‘The Fair Claims of Wales’

Abstract

Nationalist unionism was not confined to Scotland. This chapter extends the book’s analysis to Wales, where the three unionist parties – Liberal, Labour and Conservative – had also deployed nationalist arguments and language in order to maintain Wales as part of the United Kingdom. As in Scotland, the originators of this approach were the Liberals, although one wing of the Labour Party in Wales was also nationalist in mindset as was, to a more modest degree, the Conservative Party, particularly in the 1950s and 2010s, when calculated appeals were made to Welsh traditions such as its distinct language. In contrast to Scotland after power was devolved in 1999, the Welsh Labour Party managed to maintain control of this ‘nationalist unionism’ while Plaid Cymru (which advocated greater autonomy) languished.