Days of hope

The Urdd camp at Llangrannog, where I was attending part of a Plaid Cymru summer school, or Ysgol Haf. Llangrannog is on one of the most beautiful stretches of Cardigan Bay, which is high praise. The campsite, or Gwersyll, was established in 1932 and expanded in the 1970s to something like its present size, although it continues to grow - this century a large new residential block and a leisure centre have been added. Groups of children come from all over Wales for the activities here, as often as not in an all-Welsh linguistic environment.

Urdd Gobaith Cymru (literally, Wales League of Hope) was one of the many youth movements established in Europe in the 1920s. Like the Woodcraft Folk, its spirit was pacifist and internationalist, but with the added dimension of a strong commitment to Welsh/Cymraeg language and culture. It runs local eisteddfodau through the year, and its national Eisteddfod is on a similar scale to the adult equivalent, one of the biggest youth cultural events in the world, held each year and alternating between sites in North and South Wales. Next year it's in Pembrokeshire.

Plaid Cymru was also founded in the 1920s. Its new leader, Leanne Wood, is a radical green socialist and has made rebuilding the Welsh economy on the basis of sustainable communities the central focus of her leadership. The sessions today presented different visions of the economic future, exploring the tensions between conventional approaches based on growth and consumption to which many of us are still wedded, and what we all know of the impossibility of continuing on that road if we want any kind of social justice (or a habitable planet). Hard times call for hard efforts and creative thinking. As Leanne would say, 'Ymlaen!' ('Forward!')