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Magazine that published anti-Welsh language article lashes out at Huw Edwards and other critics

07 Feb 2022 3 minute read
Jonathan Meades. Laurence Sterne Trust staff (CC 4.0). Right, Huw Edwards picture by Brian Minkoff-London Pixels (CC BY-SA 3.0).

A magazine that published an anti-Welsh language article has lashed out at its critics on social media, including broadcaster Huw Edwards.

The Critic had published an article by writer Jonathan Meades that described attempts to increase the number of Welsh speakers as a “totalitarian project” and the “moribund” language itself as a tool of “self-harm and curtailment”.

Huw Edwards and others had criticised the publication of the article, with the newsreader saying: “Meades is a brilliant writer and I have enjoyed his work over many years.

“I can only assume he’s skint. Nothing else can explain this bilge.”

But The Critic hit back in a number of hot-tempered tweets, saying: “Huw Edwards wonders if Jonathan Meades is skint. No one wonders if Huw ‘half a million quid of taxpayers’ money a year’ Edwards is skint.”

It also took aim at criticism from Welsh Senedd Member Mabon ap Gwynfor who called the article “nausea inducing long form of written vomit which should only be read if you have a penchant for mental flagellation”.

Plaid Cymru councillor Sion Phillips also responded to ask: “How in 2022 is shit like this allowed to be published?”

The Critic responded to say: “Another politician. This time wondering why in this century people are still allowed to write what they want.”

It so criticised Glyndwr University head of law Dylan Rhys Jones, who called the article “race hate” saying that the lecturer was motivated by “journalism he doesn’t like”.

The magazine dubbed ‘contrarian conservative magazine’ had also taken aim at efforts to promote the Welsh language last year, describing “Welsh language zealots” who would criticise others “for the heinous crime of suggesting that large numbers of people in Wales did not really want to have Welsh foisted on them”.

It had also published an article describing the campaign to use the name Yr Wyddfa rather than Snowdon an “inward-facing, exclusionary campaigns of ethno-nationalist cultural revisionism”.

‘Straightjacket’

In his column for The Critic, Jonathan Meades wrote: “This is the Welsh Government’s totalitarian project which aims to have one million people speaking Welsh by that date. That’s twice the (much exaggerated) number that is currently claimed to speak the language. What, in this context, does ‘speak’ mean?

“The capacity to make a simple purchase? Or the ability to discuss why R.S. Thomas, a fundamentalist nationalist whose politics could be ugly and naive but whose poetry is thrillingly harsh, seldom composed in Welsh (which he had begun to learn in middle age) and then with a certain trepidation. Thomas wrote of his compatriots: ‘An impotent people sick with inbreeding.’

“In an effort to maintain that sickness, a minimum of 60 extra ‘Welsh-medium nursery groups’ will be opened by 2026. Why? Why teach a moribund language whose survival depends on ‘initiatives’? Policy decrees these speakers are needed. Needed for what? For the sake of Welshness perhaps, to give the bogus bardic tradition new legs?”

The writer also complained about the move to give Welsh and English “equal” status in Wales, and claimed that the Welsh Government has a “splendid breeding programme based on lebensborn: women will be paid to bear children so that they can be brought up Welsh”.

He suggested that the policy for a bilingual Wales was putting children in a “linguistic straightjacket”.


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Aled Rees
Aled Rees
2 years ago

why in this day and age are people like Meads mot locked up.Can you lmagine the furore if this kind of language was used to describe an initiative to promote gaelic or any other miority language.
Meads and his cohorts are to my mind down there with the lowest form of scum and need a sharp bollocking from the press authority.

Argol Fawr!
Argol Fawr!
2 years ago
Reply to  Aled Rees

“Why in this day and age are people like Meads mot locked up.”

Because here in the UK of England, free speech is now being reserved for the right wing, while the rest of us will be subject to Patel’s new policing law and similar.

Grayham Jones
2 years ago

Stop all this rubbish in wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Richard
Richard
2 years ago
Reply to  Grayham Jones

We need you at the next Yes Cymru Rally Grayham.

Andrew
Andrew
2 years ago

Welsh is of this soil, this island, the senior language of the men of Britain; and Welsh is BEAUTIFUL.
J.R Tolkien. Welsh is the oldest common denominator that binds us to our land and am so proud / privileged to send my daughter to Welsh medium education. Call out there racists for what they are; a waste of oxygen and space.

Tabor
Tabor
2 years ago

This person should read a bit of Welsh history and wonder why was the Welsh language in decline has he not heard of the Welsh Kont .

R W
R W
2 years ago
Reply to  Tabor

Are you referring to Meades with your misspelling of ‘knot’?

Richard
Richard
2 years ago
Reply to  Tabor

My Nain ( and others ) was rebuked for speaking Welsh in a Church primary school in a welsh speaking village by the welsh preacher/ headmaster farther.of one of greatest novelist who only passed a year or so back.

How life changes for the better in this case. The fact most in England do not know this practice continued to the 1920s seems lost.

Quornby
Quornby
2 years ago

Whatever these empire nostalgics may think of me pales into insignificance compared to the contempt I feel for them.

Gareth W
Gareth W
2 years ago

What an out and out bigot and racist, why are publications not prosceuted for printing such racist bile ?

Dewi Davies
Dewi Davies
2 years ago

Foisted.What a great word.Does he not realise that the English speaking world had English foisted on them by means of conquest,subjugation and denial of their culture and language. The only people that should be speaking English are the English themselves .Similar to Spanish and Portuguese in South America.

