Britain's coal and steel strongholds flex their muscles…
Cardiff, Sunday,
Centuries of political orthodoxy have been overturned in Wales after new polling shows record support for independence.
The poll in collaboration with the TV program 'UK: The End of the Union?' (4 March) found that almost 40% of Welsh people would now vote 'YES' if a referendum were held today.
Talking exclusively to the BuffPo, a senior member of YesCymru, hailed the poll as a "major" breakthrough and warned that more and more people were "coming to the conclusion that the population of Wales is the best placed to manage their own affairs like every other country."
Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price (52), son of Welsh coal miners, declared:
"Decisions affecting Wales should be made in Wales, this is a simple matter of democracy."
A Labour spokesperson for IndyWales said it demonstrated:
"the growing discontent in the way the state is organized, and the increasing belief that there is a better way to build the Wales we want to see."
The top reasons why people would vote for independence, according to the poll were:
• Feeling that Wales has different social attitudes to the rest of the UK (53%)
• Feeling that Wales is a historically separate nation (51%)
• Unhappiness with the UK's pandemic response (39%)
But perhaps more than any of these, the Welsh dragon has been stirred to roar by unemployment and economic dislocation. When the Guardian's Aditya Chakrabortty visited Bridgend during the 2017 General Election campaign, he observed that: "Few other parts of Britain rival south Wales for its sense of economic tragedy: the area that gave the world the first iron rails, exploited for its mineral wealth and then rendered surplus to the requirements of capital. We talk of people thrown on the scrapheap; here's an entire tranche of the UK now post-growth and post-democracy." Today, the seeds of years of this neglect are bearing bitter fruit.
Talking of secession, did you know that there is a lasting secessionist movement in the Shetland Islands? It aspires for the Shetland Islands to leave, not the UK, but Scotland! The Shetlanders, you see, are historically closely linked to the Norwegian and Faroese people and are only a recent addition to Scotland. Supporters of this movement would like to see the Shetlands obtain the 'Crown Dependency' status, the current status of the Isle of Man and the Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, off the coast of France. The Movement, however, does not have any active Political Party campaigning on its behalf.
In Britain’s Northern Islands, a New Fissure Opens…
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