companion were described in the press as being the first Arab women to have entered the country - can that be true?

Audi subsequently earned a living as a lecturer on Middle Eastern topics and as a guide accompanying travellers to the Holy Land on behalf of the once well-known travel agency of Henry Gage and Son.  By the mid-1890s he'd opened his Oriental Bazaar (see poster) in Station Crescent's Britannia House; spending the winter months in Palestine conducting tour parties.

Audi was described as a quiet, dignified man, with many friends in the town, and in August 1913 he was granted British nationality.  The Great War put paid to anymore visits home - this photo includes members of Joseph's family, including his mother - and early in 1919 Joseph Audi died.

I wonder if any readers know where Joseph Audi Debeni is buried?  He was a Christian Arab, as were the overwhelming majority of Ramallah's population at that time.  Ramallah is often in the news and it's estimated that nowadays 25% of its 27000 inhabitants are Christians; many of its former citizens having migrated to the United States and South America.

Widows and Spinsters

You don't find much written about the Welsh businesswomen of the Victorian and Edwardian period.  Such females did exist of course, although it helped to be a widow or a spinster or otherwise unencumbered with a spouse.

The Hotel trade in pre-First World War Llandrindod was no small beer, as the buildings of the town, now somewhat decayed, still testify.  And it was a trade which was dominated by the women who owned, or managed, the majority of the most important such businesses in the town.

Look at the 1911 Census and you'll find Miss Duggan and her sister, they were from Hundred House, the owners of Duggan's Temperance Hotel.  Then there was the Llanyre born Miss Sheen, manager of Plas Winton - now the Commodore.  Miss Ace ran the Waverley, Miss Jenkins York House and Miss Smith the Montpelier.  If they weren't spinsters they were widows like Mrs Bentley of the Spring Hotel and Mrs Smith of Ye Wells - currently occupied by Coleg Powys's Llandrindod campus.

The largest hotel in the town, indeed in the whole of Wales, was the Pump House; with its posh clientele and Continental cuisine - one of my aunts married the son of a Swiss chef from there.  It was managed for many years by the Monmouthshire born Miss Duffield, who interestingly enough was elected to the town council in 1900.

 The great rival of the Pump House was the Bridge, which would eventually supplant it as the largest hotel in the country.

Like many of the businesses in the town it was originally built and operated by local Radnorshire families.  For even though Llandrindod has been described as "not a Welsh town, but a town in Wales," most of the entrepreneurial spirit that built the place was Welsh.  In 1897 the five Wilding sisters and their two brothers sold the Bridge Hotel to the redoubtable Mrs Miles (see picture) for a tidy £7850.

Born in Treforest in 1847, Elizabeth Miles (nee Spencer) was the daughter of Pontypridd innkeepers.  Married at 20, she found herself widowed by the age of 24, and with two young sons to boot.  Perhaps because of this setback Elizabeth went on to own or lease some 10 hotels in South Wales, including the Angel in Cardiff.  A Welsh speaker - and so were her two sons - Mrs Miles eventually changed the name of her Llandrindod purchase to the Metropole Hotel.  This was for the rather frugal reason that she had bought a quantity of bankrupt linen and crockery, all  inscribed with the letter M.

So why aren't such women, and others like them elsewhere, better known?   Well, apart from the fact that history has largely been written by men, such successes may not have suited the agendas of those who tend to sell Wales short.

Blow-in Blows Hard

Wind farms - a ghastly waste of money.  Solar panels - a daily reminder that the poor have to cough-up extra cash to subsidize the well-to-do.  Fracking - seems like a good idea.  There you go, cards on the table and a few more readers heading towards that little red button in the top right-hand corner.

So should I invite James Delingpole over for a cup of Glengettie leaf tea?  After all I read his Telegraph blog, usually end-up agreeing with what he says and the poor bloke is holidaying in Cregrina and gasping for a decent brew.

I know this because Mr D has written about it, he's a bit peeved by the fact that a local farmer - let's call him Mr B - has put-up a wind turbine which can be seen from the bedroom window of his holiday cottage.  It's quite spoiled Delingpole's Radnorian sojourn.

