The Dragon Roars: the Emergence of Civil Disobedience in Welsh Language Politics

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THE DRAGON ROARS

The Dragon Roars: The emergence of civil disobedience in Welsh language politics

The purpose of my paper is to briefly throw some light on the recent history of the Welsh language and its struggle to survive into the 21st century. Of the six Celtic languages that have survived until modern times, it is probably Welsh that today enjoys the strongest position of them all. At this time, over half a million people in Wales still speak Welsh, and with the advent of the Welsh National Assembly in 1999 it was declared one of Wales’s two official languages. Welsh-medium education is freely available throughout the country, it has its own radio and television service, and you can even buy a Welsh-language version of the famous BigMac in Wales—namely the Mac Mawr. What greater proof of the language's vitality could there possibly be? However, behind the current comparatively healthy position of Welsh lies a tale of immense endeavour, perseverance, courage, sacrifice and sheer guts. Because less than fifty years ago, you'd easily have been excused for thinking that Welsh wouldn't survive to see the third millennium. So during my paper I'd like to examine the miraculous recovery the Welsh language has witnessed during the last half century, and the key part played in that recovery by civil disobedience. Until comparatively recently Welsh was the first and only language of the vast majority of the inhabitants of Wales. At the beginning of the 19th

Copyright © 2000 Dylan Phillips 1 THE DRAGON ROARS century, more than three-quarters of the population spoke Welsh as their first language, and even at the beginning of the 20th century, nearly a million people—half the population—still spoke Welsh as their mother- tongue. However, soon after enumerations recording the number of Welsh- speakers began with the decennial population census of 1891, it was realised that the language was quickly losing ground. By 1921 the percentage of Welsh-speakers had fallen to 37%. By 1951 it had fallen to just 29%. Half way through the 20th century, therefore, it was realised that Welsh was losing its native speakers at a rate of one every 90 minutes.1 In actual fact, it was little wonder that Welsh was losing ground so quickly by the first half of the last century. After all, Welsh had absolutely no official status whatsoever since the Union of Wales with England in 1536, when it had been completely ostracised from the political, administrative and legislative life of Wales. Four centuries later and Welsh was still very much conspicuous by its absence wherever you went in Wales. English was the exclusive language of the law courts, the civic authorities and government. English had been the sole language of education in Wales since 1870 when a state educational system was created throughout Britain. Even by the beginning of the 1970s, parents by-and-large were forced to accept that English would be the only realistic medium of instruction for their children. Fast-moving developments in the field of radio and television also underlined the language's total inferiority. In 1970 the BBC broadcast more hours of Arabic than it did in Welsh. But it wasn't just a problem of lack of status. Several economic and social factors also threatened its future, such as the decline of the traditional economies that sustained Welsh-speaking communities, the out-migration of Welsh-speakers looking for work, and the in-migration of English-speakers looking to escape the drab industrial conurbations of the English Midlands. All these things, coupled with Welsh-speakers’ low self-esteem and total lack of confidence in the utility and the value of their mother-tongue, were seriously endangering its

1 For a statistical examination of the position of the Welsh language, see John Aitchison and Harold Carter, Language, Economy and Society: The Chaning Fortunes of the Welsh Language in the Twentieth Century (Cardiff, 2000).

Copyright © 2000 Dylan Phillips 2 THE DRAGON ROARS future.2 By midway through the 20th century the future of the language looked bleak. When the results of the latest decennial census were released in 1961, it seemed as if the Act of Union's objective of completely eradicating Welsh was about to be realised. It showed in stomach- churning detail that the total number of Welsh-speakers had now fallen as low as 650,000—or 26% of the population—a loss of over a quarter of a million speakers in just 60 years. Supporters of the language were forcefully shaken by these stark statistics, and many despaired for its future. It was clear that the Welsh language was in crisis and that the 1961 census had sounded the final warning. It wasn’t as if anybody hadn’t ever tried to avert this impending disaster. Numerous societies and associations had been formed during the first half of the 20th century to campaign on the language's behalf. But their efforts to a great degree were being impeded by the way in which they campaigned. In reality, they were much too polite and well- mannered for their own good. Because they didn’t want to rock the boat too much, to upset anybody, or raise their collective voice in protest, they were effectively sidelined and ignored by the establishment. So despite all their hard efforts and their tireless work, the inferior position of Welsh remained unchecked. Consequently more and more supporters of the language were becoming increasingly frustrated with its continuing decline in fortunes, and many called for bolder measures by government to preserve the language. Some even began to argue that the time had come to abandon the campaigning tactics of earlier movements and to adopt a radical new approach—by unconstitutional means if necessary. The main advocate of this argument was Saunders Lewis, the celebrated author and literary critic and President of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh Nationalist Party from 1926 to 1939. He became convinced by 1962 that the battle for the future of the language was more important than the campaign for self-government. Lewis had lost patience with

