1For the past few years, the political scene in Wales has been reeling from the fallout of the 2016 Brexit referendum and, more recently, from the effects of the Covid pandemic. Precious truths have been learnt along the way from both events: firstly, that Brexit, seemingly a “done deal”, could have life-changing repercussions on the devolution settlement in Wales; and, that the devolved Senedd and its government have proven that they are more than able to manage the worst national health crisis of modern times.
2Bearing in mind the path Wales has travelled since the beginnings of Tony Blair’s devolution settlement, it might appear useful to wonder where Wales as a political entity might find itself after leaving the EU. The rumour-mill set in motion by Welsh footballer Gareth Bale on his continued presence in the Real Madrid team seemed to be a good place to start, albeit rather jokingly. Celebrating with his team-mates at the end of a World Cup qualifying match in November 2019, the Welsh footballer held up a banner on which were printed the words “Wales. Golf. Madrid. In that order”!1 Gareth Bale’s endorsement of the mantra suggests that prioritizing is at the heart of all future well-being. In a reshaped UK, Wales’s politicians and citizens alike may need to establish a clear order of objectives to attain if the future existence of Welsh governance is simply to prevail.
3Nowhere has this been discussed more effusively than in the echo chambers of social media. The frenetic activity around politics on social media in Wales has been incessant in recent years. And more precisely, the question of Welsh independence, that had so far been a niche in Welsh politics, has broken into new territory in terms of outreach and visibility.
4This paper will therefore attempt to focus on how social media has fed the political debate in Wales since Brexit by examining the most salient elements of the debate though a series of questions: Who are the main players on the field? What have they contributed? Why is there such a flurry of activity and is this likely to continue? And, finally, how has social media generated a new framing of Welsh identity and political discourse in Wales, an analysis that will be greatly aided by the theories of Charles Taylor on expressivism and spaces of mutual display?
5The result of the Brexit referendum in Wales came down firmly on the side of leaving the EU: with ‘Leave’ at 52.53% and ‘Remain’ at 47.47%, there was just under one percentage point difference with the result in England.2 For many, the prospect of seeing Wales and all that the devolution settlement represented becoming an afterthought of a super-charged Westminster was a source of real anxiety. Without the benefits of European regional funding and the export markets for Welsh products that the EU offered, the prospect of becoming a reborn “EnglandandWales” seemed to loom large.3 What had been a fairly dormant Welsh independence movement since the Scottish referendum of 2014 awoke, like the legendary dragon.
6Political commentator Guto Harri touted the term “Wexit”, stating that, although the prospect of such a Welsh exit of the UK seemed far-off, “there is a dissatisfaction with the status quo”.4
7Certain other UK factors were feeding into the debate in Wales, not least the prospect of a second referendum on Scottish independence and the possibility that this might be won by the independence camp this time round.5 Activists in the Welsh independence movement warned that, if Scotland were to break away, Wales needed to work to have a referendum on Welsh independence in place, “so that if something changes in Scotland we in Wales are not left with our pants down.” 6
- 7 “Yes Cymru: the debate on Welsh independence has begun for good”, Samuel Parry, March 23, 2017, blo (...)
8Then there was the question of the reunification of Ireland, not altogether impossible either.7
- 8 “As for the rise of Yes Cymru, Brexit undoubtedly played its part. Leaving the European Union was t (...)
9All in all, the disruptive nature of Brexit succeeded in convincing some Welsh activists that the solution to protecting what Wales had so far achieved was to broach the question of independence.8
- 9 “The other point concerns the UK Government and what happens if they continue to undermine devoluti (...)
10Westminster governments, however, prove to be the best recruiting sergeants for separatists in the British Isles. With the ultimate objective of shoring up any trade agreements it made in the post-Brexit period, the government of Boris Johnson and its passing of the UK Internal Market Act of 2020 put paid to the idea that the present devolution settlement in the UK would be off-limits to any attempts at being dismantled.9
11Back in 2020 what appeared even less likely of contributing to the independence debate in Wales was the turmoil any government would face in the likelihood of a pandemic. Sure enough, Covid has changed the very perception of devolution in Wales, as health is a devolved matter. Little did commentators think that the cheese-loving, rather unsexy Mark Drakeford, Labour’s First Minister in Wales, would reap the benefits of his management of a crisis that no-one could have imagined even a few years ago.10 His professed support of a reformed union of the four component nations of the UK still has tinges of the “clear red water”, a term coined by Drakeford himself in 2002 and used to great effect by Labour First Minister Rhodri Morgan.
