The referendum held on 1 March 1979 saw voters in Wales reject a proposal to establish a devolved Welsh assembly. Held on the same day as Scotland’s more ambiguous referendum, the result in Wales was overwhelming.

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The Wales Act, which set out the scheme for a devolved Welsh legislature, represented the Labour government’s attempt to respond to growing demands for Welsh self-government.

In July 1966, Plaid Cymru achieved its first-ever parliamentary breakthrough when its president, Gwynfor Evans, won the Carmarthen by-election, overturning a substantial Labour majority.

Plaid Cymru’s Carmarthen breakthrough in 1966 – considered alongside the Scottish National Party’s success in Hamilton (1967) – led to the establishment of the Royal Commission on the Constitution (the Kilbrandon Commission) by the Labour government in 1969. The commission’s work constituted the first major study of the constitutional challenges posed by multi-national governance and rising national consciousness.

The report, published in October 1973 after a four-year inquiry, rejected both independence and federalism for the constituent nations of the UK, instead recommending legislative devolution for Scotland and Wales in the form of elected assemblies.

In September 1974, Harold Wilson’s government published a white paper entitled Democracy and Devolution: Proposals for Scotland and Wales, putting forward proposals based on the Kilbrandon commission.

On 13 December 1976, James Callaghan, who succeeded Wilson as prime minister, introduced the Scotland and Wales Bill (before the legislation was split in two) at second reading. Callaghan argued that devolution was a necessary response to the “movement of popular will”.

The Callaghan government mostly embraced devolution, but the Labour Party at large was divided.

In Wales, the anti-devolution position was subscribed to by prominent Labour figures, including future leader Neil Kinnock. They argued that a Welsh assembly would be an expensive, unnecessary layer of bureaucracy and a danger to the unity of the United Kingdom.

These MPs also capitalised on fears of distrust between various areas and social groups.

Leo Abse was a prominent figure in the so-called “gang of six” of Welsh Labour MPs who opposed devolution. The Labour MP for Torfaen, Abse claimed that an assembly would lead to the dominance of the Welsh language in public life.

Speaking in a 1976 commons debate on Welsh affairs, he said: “There may be too few passengers on the new Swansea to Paddington Inter-City expresses, but there will be a packed gravy train steaming out of the Cardiff City Exchange, and most of Wales knows that no carriages will be fuller than the first-class coaches marked ‘For Welsh speakers only’.

In 1978, Kinnock claimed that children in Anglesey were being prevented from going to the toilet unless they asked in Welsh – which he referred to as “linguistic racialism”.

Debating Plaid Cymru’s Dafydd Elis-Thomas, Kinnock said he could “take the honourable gentleman to a school in Anglesey – I shall not mention the name of the village because it has only one school – in which children of five or six have to ask in Welsh to go to the lavatory or suffer the consequences.”

He added: “This may be nationalism taken to a militant zeal that no Plaid Cymru members wants and, indeed, upon which its members would frown. I am asking them to do more than frown.

“I am asking them to ensure that it is a categorical pledge of their party that any person belonging to or associated with the party who is guilty of this sort of informal apartheid in schools or any other body in Wales should be thrown out of the party.”

In Scotland, Tam Dalyell served as de facto leader of Labour’s anti-devolutionist tendency. He famously posed the “West Lothian question” (so-called after his constituency), which referred to the perceived imbalance between the voting rights in the House of Commons of MPs from Scottish and Welsh constituencies that would arise with devolution.

Under devolution, Dalyell declared, MPs from Scotland and Wales could vote on issues affecting only England, while English MPs could not vote on matters devolved to Scotland or Wales.

The Wales Act, alongside the Scotland Act, received royal assent on 31 July 1978. Both pieces of legislation included a requirement for post-legislative referenda.

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In Wales, the question put was as follows: “Do you want the provisions of the Wales Act 1978 to be put into effect?”

The referendum was held on St David’s Day 1979 – a fact Conservative MP Nicholas Edwards suggested was intended “to create a wave of patriotic enthusiasm, to build up an Arms Park atmosphere and to smother fact and argument in a simple appeal to Welsh loyalty”.

However, the campaign for a ‘Yes’ vote struggled to gain momentum and was damaged by deep divisions within the Labour Party, the dominant political force in Wales at the time.

The powerful and well-funded cross-party ‘No’ campaign proved dominant.

In the end, the referendum saw 79.7% of voters reject the proposal, with only 20.3% voting in favour. The turnout was 58.8%. Unlike in Scotland, the result was not subject to any ambiguity from the so-called ‘40% rule’ – set out in successful amendments to the Scotland and Wales acts, which required 40% of the total registered electorate to vote ‘Yes’ for the Act to be implemented. In Wales, the ‘No’ vote was absolute.

The scale of the referendum defeat was a profound setback for Plaid Cymru and advocates of Welsh devolution.

The then-Welsh secretary, John Morris, commented that when “you see an elephant on the doorstep you can’t ignore it”.

The Wales Act, alongside the Scotland Act, was repealed in accordance with its own provisions in 1979 by a statutory instrument.

Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher then tabled a motion of no confidence in the Callaghan government. Plaid Cymru supported the Labour government in the division after extracting concessions.

However, with the support of the SNP and Liberals, Thatcher’s motion was passed by 311 votes to 310. The vote led directly to the 1979 general election and the elevation of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister.

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In his memoir, Time and Chance, Callaghan noted: “[The referendum was] held on St David’s Day, for John Morris… had hoped the compliment would strike a patriotic chord in Welsh hearts. But the valleys were dead to the sound of our music and rejected the blandishments by a huge majority of four to one.”

The 1979 referendum result sidelined the devolution issue in the immediate term. In the following decades, however, the cause was sustained by the growing strength of Labour’s pro‑devolution tendency, the policies of Thatcher’s Conservative government, and the ability of Plaid Cymru to maintain its parliamentary standing.

Kinnock’s vehement opposition to devolution subsided during his tenure as Labour leader.

From 1987 to 1997, four English MPs held the post of secretary of state for Wales. Among them was John Redwood, a prominent Thatcherite, who faced widespread criticism for his unsuccessful attempt to mime the Welsh national anthem at the 1993 Welsh Conservative Party conference.

The strength of Labour’s pro-devolution tendency ensured the inclusion of commitments to establish legislatures in Wales and Scotland in the Labour Party’s 1997 general election manifesto.

In September 1997, voters in Wales narrowly approved the creation of a national assembly. The second Welsh devolution referendum, a key pledge of Tony Blair’s new Labour government, produced a ‘Yes’ vote of 50.3% (559,419 votes) versus 49.7% (552,698 votes).