Relocating nationalism: on the geographies

Blackwell Publishing Ltd

of reproducing nations
Rhys Jones
The paper examines the distinction that has been made in studies of nationalism
between national elites and the ordinary members of nations. While the distinction is
useful as a way of beginning to conceptualise the mechanisms through which nations
and nationalisms are reproduced, it can also reify a boundary between national elites
and the mass membership of the nation that is, in actual fact, blurred and unstable in
character. Through case studies of nationalist campaigns relating to education and
linguistic rights in the town of Aberystwyth in West Wales, the paper argues that a
focus on the places in which national ideologies are produced, circulated and
consumed can enable us to question the distinction that is made between the national
elites and ordinary members of the nation. As well as illustrating the poly-vocal
production of Welsh nationalism, the empirical research also suggests the need to
re-examine the social and spatial contexts within which nationalism is reproduced.

key words nationalism place national elite qualitative research

Wales Aberystwyth

Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University, Ceredigion SY23 3DB
email: raj@aber.ac.uk

revised manuscript received 11 March 2008

nation’: its time of formation; its use of time; its use

Nationalism: when, why, who and where?
Studies of nationalism have to a large extent been
preoccupied with understanding the historical,
political/ideological and social dimensions of
nations. In terms of the history of nationalism,
many classical theorists have sought to determine
the modernity or otherwise of nations (Nations and
Nationalism 2004). The debate has centred on the
alleged modernity, or otherwise, of nations and has
been based on the incisive contributions of key
figures such as Gellner (1983) and Smith (1986).
Distinctions can be drawn between those who
emphasise the modern qualities of nationalism,
seeing it as a product of the material and discursive
transformations that characterised the modern period
(e.g. Anderson 1983; Breuilly 1993; Gellner 1983;
Özkırımlı 2000), and the so-called ethnosymbolists,
who stress the continuity between modern nations
and earlier ethnic communities (Armstrong 1982;
Connor 1990 1994; Smith 2003). Such work
illustrates the overwhelming fascination within
studies of nationalism with the ‘when of the
of history (Connor 1990; Hobsbawm 1983).
Other scholars have focused their attention on
the political and personal use made of nationalism
or, in other words, have attempted to make sense
of the ‘why’ of nationalism. Political scientists have
attempted to chart the ways in which nationalism
is employed as an ideology that structures political
action, most specifically with regard to the state.
Work has been conducted on how nationalism can
both reinforce (Mann 1995; Tilly 1975) and challenge
(Hutchinson 1987) state power. In a related context,
authors such as Kedourie (1960 1971) have
attempted to explain how nationalism may fill a
more personal void in people’s identity within
modernity. Nationalism, therefore, is akin to a
secular religion, which helps to provide a focus for
individual and group identity.
More recently, a loose band of social constructivist
theorists of nationalism have emphasised the
numerous social contexts within which nationalism,
as a discourse, is produced, reproduced and con-
sumed. Social constructivists have shown how

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classical theorists’ understandings of nations as
monolithic and uniform social groups are misplaced,
given the way in which all nationalisms and
national discourses are complicated and fractured
by a variety of other gendered (Enloe 1989; Nash
1996; Yuval-Davis 1997) and ethnic (Chatterjee
1986; Radcliffe 1995; Yuval-Davies 1997) identities.
The personal attributes of different members of a
nation – or, in other words, the ‘who’ of the nation
– ultimately complicate any comprehension we
have of a nation as a homogeneous group of people.
Running parallel with these debates, which have
taken place mainly in the disciplines of Political
Science, Sociology, History and Anthropology, has
been the varied work conducted on the geographies
or the ‘where’ of the nation. Following Williams and
Smith’s (1983) paper, which outlined systematically
the advantages of examining nations and nation-
alism from a geographical perspective, geographers
(and others) have explored the significance of:
territories as the spatial foundations of particular
nations, especially with regard to the idea of the
national ‘homeland’ (e.g. Anderson 1986; Hooson
1994; Paasi 1996; Penrose 2002); landscapes, as
representations of national characteristics (e.g.
Cosgrove and Daniels 1988; Daniels 1993; Gruffudd
1994 1995; Johnson 1997); and certain sites, such as
statues, memorials and museums, which act as
symbolic centrepieces of nationalist commemora-
tion (e.g. Crang 1999; Heffernan 1995; Johnson
1995; Sidorov 2000; Whelan 2003).
I want to suggest, however, that there has been a
tendency within this body of geographic literature
to examine the ways in which nations are repre-
sented above all else or, in other words, how
nationalist ideas are communicated or transmitted
through a variety of media. The impressive work
that has been conducted by geographers on the
importance of rural landscapes for the nation
illustrates this point. Daniels’ (1993) examination of
the importance of landscape imagery for the American
and English nations, Gruffudd’s (1994) work on the
importance of rural landscapes as symbolic images
of the Welsh nation and Johnson’s (1997) research
on the significance of the rural landscapes of the
west of Ireland for Irish nationalism, for instance,
testify to an overarching interest within geography
in the spatial representations of the nation (see also
Crang 1999; Heffernan 1995). I want to suggest that
geographers can also bring their particular dis-
ciplinary insights to bear on the complex ways in
which nations are reproduced. In referring to the
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Rhys Jones
reproduction of nations, I seek to draw attention to
the various individuals and institutions – and related
processes – that help to produce nations or national
discourses or alter the form that they take over
time. While some work by geographers has implicitly
addressed the way in which geographical concepts
and processes can contribute to the reproduction of
nations (e.g. Johnson 1995 2003), I would argue
that there is scope for geographers to focus more
explicitly on the geographies associated with the
reproduction of nationalism.
My aim in this paper is to outline the way in
which a specifically geographical perspective can
contribute to the resolution of a long-running
debate with regard to the reproduction of nationalism,
namely the role played by a national elite in
reproducing nationalist discourses and practices. In
focusing on this one specific issue, however, I seek
to make a much broader claim concerning the
value of adopting more geographical approaches
to understanding the complicated processes that
help to reproduce nations as meaningful communities
of people. I seek to make more concrete these
broader conceptual aims by examining how Welsh
nationalist discourse has been produced by a variety
of actors in the town and university of Aberyst-
wyth in west Wales. My first case study illustrates
how the relationship between Welsh nationalist
leaders and followers can be complicated while the
second discusses an instance in which the relationship
between Welsh nationalist leaders and followers
was subverted.
National leaders, national followers and
the reproduction of nationalism
It has long been accepted within academic circles,
if not within popular and political debate, that
nations must be produced through a variety of
social and spatial practices and discourses,
whether through state education systems (Gellner
1983), print capitalism (Anderson 1983) or modern
state bureaucracies (Giddens’ 1985; for a survey,
see Özkırımlı 2000; Smith 1998). But as well as
being a product of important structural changes
that took place during the modern period, nations
are also created through the practices and
discourses of specific individuals and groups of
people. As Kornprobst has noted
most scholars agree that structural factors, as important
as they may be, do not determine the origins and the
Relocating nationalism 321
Table I National leaders and the reproduction of nationalism

