sentences:  In 1956 a 250,000-name petition calling for a parliament for Wales produced few results, but the declaration of Cardiff as the capital of Wales in 1955, Labour's 1959 commitment to appoint a Secretary of State for Wales, the creation of the Welsh Office in 1965, and the repeal of the Wales and Berwick Act 1746 two years later seemed to demonstrate a growing nationalist impetus.However, the heavy defeat for a proposed Welsh Assembly offered by Labour in the 1979 devolution referendum "suggested that the vast majority of the inhabitants of Wales had no desire to see their country having a national future".In the 1980s, economic restructuring and Thatcherite market reforms brought social dislocation to parts of Wales, which had formerly been described as having "the largest public sector west of the Iron Curtain".