Now the BNP claim Owain Glyndwr
The BNP are championing a man who revolted against the Anglo-Saxons (i.e. the English):
“Clothing depicting the last native Prince of Wales are on sale through the BNP’s merchandising website Excalibur, accompanied by the slogan, “British By Birth, Welsh by the Grace of God†across the front. Costing £10, the T-shirts are for sale alongside other items of clothing as part of the party’s “British Heroes†range, which includes merchandise adorned with the faces of Richard the Lionheart and Horatio Nelson.
Glyndr, who led the historic uprising against the English rule of Wales, was proclaimed the last native Prince of Wales on September 16, 1400. The image used on the BNP T-shirts is taken from a statue of Owain Glyndwr on a horse that was presented to the people of Corwen, Denbighshire, in September 2007, the town where Glyndr was born.”
Given that Owain Glyndwr was opposed to English rule in Wales, will the BNP now support Welsh independence? The BNP’s use of the Welsh prince as a hero makes about as much sense as the BNP praising Nehru.
It is unclear what the BNP’s take on history is. At times it appears to be a very English nationalism, at other times the focus is on ‘shared’ British or European heritage. Some BNPers are very Christian, others worship Norse gods. I don’t think they have a unified view of history beyond the notion that non-whites are foreigners. They struggle to reconcile a British nationalism based on racial purity with the fact that most Britons are of immigrant stock in some shape or form.
(Hat-Tip: Persephone)
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Filed in: History,The BNP
I think we’re getting a view of the BNP’s education policy – “Been to the picturesque ruined castle, bought the t-shirt.”
Perhaps the B.N.P. uses British in the original sense of the word (=Welsh) and will be campaigning for the expulsion of the descendants of Angles, Saxons, etc. from the occupied territories east of Offa’s Dyke. I can just see the slogans:
- Send the English invaders back to Germany!
- Liberate Lloegr now!
- Fifteen centuries of occupation is long enough!
etc. etc.
I already posted on this, and apparently…
“Orwain stood for the right of Wales to be Welsh, which is exactly what the BNP’s [sic] policy is”
But that is not exactly what the BNPs’ policy is.
The BNP may stand for the right of Wales to be Welsh (what else is it gonna be?), but they don’t stand for a Welshmans’ right to be anything other than what the BNP wants him to be, i.e. white, christian, heterosexual.
To be fair to the BNP (uck!), I don’t think Glyndwr would have wanted the Welsh to be anything other than Christian and heterosexual, and wouldn’t have thought a non-white person could be Welsh by definition.
It’s a messy vortex of nonsense – we have a local “English nationalist” who insists he isn’t a racist but doesn’t have a coherent set of beliefs in this area – can English people be non-white? Is there an “English culture” which can be contrasted sharply with other cultures? Does the Caribbean carnival need to be “balanced” by a carnival aimed at the “English”, even if it’s an artificial carnival to celebrate something that English people don’t traditionally celebrate? Do English people not celebrate St George’s day because RACE TRAITORS ARE LYING TO THEM ABOUT THEIR HISTORY????!??!?!
Pardon me, I seem to have started frothing at the mouth. And that’s the problem – attempts to try to tease out what exactly white nationalists believe (or racial nationalists of other sorts) just boil down to hating people who don’t look/think/act like they do. You can’t hope for any consistency beyond that.
“It is unclear what the BNP’s take on history is. At times it appears to be a very English nationalism, at other times the focus is on ’shared’ British or European heritage”
Interestingly enough this does recall Hannah Arendt’s discussion of fascist ideology in “Origins of Totalitarianism” (a book I found fascinating after years of ignorently ignoring it).
How simplistic of you, I take it you don’t know the story.
I can assure you it was not purely a war of the Welsh v. the English.
^ plse do tell the story & credible references in support of it. If not, I would just put that down as a simplistic, invalid assertion.
This is nothing new: the NF trained alongside Welsh nationalists in the 70′s and 80′s, and also found themselves split over Irish nationalism.
There’s nothing odd about nationalists allying with each other: look at WWII.
It’s all about being able to “pass for white”.
So, for example, the British-born (and now living in the US) blonde actress Nicollete Sheridan of “Desperate Housewives” fame, who actually has some fairly recent Indian/Punjabi ancestry via her maternal grandmother, would be deemed “acceptable”. Ditto for the late Freddie Mercury, as long as his Parsi ancestry was swept under the carpet and he didn’t use his real name either.
As for numerous other examples of mixed-race or non-white Brits…..obviously not.
Yes, it really is that shallow and superficial.
