Why being Pro-Wales doesn’t mean Anti-English

Alex Heffron
Aug 22, 2017 · 3 min read

I understand why English people can be a bit put-off when Welsh people start talking about Welsh independence. They can take it as being anti-English, particularly for those English people that live here. In the past there has been bad blood between Welsh and English people living in Wales, but you don’t have to hate England to be pro-Welsh — and indeed I think that’s extremely rare today and no more common than the occasional anti-Welsh comments I heard living in London. Most Welsh people have close friends and family who are English, and many have spent some time in their life living in England, and many/most will have at least one English grandparent/parent. My grandfather’s from Liverpool. All of my wife’s grandparents are English. The majority of my friends are English. So when I explore the importance of Welsh independence it really doesn’t have anything to do with the English.

Most English regions could write from a similar perspective about how they too have been colonised by the British. English peasants thrown off their land to work in industrial slums, culture stripped away by consumerism, forced off to war to fight for the empire, lack of local investment and so on. The issues are pretty much the same throughout the UK, though will have different details and context. In other words, I’d be pro-independence or at least pro-devolution for all parts of Britain, including throughout England. We’ve all been stitched up by the upper ruling class. It just so happens that I was born in Wales, and have chosen to settle here, and thus I focus on Welsh culture, history and politics.

What I believe in is a radical relocalisation as a way of reinvigorating culture and community, as a means of moving us away from this bland globalised consumerism that’s sucking the soul out of human community whilst simultaneously destroying the Earth. I believe that only by radical relocalisation can we move towards a more sustainable way of life, and indeed I believe that world events (e.g. climate change) are going to push us down this path anyway, whether we particularly like it or not, so we might as well do it by design, rather than kicking and screaming. Yes there’ll be trade and travel, there always has been, but it won’t be in the manner we find today. So my aim is to help rebuild resilient local economies. I am opposed to the ideology of centralised power, and when that centralised power, in Britain’s sense London, is so heavily corrupted then to me it’s overwhelmingly obvious that we need to reclaim that power.

To me it matters little whether you’re from Wales or not. If you believe in a future that doesn’t require this gross level of exploitation, and have a love of Wales (whether that’s the landscape, the people, the history, the culture, the language…) then there’s a place for you in Wales. In other words, Wales can become a place of vision, rather than just an economic backwater ‘region’ (as can be found said in the MSM) of Britain, then Welsh independence can be for you. We’re not all going to agree, and it’s not going to be a Utopia, but it can be better and fairer than Britain. People will be people, but smaller nations, I believe, are easier to manage and in the fossil-fuel-free future we’re going to need smaller, more manageable nations. Wales is well set to take advantage of that future but within Britain it will never realise its potential — not without extensive devolution. Now there are various factions and reasons for why someone would support Welsh Independence, these are just my views. But being pro-Welsh doesn’t mean being anti-English, for me it means supporting a radical redistribution of power and wealth and believing in a future that isn’t just about making more money on the property market. Wales can stand for more and be an inclusive nation.

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Alex Heffron

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1st gen farmer interested in Regenerative Agriculture.

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