How Fascist Were Plaid Cymru?
- Thread starter phildwyer
- Start date
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Steeplejack you aren't english are you? I thought you were Scottish?steeplejack said:
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
redsquirrel said:
Yup, you're right.
What my national origin has to do with this 'debate' is apparent only to 'phildwyer'.
Karac
Mae Hen Wlad Fy Mamau
Well said Phil!phildwyer said:
So the current state of the debate is a cut and paste from hansard from 3 years ago?
Interestingly enough that "debate" in Parliament quoted was supposed to be a discussion on racism in Wales -iirc -in relation to attacks on asylum seekers.
Instead some right-wing Welsh Labour MPs launched an attack on Plaid Cymru instead with the usual lies and rubbish being spouted.
Simon Thomas (PC) and Paul Flynn (left Labour) try to intervene but to no avail.
It tells you more about the politically bankrupt and desperate Welsh Labour Party than anything else.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Oh I know, just thought I was going a bit thick.steeplejack said:
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
phildwyer said:
How do you know I'm 'English' you stupid, stupid twat?
And isn;t this comment:
more redolent of a 'fascist nationalist' than anything else on this thread?
Hmmn...sniff sniff.....
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
phildwyer said:
Actually, numbnuts, I lived in Wales for a long time, and was a member of Plaid for most of it.
So other than Wayne david's disgusting and libellous remarks made behind the cowardly veil of parliamentary privelige, have you any evidence that Saunders lewis was a Hitler lover?
What's your own political background- BNP, or Old Labour, or both?
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
phildwyer said:
Because....
...oh don't bother. Clearly having lived there for seven years and read most of the academic literature on the subject, as well as having met/debated with many politicans on both sides of the divide, I know fuck all about it.
A loudmouth 'exiled' gobshite like you, on the other hand.....
steeplejack said:
Yes. He refused to fight in the seconf zorld zqr becquse he sy,pqthised zith Gernqny. In fqct, <hitler tried to set up q fifth colu,n of Zelsh Nationqlists. Look these reqlly qren^t very controversiql points, go qnd reqd Lewis:s qriting if you don^t believe ne, I^d post up so,e quotes ,yself but qs you cqn see Iùn in bloody Frqnce qnd qaqy fro, ,y books.
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
phildwyer said:
1. That's a lie, pure and simple. he- and the vast majority of the then tiny ranks of Plaid- refused to fight on pacifist grounds. Gwynfor Evans (another well knwon, er, fascist, of course) based his political strategy on that of Ghandi.
2. Hitler also thought that the abdicated King Edward VIII would be a suitable prime minister post-occupation and wanted to turn Iceland into a racial breeding stud for the 'master race'. Are you fond of quoting Hitler as vindication for your nonsensical bilge?
3. I have looked through Lewis' writings thank you very much- and you're lying/trolling/both.
steeplejack said:
Nore LIES fron our Scottish Welsh Nqtionqlist clown. 1. Lewis pretended to be q pqcifist becquse it zqsn^t too populqr to be q fqscist synpqthiser by 1939. 2. Hitler didn:t think Edward VIII would be q suitqble Prine Ninister, he thought he zould be qsuitqble King. Nor did he zqnt to use Icelqnd for the purpise you propose. 3. And if you sqy you:ve reqd Lezis^s writing, prqy tell us zhich ones. Of course, we presune you reqd fluent Welsh, right...
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
phildwyer said:
1. Bullshit. I suppose Mosley and the BUFs 'mind britian's business' anti-war campaign, run from Munich onwards, had no resonance anywhere at all?
2. King, Pm...whatever...
3. Egwyddorion Genlaetholdeb (Caernarfon, 1925)
Tynged i'r Iaith (BBC, 1962 and reprinted umpteen times)
Selected poems (English translation, UWP, Cardiff, 2000)
Letters to margaret Gilcrist, (UWP, Cardiff)
Blodeuwedd, 1948 edition
A chi, 'phildwyer'? beth orffenais chi'n llyfrau Lewis? Dim o gwbl, dw i'n meddwl.
steeplejack said:
Dydw i'n ddim yn siarad Gymraeg, sorry. And why should I? Anyway, having calmed down qfter q hqlf-bottle of Nerlot, I7ll say that linguistic chquvinisw is the single worst problen fqcing Welsh nqtionqlisn todqy. If you:ll reqd bqck in this threqd you:ll see thqt I:m quite synpqthetic to the cquse, but not to the rqcist qnd, yes, linguistic bogtos who currently infest it.
