The lesson from 25 years of devolution is that only independence can secure Welsh democracy

Phyl Griffiths, Chair of YesCymru

It’s frightening to think about how close we came to not getting our own national parliament when the referendum was held in 1997.

With 50.3% of those who voted saying they wanted devolution, the margin between continued disempowerment and a historic step forward was a small one.

In the end, there were only 6,721 votes in it, but thankfully that was sufficient to get us over the line.

The rest is not quite history because there is much more of it that is yet to be written.

The question is, who will do most of the writing?

Will it be us, the people of Wales?

Or will it be written for us by the Westminster establishment?

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Self-governance

Where opinion in Wales is heading on this is abundantly clear. It is heading decisively towards more self-governance.

A further referendum was held in 2011, and in that the result was far more decisive, with 63.5% of voters supporting more powers for what was still at that time called the National Assembly for Wales.

The appetite for more self-governance has only grown since then.

For example, a YouGov poll commissioned by YesCymru last year suggested that over 75% of Welsh residents favour control of the Crown Estate being handed over to Wales.

There is also a clear direction of travel on the question of independence.

In 2014, the year YesCymru was launched, a poll conducted by ICM Research showed support for independence to be as low as 3%.

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Remarkable

The turnaround in public opinion since then has been nothing short of remarkable, with a recent poll by Redfield & Wilton indicating that support for Welsh independence is at 35%

What this demonstrates is that the Welsh public is rapidly losing faith in the Westminster establishment to govern in its interests.

This is a reaction to the fact that Westminster has made a complete hash of things.

The economy has tanked, living standards are falling, public services are a mess, poverty is endemic and our people are suffering as a result.

Though the vast majority of the Welsh people and the overwhelming majority of their representatives in the Senedd firmly support Wales getting more powers, it is abundantly clear that there is significant reluctance to this in Westminster.

Though our national parliament has been invested with further powers over significant areas of legislation over the last quarter of a century, the flow of power has not gone in one direction only.

Backlash

In the last few years, we have seen a backlash in Westminster against this emergent self-determination.

Through the anti-devolution and anti-democratic Internal Market Act, establishment politicians in London have moved to claw back powers over swathes of important regulations and billions of pounds of funding.

Through this law, they have made overruling the Senedd in its areas of competence a regular occurrence.

The strict limitations that constrain the Senedd and thusly the ambition of our nation are clear to see.

Under the Westminster system, there is much that remains outside the reach of our people and the Senedd that represents them.

We do not control the vast majority of our taxes or our finances. We don’t control our welfare system. We do not control our justice system. We do not control our foreign policy.

Westminster

Under the Westminster system, we do not control whether the powers the Senedd currently has will remain in place in the future.

We do not control whether our Senedd will even exist in the future. A majority vote in the Westminster parliament could easily be used to scrap it. There would be absolutely nothing we could do under the current constitutional arrangement to stop it.

Though the Senedd is now secure in the hearts and minds of the Welsh people, its future remains under threat.

The great strides our young democracy has taken forward since its birth in 1999 is something to take pride in. But this is not a time to over-celebrate, to back-slap or rest on our laurels.

Not at a time when our democracy remains fragile and our country faces enormous and deep-seated challenges.

This is a time to renew our commitment to Welsh self-government as well as our determination to secure its future.

The lesson from 25 years of devolution is that only independence can guarantee Welsh democracy will continue to exist.

It is time for those who believe in a free and independent Wales to campaign with renewed vigour – not for its own sake, but to empower us to build a nation that reflects our values of fairness, equality and justice – a nation that is ambitious not for a lucky few but is ambitious for the betterment of all.