|
 |
| |
A Submission by Cymuned
to the Commission
on the Powers and Electoral Arrangements
of the National Assembly for Wales
February 2003
|
1.
|
Introduction
|
| 1.1 |
Cymuned is a communities pressure-group,
with membership drawn from all walks of life across a
very wide age-range. It was set up in 2001, in response
to the rapid deterioration in the position of Welsh as
a community language, in the face of large-scale in-migration
of non-Welsh speakers to the remaining majority Welsh-speaking
communities, during the 1990s in particular, and of extensive
out-migration of young Welsh-speaking people in search
of employment and affordable homes. Our campaign is for
a recognised human right: the right of a linguistic minority
to exist and to continue to exist. |
|
150 years ago, Welsh was the majority
language of most of the geographical area of Wales. The
subsequent transformation of this state of affairs has
resulted from pressures that are man-made and in no sense
natural. Cymuned believes that, unless the enormous demographic
shifts within what remains of Welsh-speaking Wales are
addressed, and appropriate policies are put in place in
the fields of housing and employment, the Welsh language
will not survive as a community language; and that if
it does not survive as a community language, then, after
a while, Welsh will cease to exist as a language. |
| 1.2 |
Cymuned campaigns for keeping Welsh-speaking
communities sustainable by means of
|
|
(i) |
regulation of the housing market in favour
of young people who wish to remain in their local communities
(and who are increasingly unable to do so, because of
uncontrolled house price inflation); |
|
(ii) |
the use of existing planning legislation
to create a community housing market that would protect
the interests of local people who have a need for affordable
housing. |
|
1.3
|
Cymuned also campaigns for the
implementation of a range of measures, in the fields of
economic development and education, that would have the
effect of increasing the incidence of Welsh and its everyday
use as a community language, and of promoting knowledge
of Wales’ indigenous culture, history and heritage.
|
| 1.4 |
There is not a single example
in Europe of a language’s being restored after it
has ceased to be the language of everyday use of every
community in its traditional language territory. The right
of indigenous language communities to exist, and to have
their existence protected and their identity promoted
by appropriate legislative measures, is one that is acknowledged
in Resolution 47/135 of the United Nations (its Declaration
on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic,
Religious or Linguistic Minorities); and the European
Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, to which the
UK Government is a signatory, acknowledges that the right
to use a regional or minority language in private and
public life is an inalienable right, conforming to the
principles embodied in the United Nations International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and according
to the spirit of the Council of Europe Convention for
the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
|
| 1.5 |
Article 7c of the European Charter for
Regional or Minority Languages further promulgates a
need for resolute action, on the part of signatory states,
to promote regional or minority languages in order to
safeguard them; and article 7b promulgates the facilitation
and/or encouragement of the use of regional or minority
languages, in speech and writing, in public and private
life, as an objective on which signatory states shall
base their policies, legislation and practice.
|
| 1.6 |
Cymuned is of the opinion that
Wales’ elected representatives, both in the National
Assembly for Wales and the Westminster Parliament, have
shown insufficient decisiveness in addressing the problems
that the Welsh language, Welsh culture and Welsh-speaking
communities are facing. We are dismayed by the manner
in which the establishment of the National Assembly of
Wales has led to an intensification of attacks, for party
political purposes, upon the Welsh language, speakers
of that language, and those who seek to promote its well-being
and growth as a community language. |
|
We are also disappointed by the
limited and peripheral nature of the measures announced
by the Assembly, to date, for seeking to secure and strengthen
the position of Welsh as a community language. Central
problems such as housing, and the need for large-scale
provision of teaching of Welsh to adults, are not addressed,
and in our opinion the measures proposed will achieve
no more than a slowing-down of decline — not its
reversal. |
2.
|
Bilingualism
|
| 2.1 |
Cymuned supports the National
Assembly’s stated aim of creating a bilingual Wales.
However, we question the adequacy in practice of what
the Assembly appears to understand by the phrase ‘a
bilingual Wales’. A typical definition is found in
Our Language: Its Future, the Policy
Review of the Welsh Language published jointly by the
Assembly’s Culture Committee and Education and Lifelong
Learning Committee in 2002: |
|
"In a truly bilingual Wales, both
Welsh and English will flourish and be treated as equal.