2 For the most recent and detailed study of the plight of the Welsh language during the last century, see Geraint H. Jenkins and Mari A. Williams (eds.), “Let's do our Best for the Ancient Tongue”: The Welsh Language in the Twentieth Century (Cardiff, 2000).

Plaid Cymru’s strategy of election campaigning and the abysmal failure of the early language movements. Therefore, in a radio broadcast on Tuesday night, 13 February 1962, he called for a national campaign of civil disobedience in support of Welsh. The aim of his lecture entitled Tynged yr Iaith (The Fate of the Language) was to awaken the Welsh people to the crisis facing their language, for he believed that if the present trend were to continue Welsh would cease to exist as a living language by the beginning of the 21st century. He therefore called on his supporters to abandon their electoral campaigning and to organise a direct action campaign to “make it impossible to conduct local authority or central government business without the Welsh language.”3 Spurred on by their frustration, and inspired—or perhaps shocked—by Saunders Lewis's lecture, many now believed that civil disobedience would be the only effective means of securing official status for Welsh. They felt that the authorities were completely oblivious to the critical condition of the language and that there was justifiable cause to try and gain their attention in a dramatic way. The early 60s were also, of course, a period of worldwide unrest and turmoil. In many countries minorities and peoples were expressing their disillusionment with the constitutional political process. California, sure enough, was at the very hub of this movement as student protests in support of the freedom of expression swept all over the globe from the American West Coast as far as Warsaw and Moscow in the east. There were protests in Paris against the policy of the French government in its Algerian colony; massive peace marches in London against the atomic bomb; strikes and riots in South Africa against the injustices of apartheid; and civil disobedience campaigns to achieve equal rights for black people throughout the United States. The 60s were an exhilarating period throughout the world, and supporters of the Welsh language hoped that by emulating the methods of their international cousins back in Wales they would be able to elevate the status of their mother tongue.

3 Saunders Lewis, Tynged yr Iaith (London, [1962]). For the English translation, see Gruffydd Aled Williams, ‘The Fate of the Language (1962)’ in Alun R. Jones and Gwyn Thomas (eds.), Presenting Saunders Lewis (Cardiff, 1973), pp. 127–1.

To this end a small hard-core of supporters centred around Aberystwyth decided in August 1962 to establish a new pressure group dedicated to non-violent civil disobedience to campaign for the language’s future. Their first meeting, as fitting a group of Celtic academics and students, was held two months later in a pub. There they elected the first two officers of the new group, drafted notices and pamphlets to give it publicity, deliberated over the details of their first campaign, and decided on a name—one that would incessantly plague the authorities throughout the next forty years, namely Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, or the Welsh Language Society.4 Funnily enough, the first campaign was actually started by accident five months before Cymdeithas had even been formed. Gareth Miles, a student at the University in Aberystwyth, was arrested one evening for perpetrating the heinous crime of carrying a friend shotgun on his push- bike. Such a major road-traffic offence deserved severe punishment and he was duly summoned to appear before the town’s magistrates. However, being a fervent supporter of the language Miles was annoyed with the fact that the summons he received was a monolingual scrap of paper with no hint of Welsh on it. In protest he ignored the summons and the court case had to proceed in his absence where he was fined for his offence. Once again the court order calling for payment of the fine was ignored since it was again in English only, and Miles was consequently arrested for non-payment of his one-pound fine and spent the night in a police cell. This strange, bordering-on the inane episode laid the foundation for Cymdeithas's first campaign of demanding bilingual summonses. The summons—a legal order compelling a citizen to answer for his crimes—was a strong symbol of the supremacy of the English-only State, where the Welsh language was legally deemed to be inferior. By refusing to acknowledge the authority of English-only summonses, Cymdeithas members felt that they were rebelling against an injustice that 4 The two main studies of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg are Gwilym Tudur, W Cofio?(Talybont, 1989), and Dylan Phillips,Trwy DdulliauChwyldro . . . ? Hanes Cymdeithasyr IaithGymraeg 1962—1992(Llandysul, 1998). However, foran English- medium introduction, see the chapter by the current author in Jenkins and ‘Let’s do our Best for the Ancient Tongue’, pp. 463—90.

