Welsh Journals

REVIEWS A PEOPLE'S UNIVERSITY' 'The history of learning in Wales is the history of the nation itself.' Thus Cadwaladr Davies and Lewis Jones, authors of the first official history of the University of Wales, writing in 1905. Allowing for the patriotic euphoria of the Welsh Edwardians, there is abundant ground for seeing the university as central to the historical experience of the Welsh people over the past hundred years, not only in terms of scholarship and education but also as one of an 'unhistoric' nation's very few unifying national institutions. But what precisely the history of the university as a whole amounts to remains curiously intangible. From its foundation in November 1893, fragmentation and tension were inherent in the new university system, with conflicting expectations created. The Haldane Commission of 1918, while sympathetic to the federal ideal, added to the centrifugal tendencies by abolishing the old university-wide Senate, and replacing it with the much more demure Academic Board. Debates on the future of the university in the early 1960s did not quell demands, especially from Cardiff and Swansea, in favour of defederalization. The immense expansion of the constituent institutions since the early 1980s, and the divisive policies pursued by the Welsh Funding Council in the 1990s have ensured that the debate will go on. Indeed, the Rosser report of 1993, while confirming the federal relationship, virtually acknowledged that it was in the six constituent institutions (no longer 'colleges' other than that of Medicine) that the essence of the university now lay. Hitherto, significantly enough, the main contributions to the history of the university have come from the individual colleges. E. L. Ellis wrote a superb centenary history of Aberystwyth in 1972 while J. Gwynn Williams's account of Bangor under the Reichel principalship was hardly less valuable. We have also a good history of Lampeter in its early years by D. W. T. Price, and more recently a very serviceable history of Swansea by David Dykes. Only Cardiff, oddly enough, has failed to publish a proper history of the hundred-odd years since the time of Viriamu Jones. For whatever reason, the late Stanley Chrimes's scholarly study remains immured in the college archives. But what of the University as a whole? Where is the ghost in its bureaucratic machine? In what sense does it represent a unified or integrated organization, apart from the degree-awarding and validating activities in the University Registry, and such individual bodies as the Board of Celtic Studies or Gregynog or the University Press? We are due to have the promised centenary histories from J. Gwynn Williams (down to 1939) and Prys Morgan (thereafter); both are The University Movement in Wales. By J. Gwynn Williams. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1993. Pp- 250. £ 25.00; The Report on the Proposed University of Wales by Owen M. Edwards, 1893. Introduction by J. Gwynn Williams. National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, 1993. Pp. xiv, 50. £ 15.00; The University of Wales: An Illustrated History. By Geraint H. Jenkins. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1993. Pp. 209, plates. £ 9.95; 'The Finest Old University in the World': The University of Wales, 1893-1993. By Geraint H. Jenkins. University of Wales, Cardiff, 1994. Pp. 14. n.p.