The left in Wales ‘can’t stay monolingual’ according to Welsh researcher
Stephen Price
A Welsh writer and researcher has called for meaningful ‘solidarity’ from the left in Wales, arguing that they can no longer stay monolingual as the number of people speaking Wales’ native language falls.
Llinos Anwyl, who writes on Instagram and Substack as Hen Bapur Newydd, is a creative researcher and grassroots organiser who is currently unionising tenants in Aberystwyth and Machynlleth.
Their written work is driven by a commitment to unearthing radical histories and sharing jargon-free anarchist analysis.
In one of Llinos’ most read posts to date, titled “Learning Welsh Is What Solidarity Sounds Like”, published on 3 November, Llinos argues that “language revival is class struggle”, and demonstrates why “the left in Wales can’t stay monolingual”.
The article follows the publication of the most recent Annual Population Survey from summer 2025 which shows a further fall in the number of Welsh speakers.
Released on 3 July 2025, the Survey covers the period April 2024 to March 2025.
The Substack article begins by recounting experiences of most of the radical meetings Llinos has attended in Wales, where someone uses a Welsh word or two, such as “croeso” before the rest of the discussion unfolds entirely in English.
According to Llinos: “The word sits on the top of each agenda like a decoration – a gesture toward belonging that never quite lands.
“Most of us already support the language in principle,” Llinos writes.
“We sign petitions, design bilingual posters for English-only events, and attend Welsh gigs… but principle is easy, participation is harder.”
“Across Wales, the new left speaks the vocabulary of decentralisation but rarely practises it. English remains the medium of minutes, funding bids, and strategy documents. The political project of localisation is conducted in the language of centralisation. That isn’t accidental. It’s structural.”
Llinos continues: “For two centuries, capital has concentrated ownership of communication just as it concentrated ownership of land and labour. English became the infrastructure of that concentration: the language of contracts, management, and scale.
“When industrialisation pulled labour into English-speaking centres, Welsh declined not because people stopped caring but because production moved. As the coalfields and docks expanded, labour migration and recruitment reorganised the Welsh economy around English as the lingua franca of hierarchy.”
Continuing their piece about the state of Wales today, where tourism so often replaces industry, Llinos argues that Wales’ resource extraction has simply shifted forms, but with Welsh added as tokenistic “branding”, leaving behind a culture “detached from its conditions of survival”.
Similarly, Llinos calls today’s language “rights” merely “decorative” while Wales’ young talent are unable to afford to live or function in their own communities
Moving on to Cymraeg 2050, the Welsh Government’s target for a million speakers, Llinos decries the use of statistics to measure the success of the Welsh language today, which they argue overlooks the fact that so many can’t to this day live or work in the language of Wales.
Offering suggestions how to address the decline, Llinos shares: “Real language planning would mean economic planning; community-owned housing, decentralised media, universal basic income, translation as public infrastructure.”
Equality viewed as loss by those in power
Llinos’ Substack addresses a complaint often held by minority groups, highlighting how those in power see a shift in platforming as a threat to their status, writing: “I’ve had several conversations with people who say that Welsh feels exclusionary. What they’re describing is the moment when power stops being automatic.
“For those used to living inside the linguistic majority, equality can feel like loss – just as workplace democracy feels slower than management, or community ownership feels messier than the market. It’s not exclusion; it’s redistribution.”
Llinos argues that the feeling runs deep since English has long been the language of administration, education, and progress in Wales, while “Welsh became the language of the home, the chapel, and the playground; intimate, local, and undervalued”.
“To learn Welsh,” Llinos argues, “is to interrupt that one-way traffic of translation that has run for centuries, that being English as default, Welsh as supplement.
“Every bilingual conversation that begins in Welsh and stays there reverses that flow, if only for a moment. That reversal is what solidarity looks like when it’s lived, not just declared.”
According to Llinos, “Solidarity means staying in discomfort long enough to understand it. It means hearing someone speak a language you don’t know, yet, and realising the gap is political, not personal.
“The work is not to demand translation, but to participate in creating the conditions for mutual understanding.”
“Learning Welsh isn’t about heritage or guilt. It’s not a sentimental return to the past. It’s a material redistribution of the capacity to speak and to be heard. A way of ensuring that public life doesn’t belong only to those whose language was never taken from them.”
“The old hierarchy”
For Llinos, learning Welsh is not only a form of resistance that the left should be taking part in, “it’s a rehearsal for a different kind of belonging, one where the future feels plural again”.
“A minoritised language cannot live on sentiment. It survives where labour, land, and life still intersect. Where people can afford to create bonds, raise children, and love in their own words.”
Concluding with a vision of “what solidarity looks like” in Wales today, Llinos urges the left to learn Welsh, and for both incomers and young to “dream in more than one tongue,” since “solidarity spoken in only one language isn’t solidarity at all. It’s the old hierarchy rehearsed again under new management.”
Read Learning Welsh Is What Solidarity Sounds Like in full here.
Click here to find out more about SaySomethingInWelsh.
Click here for more info on DuoLingo.
Click here for information on local Wales-based Welsh classes or London classes (Not exhaustive so please check social media and search engines for what’s on in your area)
Click here to find out more about Welsh learners’ magazine, Lingo Newydd.
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Plaid Cymru is on the left – but it could hardly be described as ‘monolingual’. So i can only assume Llinos Anwyl is referring to the ‘british left’ in Wales – so called ‘internationalists’ for whom the Welsh nation and the Welsh language barely register. Indeed it is telling feature of the brit left in Wales that the profile pic of the newly created ‘Your Party Wales’ facebook group featured two MPs – Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana – who represent consituencies in England. While meetings of the new party in Wales have been conducted entirely through the medium of… Read more »
I agree with your summing up of the typical modern Brit leftie who will spend all day spouting rhetoric about far-away issues and the priorities of the predominantly urbanised UK . They talk about grass roots then studiously ignore the need to act. In reality they have inherited some of the old imperial, colonialist supremacist mindset and are about to dictate what is good for us. Nice of them to take the trouble, we should accept their generosity of spirit.
Yes, what Edward Said would have described as ‘Orientalism’.
Where did you get the info about The cost of S4C and everything being translated into Welsh.Through unreliable 3rd hand information was it!
Where I live in West Wales, all the kids are bilingual, perhaps not the case in Cardiff?
Cardiff has 4 Welsh Medium Secondary schools with pressure of getting a 5th. #Update
“The article follows the publication of the most recent Annual Population Survey from summer 2025 which shows a further FALL in the number of Welsh speakers”
The Welsh working class, What’s to be done with them and their blind indifference? Only the “their” (sic) anarchists can save us now…all ten of them. Avanti!
Every word of Cymraeg spoken is a bullet against the colonisers.
The strongest act of defiance.
Not just The Colonisers but also the home grown Uncle Tom’s
Welsh needs to be the first language of business.
The UKs New Nuclear Reactors are being built by France’s EDF. The procurement portal is in the French language, so French suppliers have better access to the £70 billion project spend than UK suppliers as the French suppliers are pre-registered and have experience of tendering and delivering contracts.
The Welsh Government’s procurement portal is in English only https://www.gov.wales/welsh-government-and-social-value-portal-introduce-well-being-reporting-across-wales
We should campaign for all the Welsh Government contracts to be in Welsh only as then organisations will be mandated to use the Welsh language.
French is widely spoken in business circles… as is German.
Just what you want when you are building a nuclear reactor, communication in a language pretty much none of the involved parties understand…….
Truth is the British Left, elements in the Labour Party especially, are still in thrall to a residual imperialism which results in glaring hypocrisies on their part when it comes to the Celtic countries. In practice they need to ditch their assimiliationist British nationalist stances. They need to respect the historical, cultural, and political integrity of our national communities – not cling on to the old forcibly cobbled together imperial constructs merely for the sake of electoral advantage. They need to be consistent. It’s easy enough to support self-determination, minority rights, in far-flung places where it costs us nothing. The… Read more »
The biggest favour the British left could do for Wales is to do what they do in the north of Ireland- stay away. Wales has its own progressive party – Plaid Cymru which is polling well. Throw your weight behind them.
7pts behind Reform… is this what you call well?
They were projected as being 5 points behind in Caerphilly but ended up winning by 11.
Does Aber stand up when she walks in the room, anarchists, the world is lead by ‘Anarchists’
The Paedophile, The Blackmailer, The Extortionist, The Warmonger, The Serial Killer, The Genocidist, The Child Thief, those who starve and kill women and children in all four corners of the planet…These are the ‘Anarchists’…
It’s the political definition of Anarchist rather than the dictionary definition e.g. Anarcho-libertarian.
“Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or hierarchy, primarily targeting the state and capitalism.”
Everyone you cited as Anarchists are quite the opposite of what an Anarchist is.
Codswallop (sorry). The landslide victory of the Left unity candidate Catherine Connoly in the Irish Presidential Election shows that a policy of normalising use of the national language is perfectly consistent with uniting progressive movements.
We don’t need to speak different languages. The majority language in Wales is English and has been for a very long time, just as with America, Scotland and Ireland. Generally where I live (in Wales) everyone prefers to speak English because everyone understands it. Even the kids that go to the local Welsh medium school use English as soon as they’re out of the gates. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. It has to have value and at the moment it’s a cultural nicety in most of Wales, even in parts of Wales… Read more »
Have you ever spoken to a native Welsh speaker in your area? Don’t tell me there aren’t any; my mother lives in Chirk, a literal stone’s throw from England (believe me, we tested this out as kids), and a village where the death of Welsh as a community language can be dated to at least the turn of the 20th century. Nevertheless, there are two native Welsh speakers in the cul-de-sac where she lives, and at least one second-language speaker, probably more, depending on how you define your terms. Last time I was there, I went to see my mum’s… Read more »