Pembrokeshire Against DARC Radar

Dear Welsh Government Ministers and Plaid Cymru MPs,

I write to you with urgency that the DARC radar proposal in the St Davids peninsula in Pembrokeshire (Pembrokeshire County Council reference 25/1101/PA), a proposal of enormous national and international significance and scope but that has faced the most unprecedented level of opposition witnessed in a generation in Sir Benfro, be called in for Welsh Government consideration.

I write, however, from a place of profound belief in the potential and confidence of a Plaid government that represents the kind of Wales we all want to live in: a Wales that thrives with democracy and the participation of Welsh people every day in determining what their land looks like, a land where progress is made through chartering a course of peace and where war should be spared and not held aloft for the benefit of a few, and a Wales with the confidence, against all odds necessary, to protect the heritage and health of its land, at the rare and crucial moments when it most counts.

The decision to call in DARC, the huge MOD-proposed 27-dish radar array overlooking the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, is a decision that takes confidence. But as a voter who celebrated to see the election of an anti-DARC government in Wales, after the most exhausting imaginable two-year battle against the radar array that every formal poll of public opinion has found to be nearly 100% against, I have confidence in Plaid, and in its ability to govern, in a world of increasing complexity and political hostility. It is a confidence that comes from a knowledge that Plaid can, and must, be a party that thrives by being bold, that thrives from delivering a strong sense of what is seen as right by the people, and thrives not by being managerial in a time which requires strength, but by being the strength that people require.

The proposal faces being determined in what is now just a short number of days, on July the 28th, by the LPA.

As has been argued extensively by the people’s campaign (PARC Against DARC), the case in favour of calling in the proposal is simply endless. As a radar array confirmed by US documentation to be involved in targeting activities against foreign satellites around the world (which is illegal under international law), DARC, fielded by a Donald Trump-created US Space Force whose military spending has doubled since he took office, is expressly considered a serious escalation by the Chinese government. It is touted for inclusion by Northrop Grumman in Trump’s Golden Dome fantasy, a proposal that would seek to surround the earth with hundreds of thousands of missile-armed satellites capable of eliminating the entire global fleet of all nations’ satellites in a mere couple of hours, and is considered one of the most serious risks to the starting of a global nuclear war ever contrived, including by both global military experts and a substantial swathe of the professional US commentariat. DARC’s harm to the Welsh Government-designated landscape of the St Davids peninsula is confirmed by the very Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority whose land of jurisdiction would be significantly adversely impacted, in the form of a formal objection by that Authority. This is further echoed by Natural Resources Wales, a Government-level statutory body. Questions raised by the proposal include matters of international space traffic management and the proposal’s ultimately destructive exacerbation of the global US data exclusivity paradigm; the dangers of vast environmental and social damage posed by weapons systems intended for uses that could precipitate cataclysmic infrastructural damages to space infrastructure worth trillions of dollars through complex cascading debris pathways such as the Kessler syndrome; and diplomatic considerations at the very highest and most important levels of human endeavour - subjects with environmental implications so unprecedentedly novel from a planning perspective that such projects are rarely ever seen on British, let alone Welsh, soil.

To put the opposition into context: in the Council’s period for representations, 1,121 were objections to DARC, and just one was in support. This follows a statutory consultation where 401 of 495 responses alone were known to be PARC’s objection template, and every other summarised response by the MOD was also an objection. It follows also a petition of over 19,000 signatories against the proposal, echoed directly in the statement of opinion against it tabled by Plaid (which was signed by the Planning Minister), and the Westminster EDM calling for DARC to be scrapped (which was also tabled by Plaid), and the unanimous 2024 conference vote in Plaid opposing the proposal.

DARC, ultimately, satisfies every criterion that could be considered within a call-in request, from national security, to PPW national planning policy, to national and even international controversy. For these reasons, it has been commented on by Farage and The Times and The Guardian, devastated the reputation of a former First Minister, been alluded to by King Charles III in a speech to the US congress on the west’s highest world stage, and been on national television multiple times.

It is hard to imagine, in one’s most wild envisioning, a proposal that more perfectly, entirely and thoroughly correctly warrants and demands national-level scrutiny. Planning applications, as Ministers will know, were once determined in great number by a minister of state. That system changed as a result of a desire to see power devolved lower in society, but DARC is the clear and outright best example Ministers will ever see of a case in which the Welsh Government has, and must exercise, every right to use the powers over planning in Wales to protect its own community, which, in this case, is the state of Wales itself. The Welsh Government would, in my view, be failing in both its national policies and statutory duties not to demand scrutiny, stand up to Westminster, and call the proposal in for undeniably warranted consideration.

It is with support, hope, and confidence, however, that I convey this message.

DARC is Plaid’s moment to start as it means to go on: as a government that delivers results that are popular with the progressive majority of Wales, a government that makes no apology for being the stronger flavour of political representation that a country, battered by the regressive politics of Labour, Reform and the Tories, is asking that you deliver more loudly than ever in the times we live in.

I have confidence that Plaid Cymru can, and will, grow its voice. I have confidence that Plaid Cymru can gain its power, as it always has, by offering the politics of the majority of the Welsh nation: fearless, empowered, and willing to gain in strength by showing strength. More than that, however, I, like so many in the Dewi Sant peninsula, will stand by a Plaid government that protects my community and others like it to the very end. If DARC becomes an issue through which Wales finds a new and powerful way of speaking to Westminster, and that catalyses a bigger moment for the Welsh nation, I will be standing here, as many will in the Dewisland peninsula, once the historical home of all power in Wales, and riding with you into that future.

If you are a Plaid cabinet member, I urge you to make the call to stand by Sir Benfro and take your historical opportunity to make Cymru DARC-free, and venture to call DARC in.

If you are a Plaid MS, I urge you to get on the phone, support your party at Pembrokeshire’s greatest ever time of need and the only historical moment in which it will ask you to rise to the occasion for generations to come, and support the calling in of DARC now.

The devolution we have may not be independence. But devolution can only be a convincing advert for independence if people can see that, given power, the Welsh Government will take decisions that are in the interest of Wales, not of the United States, not of arms dealers like Northrop Grumman, and not of governments who have no right to buy and sell the spiritual heartlands of a nation that will one day be sovereign.

Diolch yn fawr, and I expect with every fibre of my being that you will call in DARC radar, and protect the historic county from environmental damage acknowledged by all, from the applicant, to statutory bodies, and to the people.

Best wishes

The campaign against DARC has hit galactic proportions. Plaid must call it in!

Thanks so much for all the actions you're taking to help protect the St Davids peninsula. Let's make DARC history!