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Next week Cneifiwr will be off to see Dyled Eileen in Crymych. The play tells the story of Eileen and Trefor Beasley who fought what was then Llanelli Rural District Council for eight years for the right to receive a rates bill in Welsh. As Eileen pointed out when she was interviewed by the BBC a few years ago, almost all of the council's staff and officers could speak Welsh at the time (something which is rather less true today), so why did they insist on sending out rates demands in English to Welsh speaking households such as the Beasleys?

The council sent bailiffs to the Beasleys' home on some ten occasions, and the house was gradually stripped bare. The council took a piano, a dining table, a carpet, a bookcase, a mirror and even the couple's wedding presents, even though the Beasleys had young children at the time.

Eileen, who died last year, took a stand against the intransigence and stupidity of the council and eventually won, although she and her family paid a great price for their defiance.

Roll the clock forward sixty years, and you have to wonder how much has changed.

A thought which struck Cneifiwr recently as he travelled up to London for the libel trial was how women are so often at the forefront of battles with Carmarthenshire County Council. Jacqui Thompson has taken an often lonely stand against a secretive and bullying authority, and she has also paid a heavy price. Being jeered at by councillors as she was led away in handcuffs by the police was just one episode. Shame on them.

Trisha Breckman also fought a long and hugely costly battle for justice in her planning dispute, and she was also arrested by the police and taken from her home in handcuffs at one point. At least there were no councillors around to jeer at the time.

We now know from Jacqui Thompson's trial that a senior officer of the council sent what was described as "prejudicial" material to the Chief Constable of Dyfed Powys Police before she was arrested for filming. Perhaps the same happened in the Breckman case.

At least the new Police Commissioner is taking the matter seriously and has promised to carry out an investigation.

Delyth Jenkins, whose full story has yet to come out, is another of the council's victims, and she too has been trying to get justice for years. Delyth was bullied and abused for blowing the whistle on council staff abusing the people in their care. She was shouted at by the Chief Executive for her pains, and almost all of those involved in the shameful episode are still working for the authority.

And there are others, men as well as women, who have been victimised or had their names smeared.

True, there are women on the governing Executive Board, but all have been there for years and are now fully paid-up members of the old boys' club.

When it comes to the council's senior officers, make a quick trip to a meeting of the full council, and you will see a whole raft of male officers looking down from their podium. The only exception here is the Head of Law, whose main job seems to be legal fixer for the chief executive.

Perhaps all of this is coincidence, but the culture which is on display says otherwise.

One final thought is that another ingredient in this toxic mix is evangelical Christianity. Not the mild kind of religion that most church and chapel goers subscribe to, but a creed based on the belief that the Bible is literally true, every last word, and that it is in the words of The Living Word Church in Carmarthen "infallible and inerrant" (a bit like the council).

Of course, people are free to believe whatever they like, and hallelujah for that. But if you believe that everything in the Bible is literally true, you are not far removed from people who believe that they have been abducted by aliens. Not only do you believe that Noah loaded a wooden ship with two living things of every kind and that he lived to be 950, but you will also believe that homosexuality is an abomination and that women are subservient to men.

As it happens, members of the Living Word Church were treated not so very long ago to a long sermon justifying a verse in the Bible which stipulates that wives should obey their husbands, just as slaves should obey their masters.