From Planet 169

Y Fro Gymraeg Declaration

by Tim Webb

The Welsh language, Cymraeg, and the Welsh-speaking heartland, Y Fro Gymraeg, have been badly misinterpreted in the recent debate about race and social inclusion. This has been challenged by Cymuned.

In an article in Planet 158 (“Strange Encounters”), Charlotte Williams regretted our inability to “engage in a sophisticated and comprehensive debate” about race, which is “not a black and white issue in Wales”. In another article in the same issue, “Living with Each Other”, Ian Davidson stated with reference to Y Fro Gymraeg — the region where Welsh is still spoken by most of the indigenous people — “It is not clear to me how notions of diversity can be sustained in a Welsh context and this raises serious issues.” My intention in this article is to put forward a solution to the conundrum raised by these commentators and others.

It seems to me that the main cause of the problem is the use of inappropriate theoretical models. In these models the Cymry Cymraeg — the Welsh-speaking Welsh — are regarded as one ethnic minority among many within a state whose common language and culture are English, and who therefore have no right to “stuff their language down other people’s throats”, although it is perfectly acceptable, it seems, to stuff English down people’s throats. At the same time, the Welsh-speaking Welsh are seen as white “British” people who are resistant to inmigration and “multi-culturalism”, the common language of which is English, and are therefore reactive, right-wing and “racist”. White English people relocating to Y Fro Gymraeg who, as Davidson notes, have social and economic power and a history of colonialism, are then equated with black inmigrants to England from poor countries, who have no power and who encounter racism and prejudice from the indigenous population. The trouble with these models is that they ignore power relationships, the historical context and the worldwide political, ethical and legal contexts.

In the pamphlet Mewnfudo Ie, Gwladychu Na! (Inmigration Yes, Colonisation No!) published by Cymuned in 2003 and now being reprinted, I put forward an alternative model — that of the worldwide struggle of indigenous peoples for survival against colonialism. This model differentiates between normal inmigration and colonisation. Normal inmigration happens when incomers respect the language, culture and identity of the country to which they migrate, learn the language and integrate into the community and its culture, while adding some elements from their own culture and identity as well. In other words, they become naturalised. This has been the pattern in England over the centuries and still is despite the racism suffered by black people, asylum-seekers and others. It is what Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the CRE, was talking about last April when he called for “an integrated society where people can be different”. This is what Welsh people who migrate to England do. This was the pattern in areas like the Rhondda until the end of the nineteenth century and parts of Y Fro Gymraeg as recently as the 1960s where, indeed, there is still a degree of normal inmigration, including people from different countries and linguistic backgrounds, white and black, who learn Welsh and become part of the community on that basis. Normal inmigration of this kind strengthens and enriches languages, cultures, communities and nations.

Colonisation, on the other hand, happens when incomers impose their language, culture and identity on a country, assimilating and/or displacing the indigenous people intentionally or unintentionally. This process destroys and replaces languages, cultures, communities and nations/peoples, rather than enriching them. As such, colonisation is not multi-culturalism, but a kind of anti-culturalism. England is not being colonised: the common language, which everyone learns and uses sooner or later, is English, and immigrants to England do not have the power to change this situation even if they wished to. Y Fro Gymraeg, on the other hand, is being colonised, because at present most inmigrants do not learn Welsh and integrate into the community. In a survey conducted for BBC Cymru in 2001, 66 per cent of the incomers who were interviewed said they had no intention of learning the language. As a result, communities are being Anglicised because of the disproportionate scale of migration, with indigenous people displaced by, among other things, the consequent rise in house prices.

Colonisation is facilitated by power and ideology. The power in this case is primarily economic — the main instrument being the housing market; but linguistic, cultural, legal and political power also play their part. The ideology of colonialism rests on the belief that some nations, languages and cultures (and races) are superior, and therefore have a right or even a duty to rule inferior peoples and to colonise their territory. This informs the colonial attitudes of individuals and of the state. It has also been internalised over the centuries to produce the inferiority complex of many of the Welsh themselves, a process sometimes termed “colonisation of the mind”.

From an ethical point of view, colonisation is a form of theft, and the end result is ethnocide — to be distinguished from genocide, which implies physical extermination — which is a crime both against a nation or people and against humanity, since it destroys part of the heritage of everyone in the world. This principle is now acknowledged in international law, in the United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, for example, which states that “Indigenous individuals and peoples have the collective and individual right not to be subjected to ethnocide and cultural genocide” (Article 7). Although one can obviously be Welsh without being able to speak Cymraeg, the existence of Cymraeg as a living language and medium of culture is a key element in the survival of Welsh identity — that which makes Welsh people unique. Without Y Fro Gymraeg, however, Cymraeg will not survive as a living language and we will all be the poorer.

