Wales and Britain The Story of Wales

'Are you British?

'Are you Welsh?

'Are you a bit of both?

'Since WWII, the pace of life here has been hotting up.

'And our sense of belonging has been shifting.'

The modern story of Wales is all about these two flags.

The Red Dragon and the Union Jack, fighting for prominence.

But the positions are changing.

And that makes the final chapter of our story much more exciting.

'In this series, we've traced the story

'of life in Wales across 30,000 years.

'We've followed humanity's journey from cave dweller to modern citizen.

'Since the dawn of history, people have been fascinated

'by the passage of time itself.

'But in the last 70 years,

'Wales has changed more rapidly than ever before.

'In this final part of our series,

'we'll see Wales fight for a British victory.

'A Welshman battles

'to set up Britain's most cherished institution.

'The British Parliament votes to drown a Welsh valley,

'sparking a debate about democracy and language.

'A new generation of sporting heroes sets the flags waving.

'And television itself becomes part of the story of Wales.

'As our nationalised industries decline,

'our sense of nationhood changes.

'We become a society of commuters and consumers,

'much like the rest of Britain.

'But our sense of identity and of our own history

'revives and strengthens.

'Wales and Britain...

'nation and state...

'we'll hear that it's not quite as simple as a race.

'This story of Wales has all the tension and drama of a dance.

'The Second World War.

'Wales suffers and fights shoulder to shoulder with the rest of Britain

'under the leadership of Winston Churchill

'and, of course, under the Union Flag.'

SIREN WAILS

'And the war comes to Wales.

'German bombs set Pembroke Dock ablaze for three weeks.

'And there are devastating raids on our major towns and cities.'

For three terrifying nights in February of 1941,

the port of Swansea is hammered by German bombers.

The firestorm can be seen in the sky for miles around.

It's clear that when the fighting is over,

this town will have to be rebuilt.

Lives will have to be rebuilt.

There are thousands of Welsh people in the armed forces.

Their lives will never be the same again.

'In every Welsh town, you'll find a memorial,

'like this one in Tredegar, to those who make the ultimate sacrifice.

'The whole of Britain united against fascism.

'It seems obvious now, but it isn't something

'the authorities in 1939 take for granted.

'They take deliberate steps to bolster patriotism,

'as an expert in the period, Doctor Sian Nicholas, reminds me.'

Sian, I'm interested in this concept of Britishness.

The idea of Britishness is obviously fundamental

to the idea of getting everybody together for the war effort.

The idea of it being a people's war.

So, on the radio, for instance, accents become very important.

You want a Welsh accent, you want a Scottish accent,

you want a rural accent to balance an urban accent.

In the BBC, in the Ministry of Information even,

do not use English where you mean British.

You see the memos. Do not use English where you mean British.

It upsets people in other constituent nations of Great Britain.

I don't think they get it perfect.

A famous example is JB Priestley in his Dunkirk postscript,

where he's talking about what an English epic it is and says,

"When I say English, I really mean British."

But that's a problem through the whole war.

A lot of people in England, when they say English, they really meant British.

-They still do today.

-They still do today.

It's something relatively new.

The idea that you do recognise every part of the country

within the idea of being British.

-TELEVISION: "This is the BBC..."

-'The BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation,

'stopped its regional services during the war.'

"Here is the news. Two Germans..."

'But its single, unified, UK-wide station

'is careful to reach out to Wales.

'And not just in English-language programmes.'

What actually you find is from February 1940,

at 5:00pm every night on the Home Service, you have the news in Welsh.

-And that goes right through the war.

-For everyone?

-For everybody.

Welsh, which would have been compartmentalised on the Welsh region,

becomes a national language for the duration of the war.

I wonder what they made of that in, I don't know, Scunthorpe or Hull,

-or even Essex, or somewhere like that.

-I can't imagine.

And on Tuesdays, after the news in Welsh,

you had 20 minutes of Awr y Plant - Children's Hour.

'When victory comes, Wales, like the rest of Britain,

'rejoices and waves the flag.

'And there's no doubt about which flag it is.

'Our returning troops are determined to make a new world, a new society.

'And no wonder.'

In 1945, people who live in places like Tredegar

have to put up with some rather basic conditions.

They don't have any inside toilet, no central heating,

certainly no televisions or telephones.

What's needed is a new Wales.

But any strategic decision to build that new Wales

will have to be taken at a British level.

Wales is fully plugged in to British institutions.

We don't have many institutions of our own in any case,

apart from the University or the Eisteddfod.

We don't even have an officially-recognised capital city.

'Wales is looking for British answers.

'And it's to Westminster that Welsh eyes turn in the 1945 election.

