The Curse of Merlin III - Identity what Identity?

There's nothing quite like a trip to North Wales to make you think about who you are. Am I getting out of touch with my homeland? I was born in Pill (Pillgwenlly), still Newport's most deprived (and depraved) borough. It's a long time since I left Wales to become a 'quizling'. We used to called the Welsh speakers the viet-taff (or is it Taffi-ban?) - so the tension between the different regions of Wales is still as strong now as it was then.

Wales' south-eastern industrial population may not have all the trappings of other regions but is it any less the Welsh for that - I don't think so? We refuse to learn Welsh because we don't want to lose our welsh identity - English is our mother tongue - English is a language of Wales - is it not?

Then there is the question of Nationalism. During my teenage years I was an paid up member of the ultra-left - it goes with the territory afterall. I think it was Kate Roberts who wrote that Wales is under the 'triple net' - language, religion and politics. So for me politics has always been a stronger force than the others - which is hardly surprisingly given my roots.

Whatever the problems that beset the people of Wales, are they really deep down about nationality? I think lifestyle and social class are as valid a candidate for the core or base of society - from which so many structures and problems grow. Isn't it always the way of the demigog to play the nationalist card on any and every issue?

Back in Newport in the 1970s I was a young radical - not even out of school and bunking off to be on the picket-line with striking building workers. It brought me into contact with Irish labourers, amongst whom were fugitives from Ireland's 'troubles'. Into this melting pot - welsh nationalists were drawn. It was a bit of a dilemma for the neo-marxists, who had but recently inherited the mantle of the moribund communist party of Wales.

'Rebel in the soul'
How did it all start this political thing? Being a rebel was the only way to survive at school after age eleven. Either that or a victim be. Casting my mind back to my first overt act of political rebellion - it was always intimately connected with the whole nationalist thing - but never straight forwardly so. It was the tour of the Springbok rugby team - a racially segregated side from South Africa and therefore very controversial. I lived a stone's throw from the rugby ground - but had no natural affinity for the players - I was too much of a wimp for that. The newly formed anti-apartheid thing was in the news but was hardly expected at a redneck place like Newport. There was to be a picket of the match - I can't remember from whom I learnt it - but it seemed like such a good idea. I'm not sure i really understood the issues but the idea of standing outside the ground with placards sounded perfect to me. It was my first meeting with my own kind. I remember being particularly shocked then impressed by the presence there of the school Religious Studies teacher - I forget her name. I guess she had me marked down as just another oik but that day she made a point of saying hello.

But whoa - did it cause a row at home. I never did manage to get my placard out of the house. It can't have been too long after that my older brother Roy, who had actually joined the Communist Party, was asked to leave. I was grounded. Why such a strong reaction, my father had afterall been brought up in Moscow - the Maesglas suburb of Newport that had consistently elected communist town councillors? Maybe that was it - familiarity breeds contempt? Stories of the 1926 General Strike still did the rounds of Maesglas - lots of railwaymen lived there. When my grandfather - a former stoker - cold-shouldered someone in the street - my father asked why - 'because', came the reply, 'he went over the wall during the strike. Such was the bitterness following the defeat of the strike that nobody spoke to that man again - nobody went to his funeral. Politics was a serious business - the kind of thing that could ruin your whole life if you weren't discerning. And in the 1960s, apart from the occasional Labour interlude, most people were happy with the conservative consensus. The communists were seen as a moribund fifth column.

I asked my economics teacher what he thought of the communist newspaper the Morning Star. He told me it was the worst of the gutter press. I never could bring myself to read a copy afterthat even though I guessed that was not a balanced view - but it maybe gives an idea of the zeitgeist. The communist party was a spent force, a pale reflection of its glory days. A new ghost was haunting Europe - Leon Trotsky. Legend has it that my brother went to one of those monster Anti-Vietnam war demos in London - maybe he was even there on that fateful day outside the American embassy in Grosvenor Square. There was a splendid riot. He met one of the new trotskities called Pat Jordan and invited him to come speak to the communists of Newport. After the meeting the whole branch upped and joined a little organisation, headed by the likes of Tariq Ali and Jonathan Guinness which went by the soubriquet of the International Marxist Group. I being still a minor was earmarked for its youth section - the Sparticus League. My first ever political outing, was to London for the unification conference of both organisations.