Copyright © 2000 Dylan Phillips 5 THE DRAGON ROARS was rooted as far back as the language clause in the 1536 Act of Union. And as a result, the rather farcical saga centring on Gareth Miles’s bicycle misdemeanour sparked off a nation-wide campaign of civil disobedience. The months that followed witnessed a systematic campaign of law breaking, culminating in an infamous mass rally that brought the town of Aberystwyth to a standstill in February 1963. The authorities didn't dawdle for long after that before conceding a bilingual version of the summons. Direct action had gained its first victory for the language. Having enjoyed immediate success with its first campaign, Cymdeithas swiftly moved on to new campaigns demanding bilingual chequebooks, bilingual road-tax forms, bilingual television licences, bilingual road-signs, and even bilingual dog permits. One of the most important campaigns at that time was for the right of parents to register their child's birth in Welsh, a basic right denied in Wales until direct action forced the issue in 1966. The list of potential campaigns was endless. Before the end of the 60s Cymdeithas had also moved in to all sorts of other fields as well as the fight for equal public status, including education, broadcasting, housing and planning, the economy, and political devolution. Cymdeithas realised that it would take more than a few bilingual forms and road- signs to save the language from extinction, and so it developed a detailed and comprehensive manifesto of what it believed was needed to ensure the language’s future. Protest and civil disobedience have remained key weapons for Cymdeithas in its campaign for the language throughout the last forty odd years. Essentially, protest was a means of proving how serious the condition of the language had actually become. The fact that thousands of people were prepared to break the law and accept the consequences of their actions proved the immensity of the crisis facing the language. But pragmatically, protest was also a valuable means of gaining publicity. A mass rally with hundreds of protesters would certainly be reported in the papers or on the radio and television. This would be especially true if the protesters were holding a sit-in, invading a television studio, or painting a slogan on government buildings. The only downside to this tactic, however, was the increasing need for more and more dramatic protests,

Copyright © 2000 Dylan Phillips 6 THE DRAGON ROARS since the media were quick to get bored with reporting the same old stories. Consequently, during the last forty years Cymdeithas members have been driven towards all sorts of strange and sometimes daring exploits, from climbing hundreds of feet up television transmitters, to raiding Post Offices dressed in Santa Clause costumes in a bid to remove all the English-only forms and leaflets. And when publicity stunts failed, Cymdeithas members would be more than ready to break the law. This would be the last resort, of course, when all forms of constitutional campaigning had failed. However when it was needed, members had no qualms about refusing to pay their television licences, or pour glue into ATM machines, or even break into government offices and smash equipment. Probably the most well known campaign ever waged by Cymdeithas was the one for bilingual road signs. The road-signs campaign was launched in 1967 as an attack on what were reckoned to be the most visible symbols of the subordination of the Welsh language in Welsh public life. Thousands of English-only signs were daubed in a lovely shade of green paint during the 70s, as supporters vented their aggression with paint cans during protest rallies all over Wales. Not everybody appreciated this style of campaigning, however, and the criminal damage caused to the signs was roundly condemned by politicians, journalists and members of the public. Cymdeithas activists were called every name under the sun, including “hippies,” “anarchists,” “fascists,” “terrorists,” “vandals,” and “hooligans.” One irate correspondent in the Welsh weekly newspaper Y Cymro even accused them of being the spawn of the devil.5 However, once again direct action brought with it success since by the end of the decade bilingual road-signs were a common feature of the scenery throughout Wales. The main reason for all of Cymdeithas’s success of course, was its use of civil disobedience—an effective weapon throughout history. Protest and direct action have a proud tradition in Wales, even though its introduction to the campaign for the language was a recent one.

