Топик: Survival of the Welsh Language

To counter the linguistic threat to the Welsh culture at Aberystwyth, a private Welsh-medium school was established.by Ifan ab Owen Edwards, the son of the famous educator. Apart from this little school, however, it wasn't until Llanelli Welsh School began in 1947 that the idea of teaching children through the medium of Welsh began to take hold in earnest. Other schools followed, so that by 1970, even Cardiff had its Ysgol Dewi Sant (St. David's School) one of the largest primary schools in Wales, teaching through the medium of Welsh. The increase in the Welsh primary schools was accompanied by a demand for a Welsh secondary education, and the first such schools opened in Flintshire, Ysgol Gyfun Glan Clwyd and Ysgol Maes Garmon in areas in which the great majority of the parents were monolingual English. The success of these schools were followed by Ysgol Rhydfelen in Glamorganshire in 1962 and by many others by the 1980's.

It may have taken a long while, and for many, it might have been too late, but the change in the attitude of the Welsh people toward their language has been dramatic since 1962. Not only that, but great strides have been made in convincing immigrants to Wales that their children would not suffer the loss of their English language if they were to be taught through the medium of Welsh, and that a bilingual education may well be superior to one that confines them to a single language. Many a non-Welsh speaking parent is now anxious to point with pride at the achievement of their children in the Welsh language. It is no longer fashionable in Wales to refer to the language as "dying," and the activities of the Eisteddfod as "the kicks of a dying nation," sentiments the author heard at Swansea in 1964. What caused the sea-change?

One place we can start to look for the answer is the media, especially public radio. Beginning in 1922, the BBC broadcasts in Wales were eagerly awaited. Its voice, however, was one that gave prestige and authority to its views, the voice of a public-school-educated upper-class Englishman. In addition, the majority of broadcasts led a majority of British people to believe that a BBC accent was not only desirable, but was the correct one, and that their own accent, dialect, or in the case of much of Wales, their language, was inferior. It was Radio Eireann, the voice of the Irish Republic, that broadcast the only regular Welsh language material, beginning in 1927.

At time, and for a long period afterward, incredible as it now seems, the head of the BBC station in Cardiff ignored protests from devotees of the Welsh language who wished to hear Welsh language programs. There were then almost one million speakers of Welsh. But aided by such attitudes of those in authority, a rapid decline was about to begin. This was not inevitable. Perhaps the language would have even advanced, given sufficient air time in the late 1920's and early 30's. The problem was that most Welsh listeners enjoyed their English language programs; it was only the few who realized that their enjoyment was coming at the expense of their cherished, native tongue.

Part VIII

One who did take notice, and one who provided the second place to look for the answer was Ifan ab Owen Edwards, whose father Owen M. Edwards had founded Urdd y Delyn in 1898. The son, in his turn, established the most influential of all youth movements in Wales, Urdd Gobaith Cymru in 1922; the movement has involved countless thousands of Welsh boys and girls ever since, conducting their camps, sports activities, singing festivals, eisteddfodau, etc. all through the medium of Welsh and proving that the language was not one that should be confined to an older, chapel-going, puritanical generation. Continued protests against the policies of the BBC, unable and in most cases unwilling to cater to the new, younger generation eventually led to the BBC studio at Bangor broadcasting Welsh language programs. In 1935, and in July of 1937 the Welsh Region of the BBC finally began to broadcast on a separate wavelength. Radio Cymru, however, had to wait until 1977.

Another pivotal figure in the fight for survival of the Welsh language, and one who made good use of the power of the radio broadcast was the poet and dramatist Saunders Lewis. Like Ifan ab Owen Edwards, Lewis was greatly concerned that, unless something was done, and done quickly, the Welsh language as a living entity would disappear before the end of the century. Lewis, a major Welsh poet and dramatist, generally considered as the greatest literary figure in the Welsh language of this century, was born in Cheshire into a Welsh family; he later became a lecturer at the newly established University College, Swansea. Heavily influenced by events in Ireland and the struggle for national identity in that country that took place in the political sphere, he was one of the founders of Plaid Cymru in 1925 at the Pwllheli National Eisteddfod, becoming its president in 1926.

Lewis envisioned a new role for the people of Wales that would transform their position as a member of the British Empire into one in which they could see themselves as one of the nations that helped found European civilization. As he viewed it:

What then is our nationalism?...To fight not for Welsh independence but for the civilization of Wales. To claim for Wales not independence but freedom. (Egwyddorion Cenedlaetholdeb, 1926)

Ten years later, with two companions, D.J. Williams and Lewis Valentine, Lewis deliberately set a fire at Penyberth in the Llyn Peninsular, North Wales, a site that the military wished to use for construction of a bombing school. The three then turned themselves in to the authorities and were duly indicted and summoned to appear in court. The failure of the court to agree on a verdict at Caernarfon, a town sympathetic to their cause, meant the removal of their trial to London, where they were each sentenced to nine months imprisonment. Lewis was dismissed from his teaching post at Swansea even before the arrival of the guilty verdict at the Old Bailey.

Leading Welsh historians agree that The fire at Penyberth should be regarded as a cause celebre in the struggle for Welsh identity; it certainly had its impact on Welsh thinking, an impact that was not wholly dampened by the onset of Word War ll which again focused the people of Britain on their shared identity in the face of an enemy that threatened their survival as a nation. The pacificism of Lewis was an affront to many, even within Plaid Cymru who saw the need to defeat as overriding any other concern.

Part IX

The improvements in the road system meant that many areas in Wales were easy to get to. Their beauty and tranquility became an irresistible magnet to thousands ready to retire from the squalor and overcrowding of the big industrial cities of northern and middle England. Welsh communities, especially along the North Wales coast, found themselves inundated with a flood of newcomers who were either too old to learn the language or couldn't be bothered. Many of the younger couples had no idea that Wales had a language of its own, or when they did find out were adamant that their children be educated through the medium of English. Far more significant was the fact that it was far too easy to get by perfectly well in Wales without knowing a word of its language.

