Where are we and what’s the plan?

Richard Morgan

Where are Wales and the Welsh language going? What is our destination? Not once has the goal ever been honestly laid out, and the mere mention of it is such a hot potato that constructive discussion is seldom engaged in.

It is difficult to argue that Welsh Government policy, Plaid Cymru manifestos and Welsh language civil society do not simultaneously pursue a Welsh speaking Wales, while at the same time claiming the legitimacy of a bilingual Wales.

Academic analysis of all three flagship Welsh language policy documents confirms the intrinsic ideology: Language as an end, in and of itself.

What this means is that content analysis of Iaith Pawb (2003), Iaith Fyw (2012) and Cymraeg 2050 (2017) found that the Welsh language is treated as being more important than, not only the people who speak it, but the 62% of Welsh people who say they want to learn it.

There is not a single section, chapter or paragraph that makes a positive cultural, aesthetic or experiential case for why someone would want to learn Welsh. They do however identify ways in which non Welsh speakers might be discriminated against, and explicitly justify them.

Before going any further, an important acknowledgment is required; of the scale of the struggle that began the process of getting Wales and the Welsh Language the recognition it deserves.

That recognition still lags a long way behind where it should be, and only a dimwit or Westminster politician would argue that Wales should not be allowed the same status as Scotland for instance… but here we are.

The struggle was waged with passion, aggression and vigour, and fuelled by a righteous sense of grievance that I am not going to say a single word against. Indeed, the struggle continues, day in day out, in smaller, less media obvious, but vital ways.

We all of us in Wales, who in any way value our collective identity, our right to speak Welsh… even just to call ourselves Welsh, owe an almost unpayable debt of gratitude to the men and women who fought relentlessly for Wales and its language. We would not have got this far without them.

Indeed. Here we are.

However, the questions facing us now are: Where exactly is here, where are we going, and how do we get there?

Resentment

Our current shared sense of cultural direction is incoherent and it produces mutual resentment. Welsh speakers feel ambition for the Welsh language is never backed up with sufficient commitment, and English speakers feel culturally steamrollered without ever being given a realistic path to participation.

Both are right. Nobody knows where they stand, and everyone feels equally aggrieved and resentful.

I have been privy to enough conversations and emotional outbursts in response to cultural clashes to know what resentment looks like up close.

Welsh speakers feel they are under siege and fighting for survival, and English speakers feel accused of a cultural crime they didn’t commit, where atonement is based on compulsory participation.

My point is that responding to a critique of a well known cultural phenomenon such as suspicion, hostility, indifference or fear by saying “Well, that’s not my experience… some of my best friends are [insert ethnic background here] and we are always lovely to each other” does not move us closer to consensus.

 The continuance of the struggle and the lived experience of Welsh speakers anxious and often pessimistic about the future of Cymru and its language are realities that must not be ignored.

This, and the experiences of all the other stakeholders in the future of Wales and its language are also symptomatic of a country where a long difficult struggle has got us to where we are, but where nobody can answer, collectively, honestly and accurately the two questions that a survival situation eventually forces on you. Where are we really, and what’s the plan now?

Survival mentality

I am in the middle of writing a non fiction book for young people. One of the central themes is transposing the survival mentality on to every day situations.

The biggest single predictor of survival likelihood (beyond the circumstances of the situation) is the will to survive, and the ability to maintain that will in the face of crushing odds. The second most important thing is the ability to accurately assess your situation… hazards, threats, injuries, assets, equipment… that kind of thing.

You need to be able to look around you and really understand your situation; what is going in your favour and what isn’t. Anyone who can’t do that is going to have a real problem with the third step: THE PLAN.

In a survival situation, if you haven’t got or aren’t able to maintain the will to survive, you’re going to die. If you don’t have the ability, either through disablement, permanent or temporary lack of cognitive ability or lack of training to assess your situation (your start point) accurately, you won’t be able to formulate a good working PLAN… the odds are stacked against you before you take your first step.

So where exactly are we?

We are a country that has demonstrated, beyond any reasonable doubt, the will to survive. The struggle is real, ongoing, and deserves every ounce of respect it has earned. On that point there is no argument.

The more difficult question, the hand grenade rolled into the room… the one that makes my friends so reluctant to go on the record, is whether we as a country have been able to accurately assess our situation.

The answer is no. Wales is still in crisis; bleeding out slowly, and the reason it can’t move to a clear and coherent OODA loop … Observe, Orientate, Decide, Act, is that we have community within community within community who still can’t agree that there is an emergency, and if there is, what is it, who or what caused it, and where the fault lies.

Take for instance the biggest unresolved strategic question in Wales. What is the endgame for the Welsh language? What exactly is it we want? Do we want a country in which Welsh is the dominant language of everyday life? Where English is a language of reluctant necessity, spoken only for tourists and the obdurate individuals who decline to become part of our communities?

Identity

There are many people within the Welsh language community who believe that Wales should be a Welsh speaking country, in much the same way as France is French speaking. On the face of it, this is a reasonable aspiration, because language is identity and because there is an undeniable and valid argument that the survival of the language, and that of the identity of its people, and ultimately the country itself are inextricably linked.

However, this version of Wales is a fundamentally different one from a bilingual country; a Wales in which English and Welsh are equally respected, and where Welsh and English speakers feel equally at home. Where the language someone has grown up speaking, irrespective of their place of birth, does not affect their social status or define the community they belong to.

Thus we cannot agree where we are going… we are all pulling in different directions, and even worse, we have put the cart before the horse because we haven’t yet even agreed on exactly where we are starting from. In the land of song, not only are we all singing a different tune, but many of us didn’t even start singing at the same time.

Wishful thinking

The assessment of where we are has been shaped more by what we want to be true than by what actually is. THE PLAN; whatever it is, wherever it came from, is built largely on wishful thinking and aspiration; and evidence, on the few occasions it can be found is conflicting and tossed around like a vets bill in a divorce.

The following quote from Seneca has never been more appropriate.

“If a sailor doesn’t know which port he’s sailing for, then no wind is the right wind”.

One place where there does seem to be consensus, is in answer to the question “How we get to where we need to be?”. Most stakeholders agree that the answer is Education. That is all well and good, but in Wales the plan that has evolved over the last twenty seven years has led to some of the worst educational outcomes in Europe, and you’ll be unsurprised to hear that Welsh Language policy has played, and continues to play a role here too.

That’s where I’m going next.