A bilingual Wales means a country where people can choose
to live their lives through the medium of either or both
languages" |
| 2.2 |
Wales will not be a bilingual country
until it is possible for every citizen to live the whole
of his or her life, every hour of every day, entirely
through the medium of one only of the two languages
if he or she so wishes. A non-Welsh speaking person
today can live his or her daily life wholly through
the medium of English, as the full range of public and
commercial facilities is available through the medium
of English; it is impossible for anyone to live daily
life wholly through the medium of Welsh, as the full
range of public and commercial facilities required to
make that possible is not available through the medium
of the Welsh language.
|
|
True bilingualism entails more
than a token provision of bilingual facilities and services
in the public sector and in a few comparatively enlightened
pockets of the private sector, as happens today. It entails
the provision of a full range of facilities, and the conducting
of the full range of public, commercial and social activities,
solely through the medium of Welsh, alongside those that
are provided and conducted solely through the medium of
English. |
| 2.3 |
Wales will also not be a bilingual country
until every child who was living in Wales at the start
of his or her education, and who has remained resident
in Wales for at least 90 per cent of his or her life
since then, leaves school at age 16 with a qualification
in oral and written First Language Welsh, and with the
ability to conduct extended conversations in the Welsh
language on a wide range of topics and in a wide range
of situations.
|
|
Otherwise, the bilingualism of
the majority of young people who have gone through the
education system in Wales will be no more than the ability
to deploy a few sentences of basic Welsh in response to
basic enquiries or comments by native Welsh-speakers.
That is entirely different from the ability to use Welsh
in a full range of activities and situations; and the
kind of bilingualism that is a combination of fluency
in English and an uncertain grasp of Second Language Welsh
is not enough to maintain Welsh as a viable community
and cultural medium, let alone reinforce it. |
| 2.4 |
Cymuned is deeply dismayed by proliferating
evidence that a flawed concept of bilingualism, and
of ‘equality’ between the two languages, is
being used as a justification for diluting the use of
Welsh in settings that formerly were securely monolingual.
At a community level, this includes bilingualising such
activities as school assemblies and school concerts
in majority Welsh-speaking communities (the centrality
of the school to the life of a community, particularly
a village community, surely needs no emphasising), and
the devising, for the purposes of bilingual signage
policies, of English names for places where none have
ever existed or been needed.
|
|
The effect of developments such
as these is to move further from, rather than closer to,
a situation in which it would be possible for individuals
who wished to do so to live daily life wholly through
the medium of Welsh. It also further reduces the incentive
for monoglot English-speakers to learn Welsh and take
a full part in community activities and interactions conducted
in Welsh, as well as those that are conducted in English
(a Welsh-speaker is able to take part in both). |
|
Moreover, as the number of monoglot English-speakers
in a community grows, the number of settings in which
it is possible for Welsh-speakers to deploy the Welsh
language operationally and socially is rapidly curtailed,
to the point where the Welsh language becomes extinguished
altogether as a language of community. In the interim,
the practical effect of applying the Assembly’s
inadequate definition of bilingualism will be the creation
of a society in which a large body of facilities and
activities is available monolingually in English, and
a small range of facilities and activities is available
bilingually. This is not a mechanism for securing the
continuance of the Welsh language as a living social
medium: the end result of the type of bilingualism conceived
of by the Assembly is anglicisation.
|
3.
