From Utopia to reality: Plaid Cymru
and Europen
RICHARD WYN JONES
Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, Wales
ABSTRACT. This paper traces the evolution of Plaid Cymru’s attitude towards
Europe. It does so by focusing in turn on: the place of Europe in the ideas of Saunders
Lewis, the dominant figure in the party between its foundation in 1924/25 and 1945;
the more ‘northern’ or Nordic vision of Europe that gripped the party in the post-
World War II era; and the waxing and waning of the party’s most EU-enthusiastic
phase between the mid-1980s and the present day. By adopting a longer timeframe
than is normally the case, the paper argues that Europe has played a wider role in the
thinking of the party than is often conceded; a role that was not at all or only
tangentially related to actually existing institutions. The paper goes on to argue that it
was in part the chastening impact of Plaid Cymru’s eventual exposure to actually
existing European institutions that led the party in 2003 to abandon its utopian
commitment to a post-sovereign Europe in favour of an explicit commitment to
‘independence’ as its long-term aim.
KEYWORDS: Europe, European integration, European regionalist parties, nation-
alism, Plaid Cymru, Wales
The Welsh nationalist party, Plaid Cymru, has been regarded by many scholars
as an almost paradigmatic example of a European regionalist party: a party that
has used the developing reality of European integration in order to reframe and
rearticulate its ‘regional-nationalist’ agenda becoming, in the process, enthu-
siastic partisans of the integration process (e.g., Jolly 2007; Keating 1998: 161–
83; Lynch 1996. See also Heasly 2001. For the regionalist or autonomist party
family more generally see De Winter, Go´mez-Reino and Lynch 2006). But while
this is clearly an interesting manifestation of the Europeanisation of politics and,
as such, is a topic worthy of analysis, the central contention of this paper is that
to view Plaid Cymru exclusively through the prism of European regionalism is
to miss out on the most interesting and significant aspects of the impact of
Europe and Europeanisation on the party.
Plaid Cymru’s engagement with and enthusiasm for ‘Europe’ in fact long
predates the establishment of those institutions that we now associate with the
Nations and Nationalism 15 (1), 2009, 129–147.
r The author 2009. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2009
n I would like to thank Roger Scully, Anwen Elias, Laura Cram and Neil MacCormick as well as
two anonymous referees for their comments on a previous draft. The usual disclaimers apply.

European ideal. The party’s founding ideological statement, a lecture on
Egwyddorion Cenedlaetholdeb – ‘The Principles of Nationalism’ – delivered at
its inaugural summer school in 1926 by newly installed party President
Saunders Lewis, spoke of Wales as part of a broader European civilisation.
Lewis even anticipated a day when the country would take its place in some
form of ‘League’ structure through which Wales could play a role ‘in Europe
and the world’ (Lewis 1975).1 Yet despite this, the Welsh Europeanism that
subsequently became embodied in Plaid Cymru has existed in an uneasy and
ambiguous relationship with what might be termed actually existing Europe.2
So, for example, during the referendum on the continuation of UK member-
ship of the European Economic Community in 1975, the party campaigned
for a ‘No’ vote on the basis of the slogan ‘Yes to Europe, No to the EEC’.
Even during its most European Union-enthusiastic phase in the decade or so
preceding the devolution referendum of 1997, Plaid Cymru’s commitment was
to a Europe comprehensively transformed into a ‘Europe of the Regions and
Historic Nations’; a Europe bearing little resemblance to current realities.
More recently still, the party has for the first time embraced the term
‘independence’ to describe its long-term constitutional aspirations. This
development has been accompanied by a noticeable cooling of its pro-
integration rhetoric (also noted in Elias 2008, the most detailed and author-
itative exploration of the Europeanisation of Plaid Cymru).
This paper traces the evolution of Plaid Cymru’s attitude towards Europe,
focusing both on Europe as a set of (often competing) ideals and Europe as a
collection of (sometimes competing) political institutions. The party will be
viewed across a much longer timeframe than is normally the case, thus
deepening our understanding of the place of Europe in the theory and practice
of Welsh nationalism.3 In addition, more general arguments will also be
advanced about the complexity and ambiguity of role of Europe in the
thinking of minority nationalist movements. In order to do so, the paper
proceeds in four sections. First consideration is given to the place of Europe in
the ideas of Saunders Lewis, undoubtedly the dominant figure in the party
between its foundation in 1924/25 and 1945, and a very influential figure even
after that. Lewis’s Europe was a Latin, Catholic one and, as such, quite at
odds with the nonconformist Protestant outlook of the bulk of his own party,
let alone the vast majority of his own compatriots. The second section focuses
on the period in which Lewis’s ‘southern’ Europeanism was replaced by a
commitment to an alternative, more ‘northern’ or even Nordic Europeanism;
the Europe of the small, social democratic democracies. It was a commitment
to this Europe – the Europe, as it were, of EFTA rather than the EEC – that
was in part responsible for the party’s support for UK withdrawal from the
‘Common Market’ in 1975.
A third section focuses on the waxing and waning of the party’s most EU-
enthusiastic phase between, roughly, the mid-1980s and the early years of the
present decade. While Euro-enthusiasm was clearly in part a reaction to the
developments at the European level, particularly the region-friendly rhetoric
r The author 2009. Journal compilation r ASEN/Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2009
130 Richard Wyn Jones