Date/Time
Date(s) - 26/01/2025
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Location
Tonyfelin Baptist Chapel
Categories
- Academi Heddwch
- Event organised by Cymdeithas y Cymod / the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Wales
- Event organised by South Wales Quakers
- Events organised in partnership with WCIA
- Global Action
- Global Learning
- Global Partnership
- Peace Heritage
- Volunteering
This memorial event marks the 70th anniverary of Gwilym Davies’ passing, on 26 January 1955, by celebrating the achievements of one of Wales’ most dynamic and outspoken peacemakers – and at the same time, starting a ‘year of action’ (supported by Cytun and WCIA, the Welsh Centre for International Affairs) to mark the centenary of one of the very campaigns that he spearheaded – the Welsh Churches Peace Appeal to America of 1925-26.
The Rev Gwilym Davies 1879-1955, born in Bedlinog (just a few miles from our venue up the Taff Bargoed valley), was the first Founding Director of WCIA’s post-WW1 predecessor body, the Welsh League of Nations Union, for whom Wales’ Temple of Peace & Health was built as a ‘fitting headquarters in remembrance of the fallen of WW1’. Davies was the dynamo behind 1920s peace campaigns of the League, including the Youth Message of Peace and Goodwill (which continues today through the Urdd) and the Welsh Women’s Peace Petition to America (whose centenary in 2024 has been marked through the Wales-wide project ‘Hawlio Heddwch’).
Find out more about Gwilym Davies:
- The Man with a Mission – the Story of Rev Gwilym Davies (WCIA Hidden History feature)
- The 1925 Welsh Churches Peace Appeal to America (WCIA Hidden History feature and short film)
Rev Gwilym Davies’ security pass to the inaugural conference in 1946 of UNESCO, the UN Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation, for which he had been tasked during World War 2 with consulting and drafting the Constitution – subsequently adopted in Paris.