Angela GrahamIn the context of this week’s deadline for submissions to the Legacy Consultation, Angela Graham considers the Welsh contribution to The Troubles and their aftermath.
Even before I reached my teens in 1970 I was doubting whether The Troubles ‘began’ in 1968, but the media love an anniversary, so on 1 October the BBC in Wales marked 50 years on from that significant autumn with an hour-long documentary in Welsh: Helyntion Y Cymry (The Troubles of the Welsh) by independent producer, Llyr Huws.
BBC Radio Cymru bills the programme as addressing “the role of the Welsh in Northern Ireland’s Troubles,” but its focus is narrower than that. The experiences it offers are all from former soldiers. There is no mention of Welsh politicians, or civilians with experience of Northern Irish politics, nor of any other form of engagement on the part of the Welsh. We must wait for the broader analysis of the impact that the Troubles has had in Wales.
The programme handles its chosen group well. The former soldiers, from several regiments, speak frankly. Interviewer, Dilwyn Sanderson Jones, is well known to audiences of the Welsh-language channel, S4C as the presenter of outdoor pursuits series, Ar Y Dibyn. He spent 24 years in the Royal Airforce though never serving in Northern Ireland. As well as eliciting fascinating accounts of frontline and covert operations he pursues the particularity of being a soldier from Wales in Ireland, a Celt in the British army, and whether that gave rise to a rhwyg emosiynol, a split in the feelings and attitudes.
For these Welsh soldiers there was – potentially, not inevitably – an insight into what might motivate insurgency against the British state. Being Welsh marks these interviewees. Although, on the whole, they rebuff any simplistic all-Celts-together analysis of their responses towards the Nationalists of Northern Ireland, their innate understanding of imbalance of power is clear. One soldier wonders whether if the Welsh had been treated as badly by the English he would have taken up a rifle am yr achos ni fel Cymry (for our cause as Welsh people).
However, these are career soldiers who tried to do the job they’d been given even when their accents led to challenges such as one met in the Bogside, “You’re Welsh, aren’t you? What the hell are you doing in that uniform?”
We glimpse the complexity of being a Welsh soldier in a British army in an account of refusal to stand in the sergeant’s mess for God Save The Queen but getting up for Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, the Welsh-language national anthem.
Northern Ireland’s situation posed a key challenge for some Welsh soldiers: whereas they had found it possible to feel proudly Welsh and British, they were encountering nationalists for whom a claim to Britishness was a betrayal.
These Welsh soldiers encountered expectations among some nationalists in Northern Ireland that they ought to give weight to their supposed Celtic-ness; that they were not in the right place − or uniform; that there was an implicit possibility of choosing otherwise. But the soldiers witness, at the same time, to feeling appalled by how ‘the Irish’ could treat each other.
Alongside this is a telling account of the insider-outsider perspective of the serving Welsh. One soldier was shocked at the vicious attitude shown by the Royal Irish Regiment towards some young children who were taunting them. However, he reflected that the Royal Irish was partly made up of members of the Ulster Defence Regiment, local people with families living locally, vulnerable and with much to lose.
The programme airs with a specific link to the events of October 1968, half a century ago, but in the minds of some people, traumatic events are still playing out. An interviewee describes waking from a dream of Northern Ireland to find himself strangling his wife. He has a recurring nightmare of being chased through the back streets of Derry by “black men” who drive him to his knees to shoot him in the head. At first puzzled by that detail, he has realised that they are the balaclava-wearing terrorists of erstwhile reality.
Milwr Bychan (Boy Soldier)
The Troubles has left a legacy not only in Northern Ireland but in the minds of those affected by the conflict. That is a territory that goes well beyond a geographical border. The Northern Ireland Office is conducting a consultation on proposed legacy institutions. This will end on 5 October. They have held no outreach events in Wales. This is partly because the methodology of finding potential contributors relies on information about users of services for victims and survivors. Since many people don’t identify as either, despite being affected, it means that other ways have to be found to encourage people to participate in designing ways to deal with the legacy of the Troubles.
An important aspect of this work is the gathering of perspectives and experiences. The Welsh angle must not be left out. The Troubles exerted a powerful influence on the Welsh imagination, particularly during the long road to a Welsh Assembly.
During the 70s, Wales was struggling between an impetus towards autonomy and a reluctance to break long-established bonds with the British state. This led to phenomena at both ends of a political spectrum. On one hand, there was great concern about the effect on indigenous culture of large numbers of non-Welsh-speakers moving into Welsh-speaking areas. In December 1979 a 12-year campaign of arson attacks on second homes began. Yet that same year, 1 March had seen the population vote four to one against establishing a Welsh Assembly.
Attitudes had changed enough by the second referendum on Devolution of May 1997 to deliver the slimmest of margins in favour: 50.3%. Upheavals such as the Miners’ Strike of 1984 and a loss of Conservative party influence played a major role in this shift. The Assembly by now feels like a Welsh institution.
The people of Wales achieved a measure of self-government by, largely, democratic means but the example of Northern Ireland was very influential in its demonstration of the apparent success of violence as a tool to create political leverage. The Welsh had to choose whether to emulate that or reject it.
In Wales, literature, film, stage and television bear witness to a working-out of the conflict between the impact of physical force politics and the price it exacts. Examples from cinema include Milwr Bychan /Boy Soldier,1986 which plays out some of the dilemmas explored in Helyntion Y Cymry, while Branwen, 1994 (which I produced and co-wrote) explores the pitfalls for any Welsh people who too easily equate their political struggle with that of Northern Ireland. The link between political leverage and terrorism is constantly before us today, as is the frustration experienced by citizens and politicians who feel hampered as minorities within larger states.
Bilingual logo of the Welsh Government
The positive Welsh experience of bilingualism was drawn on earlier this year when, in light of the dispute over an Irish Language Act, the Northern Ireland Committee at Westminster consulted Paul Murphy, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, 2002 – 05.
Anything that corrals the Troubles within the borders of Northern Ireland is working against sanity and history. The conflict arose within the political system of the United Kingdom and cannot be resolved by treating Northern Ireland as a place apart. The Commission wants to hear – both before and after the Consultation deadline − from people affected by the Troubles, particularly from individuals who are not members of interest groups. It also wants to reach the Northern Ireland diaspora in Wales.
The Welsh had a role in the Troubles and were influenced by them. They have a role in the aftermath and in the future of Northern Ireland.