12So how has the question of Welsh independence been presented to the population of Wales? And more importantly, can the percentage of those in favour or against be measured? A Yougov poll of June 2017, shortly before Theresa May’s snap election, asked 1,000 Welsh voters their views on Welsh independence. Voters were asked to respond on a scale from 0-10 where 0 was strongly against, to 10 strongly in favour. The results were interesting: some one quarter of the electorate stated they were in favour (7-10), a little under a half against (0-3) and 27% in what one might term the “indycurious” bracket between 4 and 6. An average score of 3.8 emerged. When the results were broken down according to people’s party political vote, Plaid Cymru voters turned out to be the most positive about independence at 5.9, followed by Labour at 4.1, and the Conservatives, most hostile at 2.2.
13In the same YouGov poll a second question was put to voters: if Theresa May’s Conservatives were to win the election, how would they view Welsh independence Here the overall average of the Welsh electorate reached 4.3 with the opposition falling to under 40%. There was a shift in the views of each party’s supporters, with Plaid voters reaching an average score of 6.9, Labour voters 5.1 (now favouring independence by a margin of 4%) and Conservatives barely moving to 2.3. Political commentator Dafydd Trystan declared it to be “a most interesting poll, and data for the first time to show the very real existence of indycurious Wales!”11
- 12 Podcasts on most of the main streaming platforms, in which guests are asked whether they are open t (...)
14The results encouraged a tsunami of social media activity that has swept through Wales like a mountain stream from the summit of Yr Wyddfa. The Conservatives under May held onto power in 2017, Boris Johnson was swept into Downing Street in 2019, but still the torrent of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok has washed over Wales, in particular Welsh youth. From being simply “indycurious”, as of March 2021 people are now being asked “you yes yet”12, as if the question is no longer “if” Wales chooses to hold an independence referendum, but “when”. And when the time comes, many activists in the movement feel that the ground work of information will have to have been laid beforehand.
15How exactly is Welsh independence presented on social media? The main social media channels are all being used13: Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, TikTok, Instagram feature innovative and attractive ways of engaging with the Welsh public. The use of videos, memes and podcasts is prolific. Everything is indeed tailored to engage with a young audience, ensuring in turn that Welsh independence is anything but a “boring” subject fit only for politicians.14 The levels of youth engagement are high, purposefully appealing to a young Welsh audience: 16 and 17-year-olds were able to vote in the Welsh Senedd elections of May 2021 for the first time, even though the turnout of this age group in the May elections was disappointing.15 However, a Savanta ComRes poll of March 2021 conducted for TV channel ITV showed that support for Welsh independence was highest amongst people aged 18-24, with close to 60% of people within this age bracket showing support for an independent Wales.16 But polling and voting are two different things.
- 17 “On May 11, the first ever match for an independent Wales took place in Cardiff. Hosted by independ (...)
16The Welsh independence movement has also strenuously endeavored to present itself as having no affiliation to one party. It follows in this the model set in Scotland: All Under One Banner proved an effective organizing principle for the Scottish independence movement. It has been replicated in Wales, with AUOB Cymru organizing marches in north and south Wales until the pandemic put an end to these.17
17Finally, an important element of any movement that sets out to convince people of the validity of its case, especially one as revolutionary as Welsh independence, is access to information. The Brexit referendum shone a worrying spotlight onto the lack of in-depth media coverage of Wales and all matters Welsh. It is therefore quite obvious that the void in Wales-specific media has been met with various attempts to provide the population with information deemed useful for a healthy political debate in Wales. Online sites have proved a fairly inexpensive way of filling the void. One, nation.cymru “a news service by the people of Wales, for the people of Wales”, set up in 2017 by Ifan Morgan Jones, a journalism lecturer at Bangor University, recently claimed to have half a million readers and 1,000 subscribers.18
18Online activism in Wales takes on many forms and a rapid overview of the diversity of sites available reveals some influential social media accounts active at the moment. Twitter accounts range from the feisty “Welsh Independence Memes for Angry Teens”,19 with its youth-oriented iconography inscribed with the Welsh words “Mi ddaw ein dydd” (Our time will come), an age-old Welsh battle-cry, to the satirical send-ups of “Welsh Bollocks”20 and its Welsh-language version “Bolycs Cymraeg”, set up in May 2015. Both accounts are supportive of an independent Wales. The superficial outrageousness of the accounts is, nevertheless, put to use to further more long-term goals: the Twitter account “Fiery Welsh Memes for Feisty Independent Dreams”21 was recently used to encourage Welsh teens to take up their new right to vote in the Senedd elections:
https://twitter.com/FieryWelshMemes 1 June 2020
Calling all 16/17 Year olds of Wales! Today is officially the day you are recognised as voters to our Senedd! The next election is less than a year away! And were excited to see your turn out, here's a meme I've due this milestone of our Senedd's Democracy! - Iwan yr Olaf
- 22 In a recent interview, a YesCymru activist acknowledged the power of social media and admitted that (...)
19Despite the overt lack of seriousness, the influence of such iconography should not be underestimated: many young Welsh people get most of their political “information” from such accounts and when the promotion of Welsh independence is factored in, it is tempting to pinpoint these ephemera as being the main explanation for the failure of Welsh independence to move into the political mainstream through tangible votes in elections. However, there is probably a longer game at play here.22
20Similarly, Hansh, a Welsh-language Youtube channel for young people developed by Welsh-language broadcaster S4C and whose videos receive up to 70,000 views on a regular basis, is very active both on Twitter and Facebook. The content is in Welsh, but a very relaxed, youth Welsh, in which authenticity of expression overrides questions of “correct” Welsh, one of the main reproaches that Welsh learners are confronted with and that many of them give as one of the reasons that put them off learning the language. There is also a conscious attempt to feature the youth of North and South Wales, often in playful banter between “Gogs” (north Walians) and “Hwntw” (south Walians): the regular video feature Bwrdd Twristiaeth Hansh (Hansh Tourist Board) in which young people all over Wales give a tongue-in-cheek tour of their home town or village, is one great way to give an all-encompassing Welsh identity to the youth of Wales. Whilst not endorsing a pro-independence platform, Hansh reflects what young people in Wales are debating, whether it be gender, BLM, mental health, violence against women or the environmental questions of the final of the Miss Wales contest! The mot d’ordre that transpires is that young people can achieve the same objectives since they have the same preoccupations as other youngsters in the UK, so that activism could very well be used to great effect in the promotion of a Wales in which these preoccupations are decided upon by young Welsh people.
21Other social media accounts that have taken off over the past few years are more overtly political. Desolation Radio, an online site offering Welsh culture and politics podcasts set up in October 2016, present also on Twitter and Facebook, is left-leaning in its politics and pro-independence. Other political parties, some of them which could even be termed to be splinter groups of larger parties, are actively backing Welsh independence on social media. Undod (the Welsh word for “Unity” or “Solidarity”) describes itself as a “democratic, non-hierarchical, republican movement established to secure independence for Wales and a better future for her people”,23 that was set up in November 2018, and would seem to bring together some former young members of Plaid Cymru who feel that Plaid is no longer “left” enough for them.
- 24 Gwlad fielded candidates in the 2019 UK general election against Plaid Cymru in the constituencies (...)
22Gwlad (“Nation” or “Homeland” in Welsh) is present through its own website and Twitter account and describes itself as a centre-right, pro-independence, pro-Brexit movement and was launched in Llanelli in August 2018.24
23Labour4IndyWales has had a Twitter account since 2017 and, as its name suggests, is made up of Welsh Labour members or supporters who are also in favour of Welsh independence. In a reaction to the CommRes opinion poll of March 2021, that showed that 39% of those polled support Welsh independence, Labour4IndyWales had this to say:
The Labour Party has a duty to actively listen to this groundswell of popular opinion and to seriously consider how best we achieve a socialist Wales. Through engaging with the movement as it is, rather than how they imagine it to be, our party will find it has potentially more in common with the 39% than it may think.25
24The technical factors in play should also be recognized since they can explain the rise in interest in certain types of social media. Whereas on Twitter and Instagram, a person’s location plays no part in the algorithms determining the content that person is most likely to see, the same is not true of a relatively new player on the scene, namely TikTok. This recent social media channel is able to take the user’s specific location into account, to the point of even directing videos in which people with a certain regional accent interact. The following situation is the result:
With TikTok, a distinct Welsh identity now exists online, with those in favour of Welsh Independence picked up by the algorithm’s location tracking and able to attract new people to the movement. Welsh TikTok creators tend not to post exclusively about Welsh Independence; and are primarily just visibly Welsh, occasionally creating Welsh-specific content. This increases a sense of solidarity and distinct culture independent from that of Britain as a whole, making the idea of an Independent Wales appear somewhat less intimidating. With this groundwork laid, some decide to publicly support YesCymru on the platform, as the algorithm picks this content up for Welsh users.26
- 27 See “The rise of Yes Cymru and why people are joining in their thousands”, walesonline, November 8, (...)
- 28 See “Is the Brexit war over or has it just begun - what now for the Union?”, Owen Worth, https://ww (...)
25However, one organization has become something of a social media phenomenon in Wales, namely YesCymru. “To see what does appear to be a grass-roots independent movement taking off in this way is something new. It’s grown to the point where it’s bigger than any political party in Wales other than Labour.”27 These are the words of Richard Wyn Jones in November 2020 when asked to comment on the phenomenal rise of YesCymru. Set up in the summer of 2014 a few months before the Scottish independence referendum, its membership has grown steadily from a few hundred activists to reach a total of 18,000 paid-up members today, earning it the title of the UK’s fastest-growing political organization in 2020.28 People have most noticeably been joining since the beginning of the pandemic, with membership doubling from 2,500 to 5,000 in the spring of 2020.
- 29 See “YesCymru returns to live campaigning with a new online festival”, nation.cymru, March 18, 202 (...)
- 30 See “The rise of Yes Cymru and why people are joining in their thousands” in whicb Richard Wyn Jone (...)
26With a basic membership fee of £20 per month, YesCymru now sits on a treasure trove of funds, enabling it to produce high-impact campaigns on social media and in conventional media channels alike. It functions on the grassroots level through a network of town or village groups who meet up to plan events to promote independence for Wales. Face-to-face meetings have of course been impossible during the various lockdowns and this is where the social media presence of YesCymru has been so crucial. The organization has some 40,000 followers on Facebook and various Twitter accounts. YesCymru is most visible to the general public on marches in support of Welsh independence – three have taken place so far in Cardiff, Merthyr and Caernarfon. And yet it is through social media that YesCymru is most prolific, inciting what its website declares to be a “digital uprising” to spearhead the independence movement in Wales.29 All in all, Welsh political pundits have been compelled to acknowledge the arrival of a new player on the scene.30
27To understand how much of an impact YesCymru has had on social media, the following slide showing mentions of YesCymru on Twitter for the period between April 13 and November 2, 2020 is edifying31:
28It is interesting to note that the peaks in mentions coincided with certain events making the news in the whole of the UK. The Dominic Cummings Bernard Castle incident provided a first flurry of activity in May 2020, followed by the Westminster vote on free school meals for children in England on October 21 – with the Conservative party voting against – to end in the highest peak of mentions on October 31st when UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak decided on generous furlough payments for England when a new lockdown was announced, although he had denied the same measure for Wales when a new lockdown was announced in Wales a few weeks earlier. This goes to show that paradoxically the Welsh Twittosphere shows an interest in the political decisions taken in Westminster applicable to England, when decision-making in those fields is devolved to Wales. The fact that YesCymru registers high social media activity at these times would seem to suggest that the Welsh Twitter accounts view Westminster decision-making as unfair to Wales, thus fuelling aspirations of independence. The Rishi Sunak episode resulted in 2,000 new YesCymru members over the 2 days following the more generous furlough provision for England.
29So how has YesCymru impacted the Welsh political scene? Its use of digital media demonstrates a more tech-savvy, inclusive, apolitical approach to political activism. As mentioned previously, YesCymru’s local group network has enabled the organization to share national information, which has proved crucial in a time of lockdowns. Thirdly, the attractive iconography it produces is fast creating a collective Welsh identity on social media. Fourthly, its use of social media broadens the appeal of independence beyond the traditional political base. It is reaching out to young people, ethnic minorities and LGBTQ communities, something that traditional political parties are not always able to do. Finally, what more proof is there of YesCymru’s constant pressure on the Welsh political scene than to see the question of independence being debated in the Welsh Senedd for the first time on July 15, 2020?
