So
the voice at the end of the phone went when in my office in Cardiff
It was September 1967 and I
had just been selected by the Carmarthen Constituency Labour Party as its
candidate to take on Gwynfor Evans at the next General Election which as it
turned out came in 1970. The way all that happened is for the book I am currently
writing!
In 1967 I was employed as
Assistant Economist for British Gas at its Welsh headquarters in Snelling House,
Cardiff and enjoyed good company there.
The Monday after the
selection the news came out that a 24 year old had been chosen to challenge Gwynfor
Evans and immediately the press were indeed intrigued – why someone so young
and with such as Welsh name?
So that particular morning
the phone rang and it was a reporter from the Daily Express in London who proceeded
to immediately ask me the question above. I don’t know whether he was hoping to
catch me off guard! but I was sufficiently worldly wise about the media even
then!. I answered that my name had come from a pictorial which had pen photos of
100 Calvinistic Methodist Welsh preachers of 1912 that my grandmother and
mother had hanging on the wall in our home. In fact it was of the Rev Gwynoro
Davies, Pencader.
Indeed my name had always
been a source of mild debate between my father and his mother–in-law! Apparently
my mother was not well after the birth and so my grandmother had to go and
register my birth. Now my father had left instructions that I was to be called –
Glyndwr Gwynoro – but my grandmother did not carry out his wishes and reversed the
order!
Later in life I came to prefer her version.
Ah! Well! said the Daily Express
journalist your name goes much further back than that. Take a look at a book ‘On
the Life of St David’ he said and your name is in it.
So off I went to the old
Central Library in Cardiff where I had spent so much time when at the
University. Duly enquired of the people there about this little book and after
about 20 minutes it arrived from the archives. It was indeed a very old, small
book and there was my name – along with other saints from Llanpumsaint! (The
Parish of Five Saints).
Apparently they were five
brothers – Gwyn, Gwynno, Gwynoro, Ceithio and Celynin – and had associations
with St David. How true I know not but all that greatly intrigued me.
Needless to say I am very
proud of my name and the fact that it is such an unique name has helped me in
my career. No one has hardly ever used my surname when referring to me.
I have come across two other
Gwynoro Jones’s – one was when canvassing in Cwmann near Lampeter in 1970 when
I knocked on this house and a man came to the door and directly said ‘Gwynoro
Jones? Meet Gwynoro Jones’! Then I have
also read of someone in Carmarthen some 30 plus years ago.
So there we go on this St
David’s Day that little episode came to mind.