(Originally published in The Welsh Agenda #66, Spring / Summzer 2021)
A few months ago I came across plans to launch a movement for the communities of Wales on 1st May this year; 2021 being the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of socialist writer Raymond Williams, it is a fitting tribute to his work. I knew that one of the brains behind Community Movement Cymru is Selwyn Williams, a brilliant and kind man overflowing with ideas, so I asked whether he’d agree to speak with me for the Welsh Agenda. I thought he would, and he did.
I was born and brought up in the Conwy Valley. I had quite a varied career, as a farm and builders’ labourer, I did biology degrees, an economics masters… I worked as a research scientist, as a school teacher, at the “Normal College” which was a teacher training college, and then in the University in Bangor. I taught economics in the University, and a colleague and I managed to get some community development courses going, despite the cuts across the organisation; mainly because we came across students who had done degrees with us and who had ended up doing community development type jobs, and who were looking for the background and support. So we developed a number of courses.
For many years I’ve been talking about community development, and teaching about it, and researching it; and, especially since retiring, I’ve been also doing it hands on in my local area. I’m involved with several community development organisations and social enterprises. For example, in my own village of Llan Ffestiniog: the hotel was about to close so we got together as a community and bought Y Pengwern, and have been running that successfully for the last 10 years. Since Covid-19 times things have been difficult of course, as it has for most people in the hospitality sector.
Y Pengwern is part of a network of local organisations though, and during Covid we diverted much of our work to directly help with the problems that were arising. We were able to adapt so very, very quickly because we knew our community, and between us we had enough people on the ground: we could respond to all sorts of things like collecting prescriptions, making sure that people had the practical help that they needed, that they had someone around if they needed some extra help, all that sort of stuff.
There are 15 social enterprises in Bro Ffestiniog, which is meaningful for a relatively small area with a population of 8,000 people. We’ve succeeded in getting those social enterprises to work together; it took some time to persuade them to do that, but once we started there were huge advantages. For example we now share some of the accountancy work as a collective. Also, it’s notoriously difficult to get good cooks and keep them in our hotels and restaurants. To be fair, it’s hard work with unsociable hours, and you can’t do it with one cook, you need two; but it’s difficult enough to find enough money to hire one full time for them to stay! But as Cwmni Bro Ffestiniog, the network of enterprises in the area, we have two hotels, four cafes, and two restaurants, which means between us we were able to hire a peripatetic cook.
We are also working with private sector anchor organisations: they’re not social enterprises, but in many respects they share a lot of the same values because they are such a part of the local area. Sure, they are organisations that need to make a private profit, but they’re much more than that because they have a connection to the community. So increasingly we’re getting the smaller local private sector organisations to work together, along with the local social enterprises.
Three or four years ago, we ran an economic analysis of the collective effect of the social enterprises in the area. At the time, we were employing 160 people across all of them, which for our area is significant. And when you look at the income and outgoings of these organisations, a high percentage of our income came from trading, and a high percentage of this actually stayed and circulated within the local area; which is really important. So we’re combining community development and foundational economy principles in practice, really, and that’s part of the model.
There are many advantages to working together, including sharing resources, and the Cwmni Bro Ffestiniog network has been really effective in that respect; but it’s a lot more than that. It’s become a catalyst for change, for changing things which are important for the community. As part of that, we’ve established BROcast, which is a digital broadcasting service. That’s really important because for most community development organisations, actually communicating with the community, getting them to participate in things can be difficult. But through this digital broadcasting, we are really carrying the community with us. I think we are slowly bringing about a sort of cultural change in the community, more and more towards “we can do things for ourselves”. Or if we can’t do things ourselves, the collective voice of the community can actually make other people do things that should be done for[1] us, and with[2] us.
One example: I still do some teaching, and we had an extra mural class I used to go and teach in Trefnant in Denbighshire; we had to stop those classes because of Covid. The participants are all people who are retired or close to retirement age, but they got together and started Zooming, and so the class has gone online. But rather than the 25 people we had before now, they’ve invited others along and there’s about 65 in the group now! So the lesson is we can do it ourselves; there’s so much now that can be done independently of large institutions, and the whole bureaucracy that goes with it.