“If you look white, you’re alright”, as Chris Rock would no doubt say about the BNP’s stance.
Shatterface:
“This is nothing new: the NF trained alongside Welsh nationalists in the 70’s and 80’s”
Evidence? Or just a smear? I was involved in Plaid and other ‘nationalist’ groups in the early 80s and I couldn’t repeat the words we used to describe the likes of the NF.
Shatterface again:
“There’s nothing odd about nationalists allying with each other”
There is a world of difference between civic nationalism (e.g. Wales, Scotland and the movements which helped liberate, say, the Baltic nations from Russian rule) and the racial nationalism typified by the NF. BNP, et al. If there were any closeness of vision or purpose between them as you claim, then why do Plaid and the SNP have ethnic Asian AMs and MSPs when the other parties tend not to?
Andrew:
“I don’t think Glyndwr would have wanted the Welsh to be anything other than Christian and heterosexual, and wouldn’t have thought a non-white person could be Welsh by definition.”
Erm, Glynd^wr lived at the beginning of the fifteen century. I think things have moved along a little since then.
Erm, Glyndwr lived at the beginning of the fifteen century. I think things have moved along a little since then.
Precisely – but I think part of what racial nationalists like about figures from distant history is that they have fifteenth century (or earlier) attitudes to things like race, culture and tribalism. If you’re going to play “what would Glyndwr think today”, he’d be on the far right in many respects but then so would virtually all of his contemporaries.
‘There is a world of difference between civic nationalism (e.g. Wales, Scotland and the movements which helped liberate, say, the Baltic nations from Russian rule’
Even if you are going to simplistically split the world up into ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’, it really doesn’t work so well to draw the line for that split between nations.
The SNP and Lithuanians might qualify as genuinely liberal nationalists, but neither Plaid Cymru nor the other Baltic nationalists exactly have clean hands.
Plaid Cymru, in particular, always has had a _very_ nasty fringe to it, probably with as close or closer a connection to criminal violence as even the BNP.
And is anyone really happy defending the stuff the Latvians get up to against Russian-speakers?
Support for nationalistic thuggery just because it romantic and far way has always been a pet peeve of mine.
Costing £10, the T-shirts are for sale alongside other items of clothing as part of the party’s “British Heroes†range, which includes merchandise adorned with the faces of Richard the Lionheart and Horatio Nelson.
BNP’s adoption of Nelson reminds me of the following quote from G.K Chesterton.
All the most genuine Englishmen in history would have laughed or yawned in your face if you had talked about Anglo-Saxons. If you had attempted to substitute the ideal of race over the ideal of nationality, I really do not like to think what they would have said. I certainly should not liked to have been the officer who discovered Nelson’s French blood on the eve of Trafalgar….Nationality exists, and has nothing to do with race. Nationality is a thing like a church or a secret society; it is a product of the human soul and will; it is a spiritual product. And there are men in the modern world who would think anything and do anything rather than admit that anything could be a spiritual product.
For all the BNP’s supposed patriotism, their behaviour is in fact anti-patriotic in its effect, since British Asians, Afro-Caribbeans, Africans, Jews etc. are a part of what Britain is. An injury to one is an injury to all.
Soru:
“Plaid Cymru, in particular, always has had a _very_ nasty fringe to it, probably with as close or closer a connection to criminal violence as even the BNP.”
Can you give examples of this nastiness?
“And is anyone really happy defending the stuff the Latvians get up to against Russian-speakers?”
Not Plaid. In the European Parliament, Plaid are aligned with a party in Latvia who campaign for the Human Rights of the Russian minority.
I’m not a BNP supporter, but I can’t see what the complaint is about here. They call themselves the BRITISH National Party (not the English one). It therefore seems quite apposite that they highlight British heroes from all the countries/regions which make up Britain.
It will obviously cause a bit of a conflict at times (Wallace, Bruce and Edward I being another example), but there is no reason why the BNP shouldn’t recognise that these people are each heroes to their own countrymen. Afer all, they preceded formation of the UK.
Boudicca,
Don’t expect they’ll be putting Bonnie Prince Charlie on their T – Shirts anytime soon then
Soru:
“Plaid Cymru, in particular, always has had a _very_ nasty fringe to it, probably with as close or closer a connection to criminal violence as even the BNP.”
Again, cite? Or by ‘criminal violence’ do you mean Plaid’s overlap of membership with Cymdeithas Yr Iaith Gymraeg (The Welsh Language Society) when it was at its most militant in the 60s & 70s – and even that ‘militancy’ was determinedly non-violent?
