Gwynfor Evans

Gwynfor Richard Evans (1 September 1912 – 21 April 2005) was a Welsh politician, lawyer and author.

He was a teenager when the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru was founded in 1925, and he founded a branch of the party while he was at Oxford.

Evans is credited with keeping Plaid Cymru going through the lean years of the 1940s and 1950s.

He became the party's president in 1945 and retained the office until 1981.

A pacifist, he became active in Heddychwyr Cymru, a Welsh organisation closely associated with the Peace Pledge Union, serving as secretary and editor of a series of pamphlets throughout the Second World War.

A committed Christian also, he declared himself a conscientious objector and was required to appear before a tribunal which, recognising the firmness of his beliefs, registered him unconditionally.

Evans contested Merioneth at the general elections of 1945, 1950, 1955 and 1959, and the 1954 Aberdare by-election.

Evans was elected to Carmarthenshire County Council in 1949, keeping his seat for the next 25 years, usually as the lone Plaid Cymru representative, acquiring the nickname "Evans dual carriageway" for his emphasis on improving transport links.

In the 1950s, he campaigned unsuccessfully for a Welsh parliament.

He joined locals Dafydd Roberts and Elizabeth May Watkin Jones in their protest against the closure and flooding of their village Capel Celyn.

This was because of the plan to dam the Tryweryn River to supply the city of Liverpool with water.

This was a cause célèbre in Wales in the early 1960s.

In 1962, Evans joined Wales West and North Television, in which he was one of the leading figures in the venture.

It won the ITV franchise for western and northern Wales, but the venture failed because of financial difficulties, and the company was merged with another station, Television Wales and the West.

In 1964 Evans transferred his candidature to Carmarthen.

He had also contested the seat at the 1964 general election.

His by-election victory is regarded as a seminal moment for Plaid Cymru.

He was shown around the House of Commons by fellow pacifist Emrys Hughes, the son-in-law of Keir Hardie; on pointing out the Welsh Labour table in the Commons' tea room, Hughes warned him, "You'd better not sit down there, your name's mud among that lot."

He was President of the Welsh political party Plaid Cymru for thirty-six years and was the first member of Parliament to represent it at Westminster, which he did twice, from 1966 to 1970, and again from 1974 to 1979.

On entering the House of Commons, he famously failed in his attempt to obtain permission to take the oath in the Welsh language.

On 14 July 1966, Evans won the parliamentary seat of Carmarthen from Labour in a by-election caused by the death of Lady Megan Lloyd George, daughter of the former Liberal Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, having come third in the general election just a few weeks before.

In the House of Commons, Evans was true to his pacifist principles in being one of the few MPs to oppose the British government's support of the Nigerian federal government with supplies of weapons in the civil war against Biafra (1967–1970).

He also opposed the Vietnam War: after being denied entry to the country as part of an inspection group, he instead protested outside a US air base in Thailand.

In the 1970 general election Evans lost his Carmarthen seat to Labour's Gwynoro Jones and failed to regain it in the February 1974 general election by only three votes.

In 1973, following the abolition of Carmarthenshire County Council, Evans failed to be elected to the new Dyfed County Council.

He was the first MP to attempt to do so, but the right to take the oath in any of the UK's native languages was not granted until 1974.

His most notable achievement was his successful campaign for the creation of a Welsh-language television channel.

Gwynfor Evans was born in Barry, near Cardiff, to Dan Evans and Catherine Richard.

He had a brother named Alcwyn, and a sister named Ceridwen.

His father ran a chain of shops in Barry, and his mother a china shop.

His mother was a fluent Welsh speaker.

As a boy, he was educated at Gladstone Road School.

Later on, he was educated at Barry County School, where he was captain of the school's cricket and hockey teams.

The area was mostly English-speaking; at school, he began learning the Welsh language but did not become fully fluent until the age of seventeen.

Evans studied at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and at St John's College, Oxford, from where he qualified as a lawyer.

During his time at St John's, he became a member of the Dafydd ap Gwilym society there.

He was also a market gardener.

He regained the seat, with a majority of 3,640 votes, in the October 1974 general election, when he returned to Parliament accompanied by two other Plaid Cymru MPs, Dafydd Wigley and Dafydd Elis Thomas.

Evans lost Carmarthen once more at the 1979 general election, to Roger Thomas (also Labour).

He was unsuccessful in the 1983 general election, and did not contest any further elections.