OK, suddenly I'm feeling a bit less sympathetic to JD and warming to Mr B. Here are some quotes, I've helpfully highlighted them in orange:

I no longer look at the white houses dotting the valley and wish one day that I could own one

So turbines have their plus points it seems.  Mr Delingpole's sympathies lie though with

the B & B owners, the people who run pony treks and riding stables, the retirees whose nest egg lies mainly in the value of their properties.

I think he means English people.

The tragedy of the Edw Valley is, unfortunately, a tragedy is being repeated across our once-magnificent country. Especially in poor Scotland – a crime for which Alex Salmond and his co-conspirators will one day burn in hell.

See what happens when you write without the benefit of a decent cuppa and yes he does mean English folk.

Price drops of 25 per cent are not uncommon and there have been cases where houses located near wind turbines have been rendered simply unsellable.

If only Mr B would erect a couple more of his poxy turbines then perhaps a few locals might afford to live in the Edw Valley.  Dellers is a bit of a wimp though:

I'm not arguing for direct action: I don't believe in violence or threats of violence, either to person or to property.

So that's all right then.  Still, he wants to ostracise Mr B because:

Anyone who puts a wind turbine on his land fully deserves to be ignored, isolated and loathed by his neighbours.

Can't see it happening, the locals are a bit too clannish to take much notice of blow-ins.

Oh and can you spot the turbine, it is there honest.

The Harbinger?

This headline suggests that the Mosleyite rump are more familiar with the Bayer Wald  than they are with Wales, but there's no denying they have some very comprehensive on-line historical archives.

They're so good that a few minutes research is all you need to come-up with a shed-load of pre-war Welsh fascists.  Real ones, not the pretend Welsh nationalist version that get Labour and it's drones all hot and bothered.

We learn that two blackshirts were killed in the Gresford disaster, one having gone back down the pit after his shift  to sell copies of the Action newspaper; that Barry Docks was a bit of a fascist hotbed and that even red Maerdy had a no-doubt shortlived BUF branch.   Prominent councillors like Mainwaring-Hughes in Swansea and W. O. Roberts in Caernarfonshire threw in their lot with Mosley and the World War One flying ace Rhys Soar was North Wales Organizer for OM's party.  Even Radnorshire was caught up in the excitement, with local farmers being invited to attend a BUF meeting in Knighton in June 1934.

Why entitle this piece the Harbinger?  Well in the 1940s - while Labour set out to build socialism, the Tories sought to hang on to Empire and nationalists dreamed of a Welsh state - Mosley's dream was of a united Europe.  Which of these was the most prescient?

Today we have local councillors under the thumb of their officials, companies run for the benefit of managers rather than shareholders, public money spent by unaccountable quangos and charities and powers transferred to a highly centralised, far from democratic Brussels.  It's a long way from Small is Beautiful or the Breakdown of Nations; infact the spirit of the age seems a lot closer to the elitist managerial corporatism envisaged by Mosley.

My Radnorshire Mama

According to Michael Foot's biography Nye Bevan had a Radnorshire mother.  In reality Phoebe Protheroe was born in Tredegar.  Her people were from Glasbury though, that part of the parish south of the Wye purloined by Brecknockshire in 1832.  Clearly Bevan's family can't have approved that act of theft.

George Lansbury actually made it to the leadership of the Labour Party and he certainly had a Radnorian mother, she was from Clyro.  Lansbury was proud of his Radnorshire roots, he was also the grandfather of actress Angela Lansbury and of Oliver Postgate - creator of the Clangers.

Perhaps our readers would like to guess at the identity of a third noted left-wing politician with local connections:

1.  Born in Merthyr in 1894, his mother, Emily Lewis, came from the Radnorshire village of Penybont.

2.  Imprisoned in 1917 for sedition.

3.  Came within 3000 votes of winning Rhondda East for the Communist Party.

4.  Took part in the 1916 Easter Rising.

5.  General Secretary of the NUM from 1946 to 1959.

You should have got it by now, otherwise click here for the answer.

Radnorshire Picts?

Take an interest in the historical uses of DNA and you soon learn not to get too excited about the latest headline.

Humans and Neanderthals never interbred says one piece of research, oh yes they did say subsequent articles; the Welsh and the English have quite different DNA says one, no they're remarkably similar says another.  Throw in the tendency of the media to sensationalize and the best thing to do is take things with a pinch of salt and await further developments.