Piers Carruthers
Piers Carruthers
2 years ago
Reply to  Dewi Davies

What about all the F1 drivers. Not forgetting the fact that most people in Wales cannot be bothered to learn Welsm. Many of my friends get pissed when I tell them they are not really Welsh unless they speak the lingo or are learning it.

hdavies15
hdavies15
2 years ago

The Critic sounds like a cultural supremacist rag that looks down its Anglophile nose at anything not Anglo and writes about it in pompous dismissive tones. Good job a lot of English people also think it’s rubbish.

Tim
Tim
2 years ago

Oh DEAR … ‘The Critic’ can’t take criticism. And because diddums hasn’t the skill to kick the ball, he tries to kick the man. Huw sidesteps the foul and shoots straight to goal. Wales 1 – Pillocks United 0.

What Ismyname
What Ismyname
2 years ago

Asking a serious question: Would it be possible to take legal action against both author and the vile rag that published him on the basis that this is pure hate speech? I would gladly contribute to a fund for legal costs to do this if it were possible.

arthur owen
2 years ago
Reply to  What Ismyname

Stop this puerile fantasy,if you must voice opposition to this infantile,ignorant fascism use facts and common sense.

Malcolmrj
Malcolmrj
2 years ago
Reply to  What Ismyname

I would join you if it’s possible count me IN

Ieuan Evans
Ieuan Evans
2 years ago

From their website page………”Contributors include David Starkey, Joshua Rozenberg, Peter Hitchens and Toby Young.[3]”

Kerry Davies
Kerry Davies
2 years ago
Reply to  Ieuan Evans

Matthew 7:20.

Kiosk
Kiosk
2 years ago

What a bigot and racist Meades is. If he loves england and the english language so much, then why does he live in Marseille?
Thank you Mr Meades. You have made my mind up for me. I will be learning to speak Cymraeg!

Andrew
Andrew
2 years ago
Reply to  Kiosk

Try out Duo Lingo. It’s great way to familiarise yourself with the ancient tongue of the Cymru. Heddwch / Peace.

Gareth Wyn Jones
Gareth Wyn Jones
2 years ago
Reply to  Kiosk

Try Duolingo and don’t worry about the mutations too much, just like you don’t worry too much about this meeds idiot

Phil Evans
Phil Evans
2 years ago
Reply to  Kiosk

Try saysomethinginwelsh.com The first course is free and it is very good. You’ll be speaking whole sentences by the end of the week.

Barbara Francis
2 years ago
Reply to  Kiosk

Thus disgusting racist should delve a little closer about the beautiful language of CYMRU (WALESto this thick racist Meades,
The SAIS ( english) are moving into WALES in droves and many of them are sending their children to WELSH speaking schools.

Steve Duggan
Steve Duggan
2 years ago

Thankfully people are ignoring these racist idiots as the Welsh language is growing. Personally I don’t mind their attitude – it’ll make more people in Wales realise independence is the best way forward.

Gareth Wyn Jones
Gareth Wyn Jones
2 years ago
Reply to  Steve Duggan

It is a narrative to claw back powers from the Senedd, it will not work in the long run….. sometimes it feels that the Westminster tanks are parked on our border like somewhere else at the moment.

Gareth John
Gareth John
2 years ago

What is it with right wing controversialists that they pride themselves on “saying the unsayable” but are staggeringly thin skinned whenever they receive a word of criticism? Why do they think that their freedom of speech is contingent on everybody else being denied theirs?

Stephen Owen
Stephen Owen
2 years ago

What has Huw Edwards’ salary got to do with anything? What Jonathan Meades wrote is still rubbish and incorrect

Barry Pandy
Barry Pandy
2 years ago

It’s good to see that Meade’s has been dragged kicking and screaming into the nineteenth century.

Mawkernewek
2 years ago

Is there any kind of regularity with which media personages take an apparently unprovoked pop at the Welsh Language? Is there anything else going on that seems to precipitate it, or is it being organized behind the scenes by any forces that stand to benefit from it?

Stephen Owen
Stephen Owen
2 years ago
Reply to  Mawkernewek

Jonathan Meades’ career must be flagging

Gareth Wyn Jones
Gareth Wyn Jones
2 years ago

He is a fascist. Full stop

Alan M Johnston
Alan M Johnston
2 years ago

May I be allowed to comment on this article by Meades? I’m a Scot whose forebears, as far as I am able to discern, were Scots, Irish, English and Traveller. I therefore have no “Anti” anything in this discussion. My first impressions on reading the piece were that Meades was being colonialist and racist. Let me get the racism charge out of the way first. At the end of his piece he says that those people should “marry out”. His words. Casual English exceptionalism and racism encapsulated in those two words. A very English “know your place” attitude. Marx, Lenin,… Read more »

Andrew Thomas
Andrew Thomas
2 years ago

Wonderful post many thanks for it 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇮🇪

Eleri Rogers
Eleri Rogers
2 years ago
Reply to  Andrew Thomas

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the Jonathan Meades piece-I mean the answers not the original article. I have seen him onTV from time to time and found him very ‘de haut en bas’

Tom P
2 years ago

Meades looks like an incel.

Crwtyddol
2 years ago

1) It’s not his business, he should keep his nose out of it.
2) It’s his attitude that’s totalitarian / despotic
3)He might (previously) have been considered an OK writer, but that doesn’t make him the Oracle.

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