Continuing from Part 1, the following is a translation and adaptation of excerpts from Professor Richard Wyn Jones's Rhoi Cymru'n Gyntaf
In what way did Saunders Lewis insist on getting his own way? In one thing, he wanted to ensure that it was his own understanding of 'Imposing Welsh' which would be accepted by the Party, namely that every local authority would be forced to work through the medium of Welsh only, and that the Welsh language should be the medium of education in every school in Wales. On top of that, he wanted to ensure a commitment to boycott Westminster, acting only via local authorities. In all of this, he was advocating the ideas of the Mudiad Cymreig, as these were the elements central to the programme its members had agreed on. There's no evidence that H.R. Jones needed a lot of persuading to accept these ideas either. The commitment to boycott Westminster would hardly cause a 'Sinn Feinner' like H.R. Jones to frown too much, and it's possible that demanding a monoglot Welsh speaking Wales would have been to his taste.
If so, is it fair to personalize what happened by claiming that it was Saunders Lewis who hijacked the agenda? Would it not be more correct to say instead that it was the intellectuals of the Mudiad Cymreig who came to dominate the new National Party's policy agenda? There are at least two reasons for believing that the personalized version is the more correct. Firstly there is little doubt that Lewis was the Mudiad Cymreig's leader. Without a doubt -and placing Ben Bowen Thomas to one side as a kind of 'special case'- Saunders Lewis was the most 'political' of the Mudiad's members. Because of this, one can hardly be too mistaken in suggesting that Saunders Lewis had the greatest influence in drawing up the Mudiad Cymreig's programme.
But more importantly, it can be shown that Saunders Lewis's constitutional ideas were different to those, at least, held by other members of the Mudiad Cymreig, and definately contrary to those the founders of the National Party wished to set as the Party's goals. Despite this, Saunders Lewis's ideas became the Party's policy -and later, dogma. In the context of its constitutional policy we can measure the supremacy of Saunders Lewis over the new party in its early years -and afterwards as well.
Evan Alwyn Owen's intention in suggesting the creation of a National Party was to seek self-government, which would then later lead to 'Full Independence'. H.R. Jones was fully in agreement with this view. It also appears that at least one of the members of the Mudiad Cymreig valued greatly the idea of independence. In a note in his diary which recorded the Mudiad's first meeting in Penarth, Ambrose Bebb noted 'the beginning of a Welsh National Party and Welsh independence'. Six days later he wrote a letter to D.J. Williams inviting him to join the group, describing it as 'working for independence...by any means available.'
However, as one of his letters published in the Western Mail in August 1923 suggested, Saunders Lewis did not share the same view as Bebb, H.R. Jones and Evan Alwyn Owen:
Now, if these safeguards of civilisation be impossible without some form of self-government, we must have it, or we must try to win it. But whatever form will provide those safeguards satisfies me, even a 'glorified county council'. What is any government but a glorified county council? And I add that if these safeguards can be assured without any radical change in the relation of England and Wales, then I for my part will be content. I agree that we cannot go back to 1282. But we can in some matters go back to pre-Tudor conditions.
Saunder Lewis did not wish to see Wales as an independent nation, because he saw no value in independence as a constitutional condition in its own right. In 1923 these remarks were but the expressed opinion of one man. But in 1925 this opinion became the position of a political party. The list of the Party's aims published after the meeting in Pwllheli are a testament to Lewis's success in hijacking the Party's agenda:
Objective: A Welsh speaking Wales. This includes:- (a) Ensuring Welsh culture in Wales. (b) Ensuring that Welsh is the only official language in Wales, and thus the obligatory language in all local authority discussions, and an obligatory language in all jobs under every local authority in Wales. (c) Ensure that all education from elementary School to University be through the medium of Welsh.
Poor Evan Alwyn Owen. By turning the National Party into a national movement, his hopes of it becoming a movement which would give priority to constitutional-political matters rather than linguistic-cultural ones were shattered. Only in 1931 was self-government incorporated into the Party's official aims.