'Despite winning the war, Winston Churchill is thrown out of office.'

CHANTING

'The voters want Clement Attlee,

'and the decisive reason is the Labour Party's promise

'to create the Welfare State,

'which the Beveridge report of 1942 had proposed.'

Labour wins because it talks about better housing.

Of support for the unemployed.

Of heavy industry owned by the people

and not driven by the kind of private profit

that built this impressive building, Bedwellty House.

In a way, it's a victory for old Welsh working-class traditions.

The solidarity of the pit, the co-op and the choir.

All of it linked to a big agenda for change.

We have to be resolute about it and clear about it

and say we can only safeguard employment for British workers

by socialist planning in Great Britain

and socialist planning in other parts of the world.

APPLAUSE

'Labour's leaders want change that embraces all of Britain.

'One of them is Aneurin Bevan.

'He was born into a mining family in Tredegar in 1897.

'He left school at the age of 13, he worked down the pit.

'At 21, he was running a club

'that provided medical care for the local community

'based on contributions made by the miners themselves.'

This isn't an orthodox government.

And I'm not an orthodox Minister of Health.

'Unorthodox, he certainly is.

'As Minister for Health in the 1945 Labour cabinet,

'he's getting the chance to put into action on a much grander scale

'what he'd been doing in Tredegar during the 1920s.

'Bevan is going to Tredegar-ise the rest of Britain.'

'On July 5th, the new

'National Health Service starts...'

'Bevan is a firebrand.

'Though for some, his tongue is a little too sharp.'

If you, if you're as quick on the job as you are on the questions, you're pretty quick.

LAUGHTER

'Maybe it's because he's a Welshman.

'But he's much more than a rabble-rouser.

'You don't force through the most far-reaching change in healthcare

'in the teeth of fierce opposition from senior doctors

'unless you're on top of your brief

'and you're a specialist at the negotiating table.'

How could anyone deny Aneurin Bevan

his place among the political greats of the 20th Century?

For the scale of his ambition and his monumental determination.

The scheme he devises, the National Health Service,

enriches the life of just about every family in the country.

It is still cherished and fought over today.

It's a great example of an idea pioneered here in Wales

which benefits the rest of Britain.

'Like many other parts of Britain, work in Wales

'is still dominated by the old heavy industries.

'Attlee's government nationalises the mines

'and the post-war boom gives fresh impetus to coal and steel.

'In the late '40s, the Steel Company of Wales begins to drain lakes

'and marshland near the beach in Aberavon.

'They shift the sand dunes

'and raise the level of the whole site by three metres.

'And all to build the most modern steelworks in the world.

'Down the road, the Baglan Bay petrochemical complex

'and the Llandarcy oil refinery.

'This is about to become a modern, industrial boomtown.'

It doesn't look like Treasure Island, does it?

Certainly not in this weather.

But that's what they call this place.

This is the massive Sandfields estate in Port Talbot.

Built to house thousands of workers and their families.

Because Port Talbot, after the war, is all about heavy industry.

Good money to be earned.

And the housing conditions are far better than in the valleys,

where most of these people come from.

So, yes, in many ways, it is Treasure Island.

'There is a flipside to how rapidly our world is changing these days.

'It's how different even the most recent past must have been.

'Today's world moves at a pace our grandparents would find dizzying.

'And they're excited by tastes that seem...

'well, rather vanilla to us.'

This is a very Welsh experience, isn't it? For me, at any rate.

Coming to the seaside without the sunshine.

The annual Sunday school trip comes to mind.

I think it's fair to say that people in Wales in the 1950s

and early '60s have a rather limited notion of leisure.

But as living standards start to rise,

so do people's expectations.

And they start to look beyond the horizon

for more exciting possibilities.

'All the conveniences that American housewives are enjoying

'are becoming available to Welsh women.'

TELEVISION: "A woman who proudly owns a new Hoover..."

'We're even making labour-saving white goods here in Wales,

'as Hoover's factory at Merthyr Tydfil keeps on growing.

'Welsh women have never had it so good.

'But the vacuum cleaner is not the only noise

'to reach Wales from across the Atlantic.'

ROCK AND ROLL MUSIC

'It's easy to forget how shocking the first blast of rock and roll is

'for Welsh ears more at tune to hymns and arias.

'But actually, industrialised Wales

'has been fully part of the modern world for three generations by now.

'By 1955, our newly-designated official capital city

'is full of dancehalls and cinemas

'and clubs with all kinds of modern sins, if that's what they are.

'They can easily cope with pop music

'and enjoy it and adapt it

'and produce its own stars in the new modern idiom.

