Race and nation in Wales

Since the 1980s ideas of the nation and nationalism in Wales have been rethought to reject primordial and essentialist conceptions and to stress the construction and frequent remaking of Welsh identity. Devolved government faced with a civil society which seemed highly divided stressed ideas of inclusion and race became an important aspect of this. The process was aided by the growth of a people’s history in which the experiences of minority ethnic communities and migration became important. The Welsh Government responded to the global Black Lives Matter moment of 2020 by developing policies to review memorials to empire and slaveholding, mandating the teaching of Black history in schools and promoting policies aimed at creating an anti-racist Wales by 2030. These are challenged by hostile forces within civil society, marked by polls indicating a substantial decline in support for Labour and strong polling for Reform.