Gwent Police and Crime Commissioner
The Gwent Police and Crime Commissioner is the police and crime commissioner for the Gwent Police area. The post was created in November 2012, following an election held on 15 November 2012, replaced the Gwent Police Authority; the current incumbent is Jeff Cuthbert. Members of staff employed under the OPCC are as followed: Police and Crime Commissioner Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner – Chief Finance Officer – Chief of Staff – Head of Performance and Partnership Head of Criminal Justice Rehabilitation – Business & Finance Officer – Drug Intervention Program Officer – Information Officer – Policy Officer – Victims – Policy Officer – Engagement – Communication Manager – Information System Analyst – Public Response Co-ordinator - Executive Assistant to the PCC & DCC – Personal Assistant to the Chief of Finance & Chief of Staff – Administrative Assistant – Public Response Assistant –
Plaid Cymru
Plaid Cymru is a social-democratic political party in Wales advocating Welsh independence from the United Kingdom within the European Union. Plaid was formed in 1925 and won its first seat in the UK Parliament in 1966. By 2018, it held one of four Welsh seats in the European Parliament, four of 40 Welsh seats in the UK Parliament, 10 of 60 seats in the National Assembly for Wales, 202 of 1,264 principal local authority councillors. Plaid is a member of the European Free Alliance. Plaid Cymru's goals as set out in its constitution are: To promote the constitutional advancement of Wales with a view to attaining independence within the European Union. In September 2008, a senior Plaid assembly member spelled out her party's continuing support for an independent Wales; the Welsh Minister for Rural Affairs, Elin Jones, began Plaid's annual conference by pledging to uphold the goal of making Wales a European Union member state. She told the delegates in Aberystwyth that the party would continue its commitment to independence under the coalition with the Welsh Labour Party.
While both the Labour and Liberal parties of the early 20th century had accommodated demands for Welsh home rule, no political party existed for the purpose of establishing a Welsh government. Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru was formed on 5 August 1925, by Moses Gruffydd, H. R. Jones and Lewis Valentine, members of Byddin Ymreolwyr Cymru. Home rule for Wales was not an explicit aim of the new movement. In the 1929 general election the party contested its first parliamentary constituency, polling 609 votes, or 1.6% of the vote for that seat. The party contested few such elections in its early years due to its ambivalence towards Westminster politics. Indeed, the candidate Lewis Valentine, the party’s first president, offered himself in Caernarvonshire on a platform of demonstrating Welsh people's rejection of English dominion. By 1932, the aims of self-government and Welsh representation at the League of Nations had been added to that of preserving Welsh language and culture. However, this move, the party's early attempts to develop an economic critique, did not broaden its appeal beyond that of an intellectual and conservative Welsh language pressure group.
The alleged sympathy of the party's leading members towards Europe's totalitarian regimes compromised its early appeal further. Saunders Lewis, David John Williams and Lewis Valentine attacked and set fire to the newly constructed RAF Penyberth air base on the Llŷn Peninsula in Gwynedd in 1936, in protest at its siting in the Welsh-speaking heartland; the leaders' treatment, including the trial judge's dismissal of the use of Welsh and their subsequent imprisonment in Wormwood Scrubs, led to "The Three" becoming a cause célèbre. This heightened the profile of the party and its membership had doubled to nearly 2,000 by 1939. Penyberth, Plaid Cymru’s neutral stance during the Second World War, prompted concerns within the UK Government that it might be used by Germany to insert spies or carry out other covert operations. In fact, the party urged conscientious objection to war service. In 1943 Saunders Lewis contested the University of Wales parliamentary seat at a by-election, gaining 1,330 votes, or 22%.
In the 1945 general election, with party membership at around 2,500, Plaid Cymru contested seven seats, as many as it had in the preceding 20 years, including constituencies in south Wales for the first time. At this time Gwynfor Evans was elected president. Gwynfor Evans's presidency coincided with the maturation of Plaid Cymru into a more recognisable political party, its share of the vote increased from 0.7% in the 1951 general election to 3.1% in 1955 and 5.2% in 1959. In the 1959 election, the party contested a majority of Welsh seats for the first time. Proposals to drown the village of Capel Celyn in the Tryweryn valley in Gwynedd in 1957 to supply the city of Liverpool with water played a part in Plaid Cymru's growth; the fact that the parliamentary bill authorising the drowning went through without support from any Welsh MPs showed that the MPs' votes in Westminster were not enough to prevent such bills from passing. Support for the party declined in the early 1960s as support for the Liberal Party began to stabilise from its long-term decline.
