Welsh Journals

lated to the political and administrative process, yet it added to and deepened the more immediate debates. From my perspective, this evolution of planning had the following implications:- 1. The Welsh Office bought time with'Wales: The Way Ahead? There were numerous pressures on it to produce a Welsh regional policy, not least from a central government which had little interest in dev- olutionist policies. Almost any plan it produced, however, competent, would have been a lightning rod for attack. By producing a mild, dis- appointing plan, it was able to blunt the worst embarassments of having no plan, and to present a superficially plausible rationale for the failure to do a subsequent plan.'Wales: The Way Ahead'also served as a superficial basis for subsequent proposals, while it was at the same time too general to engage very much specific attack. It could only be attacked for what it failed to do, for sins of omission, leaving to the opposition the burden of raising specific points of con- tention. The Welsh Office could, and did, continue to refer to its document as the basis for specific actions as much as a decade later. 2. Plaid Cymru was able to challenge this basic agenda through its plan. In many of its positions on specific events and issues, Plaid Cymru was opportunistic, but An Economic Plan for Wales' attacked the deeper structure of government policy and thus added depth to the Plaid Cymru position. Tactically, it counteracted much of the defusing, diffuse planning stance of the Welsh Office, which bene- fitted from the policy vacuum it maintained (because it offered no substantive position to attack). Án Economic Plan for Wales'raised many of the issues that the Welsh Office avoided raising, and thus gave Plaid Cymru (and others) more room to debate. 3. The overall pattern of government policy and opposition changed as a result. Rather than being limited to opportunistic attacks on particular issues, opposition to Welsh Office policy had a relatively coherent basis. Each issue-based group no longer had to start from scratch. Even some continuity of staffing was possible. Academics and consultants who had been called in in one inquiry had a better basis for participation in the next one. By the end of the 1970s this set of opposition resources had progressed far beyond what Plaid Cymru had created in 1969. 4. While controversy was elaborated in plans and analyses of plans, a more general polarization was occurring in Wales. This had econ- omic, cultural and political dimensions. What had been a fringe movement (particularly in the eyes of the British) developed res- pectability. New elements including migrants from outside joined separatist organizations, not limited to Plaid Cymru. The planning controversy contributed to this, as well as derived from it. 5. By the end of the 1970s, the controversy over planning had lost its novelty and had been channelled into bureaucratic machinery, in- cluding that of newly created local authorities, themselves involved in contentious bargaining with the Welsh Office.