The role played Classical theories Modernists: National leaders reproduce nationalism in an instrumental manner with
by national leaders of nationalism little reference to the characteristics of their followers.
Ethnosymbolists: National leaders are heavily constrained by the cultures and
histories residing in the mass membership of the nation and in the past.
Social National leaders may seek to promote a particular form of nationalism but the
constructivists success of their group-making project is highly contingent. A variety of individuals,
differentiated in terms of gender, ethnicity and so on, may construct alternative
nationalist discourses.
Geographical May show how the character of nationalist discourse is influenced by the location of
interpretations national leaders, how leaders incorporate contested geographical imaginations within
their nationalist discourses and how a range of individuals, within particular places,
are involved in the reproduction of nationalist discourses.

evolution of a nation. Agency plays an important role.
Most emphasise the role of elites. Embedded in a
material and/or ideational context, elites invent and
re-invent nations. (2005, 403)
National leaders or elites exist in a variety of
different guises, as Smith (1998, 56) has made clear.
Whereas ‘intellectuals furnish the basic definitions
and characterisations of the nation, professionals’,
on the other hand, ‘are the main disseminators of
the idea and ideals of the nation’. These two
groups of individuals also work in concert with a
so-called intellegentsia, which represent ‘the most
avid purveyors and consumers of nationalist
myths’. Nationalist leaders are said to produce and
reproduce nationalist discourses, which are then
consumed by a large group of ‘followers’.
And yet, it is clear that the role ascribed to
nationalist leaders by various theorists varies
considerably (see Table I) (Kornprobst 2005, 403 – 4).
Modernists, as noted above, believe that nations
are overwhelmingly the product of the modern
period and tend to portray a top-down vision of
the reproduction of nations, in which nationalist
leaders are seen as the sole driving force behind
the definition of national sentiments. Hroch (1985),
in his study of nationalism in eastern Europe, for
instance, has sought to illustrate the different
stages that characterise the development of nation-
alism. The first stage, significantly, is centred upon
the actions of a group of select intellectuals, which
rediscovers a nation’s past and formulates the idea
of the nation. The idea of the nation is replicated
and extended in the second stage by a group of
professionals within towns and cities. The third
and final stage represents the transmission of the
newly defined nationalist ideology to the broader
membership of the nation as it takes on the pro-
perties of a mass movement. Hroch’s (1985) model
resembles a transmission belt in which nationalist
ideals and ideologies are generated by nationalist
leaders before being communicated to a docile and
receptive population. Hobsbawm’s (1983) work on
the ‘invention of tradition’, too, can be viewed as
another inherently top-down account of the repro-
duction of nations and especially their national
memories. According to Hobsawm (1983, 13), the
nation represents an act of ‘social engineering’
carried out by the key purveyors of nationalist
ideas. In more extreme circumstances, these types
of ideas can take on an instrumentalist hue, in
which certain individuals shape national cultures
in order to further their own personal and material
interests. Greenfeld (1992), for instance, posits that
national leaders invent nations as a way of dealing
with the contradictions and uncertainties that they
face as part of modernity. Kedourie (1960 1971)
elaborates on this theme in his study of the develop-
ment of nationalism as a series of quasi-religious
beliefs. Kedourie’s work describes the instrumental
use of nationalism by a non-Western elite as a way
of buttressing their social status within their
respective societies (see also Guibernau 2000, 992).
Such modernist viewpoints can be accused of
merely being concerned with the ideas of the intel-
lectuals, since those of the mass of the national
population matter little. In such accounts, the
‘mass’ of the ‘mass movement’ of the nation have
little to contribute apart from their weight of
numbers. As Conversi (2002, 11) has put it, they
merely represent a ‘vacuum needing to be filled
from above with cultural context’. But if nations
represent, at least in part, a series of political and
cultural ideas that can be shaped by national leaders,
they are also mass movements and, therefore, we
need to think about ‘how they have been absorbed
and assimilated by the vast majority of the world’s

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populations’ (Smith 1998, 115). Such a theoretical
stance is taken by ethnosymbolists. Nations, according
to Smith (1996, 386), are not created ex nihilio and,
if this is the case, then national leaders cannot
operate without reference to the broader socio-
cultural and historic context within which they
find themselves. A nation, according to Connor
(1994), is not formed merely on the whim of national
leaders but is rather constituted on the basis of
a shift in the experience of nationhood within
the mass of the population. This does not mean
that ethnosymbolists do not believe that intel-
lectuals and the intellegentsia play an important
role in promoting modern nations. As Smith has
argued, they
are the only strata with an abiding interest in the very
idea of the nation, and alone possess the ability to bring
other classes onto the platform of communal solidarity
in the cause of autonomy. (1998, 57)
Ethnosymbolists contend, rather, that national leaders
facilitate the promotion of nationalist ideologies
within a pre-existing cultural and historic frame-
work. Ethnosymbolists believe that we must take
seriously the mass membership of the nation in
terms of their pre-existing cultures, traditions and
stock of knowledge (see the debate in Özkırımlı
2003, 347; Smith 2003, 361– 2).
Social constructivists, too, accede to the signifi-
cance of an elite in the reproduction of nationalist
discourse, but their emphasis is placed upon the
contingency of this process. Nationalism is a
‘discursive formation’ (Calhoun 1997, 3; see also
Özkırımlı 2000, 192) and, as such, it is also subject
to debate and contestation. Conceiving of nationalism
in such a way possesses two important implica-
tions. First, social constructivists encourage us to
think about the contingent ‘success’ of the
‘group-making’ project that is promoted by
national leaders (Brubaker 2004, 11). Brubaker’s
(2004, 20– 7) recent work on the Transylvanian
town of Cluj, for instance, has elaborated on the
contingent production of Romanian and Hungarian
nationalist discourse. Despite the active production
of nationalist discourse by a nationalist elite within
the town of Cluj, the definition of Romanian and
Hungarian groupness has been low (2004, 23). The
contrast between Cluj and the neighbouring town
of Târgu Mures has been marked, where nationalist
leaders in the town have been able to encourage
the emergence of extreme forms of Romanian and
Hungarian group identities. In Brubaker’s work,
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Rhys Jones
therefore, we see how similar elite practices have
led to differing outcomes.
The second important theme emerging in social
constructivist accounts of nationalism is the
emphasis that has been placed on the poly-vocal
reproduction of nationalist discourse. If the role
played by national leaders in reproducing nationalist
discourse is subject to debate and contestation,
then it is likely that a range of different people can
contribute to this process. Nationalism can be con-
ceived of as a set of discourses and practices that
are produced and consumed in day-to-day, mundane
and popular ways (Billig 1995; Edensor 2002).
Recent work on Wales, in this regard, has begun to
show how a range of different people help to shape
national politics and consciousness (Fevre et al.
1999; Jones and Desforges 2003; Thompson and
Day 1999). Fevre et al. (1999), for instance, demon-
strate how national discourses are reproduced in
mundane social contexts, such as within local
housing markets, in which Welsh-speakers cannot
afford to compete with English newcomers.
Thompson and Day (1999), too, have noted the key
role played by individuals’ experiences in pubs
and bars in enabling them to shape their own
national identity. Similarly, Jones and Desforges
(2003) have examined the way in which the day-to-
day practices of students on university campuses
can act as mundane reproducers of nationalism; in
lecture theatres, halls of residence and bars.
There are significant differences, therefore,
between modernist, ethnosymbolist and social con-
structivist accounts of the role played by national
leaders in reproducing nationalism. The key issue
within this debate revolves around the character of
the relationship between national leaders and the
more ordinary members of a nation. To what
extent is nationalist ideology promoted by an
omnipotent elite or to what extent is it the product
of a more complex negotiation between national
leaders and the followers of nationalist ideologies?
Modernist theorists tend to view this relationship
as one that is largely one way, whereas ethnosym-
bolists portray nations as the product of a dialogue
between national leaders and the broader member-
ship of the nation. The more dominant voice in this
social, spatial and temporal interlocution by far for
ethnosymbolists, however, is that of the mass
membership of the nation. Despite these differ-
ences between modernist and ethnosymbolist
accounts of the nation, there is a sense in which
they both stress the existence of a distance between
Relocating nationalism
national leaders and the mass membership of the
nation. Modernist theorists think of this distance as
something that exists in more ideological terms:
national leaders produce nationalist ideologies,
which are then consumed by the ordinary members
of the nation. Ethnosymbolists, rather, conceive of
a temporal distance between contemporary
national leaders and the broader nation, with the
latter being the age-old repository of ethnic cultures,
histories and identities.1 Social constructivist theorists,
on the other hand, conceive of a relationship
between national leaders and the ordinary members
of the nation that is far more fluid and contested in
character. Even though national leaders may seek
to define particular forms of nationalist discourse,
the success of the group-making project that they
promote is contingent. Furthermore, ordinary
members of a nation may contribute in an even
more fundamental way to this sense of fluidity by
actively producing nationalist discourses.
This debate within the literature on nationalism
resonates with the work of other academics who
have sought to understand how elite groups affect
social change. Elitist theorists, for instance, contend
that an elite plays an important role in shaping
social norms and maintain that this grouping is a
distinct and separate social group (e.g. Mosca
1939). Classic elitist theory argues that the elite
domination of society is facilitated by the fact that
the ‘rulers of society constitute a cohesive group’,
that ‘this group is territorially based within a
nation state’, that ‘the ruling elite is “closed-off”
from the ruled’, and that ‘its members are selected
by virtue of their economic, political or ideological
resources’ (Evans 2006, 39). Classical elitist theories
have been re-evaluated in recent years and there is
now a widespread acceptance that an elite may be
relatively disparate in character, be embedded in
networks of power that extend beyond the borders
of the nation state and may well gain admission to
elite circles on the basis of a variety of social
resources. And yet, the more recent contributions
to elite theory still maintain that the elite is ‘closed
off’ from the ruled (Evans 2006, 40). Bourdieu’s
(1996) research on the role of elite schools in shaping
the character and identities of the leaders of the
French state and its related industries provides
some empirical weight to such an argument.
Well-educated and well-connected individuals
have experienced a process of separation and
isolation within various elite schools in France,
especially in the period after 1968. Such schools
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323
become tools for the continued reproduction of a
hegemonic power. The new French noble class that
attends these elite schools assumes a key role in
peopling the higher echelons of the French state
and in shaping its political, economic and cultural
project.
While such work echoes the way in which
modernist theorists conceive of the role played by
a national elite in the reproduction of nationalism,
it is equally clear that other work – for instance,
research on the history of science – has sought to
complicate our conception of the role played by an
elite in affecting social change. Shapin’s (1998, 6)
work, for instance, has sought to argue that ‘science
is indelibly marked by the local and the spatial
circumstances of its making’ and that this means,
therefore, that ‘scientific knowledge is embodied,
residing in people’. Such work is to be welcomed
since it increases our understanding of the breadth
of scientific knowledge: in terms of the places
where it is practised and developed and, poten-
tially, of the people who practise and develop it. In
geography, work by Naylor (2002) has examined
how knowledges of natural history were circulated
throughout Britain during the nineteenth century.
Natural history knowledges were produced,
circulated and consumed by different kinds of
people in a range of venues.
But in spite of Naylor’s attempt to broaden our
comprehension of the character of scientific know-
ledge, there is still a sense in which important
hierarchies of power exist within its reproduction.
His work shows how the middle-class scientific
societies of the later nineteenth century derided –
and sought to distance themselves from – artisan
scientific societies. While discussing the signifi-
cance of the laboratory in the emergence of new
scientific knowledges, Withers (2001, 17), too, notes
the importance of ‘social distinctions concerning
who had access to scientific knowledge [and] who
was to be trusted in the production of it’. Similarly,
Shapin (1988, 404) maintains that social status
informed the production, circulation and consump-
tion of new scientific knowledges. Persons of lower
social status were, of necessity, marginalised
within this process of producing scientific knowledge.
Echoing the work of modernist theorists of nation-
alism, the role of the public was to act merely as
the consumers of new scientific knowledges,
whether through public discussion in coffee houses
or through the purchase of scientific books and
journals (Golinski 1992; Habermas 1989). Similar
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comments can be made concerning the more
specific research that has been conducted on the
production of geographical knowledge. Despite
efforts to demonstrate the ‘situated messiness’ of
geography or, in other words, to show how a range
of places and people are implicated in the develop-
ment and reproduction of geographical knowledge
(Livingstone 1992), this work still maintains a
strongly hierarchical vision of the way in which
geographical knowledge is reproduced.
While there is some similarity between the way
in which the role of an elite is regarded within
studies of nationalism and the way which it is
considered in broader studies of social change, a
far ‘flatter’ and less hierarchical vision of the relation-
ship between an elite and the masses can be found
in the former set of literatures, at least within social
constructivist accounts of the nation. My aim in
this paper is to add weight to this perspective by
focusing on the intermingling of a national elite
and the more ordinary members of a nation within
particular places. In this way, my aim in this paper
echoes Agnew’s (2002, 1) excellent effort to ‘map
politics’ – or, in other words, to show ‘how political
identities and interests are structured geographi-
cally as the result of human agency in the places
where people live’. Moreover, Agnew’s claims that
‘the national and the local are themselves always
elements of a wider multiscalar context framing
social causation and political agency’ (2002, 9)
shows how the agency of individuals can connect
to broader socio-spatial networks, including those
of the nation.
But while Agnew (2002, 16) distinguishes
between the formal, top-down and elite production
of (national) space and the more localised places,
which represent the ‘outlooks and actions of
ordinary people’, I want to argue that it is difficult
to separate out national leaders and ordinary
members of the nation, in social or spatial terms.
Debates conducted between national leaders and
more ordinary members of the nation occur within
particular places before being recast and rescaled
into nationalist discourses, practices and institutions
that extend throughout the whole of the nation’s
territory (Jones and Fowler 2007a). In focusing on
these issues, I seek to undermine the firm boundaries
that have been erected between a national elite and
the mass membership of the nation within classical
accounts of nationalism. Indeed, by examining
how a national elite and the followers of national
ideologies are embedded within particular localities,
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Rhys Jones
we can begin to appreciate how the two categories
can be collapsed, one into the other.
Aberystwyth and reproduction of Welsh
nationalism
For the remaining paragraphs of this paper, I want
to take forward the conceptual arguments discussed
above. I do so through discussing in detail the
significance of the town of Aberystwyth for the
reproduction of Welsh nationalism. Aberystwyth is
located on the west coast of Wales and is a town
with a population of approximately 15 000 people.
It was originally a relatively small port and market
town and, with its connection to a rail network
during the nineteenth century, subsequently
became a fashionable Victorian resort town. Two
public institutions have shaped its social and
cultural development for much of the twentieth
century: the University College of Wales,
Aberystwyth (latterly the University of Wales
Aberystwyth and now Aberystwyth University)
and the National Library of Wales. The former, in
particular, has influenced the character of the
town, giving it and the surrounding county more
of a cosmopolitan feel than would be expected of a
town of this size located in rural Wales. Moreover,
the University’s influence on the town increased
markedly from the 1960s onwards as a result of the
former’s dramatic expansion. As well as increasing
dramatically in size, the character of the student
population in Aberystwyth changed from the 1960s
onwards as higher education became increasingly
accessible to a broader population (Ellis 1972). The
town has become further dominated by the
University in recent years: over 8000 students
study in Aberystwyth and the institution employs
over 2000 people locally.
Despite the relatively small size of the town, it
has been highly significant in the political, cultural
and social life of Wales. This elevated status
derives from many factors. First, the town’s signifi-
cance derives in part from its location in the so-called
Welsh-speaking ‘heartland’, which possesses a
great deal of cultural significance within Welsh
nationalist discourse (Jones and Fowler 2007b). In
addition, the town’s cultural significance has been
further reinforced by the preponderance of organi-
sations of national significance within it. Two of
the most important cultural institutions within the
town have been discussed above. In addition, the
town’s location in mid-Wales has meant that it has
Relocating nationalism 325

Figure 1 A map of the town of Aberystwyth showing key locations

(Source: Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University)

become the chosen location for a number of Welsh
nationalist organisations and other national organi-
sations that testify to the distinctiveness of Wales.
Examples of the former include Plaid Cymru (the
Welsh Nationalist Party) and Cymdeithas yr Iaith
Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society), whereas
the numerous examples of the latter kind of
organisation include the Farmers’ Union of Wales
and Mercher y Wawr (the Welsh version of the
Women’s Institute) (Jones and Fowler 2008, 64– 71).
In addition to these more formal locations, where
debates about Welsh nationalism have been played
out, political conversations have occurred in cafes
(such as the Home Café and latterly the Cabin),
pubs (including the Black Lion and the Coopers’
Arms (Cwps)) and Pantycelyn Hall of Residence (see
Figure 1).
The material discussed in the following sections
is drawn from a wider study, which examined the
significance of Aberystwyth for the reproduction of
Welsh nationalism since the 1960s. The main
sources of evidence for explicating the link
between the politics of place and the broader
reproduction of Welsh nationalism within the
study were: documentary sources relating to a
variety of Welsh nationalist organisations; documents
and correspondence of key activists within these
organisations; ‘semi-official’ insider accounts of the
formative years of the Welsh nationalist movement
(e.g. Davies 1976; Ffransis 1985; Tudur 1987); and
55 semi-structured oral history interviews con-
ducted with a range of individuals associated with
Welsh nationalism (for theoretical accounts of the
use of oral history, see Perks and Thomson 1998).