In 1962 Saunders Lewis gave a radio talk entitled Tynged yr Iaith in which he predicted the extinction of the Welsh language unless action was taken. This led to the formation of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg the same year. Labour's return to power in 1964 and the creation of the post of Secretary of State for Wales appeared to represent a continuation of the incremental evolution of a
Anglesey
Anglesey is an island off the north coast of Wales with an area of 276 square miles. Anglesey is by the seventh largest in the British Isles. Anglesey is the largest island in the Irish Sea by area, the second most populous island; the ferry port of Holyhead handles more than 2 million passengers each year. The Menai Suspension Bridge, designed by Thomas Telford in 1826, the Britannia Bridge span the Menai Strait to connect Anglesey with the mainland. Anglesey, one of the historic counties of Wales, was administered as part of Gwynedd, but along with Holy Island and other smaller islands, it is now governed by the Isle of Anglesey County Council. Much of this article covers the whole of this administrative area; the majority of Anglesey's inhabitants are Welsh speakers and Ynys Môn, the Welsh name for the island, is used for the UK Parliament and National Assembly constituencies. The population at the 2011 census was 69,751; the island falls within the LL postcode area, covering LL58 to LL78. The name of the island may be derived from the Old Norse.
No record of such an Ǫngli survives, but the place name was used in the Viking raiders as early as the 10th century and was adopted by the Normans during their invasions of Gwynedd. The traditional folk etymology reading the name as the "Island of the Angles" may account for its Norman use but has no merit, although the Angles' name itself is a cognate reference to the shape of the Angeln peninsula. All of these derive from the proposed Proto-Indo-European root *ank-. Through the 18th and 19th centuries and into the 20th, it was spelt Anglesea in documents. Ynys Môn, the island's Welsh name, was first recorded as Latin Mona by various Roman sources, it was known to the Saxons as Monez. The Brittonic original was in the past taken to have meant "Island of the Cow"; this view is untenable, according to modern scientific philology, the etymology remains a mystery. Poetic names for Anglesey include the Old Welsh Ynys Dywyll for its former groves and Ynys y Cedairn for its royal courts. There are numerous megalithic monuments and menhirs on Anglesey, testifying to the presence of humans in prehistory.
Plas Newydd is near one of 28 cromlechs. The Welsh Triads claim. Anglesey has long been associated with the druids. In AD 60 the Roman general Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, determined to break the power of the druids, attacked the island using his amphibious Batavian contingent as a surprise vanguard assault and destroying the shrine and the nemeta. News of Boudica's revolt reached him just after his victory, causing him to withdraw his army before consolidating his conquest; the island was brought into the Roman Empire by Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the Roman governor of Britain, in AD 78. During the Roman occupation, the area was notable for the mining of copper; the foundations of Caer Gybi, a fort in Holyhead, are Roman, the present road from Holyhead to Llanfairpwllgwyngyll was a Roman road. The island was grouped by Ptolemy with Ireland rather than with Britain. British Iron Age and Roman sites have been excavated and coins and ornaments discovered by the 19th century antiquarian William Owen Stanley.
After the Roman departure from Britain in the early 5th century, pirates from Ireland colonised Anglesey and the nearby Llŷn Peninsula. In response to this, Cunedda ap Edern, a Gododdin warlord from Scotland, came to the area and began to drive the Irish out; this was continued by grandson Cadwallon Lawhir ap Einion. As an island, Anglesey was in a good defensive position, so Aberffraw became the site of the court, or Llys, of the Kingdom of Gwynedd. Apart from a devastating Danish raid in 853 it remained the capital until the 13th century, when improvements to the English navy made the location indefensible. Anglesey was briefly the most southerly possession of the Norwegian Empire. After the Irish, the island was invaded by Vikings — some of these raids were noted in famous sagas — and by Saxons, Normans, before falling to Edward I of England in the 13th century. Anglesey is one of the thirteen historic counties of Wales. In medieval times, before the conquest of Wales in 1283, Môn had periods of temporary independence, as it was bequeathed to the heirs of kings as a sub-kingdom of Gwynedd.
The last times this occurred were a few years after 1171, following the death of Owain Gwynedd, when the island was inherited by Rhodri ab Owain Gwynedd, between 1246 and c. 1255, when it was granted to Owain Goch as his share of the kingdom. Following the conquest of Wales by Edward I, Anglesey was created a county under the terms of the Statute of Rhuddlan of 1284. Prior to this it had been divided into the cantrefi of Aberffraw and Cemaes. During the First World War, the Presbyterian minister and celebrity preacher John Williams toured the island as part of an effort to recruit young men to volunteer for a “just war”. German POWs were kept on the island. By the end of the war, some 1,000 of the island's men had died while on active service. In 1936 the NSPCC opened its first branch on Anglesey. During the Second World War, Anglesey received Italian POWs; the isla
Wrexham
Wrexham is the largest town in the north of Wales and an administrative, commercial and educational centre. Wrexham is situated between the Welsh mountains and the lower Dee Valley alongside the border with England. Part of Denbighshire, the town became part of Clwyd in 1974 and since 1996 has been the centre of the Wrexham County Borough. At the 2011 Census, Wrexham had a population of the fourth largest urban area in Wales. Human activity in the Wrexham area dates back to the Mesolithic period. By the early Middle Bronze Age the area had developed into a centre for an innovative metalworking industry. A Roman civilian settlement was located in the Plas Coch area of Wrexham and excavations have revealed evidence of agriculture and trade with the wider Roman world. By the end of the 6th century AD, the area was being contested between the Celtic-speaking inhabitants and the English-speaking invaders advancing from the east; the Anglo-Saxons went on to dominate north-east Wales from the 8th to 10th centuries and the settlement of Wrexham was founded by Mercian colonists on the flat ground above the meadows of the River Gwenfro during the 8th century.
The origins of the name "Wrexham" may be traced back to this period. Renewed Welsh and Viking attacks led to a reduction in Anglo-Saxon power in north Wales from the early 10th century. Following the Welsh reconquest of the area during the 11th century, Wrexham formed part of the native Welsh lordship of Maelor. During the 12th century the lordship was disputed between the English; the first recorded reference to the town in 1161 is to a Norman motte and bailey castle at "Wristlesham", founded in the Erddig area around 1150 by Hugh de Avranches, earl of Chester. However, by the early 13th century Wrexham was undisputedly in the hands of the Welsh house of Powys Fadog. Stability under the princes of Powys enabled Wrexham to develop as a trading town and administrative centre of one of the two commotes making up the Lordship. In 1202 Madoc ap Gruffydd Maelor, Lord of Dinas Brân, granted some of his demesne lands in ‘Wrechcessham’ to his newly founded Cistercian abbey of Valle Crucis and in 1220 the earliest reference to a church in Wrexham is made.
Following the loss of Welsh independence on the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in 1282, Wrexham became part of the semi-independent Marcher lordship of Bromfield and Yale. Wrexham increased in importance throughout the Middle Ages as the lordship's administrative centre, the town's position made it a suitable centre for the exchange of the produce of the Dee valley and Denbighshire uplands, whilst iron and lead were mined locally. From 1327 onwards, the town is referred to as a villa mercatoria and by 1391 Wrexham was wealthy enough for a bard, juggler and goldsmith to earn their living there; the traditional pattern of Welsh life remained undisturbed, until the close of the Middle Ages the pattern was for English incomers to be assimilated into Wrexham's Welsh society, for instance adopting Welsh patronymics. At the beginning of the 15th century, the local gentry and peasants backed the rebellion led by Owain Glyndŵr which proved economically disastrous for the town. Local poet Glyn Guto'r Glyn wrote of Sion ap Madog, the great-nephew of Owain Glyndŵr, as Alecsander i Wrecsam.
In the mid-15th century, the parish church was gutted by fire. The main part of the current church was built in the late early 16th centuries; the Acts of Union passed during the reign of Henry VIII brought the lordship into the full system of English administration and law. It became part of the new shire of Denbighshire in 1536; the economic character remained predominantly agricultural into the 17th century but there were workshops of weavers, nailers as well as dye houses. A grammar school was established in 1603 by Alderman Valentine Broughton of Chester. During the English Civil War, Wrexham was on the side of the Royalists, as most Welsh gentry supported the King, but local landowner Sir Thomas Myddelton, owner of Chirk Castle, supported Parliament; the 1620 Norden's jury of survey of Wrexham Regis stated that four-fifths of the land-holding classes of Wrexham bore Welsh names and every field except one within the manor bore a Welsh or semi-Welsh name. The Industrial Revolution began in Wrexham in 1762 when the entrepreneur John Wilkinson, known as "Iron Mad Wilkinson", opened Bersham Ironworks.
