It’s hard to believe but it’s a whole 10 years since YesCymru was founded.

It was in September 2014 that the organisation came into being with its founding mission to campaign for Wales to take its rightful place on the world stage as a free and independent nation.

This mission, which remains our core aim, is rooted in the simple and straightforward belief that the best people to decide how Wales should be run are its people, and is underpinned by the firm belief that we are big enough, rich enough and intelligent enough to stand on our own two feet as a nation.

For years we have been fed propaganda that told us that we’re just too poor to be independent and that we need the political elite in Westminster to make our decisions for us.

Tackling this state-sponsored misinformation has been at the forefront of YesCymru’s campaigning efforts over the last decade.

And what a decade it has been.

An awful lot has happened in that tumultuous 10-year period and the world is now a very different place because of it.

Brexit

The Scots came close to gaining their independence with the referendum of 2014.

We’ve had a Brexit referendum which took Wales out of the European Union. Following that a global pandemic turned the world upside down and tore us from our loved ones.

It’s hard to argue that it hasn’t been an extraordinarily difficult period for many people.

Growth in the economy has been anaemic at best, and any economic growth that has taken place hasn’t fed through to most people’s pay packets in any meaningful way.

As a result, living standards for the majority have been eroded and inflation has made it increasingly difficult for ordinary people to make ends meet.

The scourge of childhood poverty is getting worse, not better. Around 30% of children in Wales are currently living in poverty, with 45% of children aged 7-11 worried about having enough to eat.

On top of that public services are a mess because they’ve been deprived of the necessary investment. To many of us, it feels like austerity has become a permanent state of affairs.

Over the last decade, it has become abundantly clear that Westminster just isn’t working for the people of Wales. The political system as it is currently constituted has failed them and has done so miserably.

Unsurprisingly because of this, a certain disillusionment with politics has set in with a sizable portion of the general public.

Gloom

But, amid all the gloom and the disappointment, we have seen a determination grow to fight for something better.

We have seen the flame of hope spark to life and spread among our fellow citizens.

Over the last decade, we’ve seen YesCymru start from humble beginnings, with only a few 100 members, to become an organisation with a membership in the thousands and with groups the length and breadth of Wales and beyond.

Our joyful, vibrant, and colourful rallies, from Wrexham to Cardiff, from Caernarfon to Merthyr, have attracted thousands of people to march for the cause.

When YesCymru was formed an independent Wales seemed like a distant dream, with one poll by ICM Research showing support for independence to be as low as 3%.

That dream is now much closer to becoming reality than it ever has been. The turnaround has been nothing short of astonishing with support for Welsh independence now regularly polling at over 30%.

It’s fair to say that YesCymru has experienced growing pains in this period, but we should take heart from what has been achieved and take pride in the campaign work our dedicated activists undertake in our communities.

It’s easy to forget that 10 years old is relatively young for a political organisation of this kind.

The case for an independent Wales is as strong as it has ever been. If anything it has considerably strengthened over the past few years.

It’s clear from the evidence that political settlement is not secure. Though we have our own parliament in the form of the Senedd, the levers of power it controls are not sufficient to meet the needs and aspirations of our people.

Influence

It doesn’t control the vast majority of our taxes, public finances or the welfare system. It lacks the power to shape the justice system in a way that reflects our values. Nor does it have much influence on our foreign policy which remains dominated by London.

The powers that have already been transferred to the Senedd are not safe.

We have seen this in how establishment politicians in London have moved to claw back powers over swathes of important regulation and billions of pounds of funding through the anti-Senedd and anti-democratic Internal Market Act.

Time and time again, the Westminster establishment has shown itself to be reflexively resistant to Wales gaining more power over its own affairs.

When the landmark Thomas Commission report of 2019 called for Wales to have power over justice it was contemptuously dismissed by the London elite.

A YouGov poll commissioned by YesCymru last year found that over 75% of those polled were in favour of full Welsh control of Wales’ Crown Estate assets, which were last valued at being worth an astonishing £853m.

However, Westminster governments, both blue and red, have stubbornly refused to hand over control to Wales in the same way they have done for Scotland.

Not only that, but the newly installed Starmer-led government has moved to entrench London’s control over Wales’ resources, with the announcement of the partnership between the UK government-owned and controlled Great British Energy and the Crown Estate.

Powers

Therefore we have a fight on our hands just to ensure the Senedd keeps the powers it already has.

What this underscores is that independence is vital if we are going to ensure the survival of Welsh democracy and the creation of a nation in which all our communities flourish and that reflects our values of fairness, equality and justice.

Despite the clear failure of the Westminster establishment and despite the enormous progress that has been made by pro-independence campaigners over the last decade, there is no room whatsoever for complacency.

In its first 10 years, YesCymru has succeeded in igniting hope for something better. In the next 10 years, its task will be to work towards turning that hope into a brighter future for our people.