A welcome in the valleys

Aplaid Cymru change at the House of Commons has general election overtones.

Dafydd Elis Thomas has surrendered his job as whip to Dafydd Wigley. The reason given is that he wants to devote more time to research and preparation of policy for the election.

Mrs Thatcher tells me that she was delighted with her two-day visit to Mid-Wales last week.

Hospitality

Two things in particular made it very much worthwhile. Firstly reports from all areas of Wales that the party is stronger than at any time, both in organisation and in numbers, with the real prospect of more gains from Labour.

The other was her experience in the Rhondda. She was the first Tory leader ever to venture into this bastion of Socialism, and her reception was astonishing.

True, it coincided with the valleys' silver jubilee celebrations but the warmth of Welsh hospitality for the “political enemy” was not entirely due to that.

She has to thank David Gibson-Watt for the bold venture. This M.C. and Bar veteran of military and political battles took her into the very heart of Welsh Socialism not, I imagine, without some slight trepidation.

But the results, as Mrs. Thatcher herself vouches, reflected no risks, barely an embarrassing political comment from those they met.

Finally a Tory promise about Brecon and Radnor, the seat which has been held by Labour since before the war. This will a Tory gain, says Lloyd Harvard Davies, prospective candidate.

And one of the reasons is a substantial drift of dissatisfied Liberals into the Tory Party, not only as voters, it was claimed, but as active party workers—one Tory dividend of the Lib-Lab pact.

After all only a 3.5 per cent. swing to the Conservative would see a change over in the constituency.