Category Archives: welsh national identity

BREXIT IS DAMAGING UK’S “STRENGTH AND DIVERSITY” CLAIMS WELSH “CONSERVATIVE” MP

BREXIT IS DAMAGING UK’S “STRENGTH AND DIVERSITY” CLAIMS WELSH “CONSERVATIVE” MP

The Remainer newspaper, The Times, recently published the opinion piece set out below written by the Remainer “Conservative” MP for Aberco, Mr Guto Bebb.  In his article he mourns the impact of Brexit on the Union of the United Kingdom and its “strength and diversity”.  As he says:- “As a Conservative, as a Unionist and someone who loves Wales and our place within the UK I am moved to ask if any of this is worth it?”
I would reply as an English Nationalist and as a Leaver that it is definitely worth it!  

Also I would muse aloud:- ‘hasn’t it long been said that the tears of the vanquished are the sweetest joy of victory?’
Here is Guto Bebb’s article:-
Brexit is a risk to the integrity of the UK
The UK’s success is founded on being a multi-national state where we pool sovereignty and share power while taking as many decisions at a local level as possible.
If that reminds you of the EU, it’s not accidental. People with different national histories, traditions and languages coming together to make a new history in common is a very British idea, indeed you could argue that it is the quintessential British idea.
As any Welshman knows the union that is the United Kingdom was not born easily — the magnificent castles that dominate the towns of North Wales were, after all, not built by a grateful populace to celebrate the English conquest.
Policy editor Oliver Wright and politics reporter Henry Zeffman help you understand the effects of the UK’s decision to leave the European Union. 
However, while the history is challenging for many there can be no doubt that today’s UK is democratic to its core. There can now be no question of holding any constituent nation inside the UK if it wants to leave. It is therefore worth noting that before Brexit there was no sign that any majority anywhere supported quitting.
Brexit is putting everything at risk. Recent polling in Northern Ireland showed Brexit would see support for staying in the UK collapse from 52 per cent of the population to just 35 per cent, while support for a united Ireland rises from 39 per cent to 52 per cent.
As well as the damage to our country’s strength and diversity I worry that any attempt, even one based on a majority decision by the electorate, to take Northern Ireland out of the UK would risk a return to violence, mass migration and untold suffering.
It is also clear is that the UK shorn of Scotland would be a shadow of its former self, whether or not it contained Northern Ireland. The complex but often highly constructive relationship between England and Scotland made the UK what it is, something I recognise even though I see myself as a proud and patriotic Welshman.
In Scotland the figures on the impact of Brexit on the independence debate are a concern with a clear pattern. Support for independence rises and support for the UK falls with Brexit and that picture gets more depressing for unionists the harder the form of Brexit delivered becomes.
In a UK reduced to just England and Wales, my own nation’s desire to stay in what would be now a completely unbalanced state would surely become an issue. I can envisage no circumstances under our current constitutional framework where the people of Wales would support independence but it’s one thing to be a partner in a multi-national state of four nations. It’s quite another to be the junior partner in a two nation state where the other party is 18 times larger than you!
As a Conservative, as a unionist, and as someone who loves Wales and our place within the UK I am moved to ask if any of this is worth it? The EU is far from perfect. There is much that needs reforming but surely the unity and the balance of powers developed over the years within our United Kingdom is worth protecting? Surely we can agree that frustration about some rather silly directives often far too easily blamed on Brussels remains a flimsy reason for putting at risk a UK that has served all constituent parts well?
If the price of any of the above was the destruction of the United Kingdom then that is a price that a Conservative and unionists should deem to be far too high.


ENGLAND AND WALES: IS IT TIME TO SPLIT THE LEGAL SYSTEM?


ENGLAND AND WALES: IS IT TIME TO SPLIT THE LEGAL SYSTEM?

I recently wrote an article about the above for publication on the Institute for Welsh Affairs’ website “Click on Wales”. It was published slightly amended here >>> England and Wales: is it time to split the legal system? – Click on Wales

http://www.iwa.wales/click/2017/03/england-wales-time-split-legal-system/

Here is my full original article:-

ENGLAND AND WALES – TIME TO SPLIT THE LEGAL SYSTEM?

There are now beginning to be moves afoot to split the unitary “jurisdiction” of England and Wales into two separate national jurisdictions.

In many ways such a split is not as radical a move as it might seem, bearing in mind that there are already separate jurisdictions in Scotland; in Northern Ireland; in the Isle of Man and in the Channel Isles with different Judges, procedures and often different substantive legal rules. Separate jurisdictions do not necessarily cause much practical difficulty in dealing with either civil matters or criminal matters. What it does however mean is that there would be separate legal professions.

Furthermore, even outside the Commonwealth, jurisdictions like Southern Ireland have relatively similar rules.