A couple of months ago we were told that a Pictish marker had been isolated, see here for example.  All very interesting and who knows it might even turn-out to be true ...... possibly.  One of the flies in the ointment of this Pictish theory is a possible hotspot that shares the same marker, L1335+, which is said to be centred in Radnorshire.  It's even got a name "Wales II Cadwgon."

Why Cadwgon?  Well here it get's a bit daft.  The marker turned up in some fellow called Miles whose ancestor took part in Radnorshire's Quaker migration to Pennsylvania in the 17C.  With a complete misunderstanding of how Welsh surnames are formed, this Miles was then assumed to be linked to the Miles family of Kinnerton* - who by the way preserved the Book of Taliesin for posterity.  The Kinnerton Miles family traced it's ancestry to the 11C ruler of East Central Wales, Cadwgan ab Elystan Glodrydd, hence "Wales II Cadwgon."

Of course this may all be true.  We're talking about male-to-male Y-chromosones here, and although democrats like to think they're the direct descendant in the male-line from some hardy medieval peasant, chances are they're not.  Bottlenecks ensure you're far more likely to be a male-line descendant of a roguish prince or baron, someone like Cadwgan ab Elystan Glodrydd.

So let's accept for a moment that Pictish ancestry can indeed be identified and that the Radnorshire examples are also descendants of Picts.  Is there any historical evidence?  Now I've posted a theory that minor kingdoms like Gwerthrynion and Arwystli were formed to protect the headwaters of the Wye and the Severn from 5C Irish expansion - see here.  Who better to add a bit of backbone than to import a few warlike Pictish mercenaries to the area.  Of course that's just my outlandish theory, so here's something a bit more  substantial from the Jesus College MS 20 genealogies: 

Einyaw a Katwallawn llawhir Deu vroder oedynt. Ac eu dwy vam oedynt chwioryd merchet y didlet brenhin gwydyl fichti ym pywys.

The relevant bit translates as "Didlet king of the gwydyl fichti in Powys." The gwydyl fichti meaning either Irish Picts or wild Picts but definitely Picts.

Radnorshire Picts?  Perhaps our friends at Llwyth Elystan need to get tested, perhaps they already have?

* That's Kinnerton in Radnorshire not the one in Flintshire

Songs of the Defeated

Something new everyday and today I found out about Aikake.  Now Hawaii may have a whole lot more devolved powers than anything envisaged for Wales, but clearly too little and far too late.  When you've ended up as a less than 6% minority in your own country then living in a shack on a beach seems a pretty good option.

Of course we're all supposed to abhor such narrow nationalism and that beauty spot clearly needs a golf course ..... book 'em Danno!

UPDATE:  These people were evicted from the beach in 1996, no golf course yet though - or even a windfarm - probably due to the proximity of a US Army live-fire training area.

The talented Mr Henry

Richard Wyn Jones' new book (see previous post) provoked quite a reaction on twitter, well two tweets at least.  But then as Professor Jones pointed out there's a reluctance in Wales to get to grips with the real history of Welsh fascism rather than banging-on about Saunders Lewis.  Let's try and help fill in one or two blanks.

To students of British fascism Leigh Vaughan-Henry is one of the more obnoxious Jew haters of the 1930s.  A one time director of music for the British Union of Fascists, a "notorious pro-Nazi" according to the Home Office and someone suspected of having links with German intelligence.  Little wonder that he was picked-up in the summer of 1940 and sat out the rest of the war in various of His Majesty's establishments.

Dig a little deeper and you find that Leigh Henry - the Vaughan was a later addition - was born in Liverpool in 1889, the son of a man who features in the Dictionary of Welsh Biography, John Henry the Porthmadoc born composer of favourites such as Gwlad y Delyn.  Young Leigh was also a talented musician and joined Edward Gordon Craig as director of music at his experimental theatre institute in Florence. Leigh Henry was fortunate to avoid the bloodbath of the First World War as a civilian internee in the Ruhleben Camp; while, back home, his wife Nancy - they had married in 1911 - pursued a friendship with D H Lawrence.