5 E. Jones, “Criw Adfer a Chymdeithas—y Diafol ei hun.” Y Cymro, 13 March 1979.

Cymdeithas also had other, global sources of inspiration, such as the peace movement, and the campaign for women's suffrage. But probably the most influential was the black civil rights movement in America—whose leader in Dr Martin Luther King and whose adherence to non-violent civil disobedience was an inspiration to generations of Cymdeithas members, and still is. Of course, the cost in personal terms to many members of Cymdeithas was very high. Since 1962 more than a 1,000 members have appeared before the courts for their part in direct action campaigns. They received fines to the total value of #40,000 and nearly #30,000 worth of costs and damages. Moreover, 200 members have been sentenced to a total of 42 years in prison between them. One in particular, namely Ffred Ffransis, dubbed the “champion gaol-bird” by one wit of a journalist, spent three years during the 70s in and out of various prisons.6 But this was a necessary sacrifice in the activists’ eyes in their endeavours to gain publicity and support for the movement’s demands, and to impress upon the authorities and the general populace the severity of the crisis facing the language. Some forty years later, because of its infamous reputation gained chiefly from its use of protest and civil disobedience, Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg today enjoys a prominent position in Welsh language folklore. Most pressure groups given time usually gain historical commendation since direct action is easier justified and glorified with the advantage of hindsight. But some scholars still disagree whether or not direct action is a genuinely effective means for a minority to put forward its views. According to Bridget Pym in her book Pressure Groups and the Permissive Society: “The weight of evidence suggests that government and Parliament exercise a decisive control over the business of lawmaking and that the role of pressure groups is at best indirect, at worst negligible.”7 However, other academics insist that protest is a valid and essential form of action within any democracy. For instance, Robert Benewick in his book Direct

6 Clive Betts, Western Mail, 18 October 1989. 7 Bridget Pym, Pressure Groups and the Permissive Society (Newton Abbott, 1974), p.115.

Action and Democratic Politics states: Direct action is a traditional and legitimate form of political behaviour in a democratic State. Ruling groups have rarely released or shared their power with others voluntarily. Institutional changes have seldom occurred in the absence of pressure. New policies and programmes have been introduced frequently by means outside the conventional boundaries of Parliamentary politics. As new demands and needs arise, their advocates have resorted to direct action in order to achieve recognition, participation and acceptance in the political system . . . And although it is sad commentary, it is often through forms of direct action that the moral basis of politics is kept before the government and the public.8 Within the context of the battle for the language in Wales, it is very difficult not to conclude that civil disobedience and protest have indeed brought success. After all, the list of recent victories for the language is certainly remarkable. These include a plethora of bilingual official forms and documents, bilingual road-signs, a significant increase in bilingual education, the Welsh-language television channel, greater use of Welsh within shops, banks and other public sector establishments, two statutory acts of Parliament, and recognition for Welsh as a material consideration in land-use planning matters. The public status of Welsh, and the official support it receives from the authorities, therefore, has enhanced substantially during the last four decades. But it's certain that the most important development since midway through the last century is the huge increase in public good will towards Welsh. According to a survey commissioned by S4C and the Welsh Language Board in 1995, as many as 88% of those surveyed agreed that the Welsh language was something to be proud of, and 75% agreed that Welsh should have equal

8 Robert Benewick, `Introduction’, in Robert Benewick and Trevor Smith (eds.), Direct Action and Democratic Politics (London, 1972), p.13.

Copyright © 2000 Dylan Phillips 9 THE DRAGON ROARS status with English in Wales.9 Bearing in mind how many people were turning their backs on Welsh during the two decades following the Second World War, this increase in public support must be regarded the greatest success of the battle for the language. And in my opinion at least, the use of civil disobedience in that battle, as a means of testifying to the conviction that the Welsh language was a treasure worth fighting for, was absolutely fundamental to that success.

Dylan Phillips Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies University of California Celtic Conference March 19, 2000

9 Press release by the Welsh Language Board, 15 January 1996, referring to research conducted on their behalf by NOP Consumer Market Research on public attitudes towards the Welsh language.