About this cam­paign

At this moment in his­to­ry, we are liv­ing in a world of hier­ar­chies. When we want some­thing, we can count on that thing not being hand­ed down to us from above spon­ta­neous­ly. Instead, we have to have to nur­ture enough polit­i­cal lever­age at the grass­roots to both obtain and hold onto the things we need. This applies to hav­ing access to a func­tion­ing NHS, uni­ver­sal edu­ca­tion for our chil­dren and even the very con­nec­tion to the lands we were raised in.

YesCym­ru recog­nise this: even if politi­cians are in favour of devolv­ing the Crown Estate, only a strong grass­roots cam­paign will ensure that pow­er over our lands is even­tu­al­ly trans­ferred to us, and not sim­ply from one set of politi­cians in West­min­ster to anoth­er in Cardiff.
YesCym­ru were some of the first to cam­paign on the Crown Estate in pub­lic, begin­ning with the Ban­ners on Beach cam­paign in June 2022. Local peo­ple demon­strat­ed in beach­es in all of Talacre, to Dinas Din­lle, Aberys­t­wyth, Bur­ry Port, Porth­cawl, Llanst­ef­fan and Penarth. These actions took place on our fore­shores (Crown Estate land) to high­light the seis­mic change in use of the spaces around peo­ple that off­shore wind ener­gy rep­re­sents. Local peo­ple should have a finan­cial stake in this, not just the UK trea­sury.

One year on, the cam­paign came up again in Sep­tem­ber 2023, when the YesCym­ru Swansea group impressed us with their Sand Art on the beach again. Enough peo­ple then joined the cam­paing to begin a mas­sive week­end of action, a year lat­er in April 2022. This took place in Black­wood, Aberys­t­wyth, Den­beigh and Abertawe. Chair of YesCym­ru, Phyl­Griffth gave the fol­low­ing state­ment:

“YesCym­ru is cam­paign­ing for the Crown Estate to be put in the hands of the Welsh peo­ple so that all its prof­its go to ben­e­fit our com­mu­ni­ties and con­tribute towards run­ning our pub­lic ser­vices. That is what the nation­al week­end of action was all about, which saw local YesCym­ru groups from across the coun­try send a clear mes­sage about where Wales stands on this issue.

The cur­rent sys­tem of own­er­ship when it comes to Wales’ assets is feu­dal­is­tic, wrong­head­ed and com­plete­ly unjust. The West­min­ster estab­lish­ment con­tin­ues to refuse to devolve con­trol of the Crown Estate in the Senedd despite there being an over­whelm­ing case to do so. The major­i­ty of peo­ple in Wales sup­port this posi­tion as does a large major­i­ty in the Senedd. On top of that, a report by the Nation­al Infra­struc­ture Com­mis­sion for Wales called for the devo­lu­tion of the Crown Estate.

The Crown Estate’s Scot­tish assets were devolved to Scot­land back in 2016 and there is no rea­son for some­thing sim­i­lar not to hap­pen in Wales.These assets are already worth a con­sid­er­able amount and it’s clear that over the com­ing decades, their val­ue is like­ly to grow even more. Gain­ing con­trol of them is essen­tial for us to put a strong and secure foun­da­tion in place for build­ing the fair, pros­per­ous, and for­ward-think­ing inde­pen­dent Wales we want to see.”

In August 2024, YesCym­ru under­took their most recent action in the Menai Strait, one of the areas clos­est to the col­los­al Anglsey off­shore wind devel­op­ments. Cam­paingers cruised from Cei Llechi in Caernar­fon to Menai Bridge. This was a state­ment that these water belong in the hands of the com­mu­ni­ties that live with them. The fate of these waters should not be con­trolled by a board of asset man­agers who can scare­cly pro­nounce their names.

If you want to get involved in actions like this, then get in touch by click­ing here.