Labour's Crisis: Plaid Cymru, the Conservatives, and the Decline of the Labour Party in North-West Wales, 1960-74

(Hardback)

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Many books have focused on the rise of, and success of, the Labour party in Wales, but this one focuses on its decline in an understudied part of Wales.

Reviews

'This groundbreaking study, firmly grounded in the rich archival sources, printed material and personal interviews, greatly deepens our understanding of the seismic political transformation which occurred in Gwynedd in the 1960s and 1970s. During this crucial period Plaid Cymru rapidly grew in influence and soon came to supplant the Labour Party as the key political player. The book examines the politics of the parties and attempts an explanation as to why Plaid Cymru succeeded - perhaps agianst the odds. It certainly has a relevance and a resonance beyond Wales'. - Dr J. Graham Jones, Director of the Welsh Political Archive, the National Library of Wales "'Labour's Crisis' makes a significant contribution to British, and, as Edwards asserts in his closing paragraph, even international, political historiography. It provides a missing piece of a complex jigsaw puzzle. In so doing it enriches our understanding of the relationship between the 'centre' of the British state and its rural, linguistically and culturally distinct north-west Welsh 'periphery'. What Andrew Edwards has provided is an extremely valuable building block." Dr Martin Wright, Reviews in History

Author Bio

Andrew Edwards is lecturer in modern Welsh and British history at Bangor University. Dr Edwards earned his BA in History and MA in Labour History at Bangor and went on to study for his PhD at the same institution. He has published numerous articles and essays on various aspects of Welsh Labour and nationalist history and recently worked on a major project which focused on the history of Welsh devolution, 1885-2001.