The more we work in this way, being catalysts and trying to facilitate more cooperation between people and between local organisations, the more stark the contrast appears with the way in which governments, local and central, actually work. Communities don’t think in separate silos, whereas the public sector still very much does. I know there’s a lot of goodwill and a lot of feeling within the Welsh Government that they want to get away from silo working, but it’s extremely difficult to do that on a large scale, whereas on a community scale it is a natural way to operate.
Basically what we’ve got with Cwmni Bro Ffestiniog is a model that develops the community in a way which integrates the environmental, economic, social, and cultural side of things – all of it. We started with one social enterprise, then a network of social enterprises within our area, and then we extended our work to some of the other ex-slate valleys in northwest Wales: the Ogwen Valley, the Nantlle Valley. Then some people from Anglesey came over to see what we’re doing, and as a result of that they’ve adapted the model and set up Bro Môn, which is along similar lines.
So really, the natural succession of that is, well, can we do that on a Welsh level? That is what has spurred us on to this whole idea of establishing Community Movement Cymru. It is quite organic and very much from the ground up. Pre-Covid we spent quite a lot of time going all over Wales, meeting other communities, because we thought the model that we had was something that could be adapted elsewhere. The more we met and talked to people, the more we realised that there are plenty of other community organisations that are pretty isolated in many respects, because the way government works doesn’t really help cooperation between them, and there isn’t anything that does. These other communities have been saying similar things to us. And to be honest with you, we’ve been waiting for somebody else to take the initiative for quite some time… And nobody else seemed to be doing it. So in the end we thought, we’ll have a go ourselves.
It’s being led initially by Cwmni Bro Ffestiniog, but we see our role as facilitating the setting up of the whole thing; once it’s set up, we would like to be part of it, but certainly just a part of something which is greater than us, that will have its own momentum. The rough plan is, we want to change the world entirely. But when it comes to the detail, we will figure this out together as a movement.
To be honest with you, I’m a bit scared of the whole thing, because you know, it’s a good idea but who am I to try and facilitate such a thing? But obviously, talking to other people, as I said there is support – we knew that. We’ve also got good links with Building Communities Trust (BCT). They have also been talking to people all over Wales and putting together a community manifesto to try and influence the political parties leading up to the elections. We’d published something on modern manifestos and movements as part of a contribution to a conference the Wales Co-operative Centre had run, so we’d also been thinking along these lines. It seemed to be a natural thing for BCT and us to work together.
One conclusion we’ve come to, both in Cwmni Bro Ffestiniog and in BCT – is that it’s all well and good having a manifesto on paper, but how do you get people to actually listen? Over the years I’ve known so many community development reports, and manifestos, and what have you… which have been really good, but that have sat on shelves subsequently. You need more than good ideas, you need power to actually get those ideas implemented and for change to occur.
So we thought, we need a community movement, that would have some sort of power to influence local and central government. That’s not the only aim of Community Movement Cymru of course, but one of the significant things is to actually not have to go to meetings with local government and central government powerless, with nothing but a plea for charity and for common sense. We can go with a bit of collective strength, between all of us.
This seemed like a perfect place to end the interview. We chatted for a few minutes as we rounded things off, and Selwyn talked about Marxist thought on power and change, and the intersection with the deep commitment to people and place that pervades our communities. He added (with an apology that this might sound kind of corny but it’s important that we say these things):
In the end my biggest criticism of a lot of Marxists is that they don’t realise the power of love. That’s the biggest weapon we’ve got, in a way; we’ve got to spread community, spread love, but not in some sort of wishy washy way, in a tangible way – you know what I mean. So with a bit of love, come and see us, yeah?
I promised to visit when Covid travel restrictions are lifted.
Photo credit: provided by Selwyn Williams