The jurisdictions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and quite a few others of the old Empire/Commonwealth are similar to. There are also often less differences between their legal systems and the English/Welsh legal system than there is with the Roman Law based jurisdiction in Scotland.

It is more difficult to deal with continental European systems since they are not based on Common Law principles but rather on civil law codes deriving from Roman Law, with substantively different legal rules and often dramatically different legal procedures!

My interest in the splitting of the current unitary jurisdiction of “England and Wales” into two national ones was first raised by a discussion that I had some months ago with a senior Welsh Judge who said that he wants to see a split.

Then, just before Christmas, the Law Society Gazette had an article called in the printed version “A bridge too far” talking about splitting the jurisdictions. The on-line edition was called: English solicitors ‘could pay extra to practise in Wales’. (It can be found here >>> https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/law/english-solicitors-could-pay-extra-to-practise-in-wales/5059013.article)

Increasingly the Welsh Parliament/Senedd are legislating for Wales, in a way that is different than the legislation for England. There will therefore come a time very soon when it no longer makes sense to have a single jurisdiction.

Putting my hat on as Chairman of the English Democrats rather than as a solicitor I would also welcome separation of the jurisdictions as being an important step in the direction of Independence between our two Nations. In our modern world there is no reason why our two separate Nations should be constrained into the same grossly expensive and inefficient, grandiose and extravagant UK State!

If I were a Welsh solicitor or barrister I would be optimistic about the prospects of a successful separate Welsh Jurisdiction.

As long as the Welsh Government could be persuaded to reduce the currently absolutely ridiculous level of court fees, by which the British Government has been exploiting litigants in the “England and Wales” jurisdiction there would be real benefits.

The Welsh Government would then have the right to run its own Legal Aid scheme. This could be more like the successful Scottish one and less like the unfair disaster that the “British” Government has created.

It should also be pointed out that the Welsh Government ought to want to take-over the judicial appointments system, which in England and Wales is currently very politicised.

Judges here are currently appointed and promoted by the Judicial Appointments Commission. The JAC was set up by Lord Derry Irvine, when he was Tony Blair’s Lord Chancellor, which he publically boasted would prevent the appointment or promotion of “those with reactionary views”. This aim might appeal to you or repulse you depending on which side you stand on politically, but what cannot be denied is that this is an expressly political criterion for the appointment of Judges. It is wholly inappropriate to getting the best lawyers appointed as Judges. It is also contrary to providing the best service to those who use the court system!

Far from being a problem the separate jurisdictions could make the Welsh jurisdiction very attractive and might lead to many businesses having a Welsh-only legal jurisdiction clause in commercial contracts since there would be less expense and less delay and perhaps a better selection of sensible Welsh Judges.

Also from an economic point of view the current arrangements are clearly not working very well for Welsh lawyers as it appears that fees in Wales are dramatically lower than those in England.

A separate and overhauled and sensibly rationalised completely Welsh legal system could well be much more competitive with the English jurisdiction and provide a boost not only to Welsh lawyers but also to the Welsh economy.

As the Gazette article says:- “The buildings are all here (in Wales), the judges are all here. More is spent per head in England,’ said Hughes. ‘At the moment Wales is not gaining [in terms of] access to justice. SMEs in Wales are subsidising multi-million-pound litigation between oligarchs in London. That does nothing for the community in Wales – the fees are not coming back.’

A legally independent Wales would be able to do ‘imaginative’ things to enhance access, Hughes suggested, such as introduce a contingency legal aid fund. ‘Wales would not be a particularly small common law jurisdiction. If it were a US state, 20 [states] would be smaller,’ he added.

‘The problems of the Wales bill are largely to do with the mania for preserving a fused jurisdiction,’ said Hughes. ‘But the bill is a con. It is not a reserved powers model on any sensible understanding. There is a presumption against competence in private law.

’Since our pamphlet came out the Assembly has come out in support of a separate jurisdiction and the Welsh government is using the arguments we put forward – both economic and constitutional.’

As both an English Solicitor and also as the Chairman of the English Democrats, I welcome these moves. Also if any reader in Wales supports a separate Welsh legal system then I would urge them to write to their Assembly Members and MP to lobby them to support a separate legal system. Do not forget also to write in to Barrister David Hughes, of 30 Park Place Chambers in Cardiff, supporting him as well!

SHOULDN’T DEVO SAUCE FOR THE WELSH GOOSE BE SAUCE FOR THE ENGLISH GANDER TOO?

SHOULDN’T DEVO SAUCE FOR THE WELSH GOOSE BE SAUCE FOR THE ENGLISH GANDER TOO?

The devolved Welsh Government has submitted written arguments to the “Supreme” Court in the Brexit case. My eye was caught by part of their submissions:-

“6. As the Welsh Government recently said in its written evidence to the House of Lords Constitution Committee’s inquiry The Union and devolution, devolution has become a fundamental and effectively irreversible feature of the constitution:

(i) Whatever its historical origins, the United Kingdom is best seen now as a voluntary association of nations which share and redistribute resources and risks between us to our mutual benefit and to advance our common interests.

