Dewi Watkin Powell was one of Wales’ best-known judges - a fervent supporter of the Welsh language and of Plaid Cymru.
As well as being a Crown Court judge and then a High Court judge, he gave evidence to commissions looking at options for the future governance of Wales with the likes of Gwynfor Evans and Dafydd Wigley in the 1960s and 1970s.
He later chaired the council of University College, Cardiff, sat on the governing councils of other Welsh universities and was a member of the Gorsedd of Bards. Among other distinctions, he also became President of the Baptist Union of Wales and of the Council of Free Churches.
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It’s no wonder, then, that he was seen as the right person to approach by a Plaid Cymru councillor seeking more detailed information about the constitutional status of Wales in the weeks leading up to the 1997 devolution referendum.
Gwyn Hopkins, who represented his home village of Llangennech, near Llanelli, for 30 years until retiring in 2017, was concerned about suggestions made by those who sought to diminish Wales that it wasn’t really a country and that laws passed centuries before that saw it merged into England hadn’t been repealed.
“I decided to seek advice from Dewi Watkin Powell because he was a well-known lawyer who obviously cared about Wales,” said Mr Hopkins, now 85. “I wrote him a letter six weeks before the referendum and he replied after the result was known. What he wrote back to me was a gem, but I mislaid the letter and didn’t find it until very recently.”
In fact Mr Hopkins had tucked the letter away in what was a very appropriate place - a copy of the historian John Davies’ History of Wales in Welsh that his wife had given him as a present shortly after it was first published in 1990.
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“I can’t remember why I put it in the book, which I read when it came out but haven’t looked at for many years,” he said. “But I’m very pleased the letter has turned up. As someone who has long wanted Wales to be independent , I find it very inspiring.”
In the letter Judge Watkin Powell, who died aged 94 in 2015, wrote: “The questions you raise are interesting and although, on the face of it, they invite simple answers it is not easy to provide such answers.
“Initially, you ask: to what extent does the ‘Act of Union’ remain operational? And if it is not, doesn’t it follow that Wales is no longer a part of England? Unless I misunderstand you, you then ask: if that’s the case, isn’t Wales free to proclaim its independence de jure?
“At first glance the simple answer to the first question is ‘It is not’ – but not entirely as the question has been asked for the following reasons: There has never been a law bearing the name ‘Act of Union’ on England’s Statute Books relating to Wales.
“In all probability [the historian] Owen M Edwards was the first person to christen the law passed by England’s Parliament in 1536 as the ‘Act of Union’.”
Judge Watkin Powell went on to state that there had been four laws relating to Wales’ status as a country and the 1536 law was not the first.
“The first was the First Westminster Statute 1284 (or the Statute of Rhuddlan, as it is sometimes called),” he wrote. “The 1536 law was the second that was soon followed by the law with the name 34-5 Henry VIII Number 26 (The Laws in Wales Act 1542).
“It is appropriate to consider both together because very detailed arrangements were made to administer Wales, including appointing Justices of the Peace for the first time, a Court of Great Sessions, the provision of a new county structure, the right to elect MPs for the English Parliament, law reforms and, as part of the ‘bargain’, banishing the Welsh language from official and public life. The fourth law was the Wales and Berwick Act 1746.
“Between them they contain the whole process of integrating Wales with England as a part of the Kingdom of England. The original Act of Union (if I may use the term) and the basis for all that followed was the 1284 Act. It was this Act that made Wales, as a political entity, into a single unit with England.
“It was the result of the victory of England’s King, Edward I, over the fledgling Welsh government of Llewelyn II in the war of 1282 – 83. The wording of the Statute is important. It was a law that legalised the devouring of Wales on the basis of military conquest, although the right of Edward I to ‘put the country of Wales and its inhabitants under feudal authority’ was attributed to ‘divine providence’.
“In addition, the law was said ‘to annex and unite the said country with the crown of the Kingdom …in one body’. What the 1536 Act (and the 1542 Act) did was to reaffirm the relationship that existed between Wales and England since 1284 by placing the stamp of authority of the English Parliament on the whole process in words that echo the words ‘unite’, ‘annex’ and ‘body’ from the 1284 Act, by proclaiming: ‘The country or dominion of Wales shall be, stand and continue forever from henceforth incorporated, united and annexed to and with the realm of England’.
“This is different to what happened in Scotland (that Edward I did not succeed in conquering) for union did not come by agreement (as in Scotland’s case) but by military annexation. The fourth Act, the Wales and Berwick Law 1746, declared that in any law in future the word ‘England’ is to be understood as if it consists of Wales as well.”
Judge Watkin Powell then set out in detail when the provisions aimed at wiping out Wales were repealed.
He wrote: “The 1284 Law was repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1887. The references to Wales in the 1746 Act were repealed in Section 3 of the Welsh Language Act 1967.
“Everything that had not already been repealed from the 1536 and 1542 Acts (except one clause relating to county sheriffs) was repealed by Section 35 of the 1993 Welsh Language Act.
“As such it is true that Wales cannot any longer be regarded as a part of England, but it does not mean that Wales has ceased to be a part of the entity referred to as ‘England and Wales’ because of the multitude of laws and political and administrative arrangements made by the Westminster Parliament that are still operational. “Therefore, the fact that the ‘Acts of Union”’have been annulled does not mean that Wales is, de facto or de jure, independent.”
However, stated the judge, “The effect of the referendum – or, rather, its result when (rather than if) it becomes the law of the land – will be the emergence, once more, of a fledgling Welsh government which will be, within the extent of its authority, a democratic government.”
Judge Watkin Powell concluded his letter with a rallying cry that Mr Hopkins would like the people of Wales to take to heart: “I hope this has answered your questions.
“From now on it is therefore a matter for us to see to it that the authority of what’s to come expands so as to give us the status aspired to by [Owain] Glyndŵr!”#
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