|
The Status of the Welsh Language in a new
Constitutional Settlement
|
| 3.1 |
Cymuned believes that a fully
adequate legal status for the Welsh language must be irreversibly
built into any new constitutional settlement for Wales,
particularly if that settlement includes (as seems inevitable
in the longer term) the acquisition, by the National Assembly,
of primary legislative powers — a development which
would have major implications for what was possible in
most or all of the fields (housing, planning, economic
development, education and communications) which impinge
most critically on the well-being and continuance of the
Welsh language. |
| 3.2 |
Cymuned further believes that
there is an urgent need for statutory measures to secure,
against further decline, the remaining majority Welsh-speaking
communities, and those which were majority Welsh-speaking
communities until comparatively recently. |
|
The Welsh Heartlands Authority
proposed in paragraph 4.7 below would have, as its geographical
basis, those communities that were still majority Welsh-speaking
communities at the time of the 1971 Census — the
last Census before the commencement of large-scale in-migration
driven by an unregulated housing-market. The overriding
aim of the Authority would be to administer the planning,
housing, economic development and education systems, and
communications, in ways that secured the continued viability
of the Welsh language in the communities under its jurisdiction,
and the prosperity and stability of those communities. |
|
The basis of the proposal for a Community
Rights Law, in paragraph 4.6, is a belief in the need
to create a system of legal safeguards against the destruction
of communities by the operation of market forces or
corporate fiat. The system of English Law safeguards
the rights of individuals and the rights of bodies corporate,
but grants almost no status or rights to communities
as distinct entities. This is why communities have traditionally
been defenceless against, on the one hand, the long-term
effects of housing developments by individuals and,
on the other, corporate decisions such as plans by urban
corporations to turn rural valleys into reservoirs.
|
|
A Community Rights Law of the
kind envisaged would in fact protect communities of all
kinds, in any part of the UK in which such legislation
was implemented. However, it is an urgent need in the
case of Welsh-speaking communities. |
4.
|
Cymuned’s proposals
|
| 4.1 |
Our proposals relate to the first
of the consultation questions set out in the Commission’s
discussion-paper: |
|
"Does the Government of Wales
Act provide the Assembly with the powers it needs to operate
effectively and meet the expectations of the people of
Wales?" |
| 4.2 |
In our view, a new constitutional framework
for Wales should include the following declarations:
|
| 4.3 |
The Welsh language, the language
whose particular and historic geographical locus is Wales,
is the rightful and official language of Wales, and is
considered to be its first national language1. English is also an official language in Wales. |
| 4.4 |
The Welsh language, as an unique
cultural heritage of Wales, shall be the object of special
respect and protection.2 |
| 4.5 |
Within two generations (that
is, by the year 2055), every permanent resident of Wales
shall have the duty to know the Welsh language, and the
right to use it.3 |
| 4.6 |
The Welsh Assembly Government
shall establish a Community Rights Law for Wales, whereby
all administrative communities (at Town and Community
Council level) in Wales are defined as distinct legal
entities, with distinct powers and distinct rights that
shall not be overridden by the powers or rights either
of individuals or of bodies corporate. |
| 4.7 |
The Welsh Assembly Government
shall establish a Welsh Heartlands Authority, which shall
take over all executive, representative and advisory responsibilities,
at local government level, in the fields of planning,
housing, economic development, education and communications
in the following areas of Wales: |
|
(i) |
those administrative communities in which
70% of the permanent residents were Welsh-speaking at
the time of the 1971 Census;
|
|
(ii) |
any other administrative community that
may decide in due course, by a two-thirds majority in
a local referendum of the electors in that community,
that it wishes to come within the jurisdiction of the
Welsh Heartlands Authority. |
|
In these communities, every permanent
resident is guaranteed the right and ability to conduct
all aspects of his or her daily life entirely through
the medium of Welsh if he or she so wishes.
|
|
In these communities, all public business
shall, with immediate effect, be conducted solely through
the medium of Welsh, with the provision of full translation
and interpreting services into and out of English as
and when required by non-Welsh speaking people.
|
|
A duty is hereby laid on the Welsh Assembly
Government to achieve, within one generation (that is,
by the year 2030), a state of affairs whereby all commercial
and otherwise privately-run business, and all voluntary
business, in these communities is also conducted solely
through the medium of Welsh, with the provision of full
translation and interpreting services into and out of
English as and when required by non-Welsh speaking people.
|
|
The Welsh
Assembly Government shall, with immediate effect, institute
measures to ensure that in communities under the jurisdiction
of the Welsh Heartlands Authority, all non-speakers of
Welsh who wish to do so shall be enabled to learn Welsh
without delay. |
| 4.8 |
In communities not under the jurisdiction
of the Welsh Heartlands Authority, the Welsh Assembly
Government shall guarantee the normal and official use
of both Welsh and English, and shall create the conditions
to allow growth in usage of the Welsh language to the
point where Welsh and English have full equality with
respect to the rights and duties of the permanent residents
of the communities concerned.4
|
| 4.9 |
A duty is hereby laid upon the Welsh
Assembly Government to achieve, within two generations
(that is, by the year 2055), a state of affairs whereby
every permanent resident of Wales, in communities not
under the jurisdiction of the Welsh Heartlands Authority,
is guaranteed the right and ability to conduct all aspects
of his or her daily life either through the medium of
both Welsh and English, or entirely through the medium
of one only of those two languages, as he or she may
wish.
|
| 4.10 |
A duty is hereby laid upon the Welsh
Assembly Government to achieve, by the year 2015, a
state of affairs whereby every permanent or temporary
resident of Wales, in communities not under the jurisdiction
of the Welsh Heartlands Authority, is guaranteed the
right to receive all services — public, private
or voluntary — in either Welsh or English without
recourse to translation or interpreting services.
|
| 4.11 |
A duty
is hereby laid on the Welsh Assembly Government to achieve,
within one generation (that is, by the year 2030), a state
of affairs whereby every permanent or temporary resident
of Wales, in communities not under the jurisdiction of
the Welsh Heartlands Authority, is guaranteed the right
to deal with, and demand information from, the judiciary,
all public authorities, all commercial or otherwise privately-run
organisations, and all voluntary organisations, in either
Welsh or English, as and when he or she may wish, without
the need to submit a translation.5 |
| 4.12 |
A duty
is hereby laid on the Welsh Assembly Government to achieve,
within one generation (that is, by the year 2030), a state
of affairs whereby, in communities not under the jurisdiction
of the Welsh Heartlands Authority, and in order to be
able to supply the services referred to in paragraph 4.11
above, every public official is required to show genuine
proficiency in both Welsh and English when entering public
service.6 |
| 4.13 |
The term
‘permanent resident’ as used in paragraphs 4.5
and 4.7 to 4.11 above, shall signify any individual whose
main residence, or main workplace, or main geographical
area of work, has been located, or is likely to be located,
in Wales for a period of one year or more, whether or
not the period of residence or work is continuous. |
| 4.14 |
Recognising that any policy which:
|
|
(i) |
rendered it in
any way more difficult for any person to use the Welsh
language in the communities under the jurisdiction of
the Welsh Heartlands Authority, or to use either of the
official languages of Wales in areas not under the jurisdiction
of that Authority; or |
|
(ii) |
enabled any person
to evade the duty laid down in paragraph 4.5 above |
|
would
constitute an unacceptable obstacle to the achievement
of the aims and principles set out in paragraphs 4.3 to
4.5 and 4.7 to 4.12 above, |
|
the provisions
of paragraphs 4.3 to 4.5 and 4.7 to 4.12 above shall not
be overridden by the provisions of policies, including
equal opportunity policies, in any other field. |
|
1 For comparison, see the Catalan Statute of Autonomy,
1979 (quoted in Colin H. Williams, Language Revitalisation:
Policy and Planning in Wales, Cardiff, University
of Wales Press, 2000, p. 339), and Towards a Language
Act: A Discussion Document, Dublin, Comhdáil Náisúnta
na Gaeilge, 1998 (quoted in Williams, op. cit., p. 319).
2 For comparison, see the 1978 Constitution of Spain,
article 3, paragraph 3 (quoted in Williams, op. cit.,
p. 323) and the Catalan Statute of Autonomy, 1979 (quoted
in Williams, op. cit., p. 339).
3 For comparison, see the 1978 Constitution of Spain,
article 3, paragraph 1 (quoted in Williams, op. cit.,
p. 323)
4 For comparison, see the Catalan Statute of
Autonomy, 1979, article 3 (summarised in Williams, op.
cit., p. 339).
5 For comparison, see the Catalan Language
Promotion Acts of 1983 and 1988, Section 1, articles 5
and 9 (quoted in Williams, op. cit., p. 340).
6 For comparison, see the Catalan Language
Promotion Acts of 1983 and 1988, Section 1, article 5
(quoted in Williams, op. cit., p. 340). |
|
|
|
|
|
|
