Did Plaid receive £2500 from Libya in 1976? (where did they spend it?)

Plaid Cymru has dismissed claims that it was given £25,000 by former Libyan dictator Col Muammar Gaddafi in 1976. which  is being splashed over the Unionist media.

The claims have been made by Dr Carl Clowes, a party activist who visited the north African state at the time as a guest of the Arab Socialist Union.

He told BBC Wales the Libyans were keen to forge links with Plaid Cymru as a socialist party and asked how they could help.

Plaid Cymru said there was “no record or knowledge” of any such donation.

Dr Clowes said that at the end of the week-long trip, during which there had been a succession of conversations about improvements to public services in Libya and about what Plaid Cymru was aiming to achieve in Wales, there was a meeting between the Welsh delegation and a “youngish” Libyan official.

No money was asked for by the Plaid activists, but the official said the Libyans had liked what they had heard and would see what could be done to help.

A couple of months later, said Dr Clowes, Mr Edwards had told him that £25,000 had been received by Plaid, and that the donation had not been conditional in any way.”

I can recall (i think it was (Rebecca) covering this and a claim that part of the reason for the trip was to promote Welsh Lamb as an export to Libya.

So its actually a Old Story which any decent journalist would have gone back on to see if there was amything new.

A Plaid Cymru spokeswoman said:

 “The trip to Libya was well documented at the time and since. There is absolutely no record or knowledge of any such donation being made to Plaid Cymru.”

Certainly £25,000 was a big donation for Plaid in 1976 and the Party would have seemed awash with money if it was true. 

I don't think even senior members of the party were aware that the Plaid's financial problems had been abated.

Of course it has given the Unionist Parties a chance to get on their moral highorse 

The Wasting Mule had no difficulty in finding " A Welsh Labour" who  source said: 

“It’s truly shocking that senior Plaid Cymru figures led a pilgrimage to Libya to dictator Muammar Gaddafi for money at around the same time as he was funding militias and terrorist organisations across the world.
"The frank admissions in this book show clearly that Plaid Cymru hoped to emulate some of the despot’s policies here in Wales.
"While the West was pulling together to combat terrorism, Plaid politicians were cosying up with the brutal dictator and proud anti-semite in a cynical bid for funding.”

But frankly you need only this picture to dismiss this as hypocrisy


How many trade delegations involving  UK Governments to Saudi Arabia have there been since Plaid allegedly took money from a dictator forty years ago?

Apparently.there is a difference between a revolutionary dictator like Gaddafi and hereditary  rulers.

That 's why successive governments have encouraged  and supported the Autocratic dictatorship of Saudia Arabia whose Human Rights abuses could be said to ve worse than Gaddafi




I wonder if in the period before denotations were more closely scrutinised if the Tories and Labour ever  received  any   from foreign government go-between whose Human Rights records we would find abhorrent?