Welsh independence

Welsh independence is an ideal advocated by certain political movements within the Welsh electorate that would like Wales to secede from the United Kingdom and become a sovereign state, repealing the Acts of Union between England and Wales in 1536 and 1543.

History

Location of Wales in the United Kingdom.

Welsh nobleman Owain Glyndŵr led an unsuccessful revolt (Welsh Revolt/Glyndŵr Rising) against English rule in 1400. He was proclaimed Prince of Wales by his supporters (the last Welsh native to be given the title), but disappeared 1412. Revolts stopped when the Welsh-born, Henry VII became king. He was known in Wales as Y Mab Darogan (a Welsh messianic legend, who was destined to force the English out of Britain). The Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542 created a single state and legal jurisdiction known as England and Wales.

The Encyclopedia of Wales argues that the belief that Wales should form an independent nation state originated in the mid 19th century (the Welsh word for nationalism, cenedlaetholeb, dates from 1858). The Sunday Closing (Wales) Act 1881 was the first legislation to acknowledge that Wales had a separate politico-legal character from the rest of the English state and legal juridisdiction.

In 1886 Joseph Chamberlain proposed "Home Rule All Round" the United Kingdom, and in the same year the Cymru Fydd (Young Wales) movement was founded to further the cause. However, the goal they envisaged was a devolved assembly rather than a fully independent state, and the movement collapsed in 1896 amid personal rivalries and rifts between the north and south, east and west of Wales.

There was little mainstream political interest in Home Rule following the First World War, and the focus of Welsh nationalist politics moved to the newly-founded Plaid Cymru from 1925. Plaid made its first electoral breakthroughs in the later 1960s, after a period when the declaration of Cardiff as the capital of Wales in 1955, the creation of the Welsh Office in 1965, and the repeal of the Wales and Berwick Act 1746 two years later seemed to demonstrate a growing nationalist impetus. However, the heavy defeat for a proposed Welsh Assembly offered by Labour in the Welsh devolution referendum, 1979 "suggested that the vast majority of the inhabitants of Wales had no desire to see their country having a national future".

Advocates of devolution won a narrow majority in a subsequent referendum eighteen years later, but it was only after a long period of Conservative Government; political commentator Denis Balsom notes public sentiment that devolution may be "unnecessary" following the election of a 'progressive' Labour Government. Since the referendum, there is evidence of increased support for, and trust in, the Assembly and greater support for enhanced powers.

Support

This ideology is politically promoted in the main by the Welsh nationalist party, Plaid Cymru. Around 20% of the Welsh people expressed support for full independence in a 2007 survey.

See also

Welsh nationalism