Wilkinson's steam engines enabled a peak of production at Minera Lead Mines on the outskirts of Wrexham. From the late 18th century numerous large-scale industrialised collieries operated in the southern section of the North East Wales coalfield, alongside hundreds of more traditional small-scale pits belonging to a mining tradition dating back to the Middle Ages. Wrexham was known for its leather industry; the artist J. M. W. Turner visited the town and painted a watercolour of a street scene entitled "Wrexham, Denbighshire" dated 1792–3. By 1851, the population of Wrexham was 6,714. Wrexham benefited from good underground water supplies which were essential to the brewing of beer: by the mid-19th century, there were 19 breweries in and around the town. Wrexham Lager brewery was established in 1882 in Central Road and became the first brewery in the United Kingdom to produce lag
Willy Bach, Baron Bach
William Stephen Goulden "Willy" Bach, Baron Bach is a British Labour member of the House of Lords. He was a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Ministry of Justice from 2008 to 2010, he resigned from the opposition front bench when he was elected the Leicestershire Police and Crime Commissioner on 6 May 2016. Bach was educated at Westminster School, an all-boys public school located within the precincts of Westminster Abbey, he studied at New College, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA0 degree. In 1972, he was called to the Bar, worked as a barrister, he went on to become head of chambers at King Street Chambers in Leicester on the Midland Circuit in 1996. He was a councillor in Leicester and Harborough. Bach was the unsuccessful Labour parliamentary candidate for Gainsborough in 1979 and for Sherwood in both the 1983 and 1987 general elections. On 27 July 1998, Bach was created a life peer, as Baron Bach, of Lutterworth in the County of Leicestershire, where he lives, he was appointed a Government Whip in the Lords in 1999, thereby enjoying the office as one of Her Majesty's Lords in Waiting.
From November 2000, Lord Bach served as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Lord Chancellor's Department, until June 8, 2001 when, after the general election, Lord Bach replaced The Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence Procurement – one of the most high-profile jobs in the Ministry of Defence. During Lord Bach's tenure, the United Kingdom was involved in choosing between the Boeing X-32 and Lockheed X-35 designs for the Joint Strike Fighter project. Highlighting the level of British participation in the project, Lord Bach was present at the United States Department of Defense announcement that Lockheed Martin had won the competition. Lord Bach was at the signing of "Type Acceptance" – the release into service – of the RAF's Typhoon platform. Following the 2005 general election, Lord Drayson succeeded Lord Bach at the Ministry of Defence, Lord Bach was transferred to the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State responsible for Sustainable Farming and Food.
He held this post until 2006. As of 5 October 2008, Lord Bach was brought back into government as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice replacing former Lord Hunt of Kings Heath OBE. Lord Bach was chairman of the SELEX Sensors and Airborne Systems SpA Board of Directors and Director of Italian arms company Finmeccanica until 2007, when he resigned from the board in order to return to his role as a government whip. In October 2008, Lord Bach was promoted to become a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Ministry of Justice, where he served until May 2010. In October 2013, Lord Bach became a Shadow Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister on the Official Opposition frontbench headed by Ed Miliband. On 3 December 2014, he took on the additional role of Shadow Attorney General following the resignation of Emily Thornberry, he was replaced by Catherine McKinnell after the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader. In Who's Who, Lord Bach listed his interests as watching football.
He is married, with three children. He is a great-nephew of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. Announcement of his introduction at the House of Lords
Hardyal Dhindsa
Hardyal Dhindsa is an English politician, the current Police and Crime Commissioner for Derbyshire, representing the Labour Party. Elected to the post on 5 May 2016, succeeding the previous incumbent, Alan Charles, he has lived in Derbyshire since 1967 when he arrived from Punjab in India. He is married with three grown up sons. Graduated with a degree in Psychology from Bangor University, North Wales and worked as an Assistant Psychologist in the NHS, he qualified as a Social Worker from the London School of Economics in 1985 and has 30 years’ experience as a Probation Officer and Strategic Manager in a Criminal Justice Agency, overseeing a £22million budget and 500 personnel. During this time he had a two-year secondment as Deputy Director to the Nottingham Crime and Drugs Partnership to combat the negative social and criminal impact of drugs and alcohol abuse, he has been a senior elected Labour member of Derby City Council. In 2013, he became Derbyshire’s Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner, working with Commissioner Alan Charles until he was elected PCC in May 2016.
