Survival of the Welsh Language: Part VIII

In the meantime, in an age where radio and movies began to play important roles in the regular everyday life of the people of Wales, the language continued its precipitous decline. North Wales got its news from and followed the events in Liverpool; South Wales was more tied to happenings in Bristol or even London. Links between the two areas of Wales were practically non-existent; roads and rails went West to East, not North to South, and the flow of ideas and language went in the same directions. Any sense of a national Welsh identity was disappearing rapidly along with the language. In an attempt to stop the rot, a new party came into being in 1925, Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru (The National Party of Wales) that was fiercely devoted to purely Welsh causes such as preservation of the language and culture. In 1926, Saunders Lewis took over the presidency, but the party received very little general support and, in some areas of Wales, was the object of ridicule. It was to take forty years before Plaid Cymru was taken seriously and gained its first seat in Parliament. Much had been happening until then to further erode Welsh as a common language and the idea of the Welsh as a common, united people worthy of their own government as part of a greater Britain.

In 1918, politician Arthur Henderson, (leader of the Labour Party), issued the following statement:

Given self-government, Wales might establish itself as a modern Utopia and develop its own institutions, its own culture, its own ideal of democracy in politics, industry and social life, as an example and an inspiration to the rest of the world

Henderson's views were not endorsed by the majority of members of his party. Eleven years later, in Welsh Outlook, Saunders Lewis, at the time a non-politician, echoed the sentiment:

Give [Wales] self-government and you will give her a capital city where her writers will con- gregate and meet artists and form a society. Give her a government and a capital and she will in time gather an urban class which will be the basis of a new aristocracy

The views of Henderson and Lewis, as imaginative and forward-looking as they were, did not appeal to the majority of the Welsh people' at the time, those who thought the politician and the poet were those of a very small minority indeed. In the meantime, the process of anglicization continued unabated; more people living in Wales considered themselves Anglo-Welsh than Welsh. Much of the blame (or for some,the praise), can be placed on the educational system that, even before the outset of the Second World War was geared to producing loyal Britons. When World War ll finally arrived, there was much more unanimity of support throughout Britain than there had been for the First World War. And there was less trauma inflicted upon the people of Wales, for this was a crusade against Fascism and Nazism and Hitler that almost everyone could subscribe to. It was also a fight to preserve the Empire. The heavy bombing meant a large exodus of children from the targeted larger English cities into the more rural areas. In Wales, thousands of refugees learned Welsh, but in many areas their English language overwhelmed the local speech.or tipped the scales against its survival.

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.

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