'Shirley Bassey emerges from a community

'which has always been ready to rock -

'Butetown, or Tiger Bay.'

# It was St David's Day

# When we docked in Tiger Bay

# Tiger Bay... #

Butetown was a profoundly intercultural,

multicultural community with a huge amount of talent.

I knew a black woman in Butetown who spoke good Norwegian.

She was not Norwegian, she was a cosmopolitan.

I'll tell you a story.

Um...Sheikh Zayed, who I knew rather well,

who recently died, who was a local imam,

um, I was talking to him once about a photograph that I'd seen

of a Muslim procession that went on annually on Muhammad's birthday.

CHANTING

And so I asked him,

was this a traditional celebration that came from the Yemen?

And he sort of laughed, and he said, "No".

"We saw the Catholics at Corpus Christi had a nice little procession

"and we thought it was a pretty good idea

"and so we decided to have our own."

'Butetown's special racial mix

'comes from its history as the world's busiest coal port,

'attracting sailors from all around the world.'

Crucial to this story is that almost all the immigrants were male.

Males who then married or had relationships with local women.

Many of whom might have been from the South Wales valleys or Cardiff.

And so you get a community of males who are from different countries,

but of women who are local.

'Butetown poses questions about Welshness

'in a post-war nation

'which is still overwhelmingly white.'

I think that being black and Welsh

is less problematic in some ways than being black and English.

Welsh identity includes a kind of notion of being anti-colonial.

Of being an oppressed people.

So when people say, "We were slaves," they say, "And we were coalminers."

You know? Then, "Kids went down the mines and it was awful," and so on.

And, er...you know, even occasionally, the joke that

everybody's black under the ground and so on because of the coal dust.

So there is a sense in Wales, quite a deep one,

that we are an oppressed people

who have some kind of identity with other oppressed people.

That's different than, say, economic integration.

So if you asked a question about employment, job opportunities and so on, it's different.

And I think that very often, because people feel fairly comfortable,

that it's very rare that someone insults you in the street.

That people are mostly nice to you. So you can live in that place.

It doesn't necessarily mean it's a land of opportunity.

'Butetown is about to be redeveloped.

'The housing stock here and elsewhere

'desperately needs modernising.

'All over the country.

'In Wrexham, Caernarfon, the valleys,

'new council houses are going up...

'and up...and up.'

CHORAL SINGING

'Change is coming, even to Wales' most settled communities.'

In the heart of rural Wales in the 1950s,

the traditional Welsh way of life is still strong.

The people of these communities have grown up together.

They know each other. They tend to be Welsh speaking.

They tend to be loyal members of church and chapel.

And they're bound together by those values of community

and Christianity and Welsh-speaking culture.

And suddenly, all of that seems to be under threat.

'Television is an alien intruder.'

'TV can be awkward.

'It's the mountains, see.

'But extra transmitters are coming along.'

'In homes where Welsh has always held sway,

'the English language is now advertising all the delights of modernity.'

Life here isn't all Bible black. It's very pleasant.

Lots of nice village pubs around.

Someone's got to be drinking in them.

But the fact is, in rural Wales in the 1950s,

if you enter licensed premises, it does say something about you.

And it is the kind of thing your neighbours are going to notice.

Though there is one day of the week

when they don't need to be on the lookout.

That day is Sunday, when the doors of the chapels

and churches are open and the pubs are firmly shut.

'But now that tradition is put to a referendum.

'Eastern Wales votes for Sunday service of the alcoholic kind.

'Dividing the country in two.'

That dividing line passes right here, across the Loughor Bridge.

I'm not talking about the new bridge, I'm talking about the old bridge.

You can see the approach to it here today.

This is the dividing line

between Glamorgan and Carmarthenshire.

Still a very important dividing line today, believe me,

between Swansea and Llanelli.

In 1961, after the vote,

this was the prime dividing line

between two different versions of Wales.

This side, Glamorganshire, wet.

That side, Carmarthenshire, very dry.

'The symbolic importance of Sunday closing may be hard to appreciate

'now that we've all experienced 21st-Century licensing laws.

'But it shows how many people feel their traditional way of life

'has to be defended as we move into the swinging '60s.

'If you want a more graphic sense of the threat,

'come to this peaceful reservoir near Bala.'

'In 1961, despite massive popular opposition,

'this dam wall is under construction.

'And there's nothing anyone in Wales can do to stop it.

'The bill to dam the Tryweryn River to provide water for Liverpool

'has been up before Parliament.

'It means drowning the village of Capel Celyn.

'When the vote is called, one of the 36 Welsh MPs abstains,

'the other 35 all vote against it.

'The bill is passed, just the same.'

You know, it's one thing to contemplate

the vast expanse of Llyn Celyn from the shore,

but to take on the scale of events here,

you need to come onto the lake itself.

And to be immersed in the silence in the early morning like this,

I have to say, is a profound experience.

It's a silence that speaks of loss.

The loss of a precious Welsh-speaking community

in the heart of Wales.

And yes, we can argue about the political waves

that Tryweryn produces,

but there is an irony here too.

Because the village of Capel Celyn,

which lies submerged deep beneath these waters,

plays a bigger part in our national life

than it ever would've done

had it been left in peace.

Is it any surprise that this becomes

the most famous piece of graffiti in the Story of Wales?

Cofiwch Dryweryn.

Remember Tryweryn.

Well, Tryweryn is remembered.

Because it kick-starts the two big engines of change in Welsh life

for the rest of the 20th Century.

I'm talking about devolution and the language movement.

RADIO: Bydd terfyn ar y Gymraeg tua dechrau...

'In a radio lecture in 1962,

'the writer and prominent nationalist Saunders Lewis

'predicts that the Welsh language

'will be dead by the end of the century.'

RADIO: Trwy ddulliau chwyldro yn unig y mae llwyddo.

'Revolutionary means are needed to save it.

'The lecture sparks the formation of the Welsh Language Society.

'Its protests capture the spirit of the time,

'but divide English and Welsh speakers.

'To address the democratic deficit,

'the Council for Wales and Monmouthshire.

'An advisory body with no elected mandate,

'but the only national forum Wales has,

'recommends the creation of a Welsh Office.

'When Labour wins the 1964 general election,

'the former collier and veteran MP for Llanelli, Jim Griffiths,

'becomes the first Secretary of State for Wales.

'But for nationalists,

'a Welsh Office reporting to the British government is not enough.

'They want more.

'And they seem to have a following wind.

'The historian John Davies

'was an eyewitness to the election of Plaid Cymru's first MP.'

-John, you were here.

-I was here, and it was a very remarkable night.

I mean, for anybody who had been

associated with politics in Wales,

it was, I felt, a turning point. There were people crying.

There were people yelling with delight.

Gwynfor Richard Evans, 16,179.

APPLAUSE

And then they came out to the windows there to announce.

There were rumours coming through, but nobody quite believed it.

And when they heard that it was true and that it was quite a decent majority, in fact,

people were absolutely dazed.

And people couldn't believe it.

I mean, the idea that Plaid Cymru could win a seat.

It was generally lagging around 5%-10%,

even in the most promising seats.

That it could jump to 38%, which is a huge jump in electoral terms,

seemed, to many people, impossible.

This election has made history.

So many people have declared, through their vote,

that Wales is a nation

and that they intend securing for this nation a full national future.

'The result also highlights a debate within the nationalist movement

'between supporters of civil disobedience

'and those like Gwynfor Evans, who back more conventional politics.'

He had been a very strong advocate of constitutional action.

People said, "The constitutional path isn't taking us anywhere."

And that was the kind of tension you had in the early '60s.

When he won here in Carmarthen in 1966,

it put paid to that sort of protest, to a very great extent.

It stilled the whole thing.

The Cymdeithas carried on with its own protests,

but on the broader political front,

the notion that action through elections,

through constitutional means, was the only path forward

was one of the most important results of the election here in Carmarthen.

'So the Carmarthen by-election is a victory for those nationalists

'who believe that home rule can be secured through the ballot box.

'From now on, nationalism isn't just about protest,

'civil disobedience and revolution.'

The political landscape is changing.

And for a while, it looks as if the nationalist pitch of Plaid Cymru

will bring seats here, in the South Wales valleys.

Not just in Welsh-speaking Wales.

But it doesn't happen. That momentum stalls.

And it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that here in Ebbw Vale, for example,

what motivates people isn't nationalism, it is nationalisation.

Their big local industry is being taken into public ownership.

There's a sense of confidence, a sense of pride.

That industry is steel. British Steel.

'The British Steel Corporation

'brings together the UK's 14 main steel-producing companies.

'After years of underinvestment,

'steelworkers can see a bright new future.

'And they're helping to forge that future themselves

'through the powerful works council.

'But if South Wales reckons it's got a grip

'on a thriving future in steel and coal,

'one terrible Friday morning

'reminds the valleys and the whole world

'of the price that heavy industry can exact.'

Pantglas Junior School Memorial Garden.

Dedicated to 116 children

and 28 adults

who lost their lives,

October 21st, 1966.

'A massive heap of spoil from Merthyr Vale colliery

'collapses onto the village of Aberfan.

'20 houses and the Pantglas junior school are buried.

'Despite the enormity of the disaster that day,

'the chair of the National Coal Board, Lord Robens,

'goes ahead with his plans to be installed as

'Chancellor of the University of Surrey.

'He doesn't arrive in Aberfan until the following evening.

'At first, Robens claims the disaster was caused

'by natural unknown springs beneath the tip.

'The existence of these springs was common knowledge.'

Did you give an explanation of your interview

when you said that no-one could have known

the centre of the mountain was turning into slush because of a stream?

Well, I answered all the questions that were put to me

and I hope that the answers did convey such explanations

as were required by the tribunal.

'In the final stage of the disaster tribunal,

'Robens concedes that the NCB is at fault.

'An admission which would have made

'much of the 76-day enquiry unnecessary

'had it been made at the outset.

'But Robens doggedly refuses to fund the removal

'of the remaining tips from Aberfan.

'The work is eventually paid for by raiding the disaster relief fund

'that had been raised by a public appeal for the bereaved families.

'The tragedy of Aberfan

'is the tragedy of Wales' most terrible accident.

'But it is also a story

'of the distance between ordinary people in Wales

'and the bosses of a nationalised industry

'organised on a British basis.

'Wales and Britain. So intimately linked,

'but sometimes pulling in different directions.'

By the end of the decade,

those underlying tensions

come to a head right here at Caernarfon Castle.

The occasion is the investiture of the Prince of Wales.

It is one of the biggest royal pageants of the 20th Century.

Despite a vigorous campaign by some nationalists

and a failed bomb plot, the event goes ahead,

watched worldwide by a television audience of many millions of people.

But what is the dominant Welsh attitude to this event?

An opinion poll published on the day itself

suggests that three quarters of Welsh people

are delighted with the choice of Charles as Prince of Wales.

But how do we square that with poll after poll

that suggests Welsh people want self-government as well?

FANFARE

I, Charles, Prince of Wales,

do become your liege man of life and limb.

FANFARE

It is indeed my firm intention

to associate myself in word and deed

with as much of the life of the Principality as possible.

And what a Principality!

'After all, he is joining a winning team.'

COMMENTATOR: A lovely run by Gravell.

A chance for Fenwick. JJ Williams is bound to score.

What a try!

'Wales and rugby.

'Broadly speaking, in the 1970s, football is just as popular.

'Female fans are in the minority

'and North Wales hasn't even caught the bug yet,

'and yet, it's rugby and Wales that seem to go together.'

# Ei gwrol ryfelwyr gwladgarwyr tra mad... #

'To find out why, I've come to a British Legion club

'to meet an historian of modern Wales, Doctor Martin Johnes.'

Martin, let's talk about emblems of Welshness.

The biggest emblem of all for lots of people, rugby.

Rugby is very important as an expression of Welshness

because it was one of the few popular areas of life

where Wales could say, we are a nation,

we are distinct from the rest of Britain.

Rugby had helped keep alive a popular sense of Welshness.

It was able to do that because it didn't involve any questions

about what Welshness actually meant.

You didn't have to speak Welsh to follow the Welsh rugby team.

It didn't really matter what part of Wales you were from,

what class you were from.

COMMENTATOR: ..Gareth Edwards. Edwards over...

Rugby brought Wales together without raising any awkward questions.

..Can he score? It would be a miracle if he could!

He may well get there! And he has!

'No awkward questions, maybe, but some awkward moments.'

Wales played Japan. They played the Japanese national anthem,

then started playing God Save The Queen.

And really unexpectedly, the crowd started booing God Save The Queen.

And you can't hear the band, according to the press reports.

From that moment, the Welsh Rugby Union started to say,

when England are playing, or even Scotland,

because that's the anthem they wanted, it's fair enough.

But when other countries are playing Wales, should we be playing God Save The Queen?

And in 1974, Wales dropped God Save The Queen for the visit of France.

And that's a really symbolic moment.

'According to The Times, it's through rugby

'that the Welsh express their tribal loyalty and surface nationalism.

'But is it a symbol of anything deeper?'

Being Welsh really mattered to people in the 1970s.

And rugby is a great expression of that.

But it only mattered so far.

Nobody imagined Wales could survive on its own economically.

Most people didn't feel tension between being Welsh and being British.

Back in the '70s, clubs like this were full of men.

Does the role of women change as the '70s progresses?

The 1970s sees the number of working-class women

who are working rise hugely.

They might not have been getting paid the same as men

or working the same amount of hours.

They were relatively limited in the kind of jobs they could do, but they were working.

And that made a big economic difference to Wales.

They were also starting to question some of the bastions of life.

Women, before the '70s, were often barred in clubs like this.

In the 1970s, they are literally banging on the door, asking to be let in.

When they are being let in, they're asking to be served.

Even asking to be served in a pint glass.

There was a case in Newport where a woman made an official complaint

to the government in London that she'd been refused a pint.

'And Newport is one of those places

'which is much better connected in the 1970s.

'The extension of the M4,

'like the later upgrading of the A55 in the North,

'eases the path from Wales to the centre of the British economy.

'But that economy is in trouble.

'The price of oil soars and British industry can't compete.

'In 1975, the Ebbw Vale steelworks partially closes.

'Nationalisation has turned into rationalisation.'

..Something that might be popular in Ebbw Vale tomorrow, but fatal...

'Between 1976 and 1979, 60,000 jobs are lost in Wales.

'Interest rates are 28%.

'The International Monetary Fund

'has to bail out the British economy.'

In the middle of all of this turmoil,

the people of Wales experience

one of the most explosive political campaigns of the 20th Century.

We are really going... If we want extra resources...

It affects these rural Welsh-speaking parts

just as much as it does

the industrialised English-speaking ones.

On St David's Day 1979,

the Welsh people take part in a referendum.

The Labour government is offering them a Welsh Assembly in Cardiff.

And by a crushing majority of 4-1, they say, "No, thanks".

And the impact of that result is still being debated today.

Some people see it

as one of the most shameful and demeaning episodes in Welsh history.

There is another perspective.

Given the economic mess of the time,

it can be seen as a simple expression of priorities.

People were more concerned about jobs

and livelihoods than about anything else.

APPLAUSE

'Labour is in disarray

'and Margaret Thatcher sweeps to power in 1979

'with a mandate to sort out Britain's problems.

'But when the Conservatives go back on a promise to set up

'a Welsh-language television channel, nationalists make a stand.

'For Gwynfor Evans, it might be his last stand.

'He threatens to fast to death.

'But he wins the argument.'

The government has been humiliated. The government has been defeated.

And that by a comparitively small people.

'The Tories are for turning after all,

'and S4C hits the airwaves.

'British living standards start to rise again in the 1980s.

'Wales becomes a summer playground

'for those who can afford to splash the cash.'

It's not difficult to see why the hardworkers of Manchester

and Merseyside invest so much of their leisure time

and their money here on the North Wales coast.

But they're just a small fraction of the great influx of people

who come in from England to Wales over the years.

They come here to live and to retire and to work, of course.

But in the 1980s, that trend increases.

There's more disposable income. They start to buy property.

Permanent homes and holiday homes.

And they buy them not just in areas like Llandudno,

but further inland, in the heart of Welsh-speaking Wales.

Often outbidding some of the locals in the process.

And some of the people who care for the language

are now concerned that a television channel won't be enough.

'Violence is back in the news.

'Across the decade, there are more than 200 attacks

'on holiday homes in Welsh-speaking areas.

'Though there are some arrests, the identiy of those

'behind Meibion Glyndwr, the Sons of Glyndwr, remains a mystery.

'The support they seem to have in some communities

'is seen as a sign the Conservative government

'isn't doing enough to protect the language.

'1980.

'Government-owned British Steel

'makes 6,500 Shotton steelworkers redundant.

'For north-east Wales, it is a body blow.'

But it's worth reminding ourselves

that Wales does embrace Thatcherism to quite an extent.

Things are changing.

The old heavy industries are weakening.

The emphasis on the individual is strengthening.

And radical policies,

like allowing council house tenants to buy their homes, are very popular.

And after the 1979 election, it's possible for the Conservatives to say

that you can travel from the fields of Monmouthshire at this end of Wales

and, without one sleeve in Conservative-held territory,

you can walk all the way to Ynys Mon,

the Isle of Anglesey, here in the north.

'At the next general election in 1983,

'Wales elects even more Conservative MPs to join Mrs Thatcher's crew.

'14. A record number in modern times.'

And here's the significant part.

Even those voters who are not backing Mrs Thatcher

are still looking to Westminster

for the answer to their political problems.

It is still very much a British agenda.

'But that may be about to change.

'The year-long strike by the National Union of Miners

'is a watershed for industrial Wales.

'The solidarity of whole communities is put to the test.

'They pass with flying colours.

'But they do end up on the losing side.'

What I would say about that strike is that it wasn't about Wales at all.

It was about a class struggle. It was about wage struggles.

And yet when it was ended, and when the NUM was defeated,

there came a sense very slowly, I think,

to the people of this world that what they had been experiencing

from the 1960s through the 1970s had in fact come to a dramatic end.

That strike ended the particular kind of industrial,

male, working-class world

that Wales had predominantly been about in the 20th Century.

And I think that Wales dematerialised. It sort of vanished.

You could certainly taste a sense of despair in Wales

at the end of the '80s and into the 1990s.

The institutions that it had created to defend it,

including the unions and the Labour party, were powerless.

So, what were they now going to do?

'The choices for the industrial valleys are narrowing.

'Deep mining disappears.

'A rich history seems redundant.'

The Welsh people had to find a new way of expressing their sense of society.

Their sense of grievances and perhaps their sense of a national identity.

That sense of nationhood isn't something that can be taken for granted.

Look, Wales is an entity. It's a geographical entity.

But it's a fragmented one. It always has been.

Wales is united because of the language.

But it's also divided because of the language.

Wales comes together because of its history.

But there are many histories of Wales

and many different ways of expressing that identity.

So, how did we find a new form of unity?

We certainly decided as a people

to invest in those civic institutions

that would give us a sense of citizenship.

We became citizens of Wales as never before.

'But a citizens' Wales can't shield its industrial communities

'from the effects of losing so many jobs.

'Young people suffer most of all.

'Poverty and unemplyment leave scars on a whole generation.

'Drug and alcohol abuse soar.

'And the government's determination to restructure the Labour market

'becomes a divisive issue.'

'But there is a plan.

'Butetown is about to be redeveloped all over again.

'The Cardiff Bay Barrage is meant to regenerate business life,

'and not just in the capital.

'Big projects and inward investment pulling in manufacturers

'from abroad are intended to get the whole economy moving.

'And the momentum towards a citizens' Wales gathers pace.'

When we think of national institutions in Wales,

we think of places like this.

The University of Wales here in Aberystwyth.

Or the National Eisteddfod or the National Museum.

They're the obvious ones.

But in the middle of the 1980s,

someone decides to draw up a list of these national bodies.

And they come up with 466 of them.

It's a kind of devolution process by committee.

As the Welsh Office creates more and more quangos,

you have unions and charities and other bodies

all wanting to have a presence in Wales.

And the fact is, under the Conservative and Unionist party,

Wales is quietly organising itself

in ways that are notably different

to the rest of the United Kingdom.

'And you can't move anywhere in Wales without spotting that.'

There was a time when our roadsigns had no Welsh on them.

I remember the shock of seeing a bilingual roadsign for the first time.

And I'll be honest, I was very pleased.

But under the Conservatives, in the 1980s,

with Margaret Thatcher in charge,

funding for the language mutliplies.

And that trend continues under John Major's government

with a Welsh language act cementing the place of the language in society

and in schools as well.

No-one can be in any doubt

that Wales is a nation of two languages.

Even if one of those languages is missing the letter X.

Ni'n mynd i ganol y dref, plis. Diolch yn fawr.

'In communities which turned to English two generations before,

'Welsh-medium schools are now full to bursting.

'Migration from England to coast and countryside is still on the up,

'but industrial Wales is rediscovering its Welshness.

'The language has ceased to be such a divisive issue.

'People who say they're Welsh rather than British...

'well, most of them, are now to be found in the former coalfield.

'But does this mean

'a majority is ready for devolution?'

For the second time in 18 years,

the Welsh are being offered

a modest measure of self-government, but will they take it?

26,000. So I think that's a yes all round.

Well, look at that!

'Incredibly emotional pictures, really.

'People crying and dancing and laughing.

'To go from depression to elation'

in a matter of moments is an incredible feeling.

Good morning.

And it is a very good morning in Wales.

The shift from 1979, when the Welsh people voted 4-1

against a Welsh assembly,

to 1997, where there was that wafer-thin

6,721 votes difference

between the yes and no votes

is really substantial, by any stretch of the imagination.

The objective was to get the majority, and we got the majority.

The biggest changes happened in areas which were traditional Labour-supporting areas.

If you look across the South Wales valleys,

areas like Neath Port Talbot,

all the way really across that mining or former-mining belt.

But the slim majority becomes an issue for the new assembly.

It wasn't a great foundation for the new politicians when they took office.

They were up against it from the start.

Justifying their existence, the existence of the institution,

the location of the National Assembly.

Every country anywhere in the world has some resentment expressed

towards its capital by those areas most remote.

'The Assembly struggles to make an impact across the country.

'In its first decade, it has no more success in lifting Wales out of poverty

'than the British government has achieved over the centuries.

'Much of Wales still receives funding intended for Europe's poorest regions.

'Educational performance is weak.

'Health and social problems trouble us.

'But the Assembly does have its successes.

'Working effectively when farms are affected

'by foot-and-mouth disease in 2001.

'And the principle that Welsh issues should be tackled

'here in Wales begins to gain wider acceptance.'

All of the opinion polling,

all of the shift in national identity indicators

shows that Welsh people are very pragmatic.

They recognise that it is appropriate and right

for decisions about Wales to be made at a Welsh level.

But then, on the other hand, they're very clear

that there is still real integrity

within the union of the United Kingdom.

They want to be part of that Britishness as well.

'As our traditional industries have disappeared,

'we've become a nation of commuters, like so many others.

'Wales is much more diverse these days.

'Home to people from many parts of the world.

'Multiculturalism no longer starts and ends in Butetown.

'And yet miraculously in a globalised world,

'Wales has kept a sense of itself.

'A referendum in 2011, albeit with a low turnout,

'backs law-making powers for the Assembly.'

Wales has said yes! CHEERING

Today, an old nation came of age.

'Support for Wales these days seems genuinely deeper

'than surface nationalism.

'We are a people with roots,

'with a real sense of where we come from.'

'Hundreds of schoolchildren march through Tonypandy,

'remembering the miners' riots 100 years ago.'

This is living history. This is history in the making.

'History matters to us.

'It's what has shaped the spaces we live in.'

That's why it's so important to have these beautiful buildings

like the Senedd and the Wales Millennium Centre,

because they give us frameworks in which to dream of futures,

to be critical of ourselves,

but also, to project outwards.

'Gwyneth Lewis is the poet

'whose words sing out from the Millennium Centre.'

One of the big payoffs of devolution

has been the way in which the definition of Welshness

has expanded, grown more complex,

has become more hospitable, I think,

in a way that I think is very creative.

It's given us a freedom to play with our sense of identiy

and it's broadened the base of people who are excited about being in Wales,

about living in Wales and getting some serious work done here.

'Gwyneth Lewis believes this excitement

'is beginning to change our sense of belonging.'

The two terms Welshness and Britishness

have been dancing a tango for a long time.

INSTRUMENTAL

And there are periods when we're dancing very close, cheek-to-cheek.

Other times, we're pulling apart, we're angry with each other.

There's tension. And that's actually what creates the dance.

These are not small shifts in our sense of ourselves.

The time since the beginning of devolution has been quite a painful one.

We've been looking at the new assembly, learning to crawl,

walk, stumble, and there have been failures.

And these have been painful to watch.

Welshness and Britishness,

I think it's actually a dynamic relationship.

The more we're able to tolerate that change in that development,

the more it changes into something very creative for citizens.

We're freed from worrying about things,

we're just enjoying the dance.

We're at the stage now that the story is to be continued.

But I think we're developing a far more sophisticated view

of what it is to be Welsh and what's required

to make the best of those resources that we do have.

So I'll be very, very interested to see what happens next.

In this series, I've tried to step back from the turmoil

and the immediacy of today's news

to tell the story of an entire country

over the course of 30,000 years.

'The story of Wales, like the story of any nation,

'has seen dark days and troubled times.

'But it has never been a story of people turned in on themselves.'

You're saying we should think of Wales in a much bigger world.

'And all through its history, there have been times

'when it has lead the way.'

Llandudno copper was being exported 4,000 years ago.

'In the Dark Ages, Welsh saints carried the light of Christianity

'to Scotland and Ireland, Cornwall, Brittany and Spain.

'Welsh laws based on putting things right,

'rather than an eye for an eye,

'were the most progressive of the Middle Ages.

'In the 1700s, the Welsh became

'one of the most literate nations on Earth.'

Half the population of Wales learns to read in these travelling schools.

'And in a modern world which Wales helped to power,

'we've been leaders in technology, in education,

'in the struggle for workers' rights...and decent health care.

'Are we Welsh? Are we British?

'In the last 70 years, the balance has shifted.

'We've always been a people who love our square mile.

'Our own little bit of Wales.

'But now we also have a national frame

'in which to address our problems.

'A politics and a set of instituions all of our own.

'And above all, we are a people with a story.

'And that story gives us power.'

The story of Wales is being rewritten.

And not before time.

It's the story of a people who embrace the big world

beyond that horizon.

Not insular and inward-looking,

but imaginative and dynamic and creative.

We're an ancient people more certain of our identity

than at any point in the past 1,000 years.

And in that sense, the story of Wales has only just begun.

The Open University has produced a free booklet

for you to learn more about the history of the people of Wales.

You can call 0845 366 0253

or go to bbc.co.uk/storyofwales

and follow the links

to the Open University.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd