Becoming A Welsh Nationalist....Or Just The Way My Mind Works

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Ten years ago I was not right wing but otherwise wayward in my vote. I owned shares (actually still do - guilty of laziness not hypocrisy - will deal with that when we eventually move). I strove for happy boredom. Content in domesticity, family, football and reading.

Now I'm a committed Welsh nationalist. I look back and wonder how this has come about. After all the easy option would have just to have said "I'm English as long as I'm comfortable fine".

Recently someone asked me how is it I've changed. It's a good question. After all in many ways I haven't I still the fifty five year old football/reading curmudgeon I was when I was fourteen. This I will admit rambling post attempts in baby steps to answer that point.

One thing I do know is that I'm comfortable with supporting the underdog. Even though it's a premier league team for example supporting West Ham is not the easy option. I chose as explained before because it was the closest team to where I was born but nonetheless I'm comfortable with it. I could have gone the simpler route of supporting Arsenal like most of my family do. But no. For when West Ham wins the league, the cup, all European World and Galactic competitions I know I was there when but just the right thing to do.

Similarly Welsh independence. In a week when Welsh Labour for the first time acknowledged the possibility of independence I supported it when it seemed fanciful. Not saying that it still needs a push to get it over the line but independence as an option for Wales' future is no longer laughed at.

(Now let me stress I'm claiming no credit for the popular change in mood  - Just explaining that my mind is willing to consider options which would seem odd at the time)

Here's another example I have a preference for Barry Town over Penarth and Harlow in Essex over Epping.

"You like the dumps" said my mother.

No my mother is wrong. But I do have an instinctive liking for places which whilst no one would call them fashion capitals are nonetheless better than their reputations.

I suspect my Welsh nationalism starts from a few factors then. My inclination towards the underdog. My dislike for the arrogant incompetence of Welsh Labour and the sheer evil of the Westminster equivalents. And whilst the proposed (not actioned) closure of the Tata steel plant in 2016 was the catalyst I think now it was something bubbling within me anyway.

I don't sound like an Eastender (though I am) just Southern English. Yet here I am willing to campaign for a nation to wrench itself from the Serf Nation mentality Westminster has set for it and make itself free.

So I neither look nor speak like a cliché Welsh Nationalist. What unionists don't understand is that I'm led to my position of today simply because it's the right thing to do.

Would I have felt the same if I hadn't met my wife (who incidentally is not a member of any political party but votes Plaid) and still lived in Essex? Regular readers will know I'm a fan of the parallel Earth "What If".

To be honest I don't know for sure. My guess is that I'd have accepted a majority vote for independence without paying it much attention. If there is one thing I've learnt since I've moved here it's that unless it's factory closures or Rugby Wales rarely gets the same attention from the Disunited Kingdom option than even Scotland.

Where would I have been politically in England? Probably whoever would have the most effective non Right wing candidate. After all the Nationalist option is not available and it would appear anyway that England is turning into a country where anything to the left of the Conservatives is now categorised as a dangerous Communist reactionary to the English way of life.

But of course that's probably me in a parallel universe. I'm in this one. In a Disunited Kingdom that is getting more insane by the second and the supporter of a cause which upon looking and hearing me speak you'd have thought I'd be diametrically opposed to.

Perhaps ultimately moving to Wales has changed me in ways that I'm still not fully understanding. Perhaps it has opened certain doors in mind that would have remained forever shut had I stayed in London.

Freedom of movement does that.

Until the next time.