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On the eve of the Civil War in 1642 there was much sympathy for the royalist cause in Wales. But the parliamentarians also found adherents among some landowners, such as Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, and Thomas Myddelton, as well as among individuals committed to the Puritan cause, such as the writer Morgan Llwyd and the zealous soldier John Jones of Maesygarnedd. It was mainly in the border counties and in Pembrokeshire, however, that Puritan influence and commercial contacts served to win support for the parliamentary cause. The imposition of parliamentary power on Wales and the sequestration of royalists’ property incurred resentment, and Puritan missionaries found themselves labouring in what they believed to be a dark corner of the land. The Act for the Propagation of the Gospel in Wales (1650) set up a coercive authority encompassing both political and religious life, but state intervention remained largely unproductive.
Nonetheless, the Interregnum saw the formation of Dissenting congregations, which were to lay the foundations for some of the abiding influences of modern Welsh life. The most radical were the Quakers who, making particular headway in Montgomeryshire and Merioneth, penetrated not only Anglicized border territory but also the heart of the Welsh-speaking areas. Incurring the animosity of churchmen and other Dissenters alike, they were repressed with a severity experienced only by Roman Catholics and forced into emigration to Pennsylvania, in large numbers. On the other hand, small gathered churches of Congregationalists and Baptists, whose theology was Calvinist and whose belief and personal conduct were governed by a strict code expounded in their church covenant, established the Dissenting tradition within rural communities and small towns.
In the 18th century Methodism became a new and potent influence. Launched by a revival movement of great intensity in the years after 1735, Methodism was sustained within the established church by means of local societies and a central association. The combined influences of the old Dissent and the new Methodism, however, eventually transformed the religious adherence of the Welsh people at the expense of the established church. Although served by innumerable men of learning and devotion, among them Griffith Jones, whose circulating schools contributed immeasurably to the growth in literacy, the church was racked by poverty and inadequate leadership. Thus the Methodist secession from the Anglican church made the ultimate triumph of Nonconformity inevitable.
Methodism and Dissent were not the only influences at work in 18th-century Wales. The resilience of a native culture no longer able to depend upon traditional sources of patronage showed itself in a patriotic fervour to preserve a cultural heritage threatened by progressive Anglicization. Although its proponents drew upon Welsh scholarly achievements, notably those of Edward Lhuyd, Wales had no academic institutions capable of appraising critically the work of romantic antiquarians who looked back to Celtic myth and British druidism. Yet despite its shortcomings, the 18th-century cultural movement was an important expression of a preindustrial society’s resourcefulness in protecting its heritage. One of its key figures was Edward Williams (Iolo Morganwg), whose endeavours encompassed a vast range of literary and historical studies and who also represented the political radicalism inspired by the French Revolution. Radical convictions were held only by a small minority, some of them eccentrics and others distinguished expatriates, but their endeavours marked a significant stage in the emergence of a distinctively Welsh political consciousness.
The growth of industrial society
By 1800 Wales was rapidly ceasing to be a land whose people were almost entirely dependent upon a rural economy. Industrial development, already present in certain localities, now took place on a larger scale. There was considerable development in the coalfield of northeastern Wales; in the southwest, in Swansea, copper smelting, in particular, served to make the town an important metallurgical centre, and for a period it also could count fine porcelain among its range of manufactures. The main industrial expansion occurred, however, with the growth of substantial ironworks on the northern rim of the South Wales coalfield in Glamorgan and Monmouthshire. Not hitherto served by any major urban centres, the area now became densely populated, largely as a result of immigration from other areas of Wales. A natural increase in population accelerated considerably by the late 18th century, with an estimated population for Wales of 450,000 in 1750 rising to 587,245 by 1801. The population continued to grow, again mainly by natural increase, to 1,163,139 by 1851 and to 2,012,875 by 1901. It was only in the following decade that immigration into Wales occurred on a massive scale. In this period 126,529 persons, the majority of whom came from outside Wales, migrated into Glamorgan and Monmouthshire alone, further enlarging the population of the counties that had benefited most from the internal migration of the earlier decades.
Industrial growth made it possible for large numbers of people whom the rural economy could not sustain to find a livelihood within Wales, and the industrial communities of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire contained a substantial Welsh-speaking element throughout the 19th century. Merthyr Tydfil grew rapidly to become the main urban centre of a new industrial society, but it sadly lacked the facilities normally associated with settlements of a more gradual growth. Conditions in the mining areas were harsh; workers were subjected to long hours and low wages, their children were often forced to work at the mines from a young age, and their families lived in wretched and overcrowded circumstances. It was in Merthyr Tydfil that industrial and social unrest, first expressed in wage-related disputes and sporadic rioting in several areas, erupted into a serious rising in 1831. In the following years the workers’ main channel for expressing their aspirations was Chartism, which found its most forceful manifestation in the insurrection at Newport in 1839. Rural Wales, too, was subject to social unrest, and between 1839 and 1843 the Rebecca Riots, ostensibly directed against the exaction of road tolls, gave expression to the underlying difficulties of the tenant farmers of southwestern Wales.
Improved economic conditions from the middle years of the century onward ushered in a period of comparative quietude in industrial Wales. A new phase in industrial growth, brought about by the exploitation of the steam-coal reserves of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire during the last decades of the century, created new valley communities that drew immigrants both from rural and industrial settlements in Wales and from elsewhere. The growth in coal exports led to the building of docks on the coast between Newport and Swansea, notably at Cardiff, while increasing dependence on imported ore led to the relocation of the growing steel industry to areas in close proximity to the coast.
Political radicalism
Wales only gradually embraced the radicalism that came to be regarded as its traditional political allegiance. The political exigencies of the years of the French wars of the Napoleonic period forced the Methodists, in particular, into a passivity that was underlined by a sterner interpretation of Calvinist theology. Political passions were aroused, however, by the moral indictment of the Welsh nation, and especially its Nonconformity, carried in the Report of the Commissioners for Education in 1847. The Welsh, especially the women, were portrayed as depraved and immoral, backward and ignorant. Even the more able ones among them were thought to be impeded by their theological wrangling and often by their lack of English. The growth of a Welsh-language periodical press from its largely denominational origins into a distinctively radical force proved an important influence in rural and industrial Wales alike. By the later years of the 19th century, following the franchise reforms of 1867 and 1884, the hegemony of Welsh Liberal Nonconformity was well established. The passing of legislation specifically concerned with Wales, such as the Welsh Intermediate Education Act (1889) and the Church Disestablishment Act (1914), was a parliamentary success matched in cultural life by the founding of three university colleges and the federal University of Wales and the securing of a royal charter for the establishment of the National Library of Wales and the National Museum of Wales. The attempt by Welsh Liberal associations to secure a representative assembly reached its peak with the Home Rule movement of 1886–96, but it was wrecked by dissension within the associations.
The 20th century
By 1900 there were signs that the Liberal-Nonconformist supremacy would be gradually undermined. Traditional beliefs were challenged, and the experience of World War I created new tensions. The massive flow of workers into the steel and coal areas, largely from outside Wales, affected the composition, and hence the language, of the industrial communities, and immigration coincided with a new era of industrial unrest and political militancy. The miners’ efforts at combination led in 1898 to the founding of the South Wales Miners’ Federation; the coal owners strengthened their position by forming powerful combines. Despite fierce resistance, the miners won their campaigns for an 8-hour day and a minimum wage. Within the federation a new militancy, expressed in the policy document entitled the Miners’ Next Step (1912), espoused an industrial unionism with syndicalist tendencies. These influences, though potent in the Rhondda Valley, did not pervade the coal industry, nor did they shape the steelworkers’ and tinplate workers’ unions. After the war syndicalist influence was subsumed in orthodox communism, or, more generally, in democratic socialism. By 1922 the Liberal Party in South Wales had lost its hold upon the industrial communities to the Labour Party, whose influence was felt both at Westminster and in local government. In the northeast and in the slate-quarrying communities of northwestern Wales, which also experienced prolonged and enervating industrial disputes, an allegiance to radical Liberalism gradually evolved into adherence to Labour.
Economic depression between the world wars, made particularly acute by the collapse of the export market upon which the Welsh economy so heavily depended, brought massive unemployment. Wales lost about 430,000 people by emigration to England and to areas overseas. The war years of 1939–45 brought substantial industrial recovery, and upon the cessation of hostilities strenuous efforts were made to modernize the basic industries of steel and coal and to achieve a diversification of industry in general. Even so, coal production continued to fall, and in the industrial areas the exodus of workers and their families showed no signs of abating. To be sure, the rural economy benefited from government subsidies that facilitated investments in land improvements and new buildings as well as from advisory and marketing agencies. However, the working population continued to fall, even in the rural areas.
Labour continued to retain the political allegiance of the Welsh electorate. After World War II the party registered gains in rural Wales and held as many as 32 of 36 Welsh seats until 1966. Their position was not maintained, however. Plaid Cymru, which was founded in 1925 as the Welsh Nationalist Party, achieved a measure of influence that was not reflected in successes at parliamentary elections until 1966. It captured its first parliamentary seat in a by-election at Carmarthen that year, though it lost the seat in 1970. The party subsequently won three seats in northwestern Wales in October 1974. The Conservative Party also made gains at Labour’s expense, several members being returned in constituencies where boundaries were redrawn to take account of the growth of suburban communities. In the late 1970s and early ’80s the Conservatives made even greater gains, winning 14 of 38 Welsh seats in 1983. By the late 1980s, however, Labour was again dominant, and it maintained that dominance into the early 21st century.
The Welsh Language Society, founded in 1962, brought a measure of militancy to the cause of preserving the language and was among the influences that spurred a more positive response to the problem of its continuing decline, including the Welsh Language Act of 1967. In 1964 the Labour government honoured a pledge to appoint a secretary of state for Wales with departmental responsibility, and subsequent Labour and Conservative administrations promoted an extensive transfer of functions to the Welsh Office. Demands in Wales and Scotland for an elected assembly with devolved powers led to the appointment of a Royal Commission on the Constitution, which recommended devolution for both countries in 1973. An act providing Wales with a measure of devolution was passed at Westminster in 1978, but devolution was overwhelmingly defeated—by a margin of nearly 4 to 1—in a referendum held the following year.
Support for devolution and the protection of Welsh identity increased in 1979 with the election in London of a Conservative government, which enjoyed only minority support in Wales. A new phase of immigration in rural Wales in the 1980s and increased economic vulnerability to the global free market prompted renewed and more cohesive efforts to conserve Welsh heritage. In 1982 a Welsh-language television channel was created, and in 1993 the government passed another Welsh Language Act. The Welsh Language Board, established under the provisions of the 1993 act, promoted the use of the Welsh language and sought to give Welsh equal legal weight with English in the conduct of government business.
A second referendum on the creation of a Welsh assembly, held under the new Labour government of Tony Blair, was barely approved (50.3 percent) on September 18, 1997. The assembly was given responsibility for administering public services and implementing regional policies on education, health care, and economic development, among other areas. Its first elections—which were held under a system of proportional representation rather than under the plurality system used for Westminster elections—took place in May 1999 and produced a minority Labour government headed by Alun Michael, who assumed the title “first secretary.” Although Labour won 28 seats, a resurgent Plaid Cymru took 17 seats, including several in Labour’s traditional strongholds; the Conservatives won 9 seats and the Liberal Democrats 6.
The 21st century
In 2000 Labour’s Rhodri Morgan became first secretary, and later that year the position’s title was formally changed to first minister. Morgan remained in that office when Labour won the elections of 2003 and 2007, with Plaid Cymru finishing second both times. In March 2011 another milestone in devolving government for Wales was passed when a referendum granting the Welsh assembly the power to enact laws without first seeking consent from Parliament was approved by 63.5 percent of those voting. Two months later assembly elections were held, with Labour winning 30 seats, 1 short of an absolute majority. The Conservatives finished second, ahead of Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats.
On October 21, 2014, Carwyn Jones, first minister for Wales, called for further powers to be devolved from London to Wales. The request came in response to the commitment by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron to extend the powers of Scotland’s Parliament in the wake of the failure of a September 2014 referendum in Scotland on independence. In May 2015 the Conservatives had their best showing in decades in the elections for the House of Commons, gaining three seats for a total of 11. Despite losing one seat, Labour remained the largest delegation, with 25 seats. Plaid Cymru held steady with three seats, and the Liberal Democrats dropped two seats to send a single representative to Westminster.
A year later, in the May 2016 elections for the Welsh assembly, Labour fell from 30 seats to 29 but remained in power as a minority government still led by First Minister Jones. Plaid Cymru gained a seat to reach 12 seats, while the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats lost three seats and four seats, respectively. Arguably, the elections’ big winner was the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which went from no representation to seven seats.
In the June 2017 snap election for the House of Commons called by British Prime Minister Theresa May, Labour reversed its 2015 losses to rebound to 28 seats at the expense of the Conservatives, who lost three seats to fall back to eight seats. The Liberal Democrats relinquished their lone seat. Plaid Cymru added a seat to increase its representation in the House of Commons to four seats.In December 2018 Jones stepped down as first minister and was replaced by the new leader of the Welsh Labour Party, former finance minister Mark Drakeford. When Boris Johnson, May’s replacement as the United Kingdom’s prime minister, called for a snap election in December 2019, Labour lost six seats but remained the largest Welsh presence in the House of Commons, with 22 MPs. The Conservatives added six seats for a new total of 14 MPs, and Plaid Cymru held steady with four seats.
In the elections for the National Assembly, the Drakeford-led Labour Party matched its best performance ever by taking 30 seats to fall just one seat short of an outright majority. The Conservatives added five seats to their 2016 count for a total of 16 seats, and Plaid Cymru took an additional seat to bring its presence in the assembly to 13 representatives. These gains came principally at the expense of UKIP, which lost all seven of its seats.
J(enkyn) Beverley Smith The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica