The Government in Westminster is guilty of a massive administrative oversight, or more than likely is maintaining a very deliberate silence.
The slip-up? Wales has a clean, logical and legal path pointing at the invalidity of the so-called ‘UK Union’ and England’s prior annexation of Wales.
There never was a ‘Treaty of Union’ offered to the Welsh, there was only ‘annexation’ by the English military followed by a unilateral statute issued by the English Parliament in which the Welsh were given no representation.
The primary instruments of what England claimed was ‘legal annexation’ were the ‘Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542’, often passed off as ‘Acts of Union’:
📜 1535 Act: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Hen8/27/26/1991-02-01/data.html
📜 1542 Act: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Hen8/34-35/26/1991-02-01/data.html
The ‘Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542’, England’s only legal hooks for the annexation of Wales, were repealed. This has sat in the primary record for more than three decades:
📜 The ‘Welsh Language Act 1993 (Sch 2)’ repealed the whole Laws in Wales Act 1535, and the whole Laws in Wales Act 1542 except section 47 →
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1993/38/schedule/2
📜 The ‘Sale of Goods (Amendment) Act 1994 (s.2(1))’ repealed the surviving s.47 of the Laws in Wales Act 1542: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/32
The 1284 ‘Statute of Rhuddlan’ was the first written English claim, defining Wales as annexed to the English Crown. The Westminster parliament repealed the statute in 1887 and in doing so literally deleted the foundational platform of their own ‘De Jure’ authority: 📜 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/50-51/59/enacted
The Laws in Wales Act 1535 admits Wales had its own legal system: “divers Rights, Usages, Laws and Customs be far discrepant from the Laws and Customs of this Realm.” That is Cyfraith Hywel, the codified Welsh legal practice, in operation for more than five centuries before the ‘Laws in Wales Act 1535’ was passed. The Laws in Wales Act 1535 states its purpose plainly: “utterly to extirp all and singular the sinister Usages and Customs.”
That is an act of colonial suppression, recorded within the Laws in Wales Act 1535 itself. No prior English statute instrument attempted this; the ‘Laws in Wales Act 1535’ was the sole instrument, and it was repealed in full by the Welsh Language Act 1993.
The Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542, the only statutes that legally annexed Wales to England, and the only statutes that extirped Welsh law, were deleted from the statute book by Westminster’s own hand in 1993–94. No replacement Annexation Act has ever been passed. The legal hook that bound Wales to the English state has already been dismantled.
Against the claim that the 1993–94 repeal of the Laws in Wales Acts dismantled the legal foundation of annexation, Westminster’s possible defence might be: “those Acts are spent enactments, the annexation was a one-time event, executed in 1536, and the repeal does not undo what was done.” That doctrine works for completed acts, but it does not work here. “Utterly to extirp”, the operative phrase from the Laws in Wales Act 1535, is not a one-time event. It is a continuing prohibition, an ongoing instruction that English law and English law alone shall be used in Wales “for ever”. Any such ‘continuing prohibition’ requires ‘live statutory authority’ to maintain it. Repeal the Laws in Wales Act 1535, and the continuing prohibition loses its anchor. Westminster cannot cite a statute that is no longer law!
Defenders of Dominion will claim that the ‘Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542’ were “historical trivia”, yet Westminster officially “refurbished” these acts in the ‘Statute Law Revision Act 1948’, giving them their modern short titles, ‘Laws in Wales Act 1535’ and ‘Laws in Wales Act 1542’. A state does not refurbish trivia, and Westminster maintained these instruments as live law deep into the twentieth century.
With the 1535 and 1542 Acts repealed, only the devolution framework remains: the Government of Wales Acts 1998 and 2006, rebuilt by the ‘Wales Act 2017’. Devolution statutes presuppose the annexation; nowhere do they enact it. Grants of power to Wales are not title over Wales, and the framework is itself evidence of the ineffective management Westminster applies to Cymru. It must now be recognised that every time the Senedd participates within the framework terms of English colonialism, it manufactures the appearance of Welsh consent, a narrative that papers over the foundation Westminster removed in 1993–94.
The time is upon us all to break that cycle:
📜 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2017/4/contents
The position Cymru finds itself in is strong. The 1535 and 1542 annexation Acts have been repealed and never replaced. A pro-independence majority in the Senedd can stand shoulder to shoulder with y Cymry to deliver the resumption of the unrepealed Welsh constitutional sovereignty that England currently usurps with ineffective colonial governance, returning to the principles of Cyfraith Hywel, re-activating Welsh popular sovereignty on Welsh soil, by Welsh hands and in Welsh law. To do so requires Westminster to defend the very constitutional question they have held in silence for generations: by what live authority does English law govern Wales, when the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542, the supposed acts of ‘legal dominion’, have been deleted from the statute book for more than three decades?
The passion, eloquence and cultural pride of the Welsh nation is undeniable, and it is clear the hiraeth is manifesting ever stronger alongside the rise of Welsh democratic nationalism. Whilst the path moving forward won’t be straightforward and will set up a legal collision, the constitutional question of self-determination must be forced into the open and into the international arena: Welsh self-determination versus de facto occupation? Westminster must now produce a legal ‘receipt’ for the authority it no longer possesses.
Inertia is not title. Habit is not consent. Convention is not constitution.
📜 UN Charter Article 73: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/chapter-11
The next Cymru article will set out the ‘Llywelyn Protocol’, one possible route a pro-indy Senedd can take towards
Annibyniaeth Cymru.
To Be Continued 🏴
#YesCymru #SovereigntySeries #LetTheRecordsSpeak #CelticAlliance 🏴🤝🇮🇪🤝🏴
