Talk:Harri Webb

Why does this article cut off so abruptly?
I have been meaning to ask this ever since I first saw the article. It ends with "In form, his writing was often deliberately simple and comic, in order that it could reach a wide audience and so have the desired political" and stops there. I presume an "effect" is missing? Telsa (talk) 17:41, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Harri Webb's politics
I've just been writing this for a bulletin board. But its late at night, would somebody like to edit and incorpoarate bits of it ? --

I've put these notes under that title somewhat tongue in cheek : in the 1950's he was editor of The Welsh Republican, a newspaper of sorts that usually had half a dozen issues per year. I believe that he helped out in Ithel Davies' campaign at Ogmore in 1950 and was involved in various protests and was notorious for burning Union Flags. He is credited by the writer discussed below with devising the White Eagle of Snowdonia glyph that was later adopted by the Free Wales Army. Quite a lot has been written about him, so maybe I will add to this later. Meanwhile the following is from notes that I made as I read -

Supercharging the Struggle : Models of Nationalist Victory in the Poetry of Harri Webb by Nicholas Jones in Welsh Writing in English - Vol. 9.

This starts by referring to a 1954 editorial by Harri Webb in The Welsh Republican, which was discussing a speech given by Aneurin Bevan, in which Webb emphasised the struggle for national independance against imperialism and rejected Bevan's ideas of class struggle. Webb was not always consistant and his sympathy for Zionism led him to contradict himself, as discussed later in the essay. Webb had unrealistic expectations of actual political outcomes eg in Ireland and Algeria.

Between 1949 and 1957 Webb was active in the Welsh Republican Movement editing its newspaper and being involved in demonstrations. He also joined Plaid Cymru in 1948 but switched to Labour between 1953 - 1960 before rejoining Plaid Cymru. He was annoyed by British socialists' hostility to nationalism which led to them perpetrating colonialism, and alleged that Labour, Liberal and Conservatives were merely all one party - "the English Party" - an imperialist party.

Webb's critique of Plaid Cymru was that it would simply exchange foreign colonial rule for local capitalist exploitation in that it would employ the same structures of government [ my note - ie he put forward a republican argument ] In a 1951 editorial in The Welsh Republican he backhandedly attacked Plaid Cymru as pretending to superiority, indulging in language snobbery, and as portraying their fellow countrymen to be unpatriotic compared to themselves. Webb perceived Plaid Cymru as inherently right wing, and the Welsh Republican Movement as inherently left wing. eg He disagreed with Gwynfor Evans over the Dublin Easter Rising, seeing it as a positive symbolic sacrifice not a disastrous mistake. He criticised Plaid Cymru's timid attitude in his 1955 poem " The Disclaimers ".

By 1963 Webb was openly arguing that Welsh Republicans should be militantly active and consider shedding blood eg in his letter to Gwilym Prys Davies, but in practice this seems to have been mere wishful thinking, or he allowed others to dissuade him. [ my note - The prominence of his views however as a Welsh Republican helped to lay the ground for the creation of the Free Wales Army which adopted his white eagle glyph on their flag aswell as displaying the green-red-white triclour ]

The essay goes on to discuss matters of poetry rather than politics, though it mentions Frantz Fanon's influence, and draws attention to how poems about Ireland, Algeria and particularly Israel are intended to stir up Welsh thoughts about a militant struggle for freedom. I'd like to quote this piece to end that is not poetry, from his 'The Political History of the Cynon Valley' -

"Politics everywhere is a working out of social and economic pressures which effect everybody directly. And in Wales it has always been something more, an expression not only of immediate necessities but of wider ideas and ideals, embracing such fields of human activities as religion, language and culture."

Hello, I am Nick Jones, author both of the Wikipedia entry and the article mentioned above - I am glad someone has read it. The reason it cut off is because it was essentially some parts of my PhD thesis that I cut and pasted - I hadn't realised the mistake until now. I always meant to rewrite the entry but never got round to it. Feel free to quote from the article if you want to redo the entry. I could also some more bibliography. Oh, and by the way Telsa, I think we were both in the same Pellach class a few years ago.


 * Hiya, Nick. The very man! I had been wondering whether you were still around. Feel free to expand the article. Getting an account might make it easier to keep track of it, but you can edit away without one. Talk pages are not the best pages to chat (my email is all over the web, btw), but in case you pop in again: hope things are going well :) Telsa (talk) 08:53, 26 November 2006 (UTC)