Dafydd Iwan

Written in the aftermath of the crushing 1979 devolution referendum defeat (79% voted against a Welsh Assembly), the Thatcher government's assault on Welsh heavy industry, and Iwan's own personal crises including imprisonment for Welsh language activism and divorce. Welsh morale was at a historic low.

Iwan wrote 'Yma o Hyd' to 'raise the spirits, to remind people we still speak Welsh against all odds — to show we are still here.' The song drew on deep Welsh history, referencing the departure of the Roman commander Macsen Wledig in 383 AD and the survival of Welsh identity through centuries of English domination. Its defiant chorus — 'We are still here, despite everyone and everything' — became a rallying cry that transcended party politics. Over the following four decades, the song evolved from a protest ballad into what many consider Wales' unofficial second national anthem, performed at rugby matches, football internationals, independence marches, and cultural events. Its adoption by the Welsh national football team during their 2022 World Cup qualification campaign brought it to a global audience and cemented its status as the soundtrack of modern Welsh identity. The song's power lies in its emotional accessibility: it doesn't make a constitutional argument but creates a feeling of collective defiance that makes self-governance feel like destiny rather than policy.

Supporters of YesCymru organised a campaign to push 'Yma o Hyd' to the top of the UK iTunes chart, mirroring the success of the Irish nationalist Wolfe Tones' 'Come Out, Ye Black and Tans' earlier that month. The campaign coincided with a dramatic surge in YesCymru membership and independence polling.

The chart campaign demonstrated how Iwan's 40-year-old song had become a mobilisation tool for a new generation of independence supporters. The song's success on a UK-wide platform was itself a political statement — a Welsh-language protest anthem from 1983 claiming the number one spot in 2020. YesCymru used the moment to drive membership sign-ups and social media engagement, effectively converting a cultural event into political organising. The episode illustrated Iwan's unique role in the independence ecosystem: he is not a policy thinker or a political strategist but a cultural figurehead whose work provides the emotional infrastructure on which political arguments are built. Without 'Yma o Hyd,' the independence movement would have slogans but not a shared emotional experience.

The fourth in a series of independence marches organised by AUOBCymru and YesCymru, held just weeks after Iwan had performed 'Yma o Hyd' before Wales' historic World Cup qualifying matches against Austria and Ukraine. The song had been adopted as the Welsh team's official World Cup anthem.

Iwan's performance at the Wrexham march, fresh from firing up the national football team, demonstrated the seamless connection between Welsh sporting identity and political nationalism that 'Yma o Hyd' enables. Over 8,000 people attended the march and rally, singing along to a song that had been performed before Wales' World Cup qualifier just weeks earlier. The football connection was politically transformative: it brought 'Yma o Hyd' to an audience of millions who had no prior engagement with Welsh nationalism, normalising its message of defiance and survival as part of mainstream Welsh culture. Iwan himself acknowledged this transformation, noting that 'what has happened since is even more significant, with people all over Wales singing the song, and people from other countries seeing Wales on the world stage.' By bridging sport, culture, and politics, Iwan's work demonstrates that the independence movement's greatest asset may not be policy papers but shared emotional experience.

On the day before his 82nd birthday, Iwan performed what was announced as his final gig at a festival in the Gwynedd heartland where he had grown up. The performance came as Wales was heading into the most consequential Senedd election in devolution's history.

Iwan's farewell performance carried enormous symbolic weight for the independence movement: the man whose song had defined Welsh defiance for over four decades was stepping back just as the cause he had championed for sixty years appeared closer to political realisation than ever before. With Plaid Cymru leading the polls for the 2026 election and independence support at generational highs, Iwan's retirement felt like a passing of the torch from the cultural generation that kept Welsh nationalism alive through the dark decades of the 1980s and 1990s to the political generation that might actually achieve self-governance. His legacy is not primarily political — he never held significant elected office — but cultural: he created the emotional vocabulary that allows millions of Welsh people to feel that independence is not an abstract constitutional proposition but an expression of who they have always been.