Clwyd
Clwyd shown within Wales in its original borders
Geography
Status	Non-metropolitan county (1974–1996) Preserved county (1996–)
2003 area	2,910 km² Ranked 4th
HQ	Mold
History
Origin	Administrative county of Flintshire Administrative county of Denbighshire (most) Rural district of Edeyrnion
Created	1974
Abolished	1996
Succeeded by	Conwy Denbighshire Flintshire Wrexham Preserved county of Clwyd
Demography
1981 population	390,200
1991 population	402,927
2007 population	491,100 (est; 2003 borders)[1] Ranked 2nd
Politics
Governance	Clwyd County Council
150px Coat of arms of Clwyd County Council
Subdivisions
Type	Non-metropolitan districts
File:Clwyd districts.png
Units	1. Colwyn 2. Rhuddlan 3. Glyndŵr 4. Delyn 5. Alyn & Deeside 6. Wrexham Maelor

Clwyd (Welsh pronunciation: [ˈklʊɨd]) is a preserved county of Wales, situated in the north-east, bordering England with Cheshire to its east, Shropshire to the south-east, and the Welsh counties of Gwynedd to its immediate west and Powys to the south. It additionally shares a maritime border with the metropolitan county of Merseyside along the River Dee. Between 1974 and 1996, it was a county with a county council, and it was divided into six districts. It is named after the River Clwyd, which runs through the region. It was also a Royal Mail postal county before the postal county scheme was abolished in 1996. Clwyd County Council was based in the county town of Mold.

History[link]

From the late 1950s, the radical reform of local government in Wales was considered more pressing than that in England, due to the small size of many of the existing authorities, especially the upper tier county councils. The Local Government Commission for Wales set up in 1958 was the first to recommend wholesale amalgamation of the administrative counties outside Glamorgan and Monmouthshire, with extensive boundary changes; however the then Minister of Housing and Local Government Sir Keith Joseph decided not to accept the report, noting that county amalgamations in England had been highly unpopular when proposed.^[2]

In 1967, after a change of government, the Secretary of State for Wales Cledwyn Hughes published a white paper which revived the idea of amalgamation, but instead of the boundary changes proposed in the previous report, treated each county as a whole. The report recommended a single new county of Gwynedd incorporating Denbighshire, Flintshire, Caernarfonshire, Merionethshire and Anglesey. The white paper stated that "the need for early action is particularly urgent in Wales", and so the issue was not referred to a Royal Commission as in England.^[3] Opponents criticised the proposed new county for being too large, and in November 1968 a new Secretary of State announced that Gwynedd would be divided into two.^[4]

This revised proposal was continued in a further white paper in March 1970, although this proposed that the counties be unitary authorities which would have no district councils below them. The incoming Conservative government resurrected two-tier local government in a consultative document published in February 1971, again with the same upper-tier boundaries.^[5] Some minor changes having been made to the existing county boundaries due to special local factors, the Local Government Act 1972 duly created Clwyd as a merger of Flintshire with most of Denbighshire, along with the Edeyrnion Rural District from Merionethshire. The 1970 white paper had introduced the name of Clwyd by reference to the River Clwyd and the Clwydian range of hills; Clwyd was the only new Welsh county which did not take its name from an ancient kingdom.

Districts[link]

For second-tier local government purposes, Clwyd was divided into six districts, each being operated by a district or borough council.

• Alyn and Deeside
• Colwyn
• Delyn
• Glyndŵr
• Rhuddlan
• Wrexham Maelor

These were abolished, along with the county itself, on 1 April 1996.

Coat of Arms[link]

Clwyd County Council's coat of arms was granted in December 1974. It features the cross and choughs from Flintshire's shield, which itself came from the traditional arms of Edwin of Tegeingl. The black lion of the Princes of Powys Fadog is taken from Denbighshire's shield.

Abolition[link]

Clwyd County Council and its districts were abolished by the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994, and local government would be replaced by the four unitary authorities of Flintshire, Wrexham County Borough, Denbighshire, and parts of Conwy (along with some smaller communities moving to Powys). The Act also abolished the County, and states the term "county" would be synonymous with the "principal areas" created by the 1994 Act. However the Act then created a further set of "preserved counties", which were based on the 8 created by the 1972 Act. These Preserved Counties, similar in respect to English Ceremonial counties, would be retained for a variety of purposes, including Lieutenancy and Shrievalty.

Clwyd County Council and its six districts ceased operations at midnight on 1 April 1996, and local government was immediately transferred to the new principal areas of Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire and Wrexham. The Preserved County of Clwyd also came into effect as of that date.

2003 boundary review[link]

In 2003, the borders of Clwyd were changed to cover the remainder of Conwy (which had previously been part of Gwynedd), which was part of a Wales-wide re-organisation of the preserved counties, so that boundaries of the preserved counties would contain whole current principal areas only.^[6]

These moves were met with some criticism, as the preserved counties were created to sustain a stable and continuing county layout, which would counter act to interim local government reviews affecting principal areas. This led to some areas, such as the Aberconwy district, moving to a preserved county it had never been administered by in the past, and therefore these moves went generally unreported due to the preserved county's limited status. The Boundary Commission proceeded to retain the 8 preserved counties, and modified their borders in 2003 to match with the incumbent principal area boundaries.

The 2003 arrangement brings towns such as Llandudno, Conwy and Betws y Coed into the preserved county of Clwyd.

			Merseyside
	Gwynedd		Cheshire
		Clwyd    East
		Powys	Shropshire

Legacy[link]

Many local organisations still make use of the "Clwyd" name. Some of organisations and facilities include:

• Clwyd Theatr Cymru in Mold
• Clwyd Family History Society
• Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust
• Clwyd League
• Clwyd Area Scouts
• Clwyd County Darts Association
• Clwyd Pension Fund (Local Government pension scheme inherited from Clwyd County Council, now providing pension schemes for Wrexham, Flintshire and Denbighshire unitary authorities and former districts).

The position of Lord Lieutenant of Clwyd also continues as the Monarch's personal representative as with the other seven preserved counties of Wales. The current Lord Lieutenant is Trefor Jones, who has held the position since 2001.

Geography[link]

Clwyd is bordered by the preserved/ceremonial counties of Gwynedd to the west, Powys to the south, Shropshire to the south-east, Cheshire to the east and Merseyside over the River Dee. Since the 2003 boundary changes, its coastline has extended from the Dee Estuary in Flintshire through to Llanfairfechan in Conwy. The east of the county is fairly urbanised, particularly areas such as Wrexham, Deeside and the commuter settlements close to Chester. The west, however is more rural, with Snowdonia National Park in eastern areas of Conwy. Large coastal settlements include Rhyl and Prestatyn in Denbighshire, moving westwards to Abergele, Colwyn Bay and Llandudno. Central areas of Clwyd feature the mountainous Clwydian Range and Berwyn range, and the Vale of Clwyd in the central north is a rich agricultural area. The population as of 2007 is estimated at 491,100, based on figures for the four component unitary authority areas.

Clwyd consists of the whole of the historic county of Flintshire, and most of Denbighshire. Since 2003 it has also included the former district of Aberconwy, which lies in the historic county of Caernarfonshire. Edeyrnion Rural District was also part of Merionethshire.

Clwyd as a preserved county since 2003.

See also[link]

• List of Lord Lieutenants of Clwyd
• List of High Sheriffs of Clwyd
• List of places in Denbighshire
• List of places in Flintshire
• List of places in Conwy
• List of places in Wrexham county borough

Further reading[link]

• Gordon Emery - Curious Clwyd (1994) ISBN 1-872265-99-5

References[link]

Coordinates: 53°05′N 3°16′W / 53.09°N 3.27°W / 53.09; -3.27

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (October 2010)

The Right Honourable Ann Clwyd MP
Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party
In office 24 May 2005 – 5 December 2006
Leader	Tony Blair
Preceded by	Jean Corston
Succeeded by	Tony Lloyd
Member of Parliament for Cynon Valley
Incumbent
Assumed office 3 May 1984
Preceded by	Ioan Evans
Majority	9,617 (32.2%)
Member of the European Parliament for Mid and West Wales
In office 7 June 1979 – 14 June 1984
Personal details
Born	(1937-03-21) 21 March 1937 (age 75) Denbighshire, Wales, UK
Nationality	British
Political party	Labour
Spouse(s)	Owen Roberts
Alma mater	University of Wales, Bangor

Ann Clwyd Roberts (born 21 March 1937) is a Welsh Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Cynon Valley since 1984.

Early life[link]

Ann Clwyd is the daughter of Gwilym Henri Lewis and Elizabeth Ann Lewis. She lived in Pentre Halkyn in Flintshire and attended Holywell Grammar School (now Holywell High School), the independent Queen's School in Chester and the University College of Wales in Bangor. She was a student teacher at Hope School in Flintshire. She worked as a journalist, working for the BBC as a studio manager and then became Welsh correspondent for the Guardian and Observer newspapers during 1964-79. She was Vice-Chair of the Arts Council of Wales from 1975-79. She is a member of the NUJ and TGWU.

Parliamentary career[link]

She was persuaded to stand for Parliament by Huw T. Edwards, who felt that there should be more women in parliament. She was the unsuccessful Labour candidate in Denbigh in 1970 and Gloucester in October 1974. From 1979 to 1984, Ann Clwyd was MEP for Mid and West Wales. She was elected to Parliament in a by-election in May 1984 following the death of Ioan Evans and became the first woman to sit for a Welsh valleys constituency. She served as Shadow Minister of Education and Women's Rights from 1987 but was sacked in 1988 for rebelling against the party whip on further spending on nuclear weapons. She returned as Shadow Secretary of State for Overseas Development from 1989 to 1992 and then served as Shadow Secretary of State for Wales in 1992 and for National Heritage from 1992 to 1993.

She was the Opposition Spokesperson for Employment from 1993 to 1994 and for Foreign Affairs from 1994 to 1995 when she was again sacked, along with Jim Cousins, for observing the Turkish invasion of Iraqi Kirkuk without permission. In 1994 she staged a sit-in down Tower Colliery mine in her constituency to protest at its closure.

She was a member of the International Development Select Committee from 1997 to 2005. Having been prominent in her concern for the situation in Iraq before the war there in 2003, Tony Blair made her a Special Envoy on Human Rights in Iraq in the run-up to the War. She was the first journalist to put forward claims that some Iraqis were killed in plastic shredders. On 9 August 2004, she became a member of the Privy Council.

Clwyd was a Vice-Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party from 2001 until 2005, and was elected as Chair by 167 to 156 (beating Tony Lloyd) on 24 May 2005. However on 5 December 2006 she was defeated by Lloyd by 11 votes when she sought re-election, with her closeness to Tony Blair being cited as a reason for her defeat.[1]

Clwyd, chosen for a Private Member's Bill via Ballot was pressurised by hundreds of pressure groups^{[citation needed]} in order to publisise their group. Clwyd chose the Female Genital Mutilation Bill By Ann Clwyd (to prohibit parents from sending, or taking, their daughters abroad for operations such as female circumcision) speaking about this bill, Female Circumcision was banned in 1985. She has been a vocal supporter of the Iraq War.^{[citation needed]}

She is currently Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Human Rights Group and the All Party Parliamentary Iraq Group. She is Vice-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coalfield Communities, and Secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Cambodia. She is a former Chair of the British Group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), an Executive Member on the (IPU) Committee on Middle East Questions and an Executive Member on the (IPU) Coordinating Committee of Women Parliamentarians. She has been appointed by the Prime Minister as a Member of the British Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.^{[citation needed]}

She was admitted to the White Robe of the Gorsedd of Bards at the National Eisteddfod of Wales in 1991; is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Wales, Bangor, and the North East Wales Institute of Higher Education which awarded her a University of Wales honorary degree. She holds an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Trinity College, Carmarthen for her contribution to politics and as a human rights campaigner.

She was a Member of the Arts Council 1975-79, the Vice Chair of the Welsh Arts Council 1975-97. She was on the Royal Commission on the NHS 1976-79.^{[citation needed]}

Personal life[link]

She married Owen Dryhurst Roberts, a television director and producer, in 1963. They have no children.^{[citation needed]}

References[link]

External links[link]

• Ann Clwyd MP Welsh Labour Party profile
• Profile at Parliament of the United Kingdom
• Contributions in Parliament at Hansard 1803–2005
• Current session contributions in Parliament at Hansard
• Electoral history and profile at The Guardian
• Voting record at PublicWhip.org
• Record in Parliament at TheyWorkForYou.com
• Profile at Westminster Parliamentary Record
• Profile at BBC News Democracy Live
• Indict Campaign Group Ann Clwyd is Chairman

News articles

• Number 10 press release on Ann Clwyd's appointment to the Privy Council
• Support for Iraq War
• See men shredded, then say you don't back war By Ann Clwyd
• The "human shredding machine"
• Unearthing history in Iraq

Rhys Henry Hughes (born 24 September 1966) is a Welsh writer and essayist.

Born in Cardiff, Hughes is a prolific short story writer with an eclectic mix of influences, which include Italo Calvino, Milorad Pavić, Jorge Luis Borges, Stanisław Lem, Flann O'Brien, Felipe Alfau, Donald Barthelme and Jack Vance. Much of his work is of a humorously eccentric bent, often parodies and pastiches with surreal and absurdist overtones, although he is by no means limited to any of these forms and has proven to be extremely versatile.^[1] He has been published in Postscripts among many other places.

Although he is not a member of OuLiPo, the international literary group that uses mathematics and logic to create texts that break the familiar patterns of "normal" writing, he is one of the few English-speaking practitioners of these methods. For instance his novella Elusive Plato was apparently written in the "shape of a tesseract". Some of his more experimental works can be considered examples of ergodic literature.^[2]

His long novel Engelbrecht Again! is a sequel to Maurice Richardson's 1950 cult classic The Exploits of Engelbrecht and is the most radical of Hughes's books, making extensive use of lipograms, typographical tricks, coded passages and other OuLiPo techniques.^[3]

His main project consists of authoring a 1,000-story cycle of both tightly and loosely interconnected tales. Hughes calls this grand cycle a "wheel", which in turn is formed by smaller "wheels within wheels".^[4] In August 2011, Hughes wrote his 600th story. The linear sequence was disrupted when author Michael Bishop offered to write Hughes's 612th tale, a number picked at random. That story now serves as Bishop's introduction to Hughes's short novel The Crystal Cosmos.^{[citation needed]}

As well as publishing books in English and having those works translated, Hughes has created books especially for foreign language publishers that will never exist in English.^{[dubious – discuss]} For instance, A Sereia de Curitiba will only exist in a Portuguese version,^[5] and the Greek version of A New Universal History of Infamy is radically different from the English original.^[6]

In 2005 his was the title story in The Minotaur in Pamplona, two chapbooks published by D-Press and edited by Neil Ayres. The collection also featured a poem by Brian Aldiss. He has had several short stories published in the Nemonymous anthologies.

Bibliography[link]

Novels[link]

• The Percolated Stars (2003)
• Engelbrecht Again! (Dead Letter Press; October 2008; ISBN 978-0-9796335-4-6)
• Mister Gum (Dog Horn Publishing; 2009)
• Twisthorn Bellow (Atomic Fez Publishing; March 2010; ISBN 978-0-9811597-1-3)
• The Abnormalities of Stringent Strange (forthcoming 2012)

Novellas[link]

• Eyelidiad (1996)
• Rawhead & Bloody Bones (1998)
• Elusive Plato (1998)
• The Crystal Cosmos (PS Publishing; December 2007; ISBN 978-1-905834-98-3)
• The Coandă Effect (Ex Occidente Press; November 2010)

Collections[link]

• Worming the Harpy (Tartarus Press, 1995; ISBN 1-872621-20-X)
• The Smell of Telescopes (Tartarus Press, 2000; ISBN 1-872621-44-9)
• Stories from a Lost Anthology (Tartarus Press, 2002; ISBN 978-1-872621-68-5)
• Nowhere Near Milk Wood (2002)
• Journeys Beyond Advice (2002)
• A New Universal History of Infamy (2004)
• At the Molehills of Madness (2006)
• The Less Lonely Planet (Humdrumming, Ltd.; May 2008; ISBN 978-1-905532-52-0)
• The Postmodern Mariner (Screaming Dreams; June 2008; ISBN 978-0-9555185-2-2)
• The Brothel Creeper (Gray Friar Press; March 2011; ISBN 978-1-906331-22-1)^[7]
• Link Arms With Toads! (Chômu Press; May 2011; ISBN 978-1-907681-08-0)
• Sangria in the Sangraal (Ex Occidente Press; November 2011)
• Tallest Stories (forthcoming 2012)
• The Impossible Inferno (forthcoming 2012)
• The Truth Spinner (forthcoming 2012)

Original foreign language books[link]

• Em Busca do Livro de Areia (selection in Portuguese translation, 2005)
• A Sereia de Curitiba (short fiction in Portuguese translation, 2007)
• La Déconfiture d'Hypnos (selection in French translation, forthcoming 2012)

eBooks[link]

• Better the Devil (2010)
• The Astral Disruptor (2010)
• The Phantom Festival (2011)
• Scamps of Disorder (2011)
• The Tellmenow Isitsöornot (2011)
• The Polo Match (2011)
• Flash in the Pantheon (2011)
• Young Tales of the Old Cosmos (2011)

Books in preparation[link]

• My Cholesterol Socks
• The Clown of the New Eternities
• Wuthering Depths
• Djinn Septic
• Unevensong
• Fists of Fleece
• Your Saturated Stockings
• Mirrors in the Deluge
• Salty Kiss Island
• The Jam of Hypnos
• Bone Idle in the Charnel-House
• The Senile Pagodas
• Ditto and Likewise
• The Pilgrim's Regress
• The Isle of Chrome
• The Sky Saw
• The Solar Weavers
• The Indigo Casbah
• Dribble as I Dawdle
• Implausible Planets
• Taurus of Nemedia
• The Young Dictator
• Soft Wine
• Our Malignant Slippers
• The Book of Lladloh
• Occam's Beard
• Captains Outrageous
• Suppers at the Periodic Table
• The Just Not So Stories
• My Big Glib Book of Flippant Fairy Tales
• The Knight of Whatever
• The Mischief Maker

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Spoons That Are My Ears!, Rhys Hughes's weblog
• An Interview with Rhys Hughes, by Anthony Brockway
• Rhys Hughes, the man who laughs at goldfish, interview by Steve Redwood
• Polluto: The Anti-Pop Culture Journal official website
• Rhys Hughes at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database