“If you look white, you’re alrightâ€, as Chris Rock would no doubt say about the BNP’s stance.“
Hehe
I can picture that.
Good one Jai
For those who asked, the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/mar/01/wales.devolution
1969 Two members of the Free Wales Army blow themselves up while apparently planning a bomb on a railway line along which Prince Charles was due to travel to his investiture at Caernarfon
1979-94 Meibion Glyndyr (Sons of Glyn Dwr) fire-bomb 300 English owned homes
1989 Meibion Glyndyr declared that “every white settler is a target”. The group also placed incendiary bombs in Conservative party offices in London and estate agents’ offices in London, Liverpool, Sutton Coldfield and Haverfordwest
1990 Poet and priest RS Thomas calls for a campaign to deface English owned homes
1993 Sion Aubrey Roberts, a member of Meibion Glyndyr, was jailed for nine years for sending letter bombs to Conservative politicians
Hardly ‘determinedly non-violent’, or exclusively ‘back in the 60s’.
Plaid have, and have always had, a large proportion of linguistic, rather than civil, nationalists. That’s not quite the same as racist nationalism, just like the ENL’s anti-Muslim nationalism is probably not quite the same as racism. And it’s always going to be ‘overlap in membership’, or ‘that was years ago’, or whatever.
But it’s still pretty vile stuff.
Owain Glyndwr – largely a myth of 19th Century Welsh Romanticism; in reality a faithful retainer (happy enough to lend his support to the English attacks on Scotland) turned cattle-thief.
Certainly someone who never ever entertained the idea of a “free” Wales, not once in his nasty, brutal and feudalist life.
Wales should be free of such “heroes”… ancient or modern (MG and their support base in CiG)
Cymru am byth
PC are not a monolithic bunch. One might charitably describe them as a bunch of opportunists, cutting their cloth to suit the political traditions of the constituencies they have their eye set upon.
In the South they tend to be more “socialist” than PLl (that’s Llafur Hen, bach) – meanwhile in the West, especially rural Ceredigion, they could make Genghis Khan look like a card carrying member of Liberty.
Having spent some time amidst these latter specimens of Welsh “nationalism” I can assure you of their nasty, spiteful, racist agenda – largely driven by the desire to become councillors in Lampeter, or perhaps organise a drive against English tourists in Aberaeron.
We have a splendid word for such boyos – wankers.
14
Perhaps a T shirt with the slogan
British by birth
African by the grace of God
I can get them wholesale if you’re interested.
- Send the English invaders back to Germany!
2.
Something like this happened after WW2 when borders in Eastern Europe changed (yet again) and Poles became Russian Germans became Czechs or whatever.
No one is going to stay in the same place forever though the aboriginal population of the British Isles have held out pretty well up to now.
soru – where’s the link to Plaid?
Regardless of old Owain’s actual views, his relevence today is as a symbol of Welsh independece against the English. Therefore a nationalism based on iether English or British supremacy runs counter to the legacy of Owain Glyndwr.
Soru:
You quote instances which have *no* link with Plaid at all.
“Hardly ‘determinedly non-violent’, or exclusively ‘back in the 60s’.”
If you try reading what I wrote, you might notice that I was referring to the Welsh Language Society, whose philosophy has been absolutely non-violent throughout its 47-year history.
“Plaid have, and have always had, a large proportion of linguistic, rather than civil, nationalists. That’s not quite the same as racist nationalism…”
But obviously near enough in your mind to enable you to smear civic nationalists by association. You sound like one of those bitter old valleys Labour imperialists (Abse, Kinnock, et al.) who rant on about how Plaid are “faaaaascist, reeeeehcist, extreeeemist and” (probably) “novelist and physiotherapist” as well.
Or like Peter Black AM from those ultimate irrelevances the LibDems, who recently in a blog post tried the same trick of smearing Plaid by association with the BNP. When he was rightly called on this (by a non-Plaid blogger, I might add), he tried to wriggle out of it by claiming that the BNP *weren’t* nationalists in his eyes. You seem to be trying the same trick.
Taliesin:
Yes, let’s have some real modern Welsh heroes, isn’t it? Like Bevan, in reality a faithful retainer (happy enough to lend his support to British attacks on the principles of nuclear disarmament and to support the freedom of every colony bar the one he came from) turned place-man for knock-kneed Hampstead ‘social democracy’.
“PC are not a monolithic bunch.”
Can you name a political party that is? Don’t say the BNP – they’re not monolithic, just mono-browed. Look at Labour – for every Rhodri Morgan there are a hundred Paul Murphys.