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The interviewees were identified using documentary
sources and a subsequent snowballing method.
Interviews were recorded and transcribed, and
subsequently coded and analysed using a mixture
of codes that were external and internal to the
interview material. The interview material quoted
in the following sections is used on the basis of the
informed consent of the interviewees.
In the following section, I discuss the way in
which a focus on place can enable us to complicate
the distinction made between nationalist leaders
and followers in the context of one specific nationalist
project, namely the campaign to form a Welsh-
medium hall of residence within the University
College of Wales, Aberystwyth during the late
1960s and early 1970s. There then follows a section
in which I discuss a second case – relating to the
Welsh Language Society’s first mass protest – in
which the relationship between nationalist leaders
and followers was subverted.
Complicating nationalist hierarchies: the
campaign for a Welsh-medium hall of residence
A key campaigning issue with regard to Welsh
linguistic and national identity in Aberystwyth
during the late 1960s and early 1970s was the need
to designate a Welsh-medium student hall of
residence within the University College. The need
for a Welsh-medium hall of residence in Aberystwyth
at the time was deemed to be crucial for two main
reasons. First, since students attending the
University of Aberystwyth during the late 1960s
and 1970s had experienced some form of primary
and secondary Welsh-medium education, then a
similar demand was made for Welsh-medium
higher education in places like Aberystwyth
(Evans 2000; Williams 2001). The provision of a
Welsh-medium hall of residence was perceived to
be part of this effort to promote the Welsh
language within the University’s educational,
administrative and pastoral institutions. Second, it
was argued by many activists that the growth of
the University College of Aberystwyth during the
1960s, along with the diffuse distribution of Welsh-
speaking students throughout a number of
different halls, was leading to a waning of the
influence of the Welsh language and culture within
the University. According to one interviewee, the
university had:
gone through a period of expansion, significant
expansion . . . Aberystwyth had probably doubled in
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Rhys Jones
size . . . The belief was of course that as the college was
expanding in terms of numbers, the percentage of
Welsh and the percentage of ‘Welshness’, if you like,
was decreasing . . . scattered in digs or in the halls of
residence . . . their influence within those halls would
be comparatively small.
The demands for the designation of a Welsh-
medium hall of residence within Aberystwyth at
this time can be seen to echo nations’ desires for a
national territory, which can afford protection for
the nation’s culture (Anderson 1986; Penrose 2002).
Oral history research amongst activists has
shown that the campaign for a Welsh-medium hall
of residence took place between 1966 and 1973 in a
variety of different forms: street demonstrations;
political journalism of different types; student
union meetings; and heated discussions in the
University Court, Senate and Council. Some of the
protests were wholly student-centred and, in this
way, drew much inspiration from the similar pro-
tests being led by students in favour of civil and
political rights in places such as Paris (Lefebvre
1969), Berkeley (Wolin and Schaar 1970) and
Warwick (Thompson 1970) in the UK (more
broadly, see Watts 2001).2 But while the protests
taking place in other locations promoted the need
to address large-scale civil injustices, the student
protests in Aberystwyth seem to have been triggered
by more banal concerns about television choices
within halls of residence, as the following quote
from one student makes clear:
when I was a student, there was one TV lounge. So
everyone went to watch Top of the Pops and Dr Who.
And you would have no hope in terms of gaining a
majority in watching Heddiw [literally ‘Today’, one of
the few regular Welsh-medium television programmes
at the time] or . . . whatever. You would always be in a
minority.
Further protests were played out on the pages of
the Welsh-medium student magazine, Llais y Lli. A
range of different tactics were deployed on the
pages of the magazine to further the campaign’s
aims, including the use of polemical editorials,
satirical cartoons and parodies of well-known
Welsh poems (Jones and Fowler 2008, 113– 23).
At the same time, another sphere of campaigning
took place in the more rarified atmosphere of the
University College’s committees. Throughout the
late 1960s and early 1970s, many committees were
seemingly dominated by debates concerning the
perceived advantages and disadvantages accruing
Relocating nationalism
from the designation of a Welsh-medium hall of
residence. Council minutes indicate that lengthy
discussions took place in Council meetings in
November and December 1967, for instance, and
again in March 1968 (UCWA 1967a 1967b 1968).
These minutes testify to the significance of certain
powerful staff members as supporters and detractors
of the campaign. The key figures in support of the
campaign, for instance, included Jac L. Williams,
the Professor of Education, Hywel Moseley, the
Professor of Law and, most notably, Alwyn D.
Rees, the Dean of Extra-Mural Studies and author
of one of the early important contributions to the
emerging field of rural geography (Rees 1950).
I do not have either the time or the space here to
provide a detailed account of the politicking that
led to the designation of Pantycelyn as a mixed-sex
Welsh-medium hall of residence in 1973 – 74 (for a
longer account, see Jones and Fowler 2007c). I want
to focus in more detail on how the lines of separa-
tion between a national elite and the more ordinary
members of the nation were blurred during this
period. I want to show, specifically, how an exam-
ination of the groundedness of nationalist activists
in particular places provides a more complicated
picture of the dynamics of the reproduction of
nations.
The character of the relationship that existed
between University staff and students is of para-
mount importance in this respect. To a certain
extent, the formality that characterised University
environments during the 1960s and 1970s may well
have retarded direct contact between staff and
students. Communication between staff and students
concerning the need for a Welsh-medium hall of
residence, therefore, may well have been limited.
One student of the time recalled that
you have to remember that we are talking of a
period . . . forty years ago . . . and students viewed
lecturers in a very different way . . . with awe.
While the channels of communication between the
University staff and students were limited, it is
evident that a few existed. The journalistic exploits
of the academic leaders of the campaign in
publications such as the daily newspaper the
Western Mail and the Welsh-language periodical
Barn provided one important way of disseminating
nationalist ideals to the student population. These
articles provided an ideological foundation for the
protesting students. One student at the time
maintained as follows:
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I have told you about the discussions that were
happening in the halls. But it didn’t happen in a
vacuum. It was obvious that it was happening against a
broader canvas. We were also reading about it . . . there
was a lot of letter-writing, articles in the press and so
on and so on. And you could read the Western Mail,
you would look at Barn, in other words, Alwyn D.
Rees, that was his platform.
And yet, this was not a simple process whereby a
national elite led a mass of nationalist followers, as
many classical theories of the national would
assert. Protests by the students also inspired many
of the written contributions in the national press. A
student petition, for example, was elaborated upon
by the so-called Isambard – a nom de plume of Alwyn
D. Rees – in various issues of the Barn monthly
periodical (Barn 1967; see also Barn 1968). The
relationship between academic staff and students is
further complicated by the fact that academic staff
were invited to contribute to the student
newspaper, Llais y Lli. The December 1965 and
February 1966 editions of Llais y Lli, for instance,
contained articles by D. J. Williams, a founder
member of Plaid Cymru, in which he expressed his
concern about the process of Anglicisation taking
place within the university (Llais y Lli 1965 1966a).
Alwyn D. Rees was also interviewed by the
newspaper in 1966 and the article provides a clear
illustration of his support of the Welsh-speaking
students within the University (Llais y Lli 1966b).
But in addition to these interactions in print, I
want to stress how connections between staff and
students also happened in physical contexts. An
important point of contact was provided by formal
classes. One individual remembered how political
discussions would take place informally within
certain academic departments, especially within
the Welsh and Education Departments, where
many of the academics associated with the campaign
taught: ‘I was meeting Jac L. Williams every day. I
was meeting Alwyn Rees every week . . . so we saw
enough of each other’. The ethos of the Department
of Education, in particular, was seen to have
provided an impetus for the promotion of the
Welsh language within the University. Staff within
the Department, who had been involved in justify-
ing the promotion of Welsh-medium education at
primary and secondary levels in different parts of
Wales, now trained their sights on the need to
increase the support for the Welsh language within
the University. Importantly, discussions within
lectures, seminars and tutorials acted as a means of
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promoting such ideas amongst staff and students,
as a former student of the Department makes clear:
I think it’s true to say that the Department of Education
in Aberystwyth at the time was an extremely influential
Department . . . There was, in truth, an intellectual
leadership emanating from the Department of
Education in terms of leading Welsh Wales . . . and
really there was almost an evangelic idea in terms of
teaching Welsh . . . and these ideas were discussed and
promoted in lectures, seminars and so on.
It is also clear that other, more informal,
connections could be made outside the lecture
theatre. One former student, for instance,
explained that he was in regular informal contact
with Alwyn D. Rees concerning the direction being
taken by the campaign for a Welsh-medium hall of
residence. Indeed, according to this individual, ‘he
was the only person, from amongst the staff, that
we saw fairly regularly’. Similarly, another student
noted how representatives of the Welsh-speaking
student body were regularly invited to meet for
informal discussions with Goronwy Daniel, the
Vice-Chancellor of the University, during the latter
stages of the campaign. The purpose of these
meetings was to outline the progress being made in
the campaign and to discuss different ways in
which its aims could be furthered.
In another context, the coffee mornings organised
in the Plaid Cymru office in Aberystwyth, one
interviewee maintained, offered an opportunity for
students to mix on an informal basis with Univer-
sity staff:
one of the most fascinating things in Aberystwyth in
that period was going to Goronwy House, now the
Plaid Cymru office, but . . . it was a centre of sorts for
Plaid Cymru at the time. Every Saturday morning,
the Plaid coffee morning would be organised. And there
the giants were, such as Alwyn D. Rees and Jac L.
Williams, there they all were on a Saturday morning,
and a chance to chat with them of course. And so it
would become a deep discussion about all kinds of
topics. And in those meetings a lot of things were
organised and promoted and so on, weren’t they.
What was crucial to the campaign was the
productive and relatively equal dialogue that took
place in venues such as this. Whilst staff and
student interventions – conceived of as separate
spheres of activity – were important in the
campaign for the creation of a Welsh-medium hall
of residence, interactions between staff and
students, and the sharing of nationalist ideas and
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strategies that those connections facilitated, were
far more significant. A range of places were crucial
in enabling this interaction: lecture halls and
seminar rooms; offices of University College staff
and Plaid Cymru; and, in many ways, the small-
scale and intimate townscape of Aberystwyth
itself, in which people met – and indeed still do
meet – on a regular basis.
In the period subsequent to its establishment, it
is significant that Pantycelyn Hall has developed
into a fruitful seedbed for nationalist agitation and
the production of nationalist discourse within
Wales. One of the early campaigners for the designa-
tion of a Welsh-medium hall of residence maintained
that Pantycelyn had become a ‘dynamic factory’ of
Welshness and a ‘nucleus of activity, whether it is
political or cultural’. Students residing in Pantycelyn
Hall, for instance, have played a significant role in
the promotion of recent campaigns in favour of
Welsh-medium education in Aberystwyth University
and, more significantly, a broader Wales. The
following quote demonstrates this rescaling of
student politics in the context of a protest against
the lack of financial support given by the National
Assembly for Wales for Welsh-medium higher
education:
We got to hear, from someone who wasn’t supposed to
say, that Jane Davidson [the National Assembly
Government’s Minister for Education] was coming
here. Of course, that was a golden opportunity for us to
be able to concentrate on the Assembly for a while
rather than the University.
On 11 March 2004, students confronted the
Minister in Aberystwyth and demanded an
increased financial support for Welsh-medium
education from the Assembly. It is significant that
in the months following this protest the Minister
announced that extra moneys would be made
available from the National Assembly for Wales’
Reconfiguration and Collaboration Fund to support
Welsh-medium higher education, specifically through
the establishment of a Welsh-medium postgraduate
scholarship and fellowship scheme.3 There is no
direct evidence to connect the establishment of
this scheme with the protests that took place in
Aberystwyth but student activists, not surprisingly,
were convinced of the instrumental role that they
had played in facilitating this significant development.
Once again, these nationalist discourses and
practices have emerged and have been reproduced
as a result of the informal associations that exist
Relocating nationalism
between staff and students in the University – in
committee meetings, lecture theatres, seminar
rooms and academic offices – which have enabled
the latter to learn about the University’s emerging
policies concerning Welsh-medium education and
the Welsh language, as well as their perceived
flaws. Key instances of contact here include the
discussions taking place in the University’s School
of Welsh-medium Education, in which certain staff
and student representatives have been critical of
the University’s Welsh-medium Scheme, and the
classes held in particular academic departments,
most notably those in Welsh and International
Politics. Similarly, the protest directed against the
Assembly’s Minister for Education came about as a
result of an act of purposeful indiscretion by an
Aberystwyth academic. There are echoes here of
the multi-faceted campaign to designate a Welsh-
medium hall of residence as staff and students
have been involved, once again, in a multi-pronged
effort to shape the educational and linguistic
priorities of Aberystwyth University and the broader
Welsh nation.
Subverting nationalist hierarchies: the Welsh
Language Society’s first mass protest
While the above discussion begins to show how the
relationship between the leaders and followers of
nationalist campaigns can be complicated, the
second case study illustrates how this relationship
can be subverted. I focus in particular on a
particular occurrence on the day of the first mass
protest conducted by the Welsh Language Society.
The Society was formed in 1963 in response to the
famous radio broadcast made by the intellectual
doyen of Welsh nationalism, Saunders Lewis.
Lewis argued that the decline of the Welsh
language was such that ‘revolutionary methods’
were now required in order to stem the decline
and that ‘the language is more important than
self-government’ (Lewis 1962, 32). The immediate
response to the broadcast was the formation, in
1963, of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh
Language Society), which advocated a strictly non-
violent repertoire of direct political action in order
to promote governmental support for the Welsh
language (Phillips 1998, 236– 41).
The Welsh Language Society’s first mass protest
took place in Aberystwyth on a cold Saturday in
February 1963 and was organised by two of its
leaders, who were based in the University College
of Wales, Aberystwyth at the time. The protestors’
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329
goal was to commit acts of civil disobedience,
which would lead to an arrest or arrests. The
monolingual character of legal procedure could
then be used to publicise the lack of status afforded
to the Welsh language within the legal system. The
first and, originally, only target for the day’s activities
was Aberystwyth Post Office. The key, in this
regard, was to break the law without recourse to
any violence. The daubing of posters on the walls
of the Post Office was deemed to be an ideal
solution. The outcome of the protest, nonetheless,
was deemed to be somewhat of an anticlimax.
Society members daubed posters bearing the slogans
‘Statws i’r Iaith’ (Status for the Language) and
‘Defnyddiwch yr Iaith Gymraeg’ (Use the Welsh
Language) on the walls of the Post Office, but no
protesters were arrested, since the police were well
aware of their aims.
The crucial development was the decision made
by some of the campaigners to block the road leading
into Aberystwyth from the south (Phillips 1998,
228). One protester recalls his experiences on
Trefechan bridge: ‘I remember sitting across the
road. Nothing happening, buses stopping, and
drivers going crazy and so on, berserk, but no
policeman of any kind. There was nothing.’
Despite the increasing tension and scale of the
protests, still no arrests were made. Nevertheless,
the blocking of the road on Trefechan Bridge
through a sit-in protest was decisive and successful,
in that it attracted the unprecedented attention of
the news media in Wales and beyond. This act of
civil disobedience has featured prominently in the
Welsh nation’s popular memory and is widely
remembered as the first mass protest in support of
the Welsh language.
At one level, therefore, this rather bald account
of the day’s activities gives the impression of a
successful campaign that had been led effectively
by its key organisers and which had been ably
supported by a number of ‘footsoldiers’ who had
been ready to daub the Post Office and sit on cold
concrete. After an initial set-back experienced at
the Post Office, the protestors had regrouped
effectively and devised a new strategy, which
would draw public attention to their aims. Indeed,
this is the story that has entered the Welsh national
consciousness (e.g. Phillips 1998). And yet, I want
to suggest that adopting an explicit focus on the
geography of the protest – most notably its head-
quarters in the upstairs room of the Home Café –
enables one to recount a far more telling story
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330 Rhys Jones

