Tryweryn flooding
The village and other parts of the valley were flooded in 1965 to create Llyn Celyn reservoir, in order to supply Liverpool and Wirral with water for industry.
[3] The villagers created the Capel Celyn Defence Committee, which debated and denounced the scheme all over Wales through newspapers, radio and television.
[3] In 1957, a private bill sponsored by Liverpool City Council was brought before Parliament to develop a water reservoir in the Tryweryn Valley.
This, together with the fact that the village was one of the last Welsh-only speaking communities in the area,[4] ensured that the proposals became deeply controversial; 35 out of 36 Welsh Members of Parliament (MPs) opposed the bill (the other did not vote), but in 1962 it was passed.
The Tryweryn flooding was opposed locally by the Capel Celyn Defence Committee led by Dafydd Roberts and Elizabeth May Watkin Jones.
It is recorded on a bronze plaque in a lay-by near to the dam:Under these waters and near this stone stood Hafod Fadog, a farmstead where in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Quakers met for worship.
From this valley came many of the early Quakers who emigrated to Pennsylvania, driven from their homes by persecution to seek freedom of worship in the New World.Almost unanimous Welsh political opposition had failed to stop approval of the scheme, a fact that seemed to underline Plaid Cymru's argument that the Welsh national community was powerless.
[11] A more militant response was the formation of Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru ("Wales Defence Movement") or MAC, which blew up a transformer on the dam construction site in February 1963.
But according to some commentators, Capel Celyn did not play a major part in Gwynfor Evans's victory: in addition to Carmarthen's long distance from Tryweryn, they claim that Plaid Cymru's victory owed as much to an anti-Labour backlash in the constituency's mining communities as it did to Plaid's successful depiction of Labour's policies as a threat to the viability of small Welsh communities.
The 2015 United Kingdom election took place during the flooding's 50 year anniversary, and saw the UK Conservative Party campaign on the St David's Day Agreement which would give further powers to the Welsh government.
As such, the proposals were heavily criticised in Wales; both the Welsh Government and Plaid Cymru stated that a new agreement was needed to address the issues around devolved, reserved and excepted matters, especially on the emotive subject of water.
Alun Cairns again backed the amended act, stating that the new arrangement showed "how far we have come from the events of 52 years ago, which resulted in the flooding of the Tryweryn Valley".
[26] To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the event, English composer Michael Stimpson released an album entitled Dylan & The Drowning of Capel Celyn, which featured a work for solo pedal harp, inspired by the flooding.
Electronic musician Bibio released a song called "Capel Celyn" on his 2017 album Phantom Brickworks.
The history of the villages provide inspiration for the 11th episode "Achub Y Morfilod" ("Saving the Whales") in Season 6 of the American animation series Archer, first broadcast in 2015.
[28] Capel Celyn and the reservoir also play a part in the 2016 Welsh film Yr Ymadawiad (The Passing, in English).
One instance of this motto is a graffito on the wall of a ruined stone cottage by the A487 at Llanrhystud, outside Aberystwyth[30] which has come to be regarded as a "national landmark".
[31] Meic Stephens claimed to have been the first to paint the wall in the 1960s,[30] with the slogan Cofiwch Tryweryn (sic, without the initial soft mutation and therefore grammatically incorrect).
