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Writers as good as their word on Welsh autonomy

Tony Heath
Friday 25 July 1997 23:02 BST
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The campaign to secure an elected assembly for Wales took on a cultural edge yesterday with the launch of "Writers Say Yes For Wales". About a dozen of the principality's leading wordsmiths - film and television writers as well as poets and novelists - gathered at the headquarters of St Peter's Rugby Club in Cardiff to pledge their backing in the referendum due on 18 September.

Lining up beneath a banner bearing the legend "Say Yes For Wales - Dwedwch le Dros Gymru" - Jan Morris spoke for them: "This is our last chance. If the majority of the Welsh people don't vote 'yes' in the referendum no one alive is ever going to see true nationhood in Wales".

Ms Morris, who reported the conquest of Everest on 29 May 1953 and travels the world from her home at Llanystumdwy in North Wales, described herself as a romantic nutter who dreamed of an independent Wales. "What we are going to vote about is more a matter of the heart than the brain," she said.

It is more than 40 years since Elaine Morgan, who won recognition for her television epic of Lloyd George's life for the BBC, first put pen to paper. Her controversial book The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis is causing head-scratching among naked ape buffs. She was as forthright on devolution as she is on evolution: "Those opposed to devolution suffer from a terminal lack of self-esteem and self-confidence."

Supporters of the status quo received a broadside from playwright Ed Thomas whose Song For A Forgotten City won acclaim when it was performed at London's Royal Court Theatre two years ago. House of America, a drama about open-cast coal-mining, may be headed in the same direction. He lambasted what he described as "the miserablist tendency".

With less than two months to go before the referendum, "yes" campaigners are spreading their net wide. "Pensioners Say Yes" is the brainchild of Benjamin Howells, a 67-year-old retired psychiatric nurse of Church Village, near Pontypridd.

The "Teachers Say Yes For Wales" organisers have enlisted the support of Roy James, one of the most respected educationists in Wales. This year he retired as Wales's chief inspector of schools. He said: "It is a sign of a mature democracy that decisions are taken by those most affected by those decisions."

There is something of the referee in Mr James. And as Jan Morris led the writers away from their conclave, a rugby club seemed an appropriate venue for the whistle to be blown on a game seen to be played wholly according to London rules.

Trevor Philips, page 17

Those in favour ...

Saying 'Yes' for Wales:

Interest groups already set up - writers, farmers, pensioners, teachers.

Interest groups being set up - health workers (doctors, nurses and ancillary staff), quango staff, environmentalists.

Groups set up in more than half Wales's 40 parliamentary constituencies, including Pontypridd, Brecon and Radnor, Flint, Merthyr, Pembroke, Llanelli, Cynon Valley, Vale of Glamorgan, Conwy, Denbighshire, Wrexham, Montgomeryshire, Caerphilly.

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