On Process, Events and Unintended Consequences: National Identity and the Politics of Welsh Devolution

Abstract

Former Secretary of State for Wales, Ron Davies, may have understood all along that 'devolution is a process not an event' (Davies 1999). The same cannot be said for other senior members of his own party. Rather it appears that many of the leading figures in the first Blair administration were unaware of how radical the constitutional reforms that they were initiating really were. Nowhere is this better evidenced, of course, than in the Labour leadership's serial mishandling of successive battles for the Labour leadership in Wales. Indeed the conduct of the Prime Minster and his closest advisers during these battles the first involving Davies, the second following his resignation, and the third in effect a palace coup to replace a candidate foisted on an unwilling Welsh party by Downing Street suggests not only (hat they were less than fully cognisant of the dynamics that were being unleashed by devolution, but, moreover, that they have been rather slow on the uptake.