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Cardiff: The Making and Development of the Capital City of Wales

2012; Routledge; Volume: 26; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13619462.2012.676911

1743-7997

Martin Johnes,

Irish and British Studies

Abstract Capital cities are never static entities and their status is often contested or the subject of resentment elsewhere. Any history of capitals should thus extend beyond considering the built environment that has dominated its historiography and root itself in an understanding of popular attitudes and local political processes. Only then can the reality and significance of being a capital be properly understood. Cardiff's claim, attainment and development as the Welsh capital city over the course of the mid-late twentieth century are clear illustrations of this. They demonstrate first the uncertainty and contested nature of Welsh identity and then the growing confidence that came to exist in Wales as the nation became a more meaningful administrative entity. That process might have reduced the dispute surrounding Cardiff's capital status but it did not always endear the capital to the rest of Wales. Keywords: WalesCapital CitiesUrbanNational Identity Notes Martin Johnes is Head of History & Classics at Swansea University. He has published widely on the history of Wales, including Wales Since 1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012). [1] On the early history of Cardiff, see CitationDaunton, Coal Metropolis; CitationEdwards, ‘Cardiff Becomes a City’; CitationWilson, ‘The Chicago of Wales’; CitationEvans, ‘Region, Nation, Globe’; CitationCarter, ‘Cardiff: Local, Regional and National Capital’; CitationDavies, Cardiff. On the civic centre, see CitationMorley, ‘Representing a City and Nation’. [2] See CitationSmith, ‘The Valleys’, 137. [3] CitationOsmond, Myths, Memories and Futures, 63. [4] Thus, after the First World War, other towns resoundingly rejected plans for a national war memorial in Cardiff. CitationGaffney, Aftermath, Ch. 3. For more on Cardiff's capital pretensions, see CitationEvans, ‘The Welsh Victorian City’. [5] For such memories see CitationThomas, Tyfu'n Gymro. [6] CitationStephens, Cardiff Anthology, 99. [7] CitationSutcliffe, ‘Foreword’, ix. [8] For an introduction and case studies, see CitationTaylor, Lengellé and Andrew, Capital Cities. [9] CitationSonne, Representing the State; CitationHein, Capital of Europe; CitationUrban, ‘The Limits of State Symbolism’. [10] CitationJenkins, Movement for the Capital, 1. [11] Western Mail, 3 November 1951. [12] The Humble Petition of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Citizens of the City of Cardiff in Council assembled under their Common Seal dated the 7th day of February 1949 (Capital Collection, Cardiff Central Library). Cf. various minutes of Cardiff council 1949. [13] For example, CitationDavies, Wales and Monmouthshire, 213. [14] H.T. Edwards in National Archives (hereafter NA): BD24/6. Letter from Caernarfon Town clerk, 26 April 1951. NA: BD 23/219. [15] City of Cardiff (minutes), 9 April 1951, item, 9373. House of Commons Debates (hereafter HC Deb), 3 April 1950, vol 473 c101W. [16] Jenkins, Movement for the Capital. [17] CitationRubens, When I Grow Up, 69. [18] See the memories of 1950s Cardiff in CitationBush, ‘Lash LaRue and the River of Adventure’. [19] Briefing note, 15 November 1951. NA: BD24/6. [20] HC Deb, 6 December 1951, vol 494 c2546. [21] Johnes, Wales Since 1939. [22] Jenkins, Movement for the Capital, 1. [23] Civic buildings and markets, etc. committee, 19 June 1951, item, 1134. Jenkins, Movement for the Capital, 5. [24] City of Cardiff (minutes), 30 April 1951, item 1547. [25] Jenkins, Movement for the Capital, 6. [26] Jenkins, Movement for the Capital. [27] NA: BD 23/219, BD 24/10. The Times, 8 May 1954. [28] Briefing note for cabinet discussion, 8 November 1955. NA: BD 24/10. Cf PREM 11/11081. [29] Home Affairs Committee paper, 26 October 1955. NA: BD 24/10 [30] Jenkins, Movement for the Capital, 9. [31] Civic building and markets etc committee, 20 December 1955, item 5455. [32] General Purposes Committee, 21 December 1955, item 