Welsh Journals

SUSTAINING RURAL COMMUNITIES: THE AGRICULTURE (IMPROVEMENT OF ROADS) ACT 1955 TRANSPORT historians typically focus on the most conspicuous examples of their subfield, namely, the busiest routeways. Local studies, say of individual railway branch lines, may nevertheless reveal much about the functioning of a railway network and the role of communication in the wider economic and social life of the country. The focus of this paper is on the roads most intensively used by individual families and rural communities, and the insights that their documentation might give into the wider perceptions of government towards the more remote upland areas of Wales in the immediate post-war period. A case study is made of the circumstances in which the Agriculture (Improvement of Roads) Bill of 1955 was promoted and enacted. If the upland areas of Scotland and Wales provided the most extreme examples of rural depopulation in the United Kingdom, so too did they offer greater opportunity for a more co-ordinated response. There had been a Cabinet minister with the title of secretary of state for Scotland since 1885. Although successive governments had resisted a similar post for Wales, the post-war Labour government had established a Council for Wales and Monmouthshire early in 1949; it was intended to meet at least quarterly 'for the interchange of views and information on developments and trends in the economic and cultural fields'. It would ensure that the government was adequately informed about the impact of its activities on the general life of the people. As a further compromise, the newly-elected Conservative government, in October 1951, gave the home secretary the additional responsibility of acting as minister for Welsh Affairs. Whilst he represented Welsh opinion to his ministerial colleagues, it was emphasized that he would not have executive authority for matters that were their concern. 1 Parliamentary Debates (PD), Commons, 458, 1262-77, and 493, 815-16;