Plate 1 The debate in the upstairs room of the Home Café (by permission of the National Library of Wales)

about the day’s activities in which the relationship
between national leaders and followers is subverted.
We need to appreciate the fact that activists were
attracted from various parts of Wales in order to
contribute to the day’s activities. A report in the
Daily Herald (1963) newspaper stated that:
Students from Bangor, Cardiff, Merthyr and
Pontypridd joined a home contingent in an upper room
in Aberystwyth to consider how the ‘language of
heaven’ could be returned to honour.4
The presence of these different individuals on the
streets of Aberystwyth on this day contributed to
certain divisions within the Welsh nationalist
movement. These divisions derived, in part, from a
certain conflict between nationalist campaigners
drawn from the town’s indigenous population – its
leaders from among the lecturing staff as well as its
students in residence – and other ‘outsiders’ who
had been attracted to Aberystwyth in order to take
part in the day’s protests. Following the ‘failure’ of

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Relocating nationalism
the day’s earlier protests at the Post Office, there
was much heated discussion between the various
activists in the upstairs room of the Home Café
(Plate 1). Significantly, some have argued that the
main impetus for the subsequent protest on
Trefechan Bridge derived from those activists who
had travelled to Aberystwyth for the day. One
protestor, for instance, argued as follows:
Everyone went back to the Home Café to have some
sort of a big committee, and we decided there ‘we have
to do something drastic’ because people had come
down from Bangor and up from Cardiff and they
didn’t want to go back without any result at all, and
that’s why we went to Trefechan Bridge.
The original leaders of the day’s protest – largely
people who were resident in Aberystwyth – did
not see the same need to persevere with the
protest. There is some evidence that they exhibited
a greater sense of social responsibility than some of
the student ‘footsoldiers’ and that this may have
affected their ability to support a second, more
radical and, perhaps, more dangerous protest. One
of the protest’s organisers stressed as follows:
To tell the truth I felt responsible for . . . students . . . I
was scared about what would happen to them, to tell
the truth . . . I thought that the subject of the Post Office
was enough . . . we had a lot of broad coverage after
that.
He went on to argue that the Trefechan Bridge
protest was ‘unofficial, it hadn’t been organised’.
One can almost hear the sense of grievance in his
voice. Whatever the reason for the lack of ‘official’
support for the second unplanned stage of the
day’s protests, it is clear that other individuals,
who were part of the influx of campaigners into
Aberystwyth on that day, were critical of the lack
of support of some of the leaders of the protest
towards the new plan of action. One of the more
critical activists argued as follows:
You’re familiar with Aberystwyth. Walking down now
from the Home Café, going totally straight past the
Lion, and you’re on Trefechan Bridge. But somehow or
other, people [from Aberystwyth] became lost between
the Home Café and Trefechan Bridge. What happened
to them, nobody really knows.
The challenge to the original leaders’ authority,
which had been apparent in the upstairs room of
the Home Café, therefore, was further emphasised
on the streets of the town as the protest entered its
second crucial stage. The Trefechan Bridge protest,
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331
which is widely remembered as the Welsh
Language Society’s first mass protest, had been
inspired by its rank and file members rather than
by its elected leaders.
Whatever the machinations that took place during
the day’s protests, it is clear that the campaign that
it inspired was to have a widespread impact on the
status and use of the Welsh language in Wales. The
immediate legacy of the Trefechan Bridge protest
was the instigation of ad hoc responses to the
thorny issue of English-medium summonses as
magistrates and civil servants in various towns in
Wales began to issue bilingual summonses.
Another possible impact of the Aberystwyth
protest and the subsequent campaign was their con-
tribution to a governmental re-evaluation of the
legal status afforded to the Welsh language in
Wales. Sir Keith Joseph, the Minister for Welsh
Affairs, announced in 1963 that the government
would appoint a Committee, chaired by Sir David
Hughes-Parry, to explicate the legal status of the
Welsh language (Davies 1976, 26). There is no
evidence that the formation of the Committee came
about as a direct response to the creation of the
Welsh Language Society and the Aberystwyth
protests. And yet, many activists and subsequent
Welsh historians accept that the formation of the
Society, along with its early protests, helped create
a political atmosphere, which encouraged an official
re-evaluation of the legal status of the Welsh
language in Wales (e.g. Phillips 1998, 289). It is
ironic, in this respect, that the Welsh Language
Society’s relative success was borne out of an initial
failure during its first protest in Aberystwyth.
Indeed, the success of the Society’s first protest
came about as a result of the subversion of the
hierarchies that existed within the organisation.
Conclusions
My aim has been to show how a geographical
perspective can enable one to develop new
understandings of the reproduction of nationalism.
My concern has been to illustrate how a
geographical perspective is helpful as a way of
understanding how national discourses and practices
are produced, reworked and become meaningful
forms of individual and group identity. As a way
of grounding these aims, I have explored the way
in which an explicitly geographical approach
provides additional insights into the role played by
national leaders in shaping national discourses and
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practices. When one focuses in detail on the
groundedness of both a national elite and the more
ordinary members of a nation within particular
localities, then labels such as these begin to lose
their meaning. The campaign to designate a Welsh-
medium hall of residence in Aberystwyth was
poly-vocal and was characterised by tangled
interactions between University staff and students.
The second case study developed these ideas by
showing how the relationship between the leaders
and followers of nationalist movements could be
subverted. Following the initial failure of the
protest at the Post Office, new temporary leaders
emerged within the Welsh Language Society to
force a second, more successful, protest on
Trefechan Bridge. To begin to label some
individuals within these campaigns as members of
a national elite and others as merely followers of a
nationally proscribed doctrine would seem to be
disingenuous. All contributors to these two
campaigns, in their different ways, were both
producers and consumers of nationalist discourses
and practices.
As such, the themes discussed in this paper
counter the work of modernist theorists who have
argued that ordinary members of the nation are
largely mute and powerless in the face of the
overwhelming cultural and political dominance of
a nationalist elite. It is clear that the reproduction
of Welsh nationalism that has taken place in
Aberystwyth over recent years has been far more
democratic than that portrayed in modernist
accounts of the nation. At the same time, the
empirical themes that I have discussed allude to a
process of reproducing nationalism that is far
‘flatter’ and more poly-vocal than that suggested
by the literature, which has been concerned with
charting the role played by an elite in affecting
social change (e.g. Withers 2001). Certain individuals
may take the lead in determining the contours
taken by nationalist discourse while, in other
circumstances, they may well follow other nation-
alist actors. It is likely, therefore, that an individual’s
role within the reproduction of nationalist sentiment
may vary from place to place and from time to
time. It is for this reason that references to elites
and the mass membership of the nation are, ultimately,
misleading since they tend to reify our conceptions
of the roles played by various individuals within
nationalist movements. The terms ‘national leaders’
and ‘national followers’ is far more preferable,
since it is based upon the place- and time-specific
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Rhys Jones
actions of individuals rather than their alleged
inherent qualities and characteristics.
In this regard, the empirical themes that I have
discussed tend to lend some credence to social
constructivist accounts of the nation. For social
constructivists, there are many different versions of
the same nation and these are constructed by a
range of individuals. Importantly for geographers,
the contested process whereby nationalist dis-
courses and practices are developed occurs within
particular places (Agnew 2002). If we are serious
about charting the ways in which different groups
of people – of different social and cultural standing
– can help to reproduce nations, then it seems to
me that there are manifold complex social and
cultural geographies that need to be understood.
Geography, in this sense, lies at the heart of the
various processes that reproduce nationalism.
Much more could be done to illustrate the character
of these processes and it is my contention that
geographers should play a significant role within
this important research agenda.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Board of Celtic Studies of
the University of Wales for funding the project on
which the paper is based, and the AHRC for financial
support, which enabled me to write the paper.
Thanks also to Carwyn Fowler, the RA on the
original project. I have also appreciated the
insightful comments and suggestions made by the
referees and editor of Transactions. Any mistakes or
misconceptions, however, are my own.
Notes
1 It may be possible to extend this argument by suggesting
that the mass membership of the nation, when considered
from an ethnosymbolist perspective, acts as the repository
of different conceptions of time (e.g. cyclical time),
which are at odds with a modern elite that is more in
tune with linear conceptions of time (cf. Bhabha 1990).
2 It is significant too that Lefebvre (1991, 386) has
drawn attention to the fact that the riots that took
place in Paris in May 1968 were based on a ‘panoply
of actions and actors’, which echoes the aim of this
paper; namely to show how nationalist discourses are
produced by a variety of individuals.
3 http://www.hefcw.ac.uk/Sector_Management/
rc_fund.htm, accessed 8 December 2006.
4 National Library of Wales, PCYIG = Papers of Cymde-
ithas yr Iaith Gymraeg: 68/3.
Relocating nationalism
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