Far from being racist, opposition to the colonisation and ethnocide of indigenous peoples is fundamentally anti-racist. The colonisation of Y Fro Gymraeg is not direct racism because there is no racial (i.e. physical) difference between most of the indigenous people and most of the colonists: the difference is linguistic and cultural, based on learned behaviour rather than hereditary traits. However, colonialism as an ideology is racist because it is based on the belief that some peoples are inherently superior to others. Most of the colonisation which has taken place at least since the fifteenth century has been directly racist, with white Europeans colonising the territory of black peoples. The colonisation of Y Fro Gymraeg, and support for such colonisation, is based on the same ideology, and is therefore an example of indirect or colonial racism. This is not to say that direct racism does not exist in Y Fro Gymraeg: it does, and needs to be condemned alongside colonialism, with black Cymry Cymraeg suffering from both in a kind of “double jeopardy”.

Anti-colonialism, on the other hand, is “the political struggle of colonised peoples against the specific ideology and practice of colonialism” (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, 2000). As such it is anti-racist, and has no place for hatred towards any nation, language, group or individual. The aim of anti-colonialism in Y Fro Gymraeg, therefore, is to bring colonisation and colonialism to an end, strengthening in the process multiracial Welsh-speaking communities which will welcome normal inmigration but refuse to be colonised. Moreover, since colonialism operates at individual, institutional and structural levels — including at the level of market forces — anti-colonialism must itself be practised at these levels, including the management of market forces in the fields of housing, planning and economic development. The laissez-faire approach, which assumes that “the forces of economic development, Europeanisation and globalisation dictate demographic change for Wales”, is fundamentally colonialist in its assumptions.

As the first step in implementing the principles of anti-colonialism in Cymraeg-speaking areas, “Datganiad y Fro Gymraeg” (The Fro Gymraeg Declaration) was proclaimed on 23 October last year at the Parliament House in Machynlleth. The Declaration has five main themes. The first proposes that Y Fro Gymraeg exists as the territory of an indigenous people, and that its people have the right to retain it, with Cymraeg as the normal and common language (Articles 1 and 3). In order for anything to be protected, its existence first has to be recognised. The lack of such recognition is one of the main reasons why Y Fro Gymraeg is now facing ethnocide, so securing such recognition is an essential first step.

The second declares that Y Fro Gymraeg is inclusive, “‘Normal inmigration’... is fully acceptable in Y Fro Gymraeg, and can further enrich our multi-racial and inclusive Cymraeg-speaking society” (Article 5). Nor is it exclusive in relation to the rest of Wales: “We fully support all efforts to restore and popularise Cymraeg in other parts of Cymru (and we also support the Welsh culture of those regions which is expressed through the medium of English or other languages); but we believe that the survival of Y Fro Gymraeg is indispensable to the survival and development of Cymraeg in the rest of Cymru, and to the survival of Cymru as a nation.” In other words, there is an interdependent and symbiotic relationship between Y Fro Gymraeg and the rest of Cymru. Indeed any definition of Y Fro Gymraeg will inevitably be arbitrary to a certain extent, but this is not a great problem since the aim is not separation but rather co-operation.

This brings us to the third theme in the declaration, anti-racism: “We oppose totally all forms of racism; we declare that all human beings are of equal worth and value, whatever their race and physical characteristics; and we declare that Y Fro Gymraeg is a multi-racial and inclusive region whose particular and proper language is Cymraeg” (Article 8). The principle of normal inmigration applies across the board to people of any origin and background: what is expected is that they respect the existence of Y Fro Gymraeg and its indigenous identity, integrating into it and enriching it with their own special cultural contributions. This is true multi-culturalism — anti-colonial multi-culturalism.

The fourth theme concerns social justice declaring “that the people of Y Fro Gymraeg (including those indigenous people who are not able to speak or understand Cymraeg) have the right to social justice, which includes homes, work and livelihoods, together with education and other services provided through the medium of Cymraeg, within communities whose language is Cymraeg” (Article 4). The final theme declares that colonisation, encouragement and support for colonisation, and denying, opposing or undermining the existence of Y Fro Gymraeg, are colonial-racist acts (Article 6). What we have here, therefore, is not a conflict between nations or ethnic groups (or “races”), but between ideologies, namely colonial racism on the one hand and anti-colonialism/anti-racism on the other (Article 7). The Declaration concludes by stating that the survival of Y Fro Gymraeg is the responsibility of everyone (Article 9), and by demanding that the authorities “support the Declaration, recognise the existence of Y Fro Gymraeg and its right to continue to exist, accept their moral responsibility to protect it, and take such action as is necessary to fulfil that responsibility” (Article 10).

Charlotte Williams stated in her article that we need to “consider the real meaning of pluralism and tolerance”, and “consider what type of multi-culturalism we are trying to reinforce here.” Ian Davidson noted that “The real task is to create the circumstances in which processes of tolerance and collaboration between cultures can take place, while allowing those cultures to retain their difference. Wales needs to steer a path which avoids a closed culture on the one hand, and a situation in which local (sic) cultures and practices become or remain marginalised on the other.” As far as Y Fro Gymraeg is concerned, I am in no doubt that anti-colonialism, as expressed in Datganiad y Fro Gymraeg, is the answer.