The whole north Wales coast, known as "the Welsh Riviera" became first a weekend playground for, and then an extension of, Merseyside. The mid-Wales coast, similarly was transformed by a huge influx of people from the Midlands. LIverpool accents were more common in Llandudno than Welsh; Birmingham accents common in Borth, or even Aberystwyth. The author vividly remembers visiting a pub in Bangor where every customer but one could speak Welsh, but all of whom used English to defer to a monolingual Englishman (who had been in the area forty years without learning a single word of Welsh). The same situation was found throughout much of North Wales.

The result of such massive invasions, often by retirees, certainly by those with little incentive to learn Welsh was drastic. From almost a million Welsh speakers in 1931, the number fell to just over 500,000 in less than fifty years.despite the large increase in population. Strongholds of the language and its attendant culture were crumbling fast, and it seemed that nothing could be done to stem the tide. In 1957 occurred an event that exemplified the situation: the Liverpool Corporation got the go-ahead from Parliament to drown a valley in Meirionydd (Merionethshire) called Tryweryn, which housed a strong and vibrant Welsh-speaking community. The removal of the people of Tryweryn to make way for a source of water for an English city convinced many in Wales that the nation was on its way to extinction. The survival of the Welsh language seemed irreversibly doomed, and no-one seemed to care.

Then something happened; someone seemed to care after all. At Pontarddulais in 1962, at the summer school of Plaid Cymru, a new movement began. Mainly involving a younger active post-war Welsh generation, many of them college students, the Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (Welsh Language Society) decided to take matters in their own hands to try to halt the decline of the language by forcing the hand of the government. Saviors to many, scoundrels and troublemakers to others, frustrated members of the Society had been galvanized into action by a talk given on the BBC by Saunders Lewis in February, 1962.

In his talk, entitled Tynged yr Iaith (Fate of the language) Lewis asked his listeners to make it impossible for local or central government business to be conducted without the use of the Welsh language. This was the only way, he felt, to ensure its survival. Plaid Cymru could not help, as it was a political party, so the banner was taken up by Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg. At narrow Trefechan Bridge, Aberystwyth in February, 1963, members of the society sat down in the road and stopped all traffic trying to get into town over the bridge, or trying to leave town on the same route.

Undeterred by prison sentences for disturbing the peace and for their subsequent destruction of government property (mostly road signs), and led by such activists as Fred Fransis, and folk-singer Dafydd Iwan, the society began a serious campaign. In the face of much hostility from passivist locals and prosecution from the authorities, Cymdeithas pressed for the right to use Welsh on all government documents, from Post Office forms to television licenses, from driving licenses to tax forms. In particular, the society engaged in surreptitious night time activities, removing English-only sign posts and directional instructions from the highways or daubing them with green paint. All over Wales, in early morning, motorists were faced with the green paint and daubed slogan that mysteriously had appeared overnight. It became frustrating and expensive for local authorities and the Ministry of Transport to keep replacing road signs.

Eventually, in 1963, faced with an ever-growing campaign, increased police and court costs, destruction of government property, and the vociferous demands for action by an increasingly angry and frustrated national movement, the central government decided to establish a committee to look at the legal status of Welsh. Its report, issued two years later, recommended that the language be given "equal validity" with English, a diluted version of which was placed into the Welsh Language Act of 1967.

There came about a new feeling in the land. The young people of Wales were answering the call of Saunders Lewis; the older generation began to reconsider their passiveness. Dafydd Iwan and many of his contemporaries inaugurated a whole new movement in popular Welsh music, translating English and American pops into Welsh, or writing stirring new lyrics and music or protest. The popularity of mournful, funereal hymns sung by male voice choirs found a competitor, the loud, heavy rhythms and rebellious music of new bands. Groups such as Ar Log and Plethyn rediscovered ancient Welsh folk music and brought it up to date. The National Eisteddfod entered into the spirit, each year erecting a Roc Pavilion, where such groups could attract the younger audiences. Wales began to finally shake off the shrouds cast by the Methodist Revival of over a century before.

Since the 1960's, in the author's birthplace Flint and in other towns in Clwyd, attempts to reintroduce the Welsh language in the schools have been warmly welcomed by many of the townsfolk, and a whole new generation of children who can speak, read and write Welsh may help ensure the future of the language (and ultimately, of Plaid Cymru) in such heavily anglicized areas. Other areas, such as the Cardiff region and the Valleys have already experienced some growth in the numbers of those able to speak Welsh.

Factors for this increase include the rise of a Welsh bureaucracy; further expansion of the Welsh-oriented mass media; the continued activities of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, with its appeal to the young generation; and the effects of the Welsh Language Act of 1967. Perhaps most important is the subtle change in attitude towards the language brought about by the advantages that can be gained by its speakers in both social and economic fields. Of crucial importance in winning the hearts and minds of the non-Welsh speakers who have young children has been Mudiad Ysgolion Meithrin (the Welsh Nursery School Movement) founded in 1971.

In the anglicized areas of Wales, we may yet again read such sentiments as that given by Sir Walter Scott, in a letter to his son, dated December, 1820:

You hear the Welsh spoken much about you, and if you can pick it up without interfering with more important labours, it will be worth while

In the late 1990's, as we shall see, one of the more important labors of many of the Welsh people has been to continue the fight to preserve their language, and with it, much of the culture upon which it depends. To preserve this language, the ancient, magnificent tongue of the British people for so many, many centuries, will be indeed, a labor of love to make up for so much past pain.