Aled Eirug

As far back as the industrial revolution, significant development in technical innovation has succeeded in transforming numerous manual tasks and processes that had been in existence for decades where humans had reached the limits of physical capacity. Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers this same transformative potential for the augmentation and potential replacement of human tasks and activities within a wide range of industrial, intellectual and social applications. The pace of change for this new AI technological age is staggering, with new breakthroughs in algorithmic machine learning and autonomous decision-making, engendering new opportunities for continued innovation. The impact of AI could be significant, with industries ranging from: finance, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, supply chain, logistics and utilities, all potentially disrupted by the onset of AI technologies. The study brings together the collective insight from a number of leading expert contributors to highlight the significant opportunities, realistic assessment of impact, challenges and potential research agenda posed by the rapid emergence of AI within a number of domains: business and management, government, public sector, and science and technology. This research offers significant and timely insight to AI technology and its impact on the future of industry and society in general, whilst recognising the societal and industrial influence on pace and direction of AI development.

This study assesses the extent to which there was opposition to the Great War in north-east Wales, and how it was expressed through political movements such as the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and pacifist movements such as the Fellowship of Reconcilation (FoR).It analyses the most obvious manifestation of the anti-war movement, namely the conscientious objectors (COs) from the region, whose stance provoked bitter criticism and condemnation, but also admiration and respect.In common with the rest of Britain during the Great War, north-east Wales was converted to the requirements of total war.Large numbers of women were employed for the first time, and thousands of men volunteered to join the armed forces, including approximately twenty thousand from the six counties of north Wales. 1 Many of those men who chose not to serve in the armed forces worked in factories producing armaments, or remained on the land to sustain agricultural production.However, a small minority of men resisted all attempts to be coerced into supporting the war effort and became conscientious objectors.One of their number, Walter Leslie Roberts, a young architect brought up in Hawarden in Flintshire, and living in Bredbury near Stockport in Lancashire, became the first conscientious objector to die as a result of his treatment in captivity by the prison authorities.The militarisation of Denbighshire and Flintshire during the Great War happened quickly and dramatically.The area's main recruiting centre was Wrexham, and before 1 Clive Hughes, I'r Fyddin Fechgyn Gwalia!: Recriwtio I'r Fyddin yng Ngogledd-Orllewin Cymru 1914-1916 ( Llanrwst, Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 2014), 42. the war, it had already included strong companies of the Royal Welch Fusiliers in Mold, Flint, Connah's Quay, Holywell and Rhyl. 2 A campaign for a County Territorial battalion was inaugurated in 1914, 3 and the largest Army camp in Wales was established in Kinmel Park, near Rhyl, in February 1915 which initially held between fifteen and eighteen thousand soldiers. 4Another large camp was built in Park Hall near Oswestry, and a military prison was brought into use in Mold.North-east Wales became a centre for munitions production, and Government run Shell factories were initially set up in seven centres throughout Wales, including Wrexham, and an explosives works in Queensferry, where 2,500 women were employed. 5 Eighty per cent of their operatives were women, and as the war increased in intensity, more munitions factories were opened in Wrexham, Trevor, Wynnstay and Acrefair. 6 Due to the numbers of miners who were recruited to the Army in the early stages of the war, coal production decreased markedly.At the height of voluntary recruiting, between August 1914 and March 1915, approximately 14.4% of Denbighshire coalminers, or 2,676 joined the Army.This compares with the 19.5 per cent of miners who joined from the south Wales coalfield. 7 This suggests a substantial degree of support for the war, but the initial recruiting enlistments in the Wrexham area peaked at 2,768 as early as September 1914, and declined to 1,332 and 1,150 in January and February 1915 respectively.

This article reveals the activity of British intelligence agents in south Wales during the Great War, and their involvement in the surveillance of those considered to be 'subversive' elements within the peace and labour movements.Within the context of south Wales, it considers the significant shift of the prime concern for the security agencies during the War, from German counter-espionage to domestic countersubversion.Reports by local agents of MI5, the Ministry of Munitions and the Admiralty are considered in order to assess the efficacy of anti-war and industrial militancy, and the success or failure of the Government's approach to the anti-war movement.The relationship between the aggressive approach of the Glamorgan Chief Constable, Captain Lionel Lindsay and MI5 and the Home Office's more cautious approach is assessed in the context of the centralising of authority over the security services, and the diminution of local police autonomy.Whilst Wales responded largely with enthusiasm to the call to arms at the beginning of the Great War, the country was also divided by endemic industrial conflict and a strain of political dissent, which undermined the image of a country fully dedicated to the war effort.Whilst Francis and Smith, 1 and Mor O'Brien 2 have highlighted the incidence of strikes and anti-war dissent within the South Wales Miners' Federation, others such as May 3 and Doyle 4 have featured the impact of pro-war jingoistic patriotism in Wales.This was exemplified by the Merthyr Boroughs by-election following Keir Hardie's death and the victory of the former miner's agent and quasisyndicalist Charles Butt Stanton over the official Labour candidate, the moderate ILP member and President of the South Wales Miners' Federation, James Winstone. 5 However, there has been little consideration of the response of the State to dissent and to the undermining of the war effort in south Wales, with the notable exception of Hopkin's study of archived Home Office papers describing attempts by the Glamorgan Constabulary to persecute key anti-war activists such as T.E.Nicholas. 6 This article lifts the veil on the response of the British intelligence services in Wales during the First World War, examines their concern for the region's threatening 1