- 32 “The social media bubble which delivered YesCymru such success has now also became a cauldron of na (...)
- 33 “But outsiders have watched on bewildered as internal divisions have consumed YesCymru from top to (...)
30What could possibly stop the rising star of YesCymru? The organization has recently sailed into troubled waters, resulting in the resignation of its central committee and its chair, founding member Sion Jobbins.32 Internal lines of fracture around accusations of transphobia and ethnic diversity have steered the good ship YesCymru into a perfect storm, making it look ungovernable.33 There are growing calls for the organization to become more professionalized in its activities, more transparent.
- 34 “This piece was going to be written anyway, but it’s come at a time of public disagreements over th (...)
31Social media has contributed vastly to this in-fighting, with particularly nasty spats carrying on on Twitter. Many would say that aggressivity is inherent to Twitter, that YesCymru is not a political party and that it therefore lacks the discipline of a party line.34 It would be paradoxical if the creativity produced through social media were to end up unleashing the worst excesses of self-expression, thus leading to the destruction of the ideal that social media was set up to promote.
32For social media is nothing without expression. And its mantra is most definitely sentio, ergo sum.
- 35 Taylor Charles, A Secular Age, Harvard University Press, 2007.
33In order to find some meaning to these events, it may be useful to turn to philosophers to make some theoretical sense of it all. The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor proves to be a fruitful departure for some guidance. In his 2007 book entitled A Secular Age,35 Taylor includes a chapter on “The Age of Authenticity” in which he examines the cultural revolution that has been on-going in North Atlantic civilization since the 1960s. He traces this back to the Romantic period, stating:
- 36 Ibid, p. 473. My italics.
… the understanding of life which emerges with the Romantic expressionism of the late 18th century, [is] that each one of us has his/her own way of realizing our humanity, and that it is important to find and live out one’s own, as against surrendering to conformity with a model imposed on us from outside, by society, or the previous generation, or religious or political authority.36
34This would seem to apply aptly to most activity on social media, where most people are busy finding and living out their own humanity.
35Taylor goes on to claim that the drive to realize one’s humanity can generate certain contradictions in self-expression, leading to a turn in social imaginary, thus causing trivialization. Once again, social media activity would seem to correspond to this observation.
36For Taylor, nowhere is this trivialization better illustrated than in people’s appearance, in particular through fashion, a space of horizontal, mutual presence, devoid of any common action, that is reduced to being a space of mutual display. The logical conclusion is that “consumer culture, expressivism and spaces of mutual display connect in our world to produce their own kind of synergy.”37 Commodities become vehicles of self-identity, yet “real individual autonomy” is not attained.
37It is tempting to see the use of social media by the movement for Welsh independence in this light: Twitter and TikTok provide spaces of mutual display, they are busy producing their own kind of synergy, but there is no real individual autonomy that could lead to any lasting adhesion to achieving a collective ideal.
38Wales has for several generations produced movements of dissent and the subject of this article is merely the latest in a long line dedicated to instituting change for the Welsh. The channels by which various protest movements have expressed themselves may vary in their technology, but ultimately that expression throws up some common features. Like the Parliament for Wales campaign of the 1950s and the language protestors on Trefechan Bridge, Aberystwyth in 1963, the contemporary movement for Welsh independence, more especially its vociferous representations on social media, are nothing new in the Welsh sphere of dissent, something that might aptly be summed up in the words of T. Robin Chapman as he points out four common features to protest in Wales:
- 38 Chapman T. Robin (editor), The Idiom of Dissent: Protest and Propaganda in Wales, Gomer, 2006, p. x
The first is that protest throws culture into relief: it challenges consensus and calls what was acceptable suddenly into question. It obliges culture to explain itself. Second, the discourse of protest, because of the context in which it inevitably occurs or the reaction which it inexorably provokes, is unnatural language for unnatural times; it is language in extremis, vulnerable, accusatorial, savage, simultaneously mannered and emotional. Third, protest takes a brass-rubbing of culture: it can make clear on paper what cannot always be seen clearly in the fabric of culture itself, by highlighting the raised letters on its surface. And fourth, protest itself makes cultural choices. When a protestor uses the discourse of health and sickness, encroachment, or battle, he or she does so, consciously or unconsciously, in the same way that a writer uses language. Protest is never just an act, in either sense of the word.38