I FIRST met Gareth Miles during a Plaid Cymru conference in the mid-1970s, in Tenby or Aberystwyth if I remember correctly.

He had just contributed to a debate about what the foreign and defence policy of a Plaid Cymru government should be, in an independent Wales. Rod Barrar’s suggestion was that a truly sovereign Wales should join the Warsaw Pact!

In Gareth’s opinion, he told me at the time, this standpoint was too extreme, even though the majority of Plaid Cymru members — as today in all likelihood — supported the principle of neutrality, outside Nato.

I must confess, I had expected Gareth Miles — the author of a very popular pamphlet in militant Welsh Language Society circles: Free Wales, Welsh Wales, Socialist Wales (1972) — to support enrolment in the Warsaw Pact.

But in Marxist fashion, he saw the unfavourable contradiction in this idea. The important thing was to ensure that Plaid Cymru stood by neutrality in the cold war, not to unsettle the party’s pacifists, not to drive its liberals towards Nato, nor to isolate the left wing inside the party.

After that conference, Gareth and I became close comrades and friends. Through him and Barrar, more than anyone else, I learnt my spoken Welsh in the pubs of Cardiff through the rest of the 1970s. At that time, Gareth worked as a full-time organiser for the National Union of the Teachers of Wales (UCAC), and we would meet frequently in the Roath Park, him with his crisp-filled sandwiches and me with a pint of Brain’s Dark and a cheese cob.  

Gareth was always clear and fearless in his politics.

As an early example of this, he rejected the tales from the mouths of some Plaid Cymru leaders that Breton nationalists had been the innocent victims of persecution at the hands of the French government at the end of the second world war. After researching deeply in Brittany — his French was fluent — he came to the firm conclusion that these nationalists were extremely right-wing, anti-democratic and anti-socialist, with strongly pro-Nazi elements in their midst.

Gareth was hugely disappointed that his early efforts failed to secure membership for UCAC in the Welsh and British TUCs. Victory would come later.

A failure, too, on the whole, were our efforts to turn Plaid Cymru substantially to the left. I remember one delegate, namely Dafydd Huws, declaring from the conference platform that Gareth and I would feel more at home in the Communist Party.

That Dafydd had a head on his shoulders!

But before coming to our real home, we established the Welsh Socialist Republican Movement (WSRM) at the beginning of the 1980s. After the disasters of 1979, namely the defeat in the devolution referendum and Thatcher’s victory in the general election, with the steel and coal industries under threat and holiday homes ablaze, there was the need for a new revolutionary political movement, as an alternative to Plaid Cymru and the Labour Party.

Unfortunately, not enough of us were listening to Gareth’s wise words during that period. He warned us of the political dangers of over-emphasising the republican dimension in our colourful activities and strategy, at the expense of the socialist dimension.

Despite this, the leaders of the WSRM received Gareth’s strong and principled support in a difficult period for us, under the lash of the police and the British state right up to our victory in the conspiracy case at Cardiff Crown Court in 1983.  

Which way forward after that experience? Gareth the Marxist led some of us into the Communist Party. Why that party?

This was the only authentic socialist party, international and anti-imperialist in its outlook, patriotic in its support for full Welsh language rights and a Parliament for Wales, and with its roots in the working class.

Forty years later, how does Gareth see things yesterday, today and tomorrow? Although he is ill, here are his answers to my questions on behalf of the Morning Star.

For a start, what in his opinion has been the Welsh Language Society’s biggest success since its formation in 1962?

“The foremost success has been to place the Welsh language and culture in its economic and social context,” he says.

I told him that his early pamphlet, Free Wales, Welsh Wales, Socialist Wales, had made quite an impression on me and many other young people at the beginning of the 1970s. Why was his message so needed at that time?

“There was a danger that the Welsh Language Society would get swallowed up by conservative nationalism under the influence of Saunders Lewis, for example,” Gareth replied, “And by a superficial socialist extremism.”

I reminded Gareth of the words of our old friend and comrade, the late Gwyn Alf Williams, that capitalism must die in order for the Welsh as a distinct nation to live. How true were those words today, if at all?

“I agree with the proposition and, more than that, there is a danger that the human race itself will not continue if capitalism does not come to an end', he declares in no uncertain terms, “humanity is in greater danger than ever before.”

He has long campaigned against nuclear weapons, as a member of CND, as well as opposing apartheid, racism and the oppression of the Palestinians.

Gareth and I remember meeting Gwyn Alf in the King’s Castle in Canton, Cardiff, early in the 1980s. Gwyn was about to move from the Communist Party to Plaid Cymru, while we were on our way from the national movement to the Communist Party. An interesting and comradely debate took place, without agreement.

As for the political situation in Wales today, I asked Gareth about the prospects at the present time. What would he like to see? “I wish to see Plaid Cymru and the Labour Party in Wales agreeing to create a patriotic socialist party,” came the response.

There have been enormous changes in the world in recent decades: the downfall of the Soviet Union, the victory over apartheid, new wars in Europe and the Middle East, the global warming crisis, the rise of China, and much more.

Is Keir Hardie’s old slogan, “Socialism — the hope of the world!” still relevant? Gareth is in no doubt: “Keir Hardie’s message remains one of essential importance.”

The two of us have marched through the political movements, shoulder to shoulder, since the 1970s from the left wing of Plaid Cymru to the WSRM, and then onwards into the Communist Party. What in these experiences, I wondered, are the lessons for us and for other people?

“Never lose hope!” remarked Gareth Miles, peerless Welshman, patriot and Marxist.