(ii) The principles underpinning devolution should be recognised as fundamental to the UK constitution, and the devolved institutions should be regarded as effectively permanent features of that constitution.

(iii) Devolution is about how the UK is collectively governed, by four administrations which are not in a hierarchical relationship one to another. The relations of the four governments of the United Kingdom should therefore proceed on the basis of mutual respect and parity of esteem.

(iv) The allocation of legislative and executive functions between central UK institutions and devolved institutions should be based on the concept of subsidiarity, acknowledging popular sovereignty in each part of the UK.

(v) The presumption should therefore be that the devolved institutions will have responsibility for matters distinctively affecting their nations. Accordingly, the powers of the devolved institutions should be defined by the listing of those matters which it is agreed should, for our mutual benefit, be for Westminster, all other matters being (in the case of Wales) the responsibility of the Assembly and/or the Welsh Government.”


The whole of their submissions to the “Supreme” Court can be found here >>> http://gov.wales/docs/dfm/minutes/cabinet/161125counselgeneralforwalesprintedcaseen.pdf

It is however bitterly ironic that the ‘Counsel General for Wales’ then makes no mention throughout his 28 pages of legal submissions of the dreaded “E” words – ENGLAND or the ENGLISH! 

He also switches hastily to legalistic detail instead of further general statements of constitution principle. 

I suspect that this is because the above quotation would lead naturally to a discussion of fairness, equality and the unfair anomaly that England has no English First Minister, no English Government and no English only Parliament – unlike Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland!

The value of English subsidies to Wales

The value of English subsidies to Wales


On Monday, 12th December, I was invited by the Law Society of England and Wales to a reception in the House of Lords to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Prime Ministerial Office of a famous solicitor – David Lloyd George (cue lots of jokes about whose father or grandfather “knew” Lloyd George!)

It did however give me an opportunity to talk with various interesting people including a Welsh law professor who candidly said to me that he felt that the Union of the United Kingdom was well worth keeping for Wales solely because the Welsh needed English subsidies!

The learned professor also made clear that he felt that without English money the Welsh standard of living would be drastically reduced.

I agreed with him about the standard of living, but naturally politely avoided agreeing with him about the merits of the Union!

I wonder if, looked at the other way around, how many English people would say that paying subsidies to Wales is of benefit to us English?

Here is a detailed paper bythe Welsh Assemblyon this >>> http://www.assembly.wales/NAfW%20Documents/09-012.pdf%20-%2026032009/09-012-English.pdf

What do you think?

Secretary of State for Wales highlights that MPs in charge of English Departments need to be English

Secretary of State for Wales highlights that MPs in charge of English Departments need to be English 



On the 6th August the Secretary of State for Wales, the Right Honourable Alun Cairns MP, released a statement about how proud he felt about Welsh athletes being involved in the Rio Olympics.

It seems that he could not help but put his national identity ‘Welsh’ above his British one. He stated:-

As the 2016 Rio Olympics get under way today, I want to wish all of our Welsh competitors the very best of luck. As a team of 24, this is the highest number of athletes that has represented Wales for an overseas Olympics. It’s also the first time that there are more women than men in the squad. 

These men and women will be ambassadors for athletics and Wales and are going to fill us with pride in the same way that Ashley Williams and the Welsh football team did during the Euro 2016 tournament. 


The whole nation is behind our athletes, and I’m confident their hard work and dedication will deliver results. Pob lwc i gyd. 



The reason why his words are so damaging to the much vaunted unity of the UK is that we English now know that his first loyalty isn’t to the United Kingdom but to Wales. This should instantly rule him out of taking on any other role in the British government. It is obvious that his loyalties would be questionable if he was called upon to make a decision that ought to be to Welsh detriment, but to England’s advantage.

 
It is a serious breach because a British government cabinet member has wished his Welsh countrymen luck in sport above the English, Scottish and the Northern Irish. That goes action goes against the Act of Union 1707 which stated “United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain’ because the Olympics is a United Kingdom event not a Welsh event.
 

Alun Cairns’ words show that he treats his role in England no differently than a British Colonial District Officer treated overseas colonial possessions. Everyone now knows it is Wales first for him. 

He is involved in decisions that affect England whilst clearly his loyalty is solely to Wales. How many other Welsh MPs have the same loyalty as him? 

His statement is damaging to the concept of British government because the English can no longer trust that they will be treated equally by Welsh MPs working for the British government. 

Only English MPs should be in charge of English government departments!

The English pay £140 each for the EU

The English pay £140 each for the EU


Scotland’s taxpayers are no longer a net beneficiary of EU largess and now pay in £64 per person more than they get back from Brussels, according to a new economic analysis published.

David Bell, Professor of Economics at the University of Stirling, calculated that Scots now pay more than £1.4 billion towards the EU every year and receive almost £1.1 billion back through the UK’s rebate and funds such as Common Agriculture Policy payments.

However, the English on their own contribute more than that averaging £140 for each and every person in England.

In comparison, the Northern Irish pay a net sum of only £31 per person, while the Welsh are net beneficiaries to the tune of £164 per person because they receive that much more than they pay in.

Here is a link to the original article>>> http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14537100.Scottish_Labour_considers_becoming___39_independent__39__party/

The growth of English nationalism – Friend or Foe? A Welsh viewpoint

Dr Simon Brooks


The speech, the translated text of which appears below, was given in Welsh at the Institute of Welsh Affairs Lecture, Llanelli National Eisteddfod, 7th August 2014. It was given in the absence of any English nationalists and without so far as I am aware consulting any either. It thus suffers from a failure to understand the nature of English Nationalism. It is nonetheless interesting to see a well considered analysis of Welsh nationalists’ current ideological difficulties which have resonance in England too!

The author, Dr Simon Brooks’ Biography on the University of Cardiff’s website states:-

My work explores tensions between conservatism and liberalism, as they affect literature, politics and the history of ideas in minority language communities.

In 2004, I used this perspective in my volume, O Dan Lygaid y Gestapo, to discuss the inheritance of Enlightenment thought in late 19th and 20th century Wales, and its impact on Welsh literary theory and criticism.

A few years earlier I had been prominent in public policy debate about the future of Welsh-speaking communities. The debate raised the difficulty that attempts by minority communities to resist majority assimilation with communitarian counter-measures can undermine liberal concepts of openness.

In response to this problem, much of my current work explores multiculturalism and ethnic difference in the context of a minority language community. Welsh-language literature provides the discursive evidence. I hope to draw some theoretical conclusions on how ‘conservative’ survival strategies for a minority language community might be reconciled with a ‘liberal’ desire to respect others.

Here is the text of his speech translated into English:-



The growth of English nationalism – Friend or Foe?


It’s a dangerous year in Wales. Next month, the Scots will venture to the polling booths in order to decide whether they want Scotland to be an independent country or not. If they say Yes, some believe that Wales will become independent soon afterwards. This is possible; everything in life is possible. But it is far more likely that Wales and England will be merged as one state for many decades, perhaps forever. That state will be commonly known as England. Its territory shall essentially be the same as that kingdom, The Kingdom of England, that conquered Wales, and of which Wales was a part between 1282 and 1707. Despite all its failings, at least the most important successor to it, The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, was a multi-national state, and there was, in theory at least, a fairly equal balance between Saxon and Celt. In 1841, the English formed only about 60% of the United Kingdom’s population. But if Scotland votes for independence, the English will account for 93% of the population, 95% if we exclude northern Ireland, of the state of which Wales will be a member. Britain will be an English state without Scotland, although it will include the Welsh as a national minority, a minority that may keep its devolved institutions for as long as they are tolerated by the English.

It is a dangerous decade in Wales. Following next year’s general election, it is likely that we shall see another Conservative government in Westminster. The English seem to have more faith in the Tories to look after the economy than the Labour Party. Soon afterwards, perhaps in 2017, a referendum will be held on Britain’s membership of the European Union. I would not be too hopeful of the result. There is a limit to Berlin’s patience with London’s whingeing about all things European and not every European will be willing to kneel before Great Britain, or will it be Little Britain by then, in order to keep her in the European Union. If Scotland leaves Britain, and Britain leaves Europe, Little Britain will see itself increasingly as an English fortress. It will become a real Little Britain too with the poor Welshman left as ‘the only Celt in the village’.

It could be a century too of significant immigration into Wales, mainly from England but also from other parts of the world. According to the Census, only 72% of the population of Wales was born in Wales. This is not necessarily a problem. After all only 63% of the population of London was born in Britain. But London isn’t Wales. Wales is a poor, marginal country, in a dependent relationship with her next door neighbour, and it has a minority identity. Such a country is far more open to threats to its identity as a result of demographic change than are majority cultures.

Of course, there is no direct relationship between being born in Wales and empathising or sympathising with Welsh nationhood. There are tens of thousands of people in Wales who were born in England and who speak Welsh, and tens of thousands more who consider themselves to be Welsh. I say this sincerely as a lad from London whose sister is one of the English rugby team’s greatest fans! Despite this, further Anglicisation of Wales in terms of the percentage of the population born outside the country will have political implications for Welsh identity. It is not immigration in itself that is problematic for a stateless nation such as Wales, rather the difficulties that a minority culture faces in trying to integrate newcomers.

I do not wish to raise concerns prematurely, but there is a strong possibility that Britain in the future will become a far more English place than it has been until now, and it is very possible too that Wales will become far more Anglicised as well. The dangers attached to this are intensified by the increasingly reactionary and anti-multicultural nature of recent definitions of Englishness, at least as seen in the growth of political parties such as UKIP.

So a painful question for us as a national minority is whether the recent xenophobia displayed by English nationalism represents the opening of a new path in the cultural history of England, where minorities will face a harsher, sharper wind, or is this merely a temporary storm?

The current intolerant nature of English nationalism and its general attitude towards minorities does cause concern. It is certainly not insignificant. In large states, historically at least, there has been a tendency for antagonistic attitudes towards immigrant ethnic minorities to accompany a deep mistrust of the existence of indigenous minorities. I wonder whether English nationalism will have morphed within ten or twenty years to target the Welsh national minority? We shall see, but it would be irresponsible of us to ignore the possibility that this could happen.

So, is English nationalism friend or foe?

It is a friend to the extent that it will create opportunities for us to sharpen our identity against it. Multinational states often start to unravel when strong nationalisms develop within their most important constituent nations, as happened in the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the nineteenth century, and as is happening in England and Scotland today. It is perhaps the hope that the threat of the growth of English nationalism will lead in dialectical fashion to a growth in Welsh nationalism that causes so many nationalists to be in favour of independence for Scotland. In other words, that independence for Scotland will reveal the essentially English nature of the British state and that this will motivate the Welsh to adopt a position of resistance against it.

But English nationalism is also an enemy since such a thing exists in the world as social power. Indeed, the failure of Wales and Scotland to win home rule at the same time as Ireland, at the end of the First World War, goes to show that it is not inevitable that an empire on losing one colony is bound to cede the rest. Indeed, it might strengthen its grip on what remains, more fiercely than ever before: indeed does not the recent history of Russia bear witness to this possibility? And in the future English nationalism could be very powerful indeed. Should English nationalism start to become anti-Welsh, we would have no chance of withstanding its pressure. The Welsh language, as John Cleese might put it, would be a dead parrot. As dead as Ifor ap Glyn’s Cornish-speaking parrot, for those of you who remember that immortal sketch.

For all these reasons, we cannot ignore the debate on nationhood and citizenship that is currently taking place in England.

We have become used to thinking of English nationalism as intolerant and unfriendly. Unfortunately, this is true, but it is also true that what is happening in England is a perfectly reasonable civic discussion concerning the nature of citizenship. Who can become an English citizen, and what are the duties and responsibilities of such citizens? Under what conditions should immigration be permitted, by whom and to what degree? Should immigrants be assimilated linguistically, or is it better to let immigrants use their own language if that is their wish?

Obviously, these could be Welsh themes too. Indeed, until recently, these questions were only being asked in Wales. It’s very strange then that this is not part of political debate in Wales today. It’s bizarre that these issues have been discussed within Welsh-language culture for half a century, but just as the discussion becomes legitimised in England, we in Wales give up on the debate altogether! This is particularly unwise because if we do not define Welsh citizenship ourselves, we shall be defined by what’s happening in England. Indeed that is what is happening at the moment.

UKIP’s message is that immigrants in Wales should be good Britons, and that they should speak English. What is our message?

For decades language campaigners have tried to tackle some of these themes surrounding immigration, citizenship and language. Consider, for example, Cynog Dafis’ mature contributions on the importance of integrating non-Welsh speakers in Mewnlifiad, Iaith a Chymdeithas (Immigration, Language and Society) (1971) and Cymdeithaseg Iaith a’r Gymraeg (The Sociology of Language and the Welsh Language) (1979). We have an intellectual tradition of discussing such matters in Wales.

There also exists a liberal tradition internationally that could legitimise the debate. In the work of some modern liberal philosophers, an attempt is made to reconcile liberalism as a political philosophy with the desire of minorities to protect their cultures. Perhaps the most famous scholar in this field is the liberal political theorist from Canada, Will Kymlicka. Since every state has its own rules which regulate immigration, and which by and large protect the interests of the largest ethnic group in the State, Kymlicka argues that it might be acceptable for stateless minorities to have control over the nature of immigration into their own territories. This would be ‘consistent with liberal principles of equality’. He goes on to say that ‘what distinguishes a liberal theory of minority rights is precisely that it accepts some external protections for ethnic groups and national minorities’.

In the context of immigration, it is perfectly valid, says Kymlicka, indeed essential, that liberal thinkers not only permit the national minority to ‘exercise some control over the volume of immigration, to ensure that the numbers of immigrants are not so great as to overwhelm the ability of the society to integrate them’ but also to have control over ‘the terms of integration.’ For example, if it’s acceptable for majority ethnic groups to set a language test for immigrants, on what basis could one begrudge the same right to a minority? Indeed, without influence over the process of integration, the minority may well be swallowed up. This is extremely important when the majority in the state insist that immigrants to the national minority’s territory, which the majority basically consider to be an extension of their own territory, assimilate into the majority culture and not to the minority culture.

Such a situation is extremely damaging to minority cultures, but not because immigrants from ethnic minority backgrounds who choose to side with the majority culture add to the absolute size of the majority community – in all parts of Welsh-speaking Wales, the numbers involved are too small to cause language shift. The harm done is that the process of establishing English as the language of civic integration for immigrants from outside of the European Union even in Welsh speaking areas denotes English as the civic language for the whole community. English becomes the language to be used in communication between ethnic groups and language groups. This in turn removes any moral responsibility on in-migrants from England to learn Welsh.

This then can lead to the indigenous minority assimilating into the majority culture on its own territory. In other words, the native culture assimilates into the immigrant culture, if the immigrant culture is also the culture of the state.

The implications of this are seen at their clearest in the recent British debate concerning immigration, citizenship and language.

There is a cross-party consensus in England that immigrants to Britain should learn English and that the state should promote this. Each one of the four main British parties are in favour of an unambiguous link between learning the English language and British citizenship. The Con-Dem government’s attitude in London on this is clear enough, as seen in a recent proposal that those unable to speak English should not receive dole money unless they are willing to learn English. The Labour Party’s attitude is similar as well. Indeed Ed Milliband came to north Wales during the European election campaign in order to remind us again, as if we didn’t know already, of the duty of immigrants to Britain to learn English. The Labour Party has been pushing this line for at least ten years. During his period as Home Secretary in Tony Blair’s New Labour Government between 2001 and 2004, David Blunkett introduced a number of statutory measures that made it impossible to gain British citizenship without passing a language test. And as we know, the future of the English language is one of UKIP’s main concerns. Who didn’t feel sympathy for Nigel Farage that the English language was not to be heard recently on a train journey between London and Kent?

Such messages come at us from across the border, and affect and influence us. This is scarcely a surprise; after all, the London based press is the main source of news for the Welsh people. As a result, opposition exists in parts of Wales to an imaginary enemy that doesn’t exist, namely the immigration of a non-English speaking population. In Welsh speaking communities there could in future be a battle between the monolingual rhetoric of the British state and the bilingual rhetoric of the embryonic Welsh state. We cannot be certain that the Welsh state will win. The Language Commissioner, Meri Huws, has pennies and smarties to spend on the fight; the Daily Mail is published every day. Inevitably the rhetoric of UKIP and English nationalism will undermine the confidence of the Welsh speaking community to insist that Welsh remains a community language, and it will give new confidence to those who oppose this.

What has been the response of the Welsh establishment to all this? They have buried their heads in the sand! There’s been huge reluctance to get to grips with the debate at all.

The reluctance stems from a problem in Welsh political ideology. There is a political consensus in Wales that we should be civic nationalists and this is defined against that which is called, incorrectly in my view, ethnic nationalism. The Welsh political establishment has put the Welsh language in the ethnic box, although via the creation of a concept of Welsh citizenship it could easily be placed in the civic category. Since they believe that language belongs in the ethnic box, politicians are not willing to tell immigrants to Wales that they are expected to do anything in relation to the Welsh language.

Politicians feel that this would not be welcoming, and perhaps it might be unfair too, and that we in Wales stand apart from this sort of politics. Yet it’s false to argue that learning a language is an ethnic imposition. In England, English is taught for civic reasons, in order for the citizen to be able to speak the language of the country and to access civic privileges without being disadvantaged. But the viewpoint in Wales is that the Welsh state cannot place particular obligations upon anyone.

Though this appears quite tolerant, it is a policy which ignores the reality of social power. In Britain and Wales, this always leans heavily in favour of the English language and British identity and is likely to do so even more heavily in the future. A policy not to define Welsh citizenship is a laissez-faire policy. The trouble with laissez-faire policies in the field of language or nationality, as in the field of economics, is that the strong are always likely to come out on top. There is a massive irony in all this. The practical outcome of adopting a policy of not defining Welsh citizenship is to do Ukip’s work for it as immigrants will be compelled to profess British civic values alone.

We have a responsibility to respond to the political situation in Britain as it develops. The way to do this is to develop a concept of inclusive Welsh citizenship.

I now wish to show how attempts were made to build an inclusive concept of citizenship at one point in our history by comparing the attitudes of nationalists and liberals towards nationhood at the beginning of the twentieth century. Citizenship was not an intellectual problem for British Liberals and nonconformists at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Welsh Liberals tended to define the nation on the basis of religion and saw the Welsh people as chapel-going Welsh speakers, and everyone else, the non-Welsh speaking, along too with Anglicans, Catholics and Jews, as foreigners. They had no interest in integrating these people by making them somehow Welsh. The reason for this is that they did not seek the establishment of a Welsh state. Since they did not covet a Welsh state, the question of Welsh citizenship, and who belonged to the Welsh nation, was not important.

Welsh nationalists on the other hand wished to establish a Welsh state and therefore had to define Welsh citizens. This could not be done without discussing the relationship of all the residents of Wales with the country. There was no way of having a Welsh state without having Welsh citizens.

Saunders Lewis’ answer was to base citizenship on language. In part he did so because Wales at the time was a country with a different linguistic composition to Wales today. But nationalists were also keen to do this because a language could be learned, whilst changing someone’s place of birth would be impossible, and changing religion would not only be impossible but also unfair. In changing your religion, you surrender your old identity, but in learning a language you add to a new identity without giving up the old one. In learning Welsh, one does not have to lose one’s grasp of English.

Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru’s decision to place an emphasis on the Welsh language was not an attempt to exclude people from the nation as has been assumed, but rather it was an attempt to include them.

In Plaid’s seminal first publication, Egwyddorion Cenedlaetholdeb (1926) (The Principles of Nationalism), Saunders Lewis emphasised that immigrants could become Welsh. This was essentially an argument in favour of releasing the Welsh language from its ethnic definition as a tongue used by the ethnic Welsh alone, on ‘the hearths of the Welsh Speakers’, and turning it into a civic language that would be the property of all people from all sorts of different backgrounds:

If the Welsh language and culture are only to be preserved on the hearths of Welsh speakers, then the language and culture will be dead before the end of this century. Because foreigners will come in greater numbers to Wales, to the countryside in the North and to the populous towns and villages in the South; and by their intrusion and multiplicity, they are fast turning the tide of Welsh life into an English one. Only a political movement can save us. We must turn the foreigners – if I were Greek I would say, the barbarians, – they must be turned into Welsh people, and should be given a Welsh way of thinking, the Welsh culture, and the Welsh language. That is what will make safe the only civilisation that is traditional in Wales.

Despite the use of the unwelcoming word ‘barbarians’, this argument turns on the duties and responsibilities of the immigrant; in brief, it is a theory of Welsh citizenship. It is significant that Saunders Lewis did not expect immigrants to Wales to set aside their own ethnicity. A Frenchman could remain a Frenchman so long as he became a ‘Welshman’ as well, by learning Welsh. In an article, ‘Cymreigio Cymru’ (‘Making Wales Welsh’), published in Y Faner in 1925, Lewis elaborated on this by stating:

The Englishman, Scotsman, Frenchman can each one of them, according to this definition, live and thrive in Wales, hold responsible and important jobs, and be a teacher and head teacher, a mayor or alderman or town clerk, and take a full part in the social and political life of the country, – on one simple, fair, appropriate, just condition, that in his official work – that alone, but in that, totally and without deviation – he uses the Welsh language, the language that has always been the medium of civilisation in Wales.

There is an attempt in all of this to create a civic concept of equal citizenship based on language. Now, let’s be completely clear. We cannot base Welsh citizenship on language today. Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru desired the creation of a monolingual, Welsh-speaking Wales, and in that context, making linguistic integration a cornerstone of Welsh citizenship made perfect sense. That is not the aim today, and if a political system does not insist that the native-born learn Welsh, how on earth can it insist that immigrants do so? On what basis could one insist that a man from Poland who moves to Llanelli should learn Welsh, when we know that English is the choice of language for the vast majority of the local population? But the attitude that we shouldn’t expect immigrants to learn Welsh is less fair, and more problematic, in other parts of Wales where the Welsh language has a stronger presence.

What then do we mean by Welsh citizenship in today’s Wales? Welsh citizenship would, as a matter of course, include citizenship in its legal sense, but it would also promote policies concerned with the integration of immigrants into local communities.

We associate legal citizenship mostly with the nation-state, represented in the popular mind by our passports which denote, in the case of most of us, that we are citizens of the United Kingdom. It is also worth noting that legal citizenship can exist on more than one level; indeed some academics talk of multi-level citizenship. All of us who are citizens of the United Kingdom are European citizens, for example. Multi-level citizenship also raises the possibility of Welsh citizenship without necessarily denying the concept of British citizenship. Therefore it would be wholly appropriate for us to try and develop a meaningful concept of Welsh citizenship before or indeed in the absence of independence.

Such sub-state citizenship has been developed in other stateless nations, specifically in Quebec and to some degree in Catalonia. We could follow their example and make establishing citizenship at the Welsh level a part of the devolution project in Wales. Not the least of the reasons to do this would be that it answers an ethnic question in a civic fashion.

How does one go about it? Instead of the ‘British Values’ that come from England, the reference point of Welsh citizenship would be ‘Welsh Values’. These could be defined via a national debate.

Some of the likely characteristics of Welsh citizenship are already fairly evident. In matters regarding race, religion, ethnic background, place of birth and so on, Wales would adopt a very civic type of citizenship. Indeed, this emphasis on the civic is one of the main characteristics of fifteen years of devolution, and it is very different to the emphasis being made in the current debate in England.

But citizenship would also offer a sensible answer in the context of the language problem, as long as one thinks of language as a civic rather than an ethnic characteristic. Citizenship could suggest how to integrate immigrants into Welsh speaking communities. Wales is a bilingual country and it has two equal languages, and two equal linguistic communities too. Concepts of citizenship could be used in order to put some meat on the bones of this theoretical equality. Bilingualism should not be interpreted to mean the unfettered right of non-Welsh speakers to move to Welsh speaking communities and not learn Welsh, thereby forcing the local community to change their language. Responsibility for social integration should not be shouldered in Welsh speaking communities by the indigenous population alone. The responsibility to nurture social cohesion in Welsh speaking communities should be a joint responsibility, and creating civic ideas on how to do this would be a shrewd way of moving forward.

Theoretically at least, it would be fair to expect immigrants to integrate into the Welsh speaking community as well as the English speaking community, and we should aim at giving immigrants some bilingual skills so that they can undertake some basic bilingual tasks at least. It would be great to have a simple statement by the Welsh Government that it would be desirable for people who move to Welsh speaking communities to learn Welsh. I do not foresee that enforcement would follow this, and in the case of immigrants from England we could not introduce compulsion even if we wished. However, such a statement would be of great help in terms of promoting Welsh as a community language in Welsh speaking areas as it would emphasise that learning Welsh was the social expectation, and the psychological pressure on the indigenous population to turn everything Welsh bilingual, and everything bilingual English, would be considerably reduced.

In a perceptive article on citizenship and the Welsh language for the British Council, Gwennan Higham recently noted that the debate concerning language in Wales brings to English all the advantages that stem from being the language of social inclusion. This in turn rebuffs the right of the Welsh language to be a civic language, and downgrades it to the language of an ethnic group, which there is no expectancy of immigrants to learn. This unfairness is reflected by public policy in the field of immigration. Lessons to learn English as a second language, English for Speakers of Other Languages, are provided by the Welsh Government free of charge for all non-English speaking immigrants in Wales who wish to take them, yet no classes exist that are tailored for immigrants who wish to learn Welsh in order to qualify for citizenship. This situation must change. British citizenship in Wales should not be a version of English citizenship. It is true that Welsh for Adults classes exist. But these must be paid for, which highlights the inequity still further.

To make things worse, it appears as if the Welsh Government is placing even less emphasis on this field today than ever before. What other way is there to interpret the government’s recent announcement that it wishes to cut 15% of the Welsh for Adults’ budget? This is money that exists, partially at least, in order to integrate immigrants who move to Welsh speaking areas. What message is conveyed by the fact that this expenditure is being reduced at the same time that the British State is forcing every immigrant to learn English?

The attitude in a country like Quebec is different. A specific policy is followed in order to enable and motivate immigrants to learn French. In Catalonia too, the government in Barcelona attempts to ensure that immigrants who move to Catalonia are integrated through the medium of Catalan instead of Castilian. Of course, the linguistic composition of Wales is different to that in both of these countries. It would be better for us to think of integrating immigrants to both of our country’s linguistic communities, as opposed as to the Welsh-language community or the English-language community alone.

In stateless nations such as Catalonia and Quebec something fairly unique in the Western world is afoot, which provides another reason for creating Welsh citizenship. In the debate over immigration in large countries such as England and France, immigrants are seen in very negative terms as a burden on local society. But in stateless nations, the nature of the struggle between the state and the stateless nation creates a more positive situation from the point of view of the immigrant. Immigrants are often seen as a means of strengthening the minority community, and indeed as a resource, since they add to the numbers of the minority community in question, and they identify too the minority language as multi-ethnic and civic. In Quebec, nationalists are delighted that immigrants are learning French. This strengthens Quebec. This is a far more positive discourse than the negativity which currently exists in England and which unfortunately has spilled over the border into Wales.

Therefore on every level – the defence of the Welsh language and of Welsh culture, giving skills to immigrants, promoting social inclusion, shaping a thriving, multi-ethnic society, developing civic models of belonging in a Welsh polity, developing a different discourse to the more xenophobic one of English nationalism, and also in order to ensure that Wales can remain Welsh within a Britain that could become far more English in the future – establishing Welsh citizenship would be hugely beneficial.

This would be a citizenship that is inclusive of everyone in Wales, but which would also be distinctly Welsh.

Here is a link to the original so that you can leave a comment >>> http://www.clickonwales.org/2014/09/the-growth-of-english-nationalism-friend-or-foe/