Brittle with Relics: A History of Wales, 1962–97 ('Oral history at its revelatory best' DAVID KYNASTON)

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This is exactly what it’s like to read Richard King’s fascinating, deeply important, episodic and discursive oral history of Wales from 1962-97, called, after R.S. Thomas’ poetic jab at his country’s seeming inertia, Brittle With Relics.A curious title, I have to say, as the last thing I felt reading this book was stasis. If nothing else these voices prove that Wales has been in nothing but flux this past half century or so. A testament to the brutal circumstances that bonded the communities of Wales into a new polity for the 21st century.’ On the surface, Richard King has pulled off the task with Brittle with Relics. Subtitled A History of Wales 1962–1997, it comprises sixteen topical chapters (The Welsh Language, Incomers, Cardiff Bay) built mainly from direct quotation, as well as a short introduction and epilogue. The easy way to test the effectiveness of his approach is to open the book at random and see what’s there. I did it five times. I landed on pithy insights from former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams on secularisation, poet and former activist Dewi Prysor on protest group the Meibion Glyndŵr Colour Party, former Secretary of State for Wales Peter Hain on the Valleys after the miner’s strike, Super Furry Animals singer-songwriter Gruff Rhys on Richey Manic and SFA bassist Guto Pryce on the 1997 devolution referendum – which marks the book’s cut-off, which is a little frustrating, twenty-four years on. Interviewing people is not as easy as good writers make it appear. You have to ask the right people the right questions. You have to corral and connive to tease out sentences worthy of a reader, of a quotation. You have to transcribe, trash, edit, collate and curate some kind of narrative from the Babel of um’s and ah’s, waffle and digression.

King has both chosen and marshalled his cast of voices very well, often meeting those at the very heart of events, fortuitously often folk with trenchant views to boot, from Greenham campaigner Ann Pettitt through former property consultant Bob Croydon to the late anti-apartheid campaigner Hanif Bhanjee. He arranges his material deftly, one historical witness statement often melding perfectly with the next. Richard King got to John Barnard Jenkins before his death in 2020. His politics are laid bare: “all actions are acceptable when performed in the national interest.” King captures the extraordinary quality of his quasi-Nietzschian language: “I was completely transformed, my blood was thrilled and singing, and I was possessed by a compelling ecstasy which was pure love for my country and people.” The heavy industries of steel, oil and mining were all significant employers in the region; the centre of the last of these was the South Wales Coalfield, home to the historic communitarian radicalism fathered by the Miners’ Federation and its welfare institutes and libraries.

King’s account of Wales is not comprehensive, beginning in 1962 and ending in 1997. From the introduction the work on display here is magnificent. King details the history of the Welsh language and explains his reasons for presenting the history in English. It is an act of faith, between him and the reader, that they will understand this is not a choice he took lightly. King is generally a culture historian, with a focus on music, and this plays a large part in the oral history with singers from Super Furry Animals helping to illustrate the changes that happened in Wales during this period. It cannot be emphasised enough how effective King’s oral history is. A] compelling, energetic and revealing book… King has both chosen and marshalled his cast of voices very well, often meeting those at the very heart of events… unofficial, lively, animated, opinion-charged stuff… These are the times through which many of us have lived brought to pulsing life so that we can better understand our own. It’s like eavesdropping on the past.’ ― The National The race that was hated was the English. Apart from the construction of reservoirs to boost the water supply of Liverpool, it’s nevertheless hard to find much evidence of “a blatant colonialist action”, and the way some characters in the 20th-century affected to cry their eyes out over the fates of Caradoc, Arthur, Llywelyn and Owen Glendower (“No Owain Glyndwr crap thank you very much,” as Kingsley Amis said in The Old Devils) is surely very silly. How can you still bear a grudge from Medieval days? An oral history works best when the people interviewed are those most closely involved in the events described. However, by concentrating on those most closely involved in events the story of the majority is rather overlooked. This doesn't lessen the impact of the events being described, but it does skew the perspective of the relative importance of some of those events and movements. Introducing the collection of voices, Richard King reflects on his own place in the social, temporal, and physical landscape, and examines the tensions and arguments within Wales over what constitutes Welsh identity.

