25th October 2007
Heroes
It’s very rarely that the sound of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau is to be heard on Parliament Square. But there it was, hanging in the air, with nobody singing, a half-hearted affirmation followed in quick succession by God Save the Queen in true dual flag-staff tradition.
Here was David Loyd George, immortalised in Bronze and blue Slate.
I suppose we are meant to be proud or grateful that they finally unveiled a statue there to the only Welsh Prime Minister ever in the five hundred of years since the Act of Union (sorry, Neil).
His fiery finger-wagging form was draped in in the biggest Union Flag I have ever seen. How was it that the founder of Cymru Fydd, the anti-war agitator, all-weather radical and, for those prim Victorian times, sexual adventurer came to be eulogised as the wily, world-weary war-leader and Irish partitioner and pillar of the very Establishment he had once loathed?
Standing there in the Autumn rain sent chills down my spine. This place can rot the soul of even the finest women and men as ambition takes over when the beliefs that once propelled you here begin to fade. This Faustian compulsion is all the stronger for those of us from Wales: shut out of the citadels of power, we crave success and recognition. And back home we have cheered our blessed heroes on - from Harri Tudur to DLLG - who reached the very top, which to us has always meant London.
As Bertolt Brecht writes in Galileo Galilei….
“Pity the land without heroes….No, my friend, pity the land that needs them”
They’ll usually let you down in the end.
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alanindyfed says:
October 26th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Lloyd-George must surely be spinning on his plinth.
When the Adam Price bronze is eventually unveiled
may he be wrapped in the flag of Cymru and may the Union flag be long abandoned and consigned to the Victoria ans Albert Museum!
Alanindyfed