I’ve known a few Plaid members, councillors and candidates down the years, both in former labour heartlands and that rural Ceredigion you refer to in such glowing terms; I never came across *one* of them whose views could be described as ‘racist’. Perhaps you rubbed some of them up the wrong way, which I could readily understand.
Never quite understood how people can use, in all seriousness, language like ‘imperialist’ and ‘colony’ and ‘swamping’, but then turn around and claim to have nothing to do with anyone who takes that rhetoric at face value.
Soru:
A few helpful definitions for you:
Colony: a country ruled by another country to the ruled country’s invariable detriment.
Imperialist: someone who sees nothing wrong with the above situation, even if it’s their own country which is on the dirty end of it (such as Kinnock, Abse and so on, who went around campaigning against *their own party’s policy* to give some minor semblance of democratic national government *to their own country*).
And where, exactly, did I use the word ‘swamping’? Or is this just another cheap attempt to tie civic nationalists such as me in to the racist bigotry of BNP, NF and Monday-Club Toryism?
The Judge,
You’ll have to excuse soru, he hasn’t a scooby about modern nationalism. He is a very literal chap. He sees the word nationalism and he paroxysms in fear, for he sees all forms of nationalism as wrong. That is the sum and substance of soru.
I seem to recall the SNP wanting a dispensation from the UK’s views on asylum seekers. We wanted them to be able to work and contribute, and hopefully put their problems behind them. And, perhaps, stay. But we are stuck with it being a reserved Westminster issue, despite their ideas being a ridiculous policy brought about by xenophobia.
But there you go…
There is more on this subject that would break your heart.
soru @ 28,
I have never understood how you couldn’t understand simple English and always tried to twist it.
Perhaps you could explain this internal dissonance that you appear to display at every given opportunity?
You can be very bright, but how do you manage to combine it with your own patented brand of lunacy.
I have never been able to determine whether you are a genius or an idiot. I suspect you have the same issue.
Keep us logical swats on our toes, or summat?
@31: Can you clarify, in your view, what it takes to become a liberal nationalist movement?
Is there some kind of qualifying procedure, or is it just an inherent quality of certain nations you like, and no actual actions taken by nationalists of that nation can in any way affect it?
Soru,
Of course not. Anything can be corrupted. But we are in the tail wagging the dog territory of the eternal Islamist / Islam debate that goes on here.
I have no idea if you have any group identity, but, if you do, you can be as sure as God made little green apples that someone in your group – in the broadest sense – will take it to a violent extreme. That, of itself, doesn’t destroy the movement or the case. It’s just a bit annoying.
But you do seem to have got a bee in your bonnet about Welsh Nationalism whereby you are doing your damndest to tar PC with nutters. You have flung the kitchen sink at them, particularily in post 20. I don’t really see why, that’s all.
Would you apply the same standards to the ANC?
But we are in the tail wagging the dog territory of the eternal Islamist / Islam debate that goes on here.
Precisely. You sometimes see people here who think Islam as a whole is either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, and so any evidence of people who appear to believe in it doing the opposite needs some kind of occult explanation.
Whereas I am more ‘means determine the ends’ kind of guy. If you torture, then you are a torturer, and in the service of a State that rules by torture. You don’t remain inherently a good guy, independently of anything you actually do: those are the ends your methods inevitably land you at.
Torture in my name, and I am not going to share one shred of group identity with you.
By the same token, if you bomb and murder your way to separation from some larger state, then you find yourself in a smaller state ruled by those who were most successful at bombing and murdering. Actions have consequences that are determined by their nature, not by the words you use to justify them.
Hardly anyone has any really strong irrational hatred or fear of Wales, so I was kind of hoping it would serve as a neutral example where people could judge of the facts, without the knee-jerk prejudice many feel towards larger groups.
Would you apply the same standards to the ANC?
Yes, very much. The recent C4 drama Endgame seemed to me to have it very much right.
Despite the obvious and massive racial injustice of apartheid, the number of South African voting civilians killed by the ANC was closer to the number killed by the Free Wales Army than those killed by the IRA, ETA or PLO.
But even that was close to derailing the possibility of peace talks, which would presumably have led to either indefinite oppression or a brutal civil war.
The ANC leadership was both wise and successful in achieving such a small figure while maintaining unity of their movement and country. Swap some leaders round, and by now there’d probably be some Palestinian judge reporting on the recent war between RSA and Inkathaland…
soru – indeed, I remember reading that whenever a State which attains independence through war, a civil war always[?] follows: Ireland, Finland, USA (apologies for ignoring the complexities to show a general pattern).
I just wonder what the hell this has to do with Plaid Cymru.