50/50 VISION of a HALF AND HALF CAPITAL

The Towns of Wales by Harold Carter, 1965, University of Wales Press
Cardiff: Half and Half a Capital by Rhodri Morgan. 1994, Gwasg Gomer

In 1965 Harold Carter made some prescient observations on the role of Cardiff as the capital of Wales in the final pages of The Towns of Wales.  It was then only ten years since Cardiff had been so designated and Carter suggested that there were two major sources from which a national capital should derive its importance;

·        Its primary practical function as the centre of government and administration and

·        Its symbolic function of creating and maintaining national unity as the focus of national sentiment

In the fifty years since Harold Carter made that observation Cardiff has consolidated its position as the largest urban and commercial centre in Wales and withstood challenges as to its legitimacy as a regional capital on both counts.

In the transition from the colonial governance of the Welsh Office to the form of devolution narrowly secured in the referendum of 1997 this was of course a close run thing. The failure to reach agreement on the use of Cardiff City Hall as home for the National Assembly re-opened the debate as to whether it should be the centre of government. The arguments for and against this were rehearsed by Carter in 1965 who concluded that the designation of a capital city in a modern state would inevitably generate conflict between the effectiveness as centre of government and as a symbol of nationhood. He noted that another problem particular to Wales was the nature of its urban culture or, more correctly, the absence of it. 

The first proposition that he put to support this was that Wales, as a nation, had not grown from a single nuclear area which was widely recognised as a capital. The desire for a ‘capital’ was then (in the 1950’s) largely a practical or administrative consideration with some recognition or concession that if Wales was a ‘nation’ it should have a capital.

Carter’s second proposition concerned what was then a lack of independent political existence and, to some extent, remains valid. The question is to what extent political power must be devolved for Wales to be considered an independent sovereign state. As matters stand, the designation of Cardiff as a ‘capital’ in the political sense appears to remain one of administrative convenience, albeit one which now has its own civil service. It is the centre of a regional tier of government within the sovereign state of Britain. Carter’s conclusion that any real claim to be the political capital was questionable can then only be contested as to the degree of autonomy currently enjoyed.

The third proposition put by Carter raises deeper rooted questions in suggesting that the indigenous culture of Wales was essentially non-urban and that towns have tended to be the centres of English speech and attitudes. There is then an inherent problem that urban centres cannot be symbolic of a non-urban culture. There is that strain of nationalist sentiment that romanticises an often imagined past and commends virtues associated with a society and way of living of which there is little left outside heritage compounds. Carter notes that this volkisch sentiment may coalesce with the residue of C19th nonconformity and be represented as ‘a Welsh way of life’ and “However real and valuable this may be, it certainly is not epitomised by modern urban society (p355)”.

On the matter of nonconformity and its influence on Welsh life a point may be noted in passing on the development of Cardiff from the mid C19th. The 2nd Marquess of Bute was an autocratic high church Tory but his tolerance of other religions was evidenced by mosques, synagogues, catholic churches and other places of worship that were built on his lands in and around Cardiff. What are very hard to find on any of the former Bute estates in Cardiff are nonconformist chapels. This probably reflected the establishment view of the 2^nd Marquess and his ilk that chapels were where radical politics were fermented and disseminated.

The relevance of this passing point is that the nonconformist chapel can be said to be one of the defining features of the Welsh cultural landscape. That is to say that chapel buildings define both the urban and rural view elsewhere but, due to Bute estate policy, did not and do not define the urban landscape of Cardiff. Those chapels that do exist appear in the main to have been built on areas of land not controlled by Bute. Over the larger area the dominant religious buildings were churches aplenty – Anglican/ Church in Wales or Methodist but most distinctly churches not chapels. In this respect Cardiff did not LOOK like other Victorian settlements in Wales.

Returning to Carter’s propositions he stated in conclusion that, in terms of national pride, the title of capital must inevitably be awarded to a settlement of some size which might reasonably fulfil the functions which it inherits. In the 1950’s the conflicting and irreconcilable desires thus gathered around the determination to give the nation a capital. Cardiff – the head of the economic hierarchy- was the obvious answer, yet it meant accepting an urban symbol of non-urban culture, an anglicised capital of the Welsh nation. It also housed several national institutions including the National Museum and the University of Wales giving it some more general cultural legitimacy. Perhaps, however, the most obvious symbol of national sentiment was Cardiff Arms Park at that time. To most people this is now a given but should be noted that in 1955 even that had not been the ‘national’ stadium.

