Rage against the dying of the light

THERE is a Welsh style of political speech that owes more to the pulpit than the podium. It was born in the nonconformist Valleys, where mysticism, mining and Methodism mingled and produced a distinctively emotional and poetic religious culture. At its heart is hwyl, a hard-to-translate Welsh term implying the stirringly sentimental, bardic and gutsy. On the preacher’s lips it means cerdd dafod (rhythm, or “tongue craft”) and cynghanedd (harmony). It has marked the speech of three of Britain’s most acclaimed modern political orators, all sons of provincial Wales: David Lloyd George, Nye Bevan and Neil Kinnock. Of the latter’s first speech as Labour Party leader one reporter admiringly wrote that he “hwyled and hwyled and hwyled.”