THE birth of the “Celtic Alliance” of nations against Westminster rule presents a “golden opportunity” to force the UK Government to listen.
That’s according to Sioned Williams, Welsh Deputy First Minister.
Speaking to The National in the Welsh Government’s offices in Cardiff, the Plaid Cymru politician said Westminster would be forced to listen to “marginalised and ignored” voices calling for self-determination.
“I think there is a golden opportunity here,” she said of the novel situation which sees nationalist parties in power in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
“We can find a lot of common ground and the main thing I think for me is to be able to speak about fairness and being able to get the tools that we need to do the job for the people that we represent and that we have been given the honour to be able to govern.
“Speaking with one voice on some of those issues I think really presents a huge opportunity for a voice which has so often been marginalised and ignored by Westminster to be heard even more clearly.”
Less than a month into Plaid’s historic first term in office, after Welsh voters ousted Labour for the first time in the history of devolution, the party is ploughing on with its “first 100 days” plan to deliver the change it promised during the election campaign.
For Williams, that is central to Plaid’s guiding ambition for independence as the country’s “ultimate destination”.
“We saw that we had to retain, repay the trust that was shown to us in the election to make sure that the people of Wales can see what improvement a new government can make to their lives, a nationalist government can make to their lives,” the Deputy First Minister said.
“But we’re very clear that, of course, that it is the ultimate destination, independence is a core, central tenet of my party. But we know that in this first term we’re not ready to take that step yet, there’s so much work that we have to do now and we’ve been very clear and very open about that.”
Plaid leader Rhun ap Iorwerth, the First Minister, has ruled out holding a referendum in the first term in government and support for Welsh independence is limited, though growing. A YouGov poll in January found that 26% of Welsh voters would back independence, the highest figure the company had recorded to date.
Plaid can take heart however for the fact that that figure is a touch higher than the 24% recorded for Scottish independence was when the SNP first came to power in 2007.
The SNP’s guiding principle at that point was to govern well and so grow support for the cause in the long term. It is a strategy Plaid seek to replicate in Wales.
“The SNP have charted a course through government in Scotland since that first government that we can certainly look to and learn lessons from,” said Williams.
“They have demonstrated and writ large really how a nationalist government and a government that stands up for Scotland, in their case – which we hope to do here in Wales as well – can really engender that trust, show the improvement that we can make and also then take those steps to make sure that we are reminding the UK Government of our existence and also what needs to be reformed in order to deliver fairness for our people.”
And the fact that support for independence appears to be growing shows that it is “sticky” and can be built upon, Williams added.
“We know that there’s been an increase in support for independence,” she said.
“When I was younger it was seen as something that was extremely niche and distant and unrealistic.
“What we’ve seen time and again now – not only from the work that’s been done by the Scottish Government around making the case and showing what benefits that could bring but we’ve also seen that people have come on a journey – that proportion of the Welsh population who are in favour or indy-curious as we call them has increased and has remained quite sticky. But there is a long way to go.”
For the immediate future, Plaid hope to secure more funding for Wales and the greater devolution of power to the Senedd.
Williams said: “Wales is currently not given the tools it needs to be able to fix the problems that we need to fix on behalf of the Welsh people. So we are trying to do things with one hand, very often, tied behind our back.”
On some issues, there is cross-party consensus in Cardiff for greater devolution such as giving powers over policing to the Welsh Parliament. That was something backed by the last Labour administration but rejected by their London bosses earlier this year.
Williams said: “We were extremely disappointed to see the response of the Home Secretary recently when they’re looking at this huge, generational reform of policing in the UK but we were given a straight ‘no’ as regards being able to have powers over that themselves, even though we’ve had independent commissions expertly chaired by the judiciary telling us how this would improve outcomes for people in Wales.
“There are those type of very day-to-day issues that would have a tremendous impact on what we’re able to achieve through the devolved responsibilities that we have such as health and housing and how those things interface.
“They are things that we can point to, that have been pointed to over many years, to say how these would absolutely impact and improve the lives of people here in Wales.”
Plaid’s election victory was undoubtedly seismic but, having come six seats short of a majority, they will need to rely on support from other parties to get their agenda through the Senedd.
But Williams was clear that Plaid will not get into bed with other parties.
“There will have to be, inevitably, cooperation and we’re quite confident that we can find some areas of cooperation across the parties,” she said.
Asked if this could result in more concrete arrangements, Williams said: “No, we’re not looking to have any kind of formal agreement.”
While Williams believes Wales is not as far along its journey to self-determination as Scotland, the country has one stronger symbol of nationhood: its language.
Some 18% of the country’s population can speak Welsh compared with the 2.5% of Scots who can speak Gaelic.
Promoting the language is something that Scotland could learn from Wales, Williams said.
Williams said: “When I was growing up in the south-east valleys of Wales, to be able to get a Welsh medium education was a real battle. Since devolution, the politics has been taken out of the language.”
Previously, speaking Welsh was “always referred to as a political act”, said Williams. She added: “Because we promote a civic nationalism, anyone can learn a language and it can be an extremely wonderful and rich part of your identity, but that is open to all, it doesn’t mean that you have to born to a Welsh-speaking family or come from an area of Wales where a lot of people do speak Welsh.
“I think that my advice would be to the Scottish Government is to embrace that as a further part of the richness of Scottish identity but also to ensure that it’s never a barrier, that it’s inclusive and to be able to promote and give people opportunity to become part of that Gaelic-speaking community, as they are able to in Wales.”
Plaid strode to victory on a tide of disillusionment with Labour and an anti-Reform vote, according to Williams, who said it was “encouraging” to see that Nigel Farage’s “politics of division were rejected”. But she said there was something more at play.
“There was definitely a vote for hope,” said Williams. “It was definitely a vote for aspiration and ambition and I think there’s an increasing confidence as well and we’re seeing this especially with younger people who, the data tells us, were more supportive of Plaid Cymru as a party but also of our vision for a more confident, more ambitious nation, more comfortable in our identity.”