5629. [33] Western Mail, 21 December 1955. For wider reactions, see The Times, 21 December 1955. [34] For typologies of capitals, see CitationHall, ‘Seven Types of Capital City’. [35] Parliamentary committee, 3 January 1956, item 5830 & 27 January 1956, item 6427. [36] On such developments elsewhere, see Sonne, Representing the State. [37] CitationCoop and Thomas, ‘Planning Doctrine as an Element in Planning History’. [38] CitationRichards, Dai Country, 110. [39] South Wales Echo, 2 September 1958. [40] Johnes, Wales Since 1939, Ch. 5. [41] Calculated from CitationWragg, Study of the Passenger Transport Needs of Urban Wales, 65. [42] CitationDavies Parnell, Snobs and Sardines, 97. [43] CitationBuchanan, Cardiff Development and Transportation Study. [44] CitationSmith and Williams, Fields of Praise, 349–50. [45] On sport as a source of Welsh national identity, see CitationJohnes, History of Sport. On rugby in the 1970s, see CitationJohnes, ‘A Prince, a King and a Referendum’. [46] CitationGriffith, The Welsh, 51. [47] CitationMorris, ‘Welshness in Wales’, 13; Punch, 16 July 1958. [48] CitationHughes and James, Wales, 203. [49] CitationDavies, ‘Welsh Hills’, 75. [50] CitationBBC, Listening and Viewing in Wales. On the rising pride in Wales, see CitationJohnes, Wales Since 1939, Ch. 7. [51] CitationWelsh Office, Wales. [52] HC Deb, 10 May 1968, vol. 764 c163W, 31 October 1979, vol. 972 cc582-4W. [53] CitationTripp, ‘Living on the Strip’, 35. [54] South Wales Echo, 4 March 1969. City of Cardiff Reports of Councils & Committees (1968–1969), items 9144, 9332. [55] CitationAitchison and Carter, ‘The Welsh Language in Cardiff’; CitationLewis, ‘Staring at Horizons’, 13. For a fictional representation of this life, see CitationJones, Dyddiadur Dyn Dwad. [56] Author's interviews with former members of SGCC. [57] Keep Cardiff—A Real Capital, leaflet, Cardiff Central Library, Fo LC: 352. [58] CitationJohnes, ‘Inventing a County’. [59] On banal nationalism, see CitationBillig, Banal Nationalism. [60] CitationDaunton, ‘Coal to Capital’, 222. [61] Liverpool Daily Post, editorial, 1 March 1979. [62] CitationSGCC, County of South Glamorgan Structure Plan, Proposed Alterations, para. 2.5.4.1. [63] CitationJones, ‘Beyond Identity?’, 354–5. [64] SGCC, South Glamorgan and Its Future. [65] CitationCardiff Bay Development Corporation, Renaissance. For academic analyses of the Bay project, see CitationThomas and Imrie, ‘Urban Policy, Modernisation and the Regeneration of Cardiff Bay’. CitationThomas, Regenerating Cardiff Bay. [66] CitationCooke, Cardiff: Making A European City. [67] Western Mail Survey, 15 May 1996. [68] Cooke, Cardiff: Making A European City. [69] CitationWilliams, Cardiff Dead, 231. [70] For a measured but positive view of the impact of the stadium, see CitationJones, Munday and Roche, The Millennium Stadium, Cardiff and Wales. [71] CitationJones, Mr Vogel, 73. [72] CitationUngersma, Cardiff: Rebirth of a Capital, 12. [73] CitationVernon, Politics and the People, 49. [74] For such claims, see Western Mail, 9 November 1991. [75] For example, The Economist, 9 June 1990. [76] CitationMorris, The Matter of Wales. [77] Quoted in New Start, 9 March 2001. [78] CitationMorgan, Cardiff: Half-and-Half a Capital. [79] See CitationJones, ‘Post-Referendum Politics’. [80] Daily Post, 1 March 2004. CitationHalford, Leeks from the Back Benches. [81] CitationMorgan, ‘Re-Scaling the Capital’. [82] Ibid., 296. [83] Table 000300, http://www.statswales.wales.gov.uk; INTERNET. [84] Morgan, ‘Re-Scaling the Capital’, 295. [85] Calculated from CitationWragg, A Study of the Passenger Transport Needs & Statistics on Commuting in Wales, 2008. [86] CitationBristow and Morgan, ‘De-Industrialization, the New Service Economy and the Search for Post-Industrial Prosperity’. Indeed, in comparison with major English cities Cardiff's local authorities were actually rather slow to react to the changing economic environment. CitationShapely, ‘The Entrepreneurial City’. [87] CitationMorgan, ‘Cardiff and the Valleys’, 133. [88] Author's interviews with former chief executives and leading councillors of SGCC. [89] Sutcliffe, ‘Foreword’, ix. [90] Morgan, ‘Cardiff and the Valleys’, 132.