It was in the 1920s, after the closure of his radical cultural journal Fanfare that Leigh Henry returned with a vengeance to his Welsh roots.  He joined the Gorsedd in 1923 and often figured in Eisteddfodic proceedings as a composer, conductor and lecturer.  His poetry and short-stories were published in magazines such as Welsh Outlook and he appeared regularly on the radio. In 1926 for example Henry hosted a St David's Day programme of Welsh folk music on 2LO.  A pleasant appointment at this time must have been as musical adviser to Clara Novello's Royal Welsh Ladies Choir on a tour of Australia and Noth America.

Divorced from his first wife, Leigh Henry was briefly married, it seems, to the vivacious American war correspondent Paula Lecler - forgotten now, but a woman whose globe trotting derring-do made Martha Gellhorn look like a stay-at-home.  Subsequently Henry married (bigamously it later transpired) a German woman, while always paying attention to wealthy ladies such as Winifred Coombe-Tennant and his fellow composer and musicologist Margaret Glyn.  The latter left him her fortune in 1945.  Shortly before she died Henry is said to have conducted the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in a symphony composed by Glyn at the 1945 National Eisteddfod.

A Radnorshire connection?  Well Henry wrote a biography and a rather badly received play about the composer John Bull (1563-1628), although he was unaware that Bull probably came from Old Radnor.

Leigh Henry died in 1958, having seemingly managed to keep his various identities quite separate - the progressive English musicologist and composer, the Welsh eisteddfodwr and the Union Jack waving anti-Semite.

The Big Lie

This thoroughly researched book, it's really an extended essay of 112 pages, exposes the big lie that Welsh nationalists can somehow be implicated  with pre-war fascism. The accusations just don't stand up to Professor Jones's scrutiny and are shown to be without foundation, unworthy of any decent person.

Such a serious book should receive wide attention so I'd like to restrict my comments to a couple of minor themes explored in the chapter entitled Diwylliant Gwleidyddol Cymru.

Firstly, while the lies about Welsh nationalism and fascism are recurring elements on the Welsh political scene, there has been virtually no effort to discuss the real Welsh fascists of the 1930s.  This is the solitary exception from the pen of an English academic.




I don't really agree with Professor Jones about the significance of the 30% polled by the Mosleyite candidate in Merthyr in 1931. It was a straight fight and in 1929 the Tories and Liberals had polled 40%. Certainly Mosley's long-time associate Jeffrey Hamm has been ignored in Wales, just as cosy myths about the Spanish Civil War are preferred to, say, examining the life of a revolutionary like Billy Griffiths.  Such people are confined to the footnotes.  I'd like to add a couple more forgotten names: the ex-Communist from Cardiff, Rupert Arthur Beavan, an influential BUF organiser in West Ham; and the Liverpool-Welsh journalist Norah Briscoe (nee Davies).  She wrote for the Daily Mirror, was jailed for wartime spying in an MI5 sting operation and later wrote a well-received prison novel No Complaints in Hell.  In contrast to exploring the lives of these real but forgotten fascists and others like them, we must endure the frequently regurgitated fantasies against Plaid Cymru.  Why?

Is it because socialists don't want to explore their own backyard?  After all Mosley was on the radical wing of the Labour Party, an ally of the likes of William Cove, Nye Bevan and A J Cook.  No Welsh parliamentarians followed Mosley into the fascist wilderness but plenty of other former Labour and ILP MPs and ex-candidates in England did, and not just those involved with the short-lived New Party.  Did these people suddenly stop being socialists or did they believe that the Fascist's policies of state worship, corporatism and collectivism were not a thousand miles from their previous standpoints?

Secondly Professor Davies makes a sad but surely correct observation when he suggests that the big lie has been around for so long and been revived so often that many Welsh nationalists have come to believe that it must be true.  Why is this?

Is it because Welsh activists are so involved with domestic matters that they have little time for the wider world?  You see this in the way the Welsh blogosphere has little of interest to say about foreign affairs.  Do Welsh nationalists nowadays see the wider world only through the prism of the BBC?  Does Plaid Cymru want to be loved by the British left - who they seem to view as moral arbiters qualified to pass judgement on Wales and her history?  My own view is that it's high-time that we engaged with the world and not just the  bien pensants.