Institute of Welsh Affairs

Plaid's Destiny to Influence Labour

The Psychology of Distance: Wales One Nation
Professor Phil Williams
August 2003, £7.99
ISBN 1 86057 066 6
Published in association with the Welsh Academic Press.

Embargo: 1.00am Thursday 2 October

Rather than replace Labour as the mainstream, dominant party of Wales, the destiny of Plaid Cymru is to continue to influence it to deliver greater autonomy for the country. This is the view of the late Phil Williams, a leading figure in Plaid Cymru for more than 30 years, in The Psychology of Distance: Wales One Nation, published by the Institute of Welsh Affairs today. Professor Williams, a world-renowned space physicist and AM for South East Wales in the National Assembly before his sudden death in Cardiff in June, analyses forces that unite and divide contemporary Wales. Assessing the relationship between the parties he asks: “Is it possible for a single-minded, uncompromising Plaid Cymru to create the conditions whereby other parties deliver self-government, albeit step-by-step and with some reluctance?” He says that the evidence from the past forty years, and especially the establishment of the National Assembly, suggest that this is the way forward.

He observes that Labour is not the only party being driven along this agenda, pointing to the Welsh Conservatives who are developing a stronger Welsh identity following devolution, and thereby transforming their role in Welsh politics. He adds that a little-noticed achievement of the Assembly, he says, is its promotion of an all-Wales civic society which has become a focus of a widening range of public and voluntary organisations. “This is creating natural networks that didn’t exist before, a process further encouraged by the need to form partnerships to access European Structural Funds.”

The Paper utilises the concept of ‘the psychology of distance’ to explore the cross currents of division that challenge policy makers in the Welsh Assembly Government. The most quoted divide in Wales is between north and south. Yet there are great similarities between these two halves of the country. The distance between them is largely psychological, simply because their peoples so seldom meet. In respect of other divides, for instance between the poorer communities of Wales and those that are more prosperous, the physical distance is often very small. As Professor Williams pointed out, Cyncoed in Cardiff, by a large measure the least deprived ward in Wales, is less than 20 miles from the Gurnos estate in Merthyr, which is one of the most deprived parts of the country. Yet, as Professor Williams observed, the “psychological barriers can be just as daunting as the barriers of distance.” For the long-term unemployed living in impoverished communities such as Gurnos the prosperous parts of Cardiff must seem a million miles away: “In these matters of relative separation the psychology of distance is truly at work.”

Phil Williams was Plaid Cymru’s AM for South Wales East during the first term of the National Assembly, between 1999-2003. He was also world renowned as a Professor at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, in 1992, specialising in Solar Terrestrial Physics.

The IWA’s next Gregynog Paper, due to be published in early 2004, will be The Future of Welsh Labour, by the party’s Bridgend AM Carwyn Jones, Minister for the Environment and Rural Affairs.

FURTHER INFORMATION
Contact: John Osmond, Director, IWA: 029 2057 3944 or johnosmond@iwa.org.uk