The book is a landmark history of the people of Wales during a period of great national change, collecting the oral histories of Cymru and Cymraeg, of the people, place, and of ‘seismic events’ which have shaped Wales through recent history.The hall was opened in 1927, the year following the General Strike, at a ceremony held on 19 February. My grandfather, himself a miner, was among the audience. Until its closure almost fifty years later in 1972 the hall staged operas, operettas and musicals and hosted meetings of societies and organisations including the Young Farmers’ Club, the Urdd, the Cwmamman Silver Band, the local branch of the Red Cross Society, the Association for the Blind, the Old Age Pensioners’ Society, Amman United Football Club, the Carnival Committee, the Cwmamman Peace Committee, numerous political parties, trade unions and various Chapel denominations. In 1960 my parents spent a terrified hour and a half there watching the newly released Psycho. Thomas’s greatest gift to Wales was this flint-eyed rejection of the self-deprecation with which the Welsh are still caricatured, in favour of an austere stoicism. As he writes in Welsh History: Much is known of the enmity between Wales and England, between North and South Wales and between Swansea and Cardiff but who knew about the conflicts within the Welsh speaking communities where the native-born speakers sneered at both those who spoke fluently but weren’t native, whilst those who were learning were perceived as bottom of the pile. Alastair Laurence, who is curating this series, is a freelance documentary film maker who lives near Abergavenny. In recent years Alastair has made films about The Battle of the Somme, a history of British Photography and the poets John Betjeman, Philip Larkin and TS Eliot. In this situation Welsh Labour had a very good chance to become the Agent of Progress by visibly separating itself from both Westminster rulers and local traditionalists. They took this chance in 1960s, but almost lost in in 1970s. Dissatisfaction with Labour was common around Britain, and the reasons were mostly the same with some local dashes everywhere. Here is how it was happening in Wales: according to Andrew Davies, ‘the 1974–79 Labour government, which was headed by Wilson and then by Callaghan, was uninspiring, and obviously they were dealing with huge challenges, such as the aftermath of the 1973 OPEC-induced global inflationary crisis; there was a huge amount of turmoil—industrial, economic and social. For a lot of young people on the left the Labour government was a deeply unattractive proposition. More locally in Swansea, which is where I was living, as elsewhere in the UK, such as Newcastle with the T. Dan Smith and John Poulson scandal, local government corruption was quite endemic. Swansea was archetypal, in that the Labour leader, Gerald Murphy, was sent down for corruption and then Labour lost control of the council to the Independent Rate-Payers Party, and then not long afterwards, the leader of the Rate-Payers Party was sent down for corruption as well.’

Brittle With Relics is the very antithesis of boring history. It’s unofficial, lively, animated, opinion-charged stuff. There’s the crushing view, for instance of town planner Adrian Jones that all the ‘money spent on Cardiff Bay resulted in an inferior version of Mumbles.’ In 1960 a new historical journal was launched, The Welsh History Review. The editorial introduction for the first issue explained that regardless of the fact there were already several various publications devoted to Welsh history, the new journal was necessary. Its area of academic interest was supposed to be Wales as a whole, historically and geographically, while the publications which already existed at that time were either local or focused more on the ancient and medieval period. In other words, the foundation of The Welsh History Review intended to mark a key point in academic reflection of the history of this region as a history of a modern, not bygone country. This is a wonderful book built on the oral history of the Welsh from the 1960s to the formation of the Welsh referendum which brought them an elected Assembly and a semblance of some freedom for London. This book really is about the history of the people of Wales and how they have had to overcome some brutal circumstances which bonded the many communities of the Principality.

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The book has a surface vivacity but a teleological momentum runs beneath. Early on Carl Iwan Clowes cites “cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb galon”, translated as “a nation without a language is a nation without a heart.” Ffred Ffransis recalls the Brewer Spinks episode where an investor banned the speaking of Welsh inside his Blaenau Ffestiniog factory. The arc of language activism begins with Saunders Lewis and reaches a part-fruition in the Welsh Language Act of 1993. In 2022, the two languages flow freely across the floor of the Siambr. Fascinating… for a modern social history of a nation beset by cultural fissures Brittle With Relics covers impressive ground.’ ― Buzz Mag Things have moved on in the language debate in Wales and hopefully they will move on in Scotland too, enabling us to escape what is essentially a 1970s debate and embrace a diverse and pluralistic national language community based on the society of 2023 which recognises that Gaelic development isn’t a zero sum game – and also takes Gaelic development in the traditional communities way more seriously. Brittle With Relics is nuanced, passionate and reflective, conveying a very Welsh blend of fatalism and hope.’ Rhian E. Jones, History Today A great number of these voices will be familiar to the reader; others may not be. Many of those present are speaking in their second language. And there are voices missing from this history that belong to people now departed, or to people who, despite their willingness to share them, no longer trust in the accuracy or function of their memories.