Derbyshire PCC
Flintshire
Flintshire is a principal area of Wales, known as a county. It was created by the Local Government Act 1994, it is in north-east Wales, bordering the English county of Cheshire to the east, Denbighshire to the west and Wrexham County Borough to the south. It is named after the historic county of Flintshire. Flintshire is considered part of the Welsh Marches and formed part of the historic Earldom of Chester and Flint; the county is governed by Flintshire County Council based in county hall Mold. The largest town in the county is Connah's Quay, followed by Flint and Mold. Flintshire takes its name from the former county of Flintshire established in 1536 which existed until 1974 when it was abolished under the Local Government Act 1972, its re-establishment in 1996 under the Local Government Act 1994 does not follow those original boundaries and covers a smaller area. At the time of the Roman invasion, the area of present-day Flintshire was inhabited by the Deceangli, one of the Celtic tribes in ancient Britain, with the Cornovii to the east and the Ordovices to the west.
Lead and silver mine workings are evident in the area, with several sows of lead found bearing the name'DECEANGI' inscribed in Roman epigraphy. The Deceangli appear to have surrendered to Roman rule with little resistance. Following Roman Britain, the emergence of various petty kingdoms, the region had been divided into the Hundred of Englefield, derived from the Latin Deceangli, it became part of the Kingdom of Mercia by the 8th century AD, with much of the western boundary reinforced under Offa of Mercia after 752, but there is evidence that Offa's Dyke is a much earlier construction. By the time of the Norman conquest in 1066 it was under the control of Edwin of Tegeingl, from whose Lordship the Flintshire coat of arms is derived. Edwin's mother is believed to have been daughter of Eadwine of Mercia. At the time of the establishment of the Earldom of Chester, which succeeded the Earl of Mercia, the region formed two of the twelve Hundreds of Cheshire of which it remained a part for several hundred years.
Flintshire today resembles the boundaries of the Hundred of Atiscross as it existed at the time of the Domesday Book. Atiscross, along with the Hundred of Exestan, was transferred from the Earldom of Chester to the expanding Kingdom of Gwynedd from the west in the 13th century following numerous military campaigns; this region, as well as an exclave formed from part of the Hundred of Dudestan formed the main areas of Flintshire, established by the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 under Edward I. It was administered with the Palatinate of Flint by the Justiciar of Chester; the county was consolidated in 1536 by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542 under the Tudor King Henry VIII, when it was incorporated into the Kingdom of England. Flintshire remained in existence until 1974 when it was merged with Denbighshire and Edeyrnion Rural District to form the administrative county of Clwyd. Clwyd was abolished 22 years and Flintshire reorganised in its present form in 1996. However, some parts of the historic country are not included within the present boundaries of Flintshire: English Maelor was incorporated into Wrexham County Borough, St Asaph and Rhyl into Denbighshire.
The current administrative area of Flintshire came into existence in 1996, when the former administrative county of Clwyd was split into three smaller areas. The principal area was formed by the merger of the Deeside and Delyn districts. In terms of pre-1974 divisions, the area comprises the former borough of Flint the urban districts of Buckley, Connah's Quay, Mold the rural district of Holywell Rural District all of Hawarden Rural District except the parish of Marford and HosleyThe district of Rhuddlan, formed from the administrative county of Flintshire was included in the new Denbighshire instead. Other parts of the pre-1974 administrative Flintshire to be excluded from the principal area are the Maelor Rural District and the parish of Marford and Hoseley, which became part of the Wrexham Maelor district in 1974 and are now part of Wrexham County Borough. See List of places in Flintshire for a list of towns and villages. Flintshire is a maritime county bounded to the north by the Dee estuary, to the east by Cheshire, to the west by Denbighshire and to the south by Wrexham County Borough.
The coast along the Dee estuary is developed by industry and the north coast much developed for tourism. The Clwydian Range occupies much of the west of the county; the highest point is Moel Famau. The chief towns are Buckley, Connah's Quay, Hawarden, Mold and Shotton; the main rivers are the Dee, the River Alyn. Located on the North Wales Coast Line with services run by Virgin Trains and Transport for Wales calling at Flintshire stations such as Flint and Shotton with an interchange at Shotton with the Borderlands Line, which links other Flintshire stations with the Liverpool area. Parts of Flintshire have major manufacturing industries. Amongst these are an advanced Toyota plant that manufactures engines, Shotton Paper, Airbus, making the wings for the A330 and the A380 at Broughton. There are daily flights of the Airbus Beluga transport aircraft of Airbus wings from Broughton for the smaller aircraft; the wings for the A380, which are too large to be transported by air, use a multi-modal transport using Flintshire's roads, the River Dee and the port of Mostyn in Flintshire.
Flintshire is known for its inter
