THE beginning of the week at the National Eisteddfod saw the National Library of Wales celebrating the life of the late Labour politician Ann Clwyd. She won her constituency, Cwm Cynon, part of the “bro” or catchment area for this year’s festival, in the miners’ strike of 1984. Before her death, she had contributed 260 boxes of material to the library’s political archive.

A controversial figure in Welsh politics, her major feat was to be elected in Cwm Cynon, the first female MP to represent a south Wales industrial Valleys seat, and then only the fourth female MP in Welsh history.

And so it was totally fitting to see Wales’ first female first minister, Eluned Morgan, on the panel, and describing Clwyd as “a fighter and one who was willing to upset people if necessary for an issue she believed in.”

Her commitment to the cause of Kurdistan was remembered as well as her stay-down strike to help save Tower Colliery. In the words of the radical Welsh poet Hywel Griffiths:

“Yn nosau dewr Cwrdistan — yn Hirwaun
a’r Twr, a chyhwfan
baner sy’n dal i herian
yno mae y cof am Ann.”
 
“In Kurdistan on brave nights — in Hirwaun
and Tower, waving
a banner that still challenges
there is the memory of Ann.”

Three International Brigaders from Rhondda Cynon Taf were recognised for their bravery and commitment at the society’s tent. Edward Greening of Aberaman, Alun Menai Williams of Gilfach Goch and Harry Dobson of Tonypandy. Dobson was to die in Spain of wounds sustained at the battle of Gandesa.

The audience at the lecture was also regaled with rousing renditions of songs from that war by Cor Cochion Caerdydd (Cardiff Red Choir). And at the mouth of the Rhondda, in these times of the resurgence of fascism, the stirring slogan from the struggles against Oswald Mosley and Francisco Franco of 1936 was called to memory, “the anti-fascist barricades stretch from Tonypandy to Madrid.”

Meanwhile from the Eisteddfod pavilion, Mererid Hopwood, the new archdruid, echoing the traditional eisteddfodic ceremony cry of “A Oes Heddwch?” (“Is there peace?”) called on the attendees to “Prepare for peace — that’s the headline we need these days.”

“Preparing for peace means that we must look at the world in a different way, have different priorities, spend our money on different things — not on weapons but on the arts, education and fair play.”

Hopwood was the first woman in the history of the national Eisteddfod to win the bardic chair back in 2001 at Denbigh.

Wednesday saw the Welsh Language Society remembering the miners’ strike on its 40th anniversary. Pontypridd, the Eisteddfod site this year, was then the headquarters for the South Wales NUM. And in August 1984 it was the scene of a mass demonstration against the intention of the courts to sequestrate the union’s assets.

Ben Gregory, a language activist, recounted the extreme hardship then facing his own mining family and community in Tredegar at large, while Angharad Tomos spoke of the political education she received as to the need for language militants to build alliances with workers in struggle.

We were reminded of the words of the late Dr Hywel Francis: “The miners’ strike united the Welsh, whether farmers, miners or teachers, women and the workless, Welsh speakers and non-Welsh speakers, in a way that had not happened for ages.”

Cross-party and cross-community action were emphasised as the way forward for current political struggles too. An emergency event was called in the Pabell Heddwch (peace tent) under the slogan of Opposing the Far Right in Wales.

People from a range of parties and organisations contributed as to how to develop a Welsh stratagem against fascism. The creation of an agency to disprove and challenge far-right propaganda and lies was top of the list, with the cessation of austerity just as vital in tackling the threat. But in the short term, the fascists would need to be challenged on the streets.

The Lle Celf (literally “art place”) is always a location to visit and there to be challenged. The first exhibit this year certainly achieved that.

An entrance to a stark room furnished solely with a large simple table and set of chairs. The table was split viciously across its breath by a harsh and rough steel fence. Shadows menacingly streak across the floor and the whole atmosphere is stark and upsetting.

“On which side of the fence are you?” is the question. But the topic could be manyfold and is left to the viewer’s choice. Angharad Pearce Jones, a commercial blacksmith as well as artist, won the gold medal here with this striking piece.

The eye was taken too by two sets of works on the Valleys by local artists. Anthony Evans has produced a new set of pieces on Pontypridd, a town which has always enthralled him as a topic.

In Y Cymoedd (the Valleys) the angular shapes of hillside streets at night are engaging. With lighted windows but also dark shadows it is both cosy — yet at the same time eerie. People pour out of chip shops to populate the streets and a rugby pitch is floodlit, while others sleep in blackness. Truly a gripping picture of Pontypridd.

A series of drawings by the late Elwyn Thomas, Rhondda artist and teacher, similarly celebrates the Valleys. The picture, End of Afternoon Shift, shows a miner washing before a range. Simple yet highly detailed, its lines depict a spotless room with a collier cleaning the dirt of his labours from his torso. A scene once enacted by hosts of men in countless working homes here.

Back to the Archdruid Mererid Hopwood, as on Friday, immediately prior to the Eisteddfod’s pinnacle Chairing of the Bard ceremony, she insisted on making time to meet the new Cuban ambassador, Ismara Walter and political secretary, Aymee Negrin, for a rushed cup of tea behind the scenes at the pavilion.

Talking together in Spanish, they discovered that Cuba and Wales have a shared tradition of lively oral poetry competitions. So look forward to even closer relations between the two countries in that cultural field.