Incidentqlly, ny (Welsh speaking) grandfqther was friends with Gwynfor Evans in Camarthqn, and thought very highly of hi, (though he always voted Labour). And Saunders Lewis used to live around the corner from me, and a right grumpy old bugger he was. I was poll_watching for the Labour Party once, qnd when he came in to vote I asked him for his number and he told me to fuck off (I assume, he spoke Welsh of course but the ,eaning was cleqr enough.) The tw_t wasn^t even Welsh, he was a Scouser.
More broqdly, qll nqtionqlist pqrties run the risk of fqscism, qnd eqrly Plqid Cynru were not qlone in succombing to it. As I^ve sqid before, a genuinely sociqlist nationqlist pqrty which accepted the multi_lingual nature of modern Wales would receive my full support, which would actuqlly be worth quite a lot to them, did they but know it.
I know nothing about the subject, but I bet 10 pounds on Phil being right about Saunders Lewis admiring Mussolini. It would hardly be surprising of a nationalist in the twenties to do that would it? But your airbrushed romantic view of nationalism no doubt prevents you from seeing it.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Yeah but there's a difference between pointing out that one person was a fascist and the party being fascist or racist, particuarly now 50 years on.
Karac
Mae Hen Wlad Fy Mamau
Firstly no evidence has been provided that Saunders Lewis was an admirer of Mussolini.888 said:
Secondly what about Oswald Mosely?He was a prominent Labour MP before he became a genuine,bona-fide Fascist Leader!
Yet i doubt if anyone would seriously start a thread like "How Fascist were the Labour Party"
lewislewis
Lumumba Cymru
phildwyer said:
You've got a fucking nerve, not one person has come on this thread and supported your 'argument'. What the hell is this thread? Its an absolute joke. Your argument is riddled with lies, myths and is factually incorrect. You have produced no valid evidence to support your claim !
I have never met a Plaid Cymru member who is racist towards 'the English' or whoever (not even in north Wales), i have met some nationalists who express racist sentiments, but they have never been in Plaid Cymru (and these people are a tiny minority). If Plaid were fascist what would be the point in opposing the BNP? The only fascism i've seen in Wales has come originally from England. Plaid has more Muslim councillors than the other parties in Wales put together. Plaid has never been remotely right-wing, it has always has a social democratic core and a socialist current.
Saunders Lewis isn't the single biggest influence on Plaid, that's complete bullshit. Gwynfor Evans was.
Everything everyone else on this thread has said (apart from Majorleague) has been spot on.
And the answer to the question in this thread title is 'not at all'. Loser.
Hating the English doesn't make anyone fascist for fuck's sake. I can't stand what townies who want a 2nd home are doing to the price of houses back in Somerset. It prices out the locals. Resentment is totally understandable.
Judging by the evidence so far, 'not much' would seem to be the answer to the original question.
Judging by the evidence so far, 'not much' would seem to be the answer to the original question.
lewislewis said:
I already said that present day Plaid Cymru is not remotely fascist, you smearer!
In similar fashion to you in your putting Forward Wales as your second choice, my second choice is actually Plaid C. (voted for them in the past etc.) I don't think that they are remotely "fascist" or even racist. Whether they are reactionary and frustrated at making headway into the scialist heartlands are different questions, and the ones which more interest me.
The Plaid of the early 20th C. held openly quite conservative elemnts, Saunders Lewis and Ambrose Bebb amongst them. Whether they were fascist or not is debatable, but I suspect that they were more inclined to say "my enemy's enemy is my friend" at a time when fascism was dynamic politica force across Europe!
That don't make them fascist today, despite their attempts to channel socialist energies into nation-building distractions.
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
majorleague said:
So when you claimed above that Ambrose Bebb was an 'open fascist supporter' you were 1. lying or 2. pissed?
steeplejack said:
I think I got this from a Professor at the University of Glamorgan. If you want I can give you his email address and you can ask him. One of Wales' top historians.
I don't drink alcohol, unlike you wandering Scots!
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
Dai Smith, Stefan Berger or Chris Williams?
Not much of a surprise of it was one of those three Glamorganites.
there is no link between Ambrose Bebb and British/Euro-fascism whatever.
Not much of a surprise of it was one of those three Glamorganites.
there is no link between Ambrose Bebb and British/Euro-fascism whatever.
steeplejack said:
Yes, it was one of them! Haha! You certainly got to know your way around during your seven years in Wales, I'll give yu that! (Though one off that list is actually at Swansea, but let's forget that...)
OK, let's take your greater knowledge as given and say that Plaid and the above prominent activists were NOT remotely fascist. The simple fact is that this idea has seeped into the culture as a kind of folk-myth and possibly merely a tactic against plaid in the Labour voting heartlands. (As seen in both my own prejudice on the matter, that of PhilDwyer, the top Proffessors named above, and the likes of Wayne David MP and a whole host of others.)
It would help to get hold of some of the primary sources for the anti-Bebbe/Saunders Lewis arguments in all this, so I'll look into it!
But what interests me is that, if this is one of the popular prejudices against Plaid in Labour areas, will this not prevent the ageing nationalist party/movement from making headway into, say, the Valleys or Newport/Cardiff/Swansea etc.
Plaid is not making pro-fascist remarks today, but the popular perception that it once DID SO is unimistakably there.
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
I must admit I never came across one voter at election time during telephone canvassing and door knocking who took me to task over this alleged 'fascist' current in Plaid.
The closest you can say is that elements in Plaid were close to the radical right tradition in France- Charles Maurras and Action Francaise. Some have attempted to show that Lewis' notion of perchentyaeth (self sufficiency) was a kind of idealised agricultural autarky a la Mussolini. These are parallels rather than direct links. Lewis did have some mad ideas- one of them being to raze all valleys industry to the ground and re-introduce agriculture in its stead, but that was never a Plaid policy- more of a personal prejudice on Lewis' part- a prejudice shared by many at the grime, ugliness and squalor of some industrial areas at that time.
The Bebb quote, often taken out of context (particualrly amongst historians with a naked Unionist new Labour agenda, including some of those mentioned above), was made in 1923 when he said that 'it's a Mussolini that Wales needs!'. this ata atime when fascism was a very new concept and the papers were writing it up in terms of 'strong man re-invigorates weak country ravaged by war'. Hence, superficially, at the very outset a figurehead like Mussolini may have had some appeal to folk trying to feel their way towards some kind of 'nationalist' polity. Incidentally this comment was made three years before the formation of Plaid Cymru- the party can hardly be blamed for that remark.
So you can see how such smears emerge- but they are easily refuted. That they are still repeated by neanderthal Kairdiff Labour typs like phildwyer reveals more about how little New labour in Wales have to say about policy or taking Wales forward these days.
incidentally, it was a Labour Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster who left that party to start the british fascist movement in late 1931, along with several colleagues both from labour and the ILP.
D'you think I should start a thread saying 'how fascist were Labour?'
The closest you can say is that elements in Plaid were close to the radical right tradition in France- Charles Maurras and Action Francaise. Some have attempted to show that Lewis' notion of perchentyaeth (self sufficiency) was a kind of idealised agricultural autarky a la Mussolini. These are parallels rather than direct links. Lewis did have some mad ideas- one of them being to raze all valleys industry to the ground and re-introduce agriculture in its stead, but that was never a Plaid policy- more of a personal prejudice on Lewis' part- a prejudice shared by many at the grime, ugliness and squalor of some industrial areas at that time.
The Bebb quote, often taken out of context (particualrly amongst historians with a naked Unionist new Labour agenda, including some of those mentioned above), was made in 1923 when he said that 'it's a Mussolini that Wales needs!'. this ata atime when fascism was a very new concept and the papers were writing it up in terms of 'strong man re-invigorates weak country ravaged by war'. Hence, superficially, at the very outset a figurehead like Mussolini may have had some appeal to folk trying to feel their way towards some kind of 'nationalist' polity. Incidentally this comment was made three years before the formation of Plaid Cymru- the party can hardly be blamed for that remark.
So you can see how such smears emerge- but they are easily refuted. That they are still repeated by neanderthal Kairdiff Labour typs like phildwyer reveals more about how little New labour in Wales have to say about policy or taking Wales forward these days.
incidentally, it was a Labour Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster who left that party to start the british fascist movement in late 1931, along with several colleagues both from labour and the ILP.
D'you think I should start a thread saying 'how fascist were Labour?'
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
Has CW moved to swansea recently then? the one I'm thinking of is very much still at Glamorgan.
steeplejack said:
That depends on where you were canvassing, though. I suspect not in the Valleys! (Can I ask where precisely??)
I hear the poplar views about Plaid's fascism from all manner of people, not at all politically minded. It IS a popular perception amongst people whether or not you felt you took that it on the doorstep, or over the phone from Plaid Cymru central office.
steeplejack said:
I had no idea PhilDwyer was so unspohisticated or downright New Labour. Then again, I don't know the guy.
steeplejack said:D'you think I should start a thread saying 'how fascist were Labour?'
It would make for an interesting thread and might lend some good weight to your arguments here, but the poplar myth that Plaid was sympathetic toward French/Spanish/Italian fascism remains.
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