LAST Saturday saw activists from across West Wales converge on the Bank Vault venue in Aberystwyth to commemorate the person and political militant that was Gareth Miles.

The occasion was the launch of a volume of tribute in honour of this outstanding individual. “O’r Gwylltio, Gweithredu” (From Anger, Action).

Such was the fame and popularity of this man that two such events had already occurred, in Pontypridd and Caernarfon with further ones planned for Carmarthen and Wrexham.

For he had lived in towns all across Wales and touched the lives of people in many places.

Between its covers, in the stories from his family, friends and comrades, we find the multi-faceted figure that was Gareth Miles. For he was a man of many voices - the language-rights agitator, educator, trade union organiser, Marxist thinker, popular author as well as radical dramatist.

Though a militant Welsh language activist and writer, he was a lover of literature in English, French and Spanish, translating plays by Moliere and Shakespeare into Welsh.

Indeed, language campaigner Angharad Tomos spoke vividly of her experience of his inspirational role as a teacher of modern languages.

Yet Miles was also a writer of popular thrillers and political television dramas. In the words of his close friend Cynog Dafis, former Plaid Cymru and Green MP: “his literature was an extension of his politics.”

And in the volume are tales of a fervent Welsh patriot who was quintessentially internationalist in outlook with all these aspects of his character examined in this book dedicated to his memory.

Dafis spoke movingly of the loss of personal political discussion and debate with Gareth. “It was like an intellectual fix that I needed.”

A key element of his story was his role as a founder of the militant language rights group Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg / The Welsh Language Society. Where he was key in shaping its policy of non-violent direct action based on the teachings of Martin Luther King.

So fittingly, one international campaign truly close to his heart was that of The Wales Anti-Apartheid Movement. And prominent Welsh Language Society members Hywel Griffiths and Sian Howys spoke of his outstanding role in the group and its development as a radical internationalist movement.

The content of the tribute covers the rich journey of his life. And chronicles a man generous to others with his support and knowledge. It charts Gareth’s political journey from a left nationalist in Plaid Cymru through his creation, together with Robert Griffiths, of the Welsh Republican Socialist Movement and then into the ranks of the Communist Party.

Trade Unionism too was a key element in his life, he having been a full time official with the Welsh-language teachers’ union UCAC and later a senior lay one with the Writers’ Guild.

As well as having served on the board of the Morning Star, a paper that he fervently loved as stressed by his son in law, Ceri Williams, himself a Wales TUC staff member. Fittingly a Morning Star stand showcased many of Miles’s political writings in Welsh and English.

And so at the event, in keeping with Gareth’s commitment to culture and politics, poems were recited, stories told, slogans exclaimed and socialism preached — in numerous languages.

And those title words by the Welsh dramatist and poet Aled Jones Williams, in memory of Gareth’s work and life, were in all our minds. “O’r Gwylltio, Gweithredu”/ “From Anger, Action.”