Introduction
I would like to draw
your attention to the problems faced by the Welsh-speaking minority of Wales and
the fact that one of the most fundamental rights of Welsh-speaking communities
is being threatened: the right to exist and the right to continue to
exist.
Welsh speakers have
been oppressed in a variety of ways since the conquest of Wales in the late
middle ages, including the legislative relegation of the language to a secondary
status within Wales and the practice of the 'Welsh not' in the 19th century,
which led to beating children for speaking their native tongue in school. The
discrimination was less brutal and obvious during the 20th century, and the U.K.
Government made some
legislative amends by passing Welsh Language Acts in 1967 and 1993 which removed
some of the official stigma formerly placed upon the language. However, the
weight of past centuries’ injustices and a failure to make this minority
language truly equal in all spheres of Welsh life has meant that the language
continued to decline.
A little over 500,000
people speak Welsh today, or about 18% of the three million people who live in
Wales. As Wales is part of the United Kingdom, and as the total population of
the U.K. is now estimated at around 60 million people, it will be seen that
those who speak Welsh constitute a very small minority within the greater state
in which they live, being less than 1% of the entire population of the United
Kingdom.
A combination of
social and economic factors, aided and abetted by governmental inaction and a
lack of political will, is now threatening to destroy this linguistic minority
completely. Welsh is being undermined as a community language by three factors:
an outward
migration forced by poor economic
conditions
an in-ward migration
of people who do not speak Welsh
the failure of the
vast majority of in-migrants to learn the language.
The negative pressures
brought to bear upon Welsh as a community language during the past decades can
be graphically demonstrated by referring to the geographical area of Wales with
a Welsh speaking population of 80% or more. In 1961, 36.8% of the geographical
area of Wales reached this mark. By 1971, this had declined to 27.4%. And by
1981, this had gone down to only 9.7%. Subsequent statistics and analyses show
that a similar decline continues.
If the combination of
negative factors which are now arrayed against these communities is not
addressed and checked, then it is believed that Welsh as a living community
language will be exterminated. And there is
every reason
to believe that the destruction of Welsh as a community language will lead to
ultimate and total destruction of this minority language.
Perhaps the
leading expert on invigorating minority languages, Joshua Fishman, has made it
clear that a language must be kept alive at community level in order to survive:
"Instead of being the language of linguistically
isolated families [the minority language] must also become the language of
interfamily interaction, of interaction with playmates, neighbors, friends and
acquaintances. Via demographic concentration, those who [...] are organized only
on an individual family basis strive to attain an even higher form of social
organization: beginning with family they attain
community."
It is exactly this
demographic concentration which is being undermined in traditionally Welsh
speaking communities today. In discussing native American languages, James
Crawford notes several `social
changes’ and `dislocations’ which can undermine these minority languages, and at
the top of his list he places: `Demographic factors [:] In- and out-migration.’
He states safeguarding community space as a crucial factor in ensuring a
language’s survival, noting the specific example of California, `a state that
[...] refused to establish [...] space for language communities to regroup’, a
neglect with serious consequences: `It is no coincidence that indigenous tongues
in California are among the most endangered in the U.S.A.’ In short, all
research indicates that minority languages must be able to live at the community
level in order to survive.
Statistics clearly
show that Welsh as a community language is being undermined. One of the
indigenous languages of the United Kingdom
is being threatened with extinction, and thus the multinational, multicultural and
multilingual society of
the United Kingdom is being threatened. Moreover, the minority of people who
speak Welsh as their first language are being denied the right to continue as a
distinct cultural and linguistic group.
The United Nations
Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic,
Religious and Linguistic Minorities,
states in the Article One, Clause One, that:
"States shall protect
the existence of the national or ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic
identity of minorities within their respective territories and shall encourage
conditions for the promotion of that identity." And in Clause Two, it adds that:
"States shall adopt appropriate legislative and other measures to achieve these
ends."
Given the obvious
lessons to be learned from statistics regarding the condition of Welsh as a
community language, it is clear that the Welsh Assembly Government in Cardiff
and the U.K. Government in London are not acting in full accordance with Article
1 of the Declaration. Instead of using appropriate legislative and other
measures to encourage and nurture this minority community, the Welsh and United
Kingdom governments are allowing a combination of social and economic
factors to erode the language and
deny Welsh-speakers their fundamental right to continue to exist as a distinct
group within a multinational, multicultural and multilingual United Kingdom.
Furthermore, Article
27 of The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states
that
`linguistic minorities
[...] shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of
their group, to enjoy their own culture [...] or to use their own language.’
As the facts provided
by official surveys such as the census clearly show that Welsh is being
undermined as a community language, it must be said that politicians in Wales
and the United Kingdom are ignoring the responsibility placed upon them by
Article 27 of the International Covenant.
Analyses of the
Problems
1) outward
migration
Welsh-speaking
communities are economically disadvantaged. They constitute some of the poorest
parts of the United Kingdom, and, indeed, some of the poorest parts of Western
Europe. In addition, statistics also demonstrate what academics define as the
`cultural divide in the workplace’, with Welsh speakers tending to occupy
lower-paid jobs, especially in the private sector. Census figures also show that
people who don’t speak Welsh (and who moved into these areas) are proportionally
over-represented in professional, supervisory and managerial employment
categories, while Welsh speakers are over-represented in the unskilled and
semi-skilled categories. This means that many Welsh speakers can not stay in
their communities and are forced to seek employment
elsewhere.
2) inward
migration
Wales is a very
beautiful country and it thus draws a great number of people seeking to enjoy
its mountains, sea coasts and rural landscapes. This is a clear example of rural
in-migration, a phenomenon which has been acknowledged in a report commissioned
by the European Commission.
Many of these `life-style
immigrants’ who move into rural Wales come from much wealthier areas and much
more privileged economic backgrounds in England; as a result, the prices of
local houses are out of proportion to the local economy, and local people are
priced out of the houses in their own communities. This increases the pressure
on Welsh speakers to leave their communities.
In addition to forcing
young Welsh speakers out of their own communities by economic means, this
in-migration has another negative effect on the minority language in that very
few in-migrants actually learn Welsh. In a recent survey, 66% of non-Welsh
speaking in-migrants to
Welsh-speaking communities said they did not feel inclined to learn the
language. Statistics regarding language classes show an even more disheartening
picture: one recent study showed that in the old county of Dyfed, only 1.7% of
the non-Welsh speaking population were registered on Welsh courses. Studies also
suggest that, out of that small 1.7%, about 90% will not follow through and
continue the language course.
In addition to placing
the indigenous population of Welsh-speaking communities at an economic
disadvantage, this rural in-migration
is overwhelmingly constituted by individuals who can’t or won’t attempt to learn
Welsh. As a result, this minority language is being undermined and Welsh-speakers are
being increasingly denied
the right to use their language in their own communities. History has witnessed
the forced movement of peoples used as a weapon to undermine minority cultures.
Rather than being a governmental-lead movement of peoples, what we are seeing in
Wales today is a demographic shift allowed by the government’s refusal to
regulate the housing market. Unfettered capitalism is thus allowing this
movement of peoples to destroy Welsh as a community language.
Dr. Michael Krauss,
former president of `The Society for the study of the Indigenous Languages of
the Americas’ and director of `The Alaska native Language Center’ has described
this kind of lack of political will as `brutishly [...] allowing "survival of
the fittest" to prevail over human rights in this manner, even though as human
beings we are also supposed to be endowed with reason and the ability to control
our impulses and plan rationally for the future.’ In other words, the government
is `brutishly allowing’ wealthy individuals and businesses who are not part of
the minority community to exercise their economic might to the detriment of that
fragile minority community.
The general principle
of intervening in the free market for moral reasons is well established in the
realm of ecology. It has long been recognized that economic and industrial
forces must be regulated in order to protect threatened ecosystems and thus
preserve the natural wealth of the world. The sociologist C. Wright Mills has
described the `higher immorality’ which places economic power and advantage
above fundamental moral concerns, noting that this kind of attitude becomes
institutionalized as an `organized irresponsibility’.
The same holds true
for preserving the cultural wealth of the world and protecting threatened
linguistic minorities like the Welsh-speaking communities of Wales. Allowing
economic might to rule the housing market in Wales is an example of this `higher
immorality’, and allowing this situation to continue to undermine a minority
language is a kind of `organized irresponsibility’ which should be rectified by
adopting legislative measures. It is clear that, in order to act in the spirit
of The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National
or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, the government must `encourage
conditions for the promotion’ of the Welsh language and intervene in the housing
market by adopting `appropriate legislative and other measures’.
There are plenty of
precedents for this kind of positive intervention. For example, Finland’s
Swedish-speaking minority community on the island of Aland is protected by the
kind of legislative measures we would like to see enacted in Wales. And in
England, even though no threatened linguistic minority is at risk, the Lake
District National Park Authority has intervened in the housing market in order
to protect the integrity of the local traditional community. In other words, in
calling for legislative measures which would restrict the housing market and
protect Welsh as a minority language, we are calling for action in keeping with
Article One of the Declaration, and we are only asking for the kind of steps
which have already been taken elsewhere.
Some local authorities
in Wales the Pembroke Coast National Park Authority, the Snowdonia
National Park Authority and Gwynedd County Council have taken steps in
this general direction, but positive pressure must be placed upon the Welsh
Assembly Government in Cardiff in order to ensure that these local attempts at
generating positive legislation are supported on the national level.
Welsh-speakers are not
being threatened with the kind of violent aggression which has been aimed at
other minority groups around the world in recent years. They belong to a
minority which exists peacefully under the rule of a democratically elected
government. Indeed, Welsh has been held up as a positive example of how a
minority language can thrive in the modern world. However, the sad reality is
that this potentially positive example for the rest of the world is in fact in
danger of disappearing forever from the face of the world.
If the Welsh Assembly
Government and the U.K. Government can not be motivated to address the problems
facing Welsh today, then it will disappear as a living community language. The
disappearance of Welsh-speaking communities shows that a minority community in a
developed, democratic country can be pushed to the brink of extinction by
governmental refusal to recognize the dangers posed by a free-market economy to
economically week minority communities.
If individual
economic might is allowed to triumph over the rights of minority communities,
then those communities will cease to exist.
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Introduction
