Plaid Cymru
Plaid Cymru is a socialist, Welsh nationalist political party in Wales, committed to Welsh independence from the United Kingdom. It campaigns on a platform of social democracy and civic nationalism. The party is a supporter of the European Union and is a member of the European Free Alliance. The party holds 4 of 32 Welsh seats in the UK House of Commons, 14 of 60 seats in the Senedd, and 200 of 1,234 principal local authority councillors. Plaid was formed in 1925 under the name Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru and Gwynfor Evans won the first Westminster seat for the party at the 1966 Carmarthen by-election.
In 1999, Plaid Cymru gained considerable ground in traditionally Labour heartlands. These breakthroughs were part of the intentional aim to win more seats in the Welsh valleys and North East Wales, which continues to be an ambition today. The party have mostly been in opposition in the Senedd. Although under the leadership of Ieuan Wyn Jones, the party was part of a coalition as a junior partner with Welsh Labour between 2007 and 2011. Wyn Jones became the deputy First Minister and Minister for the Economy and Transport, alongside other Plaid MSs who also joined the cabinet.
After losses in the 2011 Assembly elections and dropping down to being the third largest party, Wyn Jones stepped down. He was succeeded by Leanne Wood. In the 2016 Assembly elections Wood managed to win her constituency seat of Rhondda meaning the party gained one seat, and became the official opposition once again, although only for a brief period. In 2018 following internal pressure and a leadership contest, Adam Price defeated Wood and was elected the new leader. Following the 2021 Senedd election Plaid formed a co-operation agreement with the Welsh Labour government. In May 2023 Price resigned as leader following the publication of a report which detailed failings by the party to prevent sexual harassment and bullying. In June 2023 Rhun ap Iorwerth was elected unopposed as leader. The party won both its target seats in the 2024 general election, therefore becoming the second largest party representing Wales in the House of Commons.
Aims
In September 2008, a senior Plaid assembly member spelled out her party's continuing support for an independent Wales. The then Welsh Minister for Rural Affairs, Elin Jones, told delegates at Plaid's annual conference in Aberystwyth that the party would continue its commitment to independence under the coalition with Welsh Labour.In 2014, the party's constitution included the following aims:
- Securing Welsh independence in Europe
- Economic prosperity, social justice and a healthy natural environment with decentralist socialism
- A national community with equal citizenship and respect for diversity
- Develop a bilingual society
- Promote Wales to the world and achieve United Nations membership
The party opposes nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
The party also favours lowering the voting age to 16 years old. The voting age has already been lowered to include 16- and 17-year-olds for both Senedd elections and local elections in Wales since 2020, but not for UK general elections or police and crime commissioner elections: 18 is the minimum voting age for both of these. In 2025, the UK Government announced it will be reduced to 16 for those elections by the next UK general election, currently set for 2029.
Plaid Cymru supports making social care "free at the point of need".
In 2021, Plaid Cymru's policies in its co-operation agreement with Welsh Labour included:
- Free school meals for all primary school children
- Free childcare for all two-year-olds
- "Immediate and radical action to address the proliferation of second homes and unaffordable housing"
- Creation of a national care service
- Long-term Senedd reform
- Reforming council tax
- Increased investment in flood defence and prevention
History
Beginnings
While both the Labour and Liberal parties of the early 20th century had accommodated demands for Welsh home rule, no political party existed for the purpose of establishing a Welsh government. was formed on 5 August 1925, by Moses Gruffydd, H. R. Jones and Lewis Valentine, members of ; ); and Fred Jones, Saunders Lewis of and D. Edmund Williams. Initially, home rule for Wales was not an explicit aim of the new movement; keeping Wales Welsh-speaking took primacy, with the aim of making Welsh the only official language of Wales.In the 1929 general election, the party contested its first parliamentary constituency, Caernarvonshire, polling 609 votes, or 1.6% of the vote for that seat. The party contested few such elections in its early years, partly due to its ambivalence towards Westminster politics. Indeed, the candidate Lewis Valentine, the party's first president, offered himself in Caernarvonshire on a platform of demonstrating Welsh people's rejection of English dominion.
1930s
By 1932, the aims of self-government and Welsh representation at the League of Nations had been added to that of preserving Welsh language and culture. However, this move, and the party's early attempts to develop an economic critique, did not broaden its appeal beyond that of an intellectual and socially conservative Welsh language pressure group. The alleged sympathy of the party's leading members towards Europe's totalitarian regimes compromised its early appeal further.Saunders Lewis, David John Williams and Lewis Valentine set fire to the newly constructed RAF Penyberth air base on the Llŷn Peninsula in Gwynedd in 1936, in protest at its siting in the Welsh-speaking heartland. The leaders' treatment, including the trial judge's dismissal of the use of Welsh and their subsequent imprisonment in Wormwood Scrubs, led to "The Three" becoming a cause célèbre. This heightened the profile of the party dramatically and its membership had doubled to nearly 2,000 by 1939.
1940s
Penyberth, and Plaid Cymru's neutral stance during the Second World War, prompted concerns within the UK Government that it might be used by Germany to insert spies or carry out other covert operations. In fact, the party adopted a neutral standpoint and urged conscientious objection to war service.In 1943, Saunders Lewis contested the University of Wales parliamentary seat at a by-election, gaining 1,330 votes, or 22%. In the 1945 general election, with party membership at around 2,500, Plaid Cymru contested seven seats, as many as it had in the preceding 20 years, including constituencies in south Wales for the first time. At this time Gwynfor Evans was elected president.
1950s
Gwynfor Evans's presidency coincided with the maturation of Plaid Cymru into a more recognisable political party. Its share of the vote increased from 0.7% in the 1951 general election to 3.1% in 1955 and 5.2% in 1959. In the 1959 election, the party contested a majority of Welsh seats for the first time. Proposals to flood the village of Capel Celyn in the Tryweryn valley in Gwynedd in 1957 to supply the city of Liverpool with water played a part in Plaid Cymru's growth. The fact that the parliamentary bill authorising the dam went through without support from any Welsh MPs showed that the MPs' votes in Westminster were not enough to prevent such bills from passing.1960s
Support for the party declined slightly in the early 1960s, particularly as support for the Liberal Party began to stabilise from its long-term decline. In 1962, Saunders Lewis gave a radio talk entitled Tynged yr Iaith in which he predicted the extinction of the Welsh language unless action was taken. This led to the formation of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg the same year.Labour's return to power in 1964 and the creation of the post of Secretary of State for Wales appeared to represent a continuation of the incremental evolution of a distinctive Welsh polity, following the Conservative government's appointment of a Minister of Welsh Affairs in 1951 and the establishment of Cardiff as Wales's capital in 1955.
However, in 1966, less than four months after coming in third in the constituency of Carmarthen, Gwynfor Evans captured the seat from Labour at a by-election. This was followed by two further by-elections in Rhondda West in 1967 and Caerphilly in 1968 in which the party achieved massive swings of 30% and 40% respectively, coming within a whisker of victory. The results were caused partly by an anti-Labour backlash. Expectations in coal mining communities that the Wilson government would halt the long-term decline in their industry had been dashed by a significant downward revision of coal production estimates. However, particularly in Carmarthen, Plaid also successfully depicted Labour's policies as a threat to the viability of small Welsh communities.
1970s
In the 1970 general election, Plaid Cymru contested every seat in Wales for the first time and its vote share surged from 4.5% in 1966 to 11.5%. Gwynfor Evans lost Carmarthen to Labour, but regained the seat in October 1974, by which time the party had gained a further two MPs, representing the constituencies of Caernarfon and Merionethshire.Plaid Cymru's emergence prompted the Wilson government to establish the Kilbrandon Commission on the constitution. The subsequent proposals for a Welsh Assembly were, however, heavily defeated in a referendum in 1979. Despite Plaid Cymru's ambivalence toward home rule the referendum result led many in the party to question its direction.
Plaid campaigned to leave the Common Market in the 1975 referendum, feeling that the EC's regional aid policies would "reconcile places like Wales to their subordinate position". Nevertheless, 65% of Welsh voters voted to remain in the EC during a 1975 referendum. The EC was incorporated into the European Union in 1993.
At the 1979 general election, the party's vote share declined from 10.8% to 8.1% and Carmarthen was again lost to Labour, although Caernarfon and Merionethshire were held by the party.