“The year before capital status was granted, resentment of the city had grown amongst rugby supporters in the west after the Welsh Rugby Union decided to hold all future international matches in Cardiff because the facilities and profits were better there. This may not have been universally popular but it did at least give Cardiff some relevance in the wider Welsh community. In the absence of the traditional apparatus of a nation state, sport played an integral role in developing and sustaining a popular sense of Welsh national identity.”(Johnes,M.  Making of Cardiff, 2012)

This was reiterated by Rhodri Morgan in his 1994 book, Cardiff: Half-and-half a Capital (p17). 

Cardiff Arms Park’s position as the ‘national’ rugby stadium was consolidated through further works ahead of the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games which brought the overall capacity of the stadium to 60,000. The rebuilding of Cardiff Arms Park into a modern National Stadium in the 1970s coupled with the success of the national rugby team gradually made the city a more genuine focus for Wales and Welsh pride. That was a factor, albeit coupled with the economic rationale that underpinned the City Council’s support for its reconstruction as the Millennium Stadium when the Welsh Rugby Union considered building a new stadium at Island Farm in Bridgend ahead of its bid to host the 1999 Rugby World Cup.

Antipathy to the city has, however, persisted and remains an underlying factor fifty years after Carter made his observations. It informs the discussions relating to the recognition of the city region which is, again, largely a matter of political distinction. In the social, cultural and economic landscape city regions have been a given throughout history as is the centrepital force exerted by major settlements referred to in earlier blogs. What Carter highlighted in his 1965 work was that the two periods of significant urbanisation in Wales were;

·        Imposed during the Norman/ Angevin occupation and,

·        Exploitative in the course of industrialisation.

Given that Cardiff is also centred on the pre-urban nuclei of Roman fortification and the Victorian port was built by the Irish for a Scot some consideration might be given to that theory that it must inevitably be viewed as an alien settlement in Wales. It was, and remains, one of the least Welsh place in Wales.  On the other hand Carter's notion that an antipathy to urbanism is embedded in the DNA of the Welsh may be considered fanciful. It may well be in there somewhere and, indeed, have much to do with the terrain of Wales, the inherent challenges that this presented to communication historically and the concomitant parochialism of its scattered communities. In recent years the capital has been the object of envy and resentment not pride among many in its hinterland. This may have much more to do with recent political relationships and perceptions of economic disparity between the city and other parts of Wales.  

It is worth then revisiting Rhodri Morgan's 1994 piece which raised many supplementary questions almost thirty years after Carter's observations. It closes with comment on forms of political autonomy for Wales which preceded the devolution referendum by some 3 years and Rhodri's ascent to the status of First Minster of Wales by three more. The questions it raises appear to remain relevant even now, not least the question raised above as to the degree of 'indpendence' that has been achieved to date and whether that has consolidated or supplemented the status of Cardiff as a 'capital'. As Rhodri Morgan notes in the closing page;

"Perhaps it is easier to assert the right to a share of political control if you do not feel in the beggars can't be choosers position" (p82)

It might be said that Wales remains, over fifteen years after devolution, the beggar at the back door of a bankrupt kingdom. Economically it is not independent but is in fact saturated with a dependency culture. 

Furthermore the devolution process itself emphasised or even exaggerated the 'half-and-half' aspect of the country, let alone Cardiff's status as its capital;

 “…….an unfortunate fault line between the city and the National Assembly- a relationship whose dysfunctional side has been symbolic of Cardiff’s relationship with Wales itself. You can, according to taste, blame this dysfunctionality on inescapable institutional rivalry or on personalities, on Assembly Ministers or on the adversarial approach of the city’s leader, Russell Goodway, in the Assembly’s early years. That the relationship has been a little fractious should not surprise anyone as there is always tension between city governments and the tier above.” (Talfan- Davies, At Arms Length, 2008, p285)

Harold Carter’s 1965 study was a hugely important contribution to understanding the spatial structure and character of human settlement in Wales through a detailed examination of the patterns of its component parts and the process of its development. However, in revisiting his observations on Cardiff one must also consider the sources and instruments of power deployed in the subsequent re-shaping of the south of the city Cardiff and its evolution as a ‘capital’. Revisiting Carter’s work is a reminder that urban morphology must necessarily be supplemented by consideration of institutional structures and how settlements have, historically, been shaped by those who command the necessary resources. The 50th anniversary of its publication should be officially marked and more widely celebrated by the architecture  and planning professions in Wales 

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