by-elections in 1945, the party won 25 per cent of the vote in Caernarfon and 16 per cent in Neath. By 1945 Plaid Cymru was in a "better position then it had been in 1939", wrote Dr Davies. Responding to Welsh nationalism, and despite opposition by Labour politicians such as Aneurin Bevan, Morgan Phillips and Attlee, the U.K. government felt it prudent to establish the Council of Wales in 1948, an unelected assembly of 27 with the brief of advising the UK government on matters of Welsh interest. The Council of Wales held no authority on its own, to the frustration of many of the councillors. Following the war Plaid Cymru challenged the UK government's continued military conscription in peacetime, and protested the War Office's use of Welsh lands for training exercises: first in the Preseli Hills in 1946, then in Tregaron in 1947, and then Trawsfynydd in 1951. Throughout the 1950s, Evans reached out to other political parties in Westminster to establish a parliament for Wales. Though failing to establish a Welsh assembly, there was movement on devolution. With Plaid Cymru expanding its influence further into the industrial south-east constituencies, the UK government gave in on small concessions towards devolution. First they established a Minister of Welsh Affairs in 1951, then a Digest of Welsh Statistics began publication in 1954, and in 1955 Cardiff (Caerdydd) was recognised as the Welsh capital city. On Evans' initiative in response to a lack of Welsh-medium education at the college level, the University of Wales set up a committee for the creation of a Welsh-medium college in 1950. By 1955 the university announced its expansion of a Welsh-medium curriculum, and its continued expansion in relation to the demand for classes in Welsh. Additionally, Plaid Cymru was attracting members from other parties, such as one-time Plaid Cymru critic Huw T. Edwards, who resigned from the Council of Wales and left Labour in 1958 over what he described as "Whitehallism". A Welsh constitutional monarchy See also Welsh peers and baronets. At a party conference in 1949, fifty members left Plaid Cymru over Evans' strict observance of a pacifist political doctrine and over the party's continued emphasis on the Welsh language, but also because the party firmly rejected adopting a republican manifesto. The disaffected founded the Welsh Republican Movement which provided a home for radical ideas while Plaid Cymru matured as a political party, wrote historian