Stop Blaming Retirees for the Decline of the Welsh Language

How the percentage of people able to speak Welsh in 
traditionally Welsh-speaking communities has fallen 
significantly since the 1960s.                                         

It seems that the factor most blamed for the decline of the Welsh Language is the in-migration of English retirees.  I, however, would argue that the effect of retiree in-migration on the survival of Welsh-speaking communities has been significantly overstated and indeed I would argue that it cannot possible be given the most blame for the language's demise.

Who are the non-Welsh-Speakers?
In a hypothetical situation where retirement migration is indeed the leading cause, you would sure see a drop in the percentage of Welsh-Speakers in the community.  But that drop would, logically, be concentrated among the over-65s, with younