Programme 1
On 18 September 1997, Wales voted in favour of devolution by a majority of just 6,721, which represented only 0.3% of the electorate. But although the majority was so slender, the result marked a sea of change since the 1979 Referendum. At that time, the overwhelming majority in every region of Wales had opposed devolution. What happened between 1979 and 1997 to turn the tide of opinion?
There is a popular misconception that the people of Wales came to feel more Welsh between the two referendums; that the sense of Welsh national identity has somehow increased. The bald fact is that the percentage of Welsh people who feel Welsh stayed the same between '79 and '97. What did change was the meaning of being Welsh. An increasing number of people came to believe that there was a natural connection between Welsh identity and support for devolution. And the person who was mainly responsible for this development was Margaret Thatcher.
Thatcher came to power barely two months after the 1979 Referendum, and by the time her party lost power eighteen years later, Wales had changed. The old Welsh industrial economic base – particularly the coal and steel industries – had been shattered beyond repair. Welsh politics had changed as well. The effect of the rule of a string of Welsh Secretaries of State with no interest in, or connections to, the country, had been to galvanise a new generation of Labour MPs into believing that the future of Wales depended on devolution. Ron Davies was the rising star in that group, and with the support of Labour leader John Smith, he put Wales on the path towards the fateful night of 18 September 1997.
The supporters of devolution in Wales were of course exceedingly fortunate in their timing, as they were able to take full advantage of the wave of optimism and hope created by Tony Blair's General Election victory in 1997. The 'Yes' campaign was also indubitably helped by the fact that the 1997 Referendum was held only a week after Scotland voted in favour of devolution by a large majority. But in their very different ways, Margaret Thatcher and Ron Davies both played crucial roles in the process that led to the establishment of the National Assembly for Wales.
Although there was a huge change between '79 and '97, things have continued to change since then. In addition to explaining the change between the two referendums, Dr Richard Wyn Jones will be examining the change in public opinion in Wales in the first decade of devolution: a decade when a slim majority turned to widespread general support for the principle of devolution. It was also a decade which saw an increasing proportion of Welsh people supporting the development of the Assembly into a fully-fledged Parliament based on the Scottish model.
