Hywel Williams has produced a new look at Welsh History for S4C and gets beyond the usual clichés of Welsh Socialism and Nationalism. It’s meant to be provocative no doubt and will certainly challenge the settled nature of Welsh History that politicians, historians and academics speak of.
Explaining the idea he wrote in the Western Mail ‘What really happened to the Welsh in the late 20th century? Our official history is dominated by two big ideas, socialism and nationalism.
Socialist assumptions welcome public sector expansion while nationalist ones delineate a steady devolutionary advance.
The NHS became Wales’ biggest employer and the Tudors’ legislative union with England was undermined. What were the three most important dates in modern Welsh history? Our establishment historians reply: “1536, 1945 and, er – that’s it.”
That answer turns Welsh history into a very boring subject.
Some things, of course, can be both boring and true, and any country’s history contains dull events. But too much of Wales’ history is written by people who’ve decided to leave in all the really boring bits and therefore miss out the big picture.
General elections and referendums grab the headlines for a while, but all those swings and polls are soon forgotten. Rightly so because they’re superficial – mere reflections of deeper currents in economic life, cultural change and social development. And those forces can’t be confined to one country’s history.
Placing Wales’ past in a wider context usually means placing it side by side with that of England. This seems to me trite, misleading and parochial. What we need is an international view of our country – not an introspective one.
In Cymru Hywel Williams, I’ve looked at the six themes which have shaped the contemporary world: nationality and personal identity; religious belief and Christianity’s decline, the global economy and free markets; things green and the environment; popular culture and entertainment and the history of the body – both obese and honed.
The programme is available to watch on S4C catchup and to get English subtitles click on the owl button on the screen.
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3 comments:
Cheers for the heads up ,looks good
Why not mainstream Welsh TV I wonder
my thoughts exactly Valley Mam why not give it a wider audience, in my opinion is deserves it.
He's talking as he if is the only person who has only noted globalization. Who are these boring "establishment historians" that ignore the wider world? And the idea that general elections are superficial is ludricous. Of course they reflect wider currents, currents that are themselves affected by what governments do.
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