I am writing this article in a foreign language; a language I consider to be that of our oppressors and ancient foe. I do so out of realism; an acceptance that almost every reader of this article on this site will have English as their own mother tongue.  The word commonly used to describe my country itself is demeaning, Wales – the country of the Welsh comes from the Old English, Saxon “wealh” which means foreigner or slave and enslavement is a term we would easily recognize for the past 800 years has been one long period of oppression of our identity. We are an ancient people, descendants of the earliest migrants to these islands at the end of the last ice age some 8,000 years ago. The beginning of the end of our dominance in the former homelands from the North Sea to the Atlantic Ocean began about 1,600 years ago when the first of the Saxons arrived, over the next two hundred years a mixture of intermarriage and brutality by the Germanic invaders forced our retreat into the western edges, west beyond the Severn and our close kinfolk, the Kernow west of the Tamar and the Cumbric west of the Pennines in Yr Hen Ogledd.

Despite being absorbed by political annexation and military oppression by the Norman and Angevin Kings into what was little more than a greater England, a colony of the Anglo-Normans and later into the United Kingdom, the Cymry remain a nation apart. We have retained our ancient language despite the disgrace of the Act of Union of 1536 which proclaimed that English was to be the only official language in Wales, and despite the excesses of Victorian attempts to destroy our mother tongue. Families still talk of the humiliation of the “Welsh Not” which was used to discourage the use of the Welsh language by their great grandparents in the mid to late 19th century. The “Not” was a wooden board, usually a rectangle of approximately 6 x 4 inches with the letters “W.N.” carved into it.

Each morning, this was hung around the neck of the first child caught speaking Welsh by one of the school masters, that child had to hand it to the next child caught speaking Welsh, who in turn had to hand it to the next child. The unfortunate child wearing the Welsh Not around their neck at the end of the school day was punished; usually by way of a beating or detention, although the headmaster of Neuaddllwyd School, in Ceredigion, fined his pupils and used the money to pay for tobacco.

Industrialisation

Unlike many of the Highland Scots who were driven off their own land by greedy landlords, English and Scottish alike and unlike the Irish who suffered from the potato famine and more English oppression, the Welsh were inclined to stay at home. We had a key role to play in the industrial revolution which brought opportunities for individual social and economic advancement for some and widespread suffering, danger and deprivation for others. The once green valleys in the south became blackened wounds as coal was energetically excavated in scenes of living hell. Until 1842 women and children under the age of 10 were routinely employed in the pits. Throughout the prior decades thousands died of injuries and from malnutrition or consumption. Puberty for both girls and boys who worked down the mines was delayed due to the toxic chemistry of the coal. Thousands more suffered from deformed spines, leg ulcers, asthma and varicose veins.

The industrialisation of the south in particular also brought more Anglicisation; the railways joined our hitherto isolated towns and villages to Bristol, Birmingham and beyond. For some lucky few this meant an opportunity to travel, to gain education and better opportunities in life but the trains in turn brought migrants from England and one devastating consequence for our language was the arrival of newspapers and books from London. A mineworker in the Valleys could now find out the latest news from the British Empire as long as he, or she, could read English. Our language and our entire culture were under threat of extinction and it is no surprise that even today, our native tongue is rarely heard in vast swathes of the south and east of our nation.  

Coal literally fuelled the metal working industry. Copper and tin had long been produced in the south and the first ironworks opened in 1766 in Merthyr Tydfil. Working conditions in these plants was as hazardous and brutal as life was underground for the miners. A working day of 14-16 hours was normal and the toxic nature of the metal working was not identified as the source of the ailments endured by the workers of all ages, the miscarriages of women workers and the general malaise of the communities.

October 14th 1913 - a coal mine disaster in Glamorgan. The seam was ablaze and smoke can be seen bellowing from the shafthead.

“Blue Books”

The foolish arrogance of the British State is demonstrated in many examples across the British Isles and in Wales we had our own example of how the State viewed our proud hard working forebears. In 1847 Commissioners were dispatched from London to carry out an extensive enquiry on our schools. The reports found the education system in Wales to be in a parlous state, although they formed this opinion because the Commissioners were exclusively English-speaking while the education system was then largely conducted in Welsh, therefore the Commissioners could not form a realistic opinion of the education system. The publication of the "Reports of the commissioners of enquiry into the state of education in Wales" concluded that the Welsh as a people were dirty, ignorant, lazy, drunk, superstitious, lying, and cheating because they were Nonconformists and spoke Welsh. Very quickly, because of its blue covers, the report was labelled Brad y Llyfrau Gleision, or in English, "The Treachery of the Blue Books".

Little more than slaves, our working class forebears also had no say in the running of their own affairs, let alone the running of the country. Only the wealthy had the privilege of voting and standing for election to Parliament. Against this socio-economic climate it was hardly surprising that the Chartist movement should gain support. Although of English origin the movement for reform in the way MPs were elected and paid, calls for the enfranchisement of males over the age of 21 were taken up in the industrialised south. Monmouthshire was the setting of the last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain. The poll-tax riots of 1990 were a walk in the park compared to the Newport Rising on November 4, 1839. Several thousand Chartist sympathisers, including many coal-miners, most with home-made arms, led by John Frost, marched on the town of Newport in a bid to liberate fellow Chartists who were reported to have been taken prisoner in the town's Westgate Hotel.

The growing radicalism of the working class was the seedbed for a nascent nationalism. This was aided by the growth of the non-conformist movement, especially the growth of the Presbyterian Church of Wales. This radicalism was exemplified by the Congregationalist minister David Rees of Llanelli who edited the radical magazine Y Diwygiwr (“The Reformer”) from 1835 until 1865. William Rees (also known as, Gwilym Hiraethog) established the radical Yr Amserau (“The Times”) in 1843, and in the same year Samuel Roberts also established another radical magazine, Y Cronicl (“The Chronicle”).

Emergence of Plaid

An abortive attempt to establish an independence movement, Cymru Fydd, in the pattern of Young Ireland in 1886 was short lived. Both the established Liberal Party and the new born Labour Party took up the case for Home Rule from time to time. However it was with the establishment of Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru (The National Party of Wales) in 1925, that full independence from the UK was first advocated.

Plaid was born out of the merger between two nationalist organisations founded only the previous year, The Welsh Movement headed by Saunders Lewis and the Welsh Home Rulers led by H.R. Jones.

The writer, historian and poet Saunders Lewis considered that “Welshness” was about blood and belonging. Migrant workers from England were not considered to be Welsh. He sought to encourage the indigenous Welsh to throw off their sense of inferiority and demonstrate how Welsh heritage was linked as one of the 'founders of European civilization’. As a cultural nationalist in the mould of Ireland’s Padraig Pearse, Arthur Griffiths, Tom Clark and De Velera, he wrote "Civilization is more than an abstraction. It must have a local habitation and name. Here its name is Wales." Additionally, Lewis strove for the stability and well-being of Welsh-speaking communities, decried both capitalism and socialism and promoted what he called perchentyaeth; a policy of 'distributing property among the masses’, a Welsh form of distributism - an idea first promoted by 19th century Catholic thinkers and taken up by English writers such as Hillaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton.

War years

Trouble erupted a decade later when the British State decided to build a training school for RAF bomber pilots at Penyberth on the Llŷn Peninsula. The events surrounding the protest, known as Tân yn Llŷn (Fire in Llŷn), helped define Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru on the political landscape.

The British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin refused to hear the protestors’ case against the establishment. The mood of the protest against the training school was summed up by Lewis when he wrote that the UK government was intent upon turning one of the 'essential homes of Welsh culture, idiom, and literature' into a place for promoting a barbaric method of warfare. Whether this was calculated to cause maximum humiliation on the “troublesome” Welsh or just another case of the uncaring, unthinking attitude of the London ruling elite but building work began exactly 400 years after the first Act of Union annexing Wales into England.

On 8 September 1936 the training school building was subjected to an arson attack and in the investigations which followed Saunders Lewis, Lewis Valentine, and D.J. Williams claimed responsibility. The trial at Caernarfon failed to agree on a verdict and the case was sent to the Old Bailey in London. The "Three" were sentenced to nine months imprisonment in Wormwood Scrubs, and on their release they were greeted as heroes by fifteen thousand Welsh supporters at a rally in Caernarfon.

Many Welsh were angered by the English judge's scornful treatment of the Welsh language, by the decision to move the trial to London, and by the decision of University Collage, Swansea, to dismiss Lewis from his post before he had been found guilty.

Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru members were free to choose for themselves their level of support for the war effort. Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru was officially neutral regarding involvement the Second World War. Central to the neutrality policy was the idea that Wales, as a nation, had the right to decide independently on its attitude towards war and the rejection of other nations to force Welshmen to serve in their armed forces. With this challenging and revolutionary policy party leaders hoped a significant number of Welshmen would refuse to join the British Army.

Lewis has attracted latter-day controversy because of his alleged praise of Adolf Hitler. In 1936, Lewis spoke of the Nazi dictator "At once he fulfilled his promise — a promise which was greatly mocked by the London papers months before that — to completely abolish the financial strength of the Jews in the economic life of Germany."

Lewis died in 1985 and never saw the establishment of the National Assembly in Cardiff in 1999. This devolved institution ironically conducts its affairs in the language of the Saxons and allows us to determine issues such as education, health, transport, housing, local government, social welfare and town and country planning. It’s not perfect as everything has to be understood and dealt with in the context that Wales remains part of the United Kingdom and the UK is a member of the European Union.

Plaid’s betrayal of Welsh nationalism

As a passionate believer in Wales as a homeland for the ethnic Cymry, Lewis would have been horrified to learn that today’s PC stands for political correctness rather than Plaid Cymru. Plaid is the second largest party in the Assembly but as no party has an overall majority, Plaid is effectively in a ruling coalition with the larger Labour Party.

While it is still possible to speak in open and to declare one’s pride in being Welsh, it is ironically taboo to discuss the very topics which are slowly but surely undermining our sense of Welshness. We cannot openly express our alarm at the alarming rate of closures of churches while new mosques are opened in our ancient cities. We cannot openly criticise the disastrous immigration and asylum policies of the Westminster government for fear of being labeled racist. We cannot demonstrate our opposition to being part of a United States of Europe without being accused of scaremongering and being reactionary.

Plaid has abandoned any claim to be a party of the ethnic Cymry and has signed up to the flawed theory of multiculturalism – its manifesto states that one of the aims of the party is….

“To build a national community based on equal citizenship, respect for different traditions and cultures and the equal worth of all individuals, whatever their race, nationality, gender, colour, creed, sexuality, age, ability or social background.”

It is firmly committed to globalism by pledging to remain within the EU:

“To promote the constitutional advancement of Wales with a view to attaining Full National Status for Wales within the European Union.”

and again

“To promote Wales's contribution to the global community and to attain membership of the United Nations.”

Instead of trying to defend the Cymry from an influx of unassimilable migrants it resigns itself to the invasion of outsiders and champions those it calls the “new Welsh”. This is the same attitude of the civic nationalists in Scotland who embrace the mass migration of the “new Scots”.

As the new Wales becomes increasingly multicultural, the party is attracting more members from Wales’s ethnic minority communities. The party is “proud” to have one AM and three County Councillors from the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities of Wales.

What of the future?

Our language may just survive. It is encouraging that National Curriculum ensures schoolchildren in Wales study Welsh up to the age of 16 and many students chose to continue with it in their A levels and college years.

The most recent census figures (2001) presented in "Main Statistics about Welsh"by the Welsh Language Board, indicate 582,400 (20.8% of the population of Wales in households or communal establishments) were able to speak Welsh and 457,946 (16.3%) can speak, read and write it. This compares with 508,100 (18.7%) for 1991.

The results of the "2004 Welsh Language Use Survey" indicates that there are 611,000 Welsh speakers in Wales (21.7% of the population living in households), 62% claim to speak Welsh daily, and 88% of those fluent in the language speak it daily.

But there is more to a national identity that language and data in 2008 on ethnic background and national identity showed that:

• 94 per cent of pupils consider themselves to be of white ethnic background;
• 56 per cent consider their national identity to be Welsh.

This is indeed a source of concern as it means that little more than half the pupils regard themselves as Welsh which can only be interpreted in one of two ways; either the other 44% are off-spring of English migrants from the Industrial Revolution or more recent settlers from elsewhere in the UK, Europe and beyond, or it means the while some of the other 44% may well be descendants of migrants there is a considerable number of ethnic Cymry who do not understand their heritage and their place in the nation.

Like all indigenous peoples around the planet; globalism, economic liberalism and the pursuit of the folly of multiculturalism threatens us all and the Cymry are no exception.