Welsh Journals

It is when Dr. Evans moves from narrative to analysis that he should be read with some wariness. JOHN MORRIS THE WELSH ECONOMY: STUDIES IN EXPANSION. Edited by Brinley Thomas. Cardiff, 1962. pp. xiv + 216. 30s. This book, written by members and former members of the staff of the Economics Department, University College, Cardiff, appeared some eight years after the similar volume edited by Professor A. K. Cairncross on The Scottish Economy (Cambridge University Press), and a few months after the publication of the Scottish Council Report, Inquiry into the Scottish Economy (Edinburgh, 1961). Cairncross's Scottish symposium is wider in scope than its Welsh counterpart described by its sub-title as "A Statistic- al Account of Scottish Life", it has chapters on local government finance, trade unions, education, crime, and the churches-chapters which have no counterpart in the admirably planned Welsh volume. The main title of each book is significant. Professor Cairncross introduced with the follow- ing words the study which he edited "The Scottish economy is an integral part of the British economy, sharing the same currency, supplying a common market, subject to identical rates of tax. There is complete freedom of movement between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom and a strong equalising tendency, therefore, alike in prices and wages, in the terms of employment and conditions of living. Yet the segment lying north of the Border is a distinct society with a unity and cohesion of its own. It is not merely that it coincides with an ancient kingdom in which the fire of nationalism still burns although the fact that Scotland is a country in its own right, differing from England and [from] Wales in its memories and aspirations, temperament and tastes, institutions and culture, lends additional interest to a study of its social and economic problems. There is also a sufficient degree of segregation from the rest of the economy, and a sufficient diversity within Scotland, to allow one to speak of a Scottish economy, functioning as a unit and with an independent momentum and there is a sufficient amount of statistical information about this economy to enable one to describe and analyse it". Most of the same things may be said about the economy of Wales, both about its integration and its distinctiveness in the economy of Britain. In the matter of industrial specialisation (the obverse of the diversity mentioned by Professor Cairncross) Wales is less similar to the whole of Britain than Scotland is. Clearly there is a Welsh economy, but of course having an economy is not something peculiar to countries. Though not quite the first book on the Welsh economy-one recalls in particular Professor Emeritus J. Morgan Rees's Diwydiant a Masnach Cymru Heddiw (Cardiff, 193 I)-one can readily agree with the statement on its dust- jacket that this is "the first work of its kind on the Welsh economy." In the penetrating way in which the Welsh story is told in the context of that