MY NATIONAL anthem calls Wales “The land of my fathers” but the century old Welsh Women’s Peace Petition shows that our mothers shaped Wales as a global player, as well as giving me an emotional connection to my own family history. 

The story of the petition itself is remarkable. In February 1924, four Welsh women — Annie Hughes Griffiths, Mary Ellis, Gladys Thomas and Elined Prys — landed in New York, holding a bouquet of daffodils, a leather-bound memorial containing an appeal for peace and a petition signed by 390,296 Welsh women.

Their goal was to present them to the ordinary women of the US, asking them to use their influence to encourage the US government to join the League of Nations as a means of avoiding future conflicts such as the recently endured Great War.

On February 21 1924 these four women took their campaign to president Calvin Coolidge’s White House, securing a promise that the signatures would be kept in the Smithsonian museum in perpetuity.

Exactly 100 years later to the day — February 21 2024 — I took a debate to the Senedd to mark the centenary of this extraordinary campaign and explore its significance for Wales today.

Before we get into how this extraordinary piece of work came about and my own family ties to the petition, I want to share with you the last paragraph of the leather-bound appeal, which include Lincoln’s words: “The future is big with hope if we, as the women of this generation, do our part. To us has come an opportunity as real as the responsibility is grave. We would, therefore, appeal to you, Women of the United States of America, ‘with malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right’ to aid in the effort to hand down to the generations which come after us the proud heritage of a warless world.”

To set the context, the Welsh women’s peace petition was one of several campaigns launched by the Welsh League of Nations Union — one of the largest membership organisations in Wales in the early 1920s.

At a time when the majority of women in Wales did not have the right to vote, the petition afforded one of few opportunities to voice an opinion, and the fact that 30 per cent of the female population of Wales took that opportunity was no small matter.

Indeed, once it arrived in the US, the petition attracted a great deal of press attention — from its presentation at a grand ball in New York, to its storage at the Smithsonian via the White House.

But as the years went by, memories faded. Until 2023.

A group of women called Heddwch Nain-Mamgu (Grandmother’s Peace) had rediscovered the appeal, tracked down the petition, secured the digitisation of the names, and were able to welcome the petition back to Wales in April 2023.

And so unearthed my connection to this remarkable campaign.

I didn’t expect to find anyone related to me on the petition. My four great-grandmothers were the wives of miners in the coalfields of the south-east Wales valleys. These women were unable to continue their education beyond their primary school and struggled every day to keep “y blaidd wrth y drws” (the wolf from the door) — how would these women have time to consider the big issues of the day, like the importance of international peace?

But I was wrong. There was the name of my great-grandmother, Bessie Evans, of Price Street in Rhymney, along with her two eldest daughters — my Bopa (Auntie) Miriam and Bopa Elizabeth.

Another daughter, my grandmother Nansi, was too young to sign the petition but was certainly a huge influence on me in terms of my politics.

From her, I’d learnt that Bessie’s life was hard. My great-grandfather had lost three of his fingers in an accident in the Rhymney Ironworks and options of work were severely limited, so Bessie earned by taking in people’s washing.

Yet here was the unmistakable proof that she believed Wales had a voice in the world. The discovery was thrilling, and when I came to talk about it in the Senedd, I found it very emotional.

For me, it was an important and clear message from the past: the voice of my foremothers calling me through the decades. They had signed this petition because they understood that it was ordinary, poor people like them who paid the high price of war; that society, co-operation, and action were all important; and that Wales needed to raise its voice on the world stage.

Wales — and Welsh women in particular — have a long and proud tradition of speaking out on international issues. Women like Jessie Donaldson from Swansea, who travelled to Cincinnati to set up a safe house for runaway slaves, or the sisters Sarah and Blanche Hilditch who welcomed the abolitionist Frederick Douglass to Wrexham.

At a recent peace march in Swansea calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the majority of speakers were women. I marched alongside women who had been at Greenham Common, and are co-members of CND.

Back in the Senedd, I implored my colleagues not to treat this petition as a mere piece of history, but to take inspiration from it, that Wales could and should have a voice on the global stage.

It’s not meaningless that the Senedd backed Plaid Cymru’s calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, and it matters that Labour Welsh government hasn’t publicly backed these same calls. 

The words of the appeal resonate because they are just as important today as they were a century ago: we can speak truth to power, and we must do all we can to “hand down to the generations which come after us the proud heritage of a warless world.”

Sioned Williams MS is the Plaid Cymru Member of Senedd for South Wales West, which covers the local authority areas of Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Bridgend. She grew up in the Gwent valleys. She is Plaid Cymru’s spokesperson on social justice, social services and equalities.