Monday 28 May 2018

Happy Birthday Owain Glyndwr - Eight part Video on Life of Owain Glyndwr






Cefn Caer - Replica's of the Sword of the Nation and, Owain Glyndwr's Crown, also copy of Pennal Letter






CARRYING THE BANNER OF OWAIN GLYNDWR FOR NATIONAL AND SOCIAL LIBERATION INTO THE 21st CENTURY YR AFLONYDDWCH MAWR - THE GREAT UNREST - THE WELSH SOCIALIST REPUBLICAN CONGRESS

Happy Birthday Owain Glyndwr - We carry on your vision in Pennal Letter of an Independent Wales







Wednesday 23 May 2018

A Bridge Over Troubled Waters - Pont Glyndwr Nid Pont Carlo





                      CARDIFF - THE WELSH OFFICE - ON 28th MAY 2018 at 2.00 pm 

Saturday 19 May 2018

Idris Davies "When Greed Was Born In Monmouthshire" the Scotch Cattle were also born





When Greed was born in Monmouthshire (Gwent) the working class organised themselves into the Scotch Cattle they did not just rollover and die - they fought back.

https://greatunrest2012.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/edward-morgan-of-scotch-cattle-executed.html


The Scotch Cattle were underground before and after the Merthyr Rising - they existed from 1820's to 1850's in Monmouthshire Valleys - they are the pre cursors of later working class underground movements.

The Bells of Rhymney: Is there hope for the future say the Brown Bells of Merthyr ?




O what can you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rhymney.
Is there hope for the future?
Cry the brown bells of Merthyr.
Who made the mineowner?
Say the black bells of Rhondda.
And who robbed the miner?
Cry the grim bells of Blaina.
They will plunder willy-nilly,
Say the bells of Caerphilly.
They have fangs, they have teeth
Shout the loud bells of Neath.
To the south, things are sullen,
Say the pink bells of Brecon.
Even God is uneasy,
Say the moist bells of Swansea.
Put the vandals in court
Cry the bells of Newport.
All would be well if — if — if —
Say the green bells of Cardiff.
Why so worried, sisters, why
Sing the silver bells of Wye.

BY IDRIS DAVIES


A Poem that expresses democratic thoughts and feelings about Monarchy in 2018


 


As long as those who rule the earth
Succeed to power by right of birth
All struggles aimed to break their grip
Are choked by laws of ownership.
The land we stand on is not ours,
But lies in the hands of ancient powers
And though we protest, march and vote
Their foot is always on our throat.
We cannot truly share the wealth,
For it was robbed by force and stealth
By those who claim by family tree
Dominion over land and sea.
As long as we accept this state,
The few dictate the people's fate.


By Ian Jenkins

Monday 14 May 2018

Quim Torra new Catalan president



Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr support the position of the CUP on the new President on the question of unilateral independence and Puidgemont being legitimate President of Catalonia.,

Mae Hiraeth yn Fy Nghalon - Dafydd Iwan - There's a longing my heart - May 28th stand for Wales





                          PONT GLYNDWR MY HERITAGE

                WELSH RESISTANCE IS TO THE END OF TIME

Quim Torra, proclamado nuevo President de la Generalitat de Catalunya

Saturday 12 May 2018

Free Speech in Question at the Merthyr Rising ?



Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr while we greatly appreciate the Merthyr Rising Festival we are concerned that this good example of free expression in Wales is being curtailed leading to the resignation of its Director Ian Jenkins.

The issues that lead to our concern at Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr are contained in the posting below from Vanessa Beeley :


John Pilger has given me permission to publish an abridged version of his email to the organisers of #MerthyrRising Festival 2018 sent BEFORE they took steps to withdraw myself and Patrick Henningsen from the speakers list without informing either of us.

They chose to inform Chris York of Huffington Post though, who had been emailing them and applying pressure for us to be withdrawn.

It seems the "ethos" of Merthyr Rising is to cave in to pressure from the Neocon media and to passive-aggressively support and condone the "regime change" war being waged against #Syria by their own UK Regime & US Coalition of Terror - and also to endorse the anti-Russia mania that is sweeping "Global Britain".

Truly shameful days!

John Pilger's message:

"You ask for advice. There is only one piece of advice to give -- you must stand up to the bullies and censors. Vanessa Beeley is in trouble with them because she wrote truths that countered their misrepresentation of the invasion of Syria by US and UK backed jihadists. 

Vanessa is a fine reporter, who was one of the finalists in the 2017 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, perhaps the most distinguished award for truly independent journalism in Britain, which the Guardian itself was proud to receive in the past. 

What the bullies and censors can't stand is that she has exposed the fraudulence of the UK and US funded 'White Helmets' and so they resort to craven smears. She is is not an apologist for Assad. She makes clear that 'the proudest day of my life' referred to the American Peace Delegation to Syria, of which she was a member. In any case, Vanessa has written all this, and it is the responsibility of you and me to familiarise ourselves with the background to these attacks and smears. 

The cold war mania they express is everything those you celebrate in the Merthyr Rising festival fought against. You should be proud to host Vanessa, who has my unqualified endorsement. This is a matter of free speech. Let me know if I can help further."

I do not include Ian Jenkins, one of the founders of Merthyr Rising, in my criticism, he has been a staunch supporter and defender of Free Speech.

What is a Free Nation ? James Connolly

 

Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr on the Anniversary of execution of James Connolly reminds everybody What is a Free Nation ?

First published in Workers' Republic, 12 February 1916 

Transcribed by the James Connolly Society - IRSM/IRSP
Formatted and indexed by Workers' Web ASCII Pamphlet project



We are moved to ask this question because of the extraordinary confusion of thought upon the subject which prevails in this country, due principally to the pernicious and misleading newspaper garbage upon which the Irish public has been fed for the past twenty-five years.

Our Irish daily newspapers have done all that human agencies could do to confuse the public mind upon the question of what the essentials of a free nation are, what a free nation must be, and what a nation cannot submit to lose without losing its title to be free. It is because of this extraordinary newspaper-created ignorance that we find so many people enlisting in the British army under the belief that Ireland has at long last attained to the status of a free nation, and that therefore the relations between Ireland and England have at last been placed upon the satisfactory basis of freedom. Ireland and England, they have been told, are now sister nations, joined in the bond of Empire, but each enjoying equal liberties - the equal liberties of nations equally free. How many recruits this idea sent into the British army in the first flush of the war it would be difficult to estimate, but they were assuredly numbered by the thousand.

The Irish Parliamentary Party, which at every stage of the Home Rule game has been outwitted and bulldozed by Carson and the Unionists, which had surrendered every point and yielded every advantage to the skilful campaign of the aristocratic Orange military clique in times of peace, behaved in equally as cowardly and treacherous a manner in the crisis of war.

There are few men in whom the blast of the bugles of war do not arouse the fighting instinct, do not excite to some chivalrous impulses if only for a moment. But the Irish Parliamentary Party must be reckoned amongst that few. In them the bugles of war only awakened the impulse to sell the bodies of their countrymen as cannon fodder in exchange for the gracious smiles of the rulers of England. In them the call of war sounded only as a call to emulate in prostitution. They heard the call of war - and set out to prove that the nationalists of Ireland were more slavish than the Orangemen of Ireland, would more readily kill and be killed at the bidding of an Empire that despised them both.

The Orangemen had at least the satisfaction that they were called upon to fight abroad in order to save an Empire they had been prepared to fight to retain unaltered at home; but the nationalists were called upon to fight abroad to save an Empire whose rulers in their most generous moments had refused to grant their country the essentials of freedom in nationhood.

Fighting abroad the Orangeman knows that he fights to preserve the power of the aristocratic rulers whom he followed at home; fighting abroad the nationalist soldier is fighting to maintain unimpaired the power of those who conspired to shoot him down at home when he asked for a small instalment of freedom.

The Orangeman says: "We will fight for the Empire abroad if its rulers will promise not to force us to submit to Home Rule." And the rulers say heartily: "It is unthinkable that we should coerce Ulster for any such purpose."

The Irish Parliamentary Party and its press said: "We will prove ourselves fit to be in the British Empire by fighting for it, in the hopes that after the war is over we will get Home Rule." And the rulers of the British Empire say: "Well, you know what we have promised Carson, but send out the Irish rabble to fight for us, and we will, ahem, consider your application after the war." Whereat, all the Parliamentary leaders and their press call the world to witness that they have won a wonderful victory!

James Fintan Lalor spoke and conceived of Ireland as a "discrowned queen, taking back her own with an armed hand". Our Parliamentarians treat Ireland, their country, as an old prostitute selling her soul for the promise of favours to come, and in the spirit of that conception of their country they are conducting their political campaign.

That they should be able to do so with even the partial success that for a while attended their apostasy was possible only because so few in Ireland really understood the answer to the question that stands at the head of this article.

What is a free nation? A free nation is one which possesses absolute control over all its own internal resources and powers, and which has no restriction upon its intercourse with all other nations similarly circumstanced except the restrictions placed upon it by nature. Is that the case of Ireland? If the Home Rule Bill were in operation would that be the case of Ireland? To both questions the answer is: no, most emphatically, NO!

A free nation must have complete control over its own harbours, to open them or close them at will, or shut out any commodity, or allow it to enter in, just as it seemed best to suit the well-being of its own people, and in obedience to their wishes, and entirely free of the interference of any other nation, and in complete disregard of the wishes of any other nation. Short of that power no nation possesses the first essentials of freedom.

Does Ireland possess such control? No. Will the Home Rule Bill give such control over Irish harbours in Ireland? It will not. Ireland must open its harbours when it suits the interests of another nation, England, and must shut its harbours when it suits the interests of another nation, England; and the Home Rule Bill pledges Ireland to accept this loss of national control for ever.

How would you like to live in a house if the keys of all the doors of that house were in the pockets of a rival of yours who had often robbed you in the past? Would you be satisfied if he told you that he and you were going to be friends for ever more, but insisted upon you signing an agreement to leave him control of all your doors, and custody of all your keys? This is the condition of Ireland today, and will be the condition of Ireland under Redmond and Devlin's precious Home Rule Bill.

That is worth dying for in Flanders, the Balkans, Egypt or India, is it not?

A free nation must have full power to nurse industries to health, either by government encouragement or by government prohibition of the sale of goods of foreign rivals. It may be foolish to do either, but a nation is not free unless it has that power, as all free nations in the world have today. Ireland has no such power, will have no such power under Home Rule. The nourishing of industries in Ireland hurts capitalists in England, therefore this power is expressly withheld from Ireland.

A free nation must have full power to alter, amend, or abolish or modify the laws under which the property of its citizens is held in obedience to the demand of its own citizens for any such alteration, amendment, abolition, or modification. Every free nation has that power; Ireland does not have it, and is not allowed it by the Home Rule Bill.

It is recognized today that it is upon the wise treatment of economic power and resources, and upon the wise ordering of social activities that the future of nations depends. That nation will be the richest and happiest which has the foresight to marshal the most carefully its natural resources to national ends. But Ireland is denied this power, and will be denied it under Home Rule. Ireland's rich natural resources, and the kindly genius of its children, are not to be allowed to combine for the satisfaction of Irish wants, save in so far as their combination can operate on lines approved of by the rulers of England.

Her postal service, her telegraphs, her wireless, her customs and excise, her coinage, her fighting forces, her relations with other nations, her merchant commerce, her property relations, her national activities, her legislative sovereignty - all the things that are essential to a nation's freedom are denied to Ireland now, and are denied to her under the provisions of the Home Rule Bill. And Irish soldiers in the English Army are fighting in Flanders to win for Belgium, we are told, all those things which the British Empire, now as in the past, denies to Ireland.

There is not a Belgian patriot who would not prefer to see his country devastated by war a hundred times rather than accept as a settlement for Belgium what Redmond and Devlin have accepted for Ireland. Have we Irish been fashioned in meaner clay than the Belgians?

There is not a pacifist in England who would wish to end the war without Belgium being restored to full possession of all those national rights and powers which Ireland does not possess, and which the Home Rule Bill denies to her. But these same pacifists never mention Ireland when discussing or suggesting terms of settlement. Why should they? Belgium is fighting for her independence, but Irishmen are fighting for the Empire that denies Ireland every right that Belgians think worth fighting for.

And yet Belgium as a nation is, so to speak, but a creation of yesterday - an artificial product of the schemes of statesmen. Whereas, the frontiers of Ireland, the ineffaceable marks of the separate existence of Ireland, are as old as Europe itself, the handiwork of the Almighty, not of politicians. And as the marks of Ireland's separate nationality were not made by politicians so they cannot be unmade by them.

As the separate individual is to the family, so the separate nation is to humanity. The perfect family is that which best draws out the inner powers of the individual, the most perfect world is that in which the separate existence of nations is held most sacred. There can be no perfect Europe in which Ireland is denied even the least of its national rights; there can be no worthy Ireland whose children brook tamely such denial. If such denial has been accepted by soulless slaves of politicians then it must be repudiated by Irish men and women whose souls are still their own.

The peaceful progress of the future requires the possession by Ireland of all the national rights now denied to her. Only in such possession can the workers of Ireland see stability and security for the fruits of their toil and organization. A destiny not of our fashioning has chosen this generation as the one called upon for the supreme act of self-sacrifice - to die if need be that our race might live in freedom.

Are we worthy of the choice? Only by our response to the call can that question be answered.

Wednesday 9 May 2018

Catalonia: Spain blocks Puigdemont's swearing-in again

May 28th a Day to protest for Wales - No Carlo but Pont Glyndwr







Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr supports Embassy Glyndwr call for protest on 28th May to protest naming Severn Bridge after an English Royal and not a Welsh hero like Glyndwr.

Saturday 5 May 2018

The Merthyr Rising 1831








25th - 27th May 2018 - Merthyr Rising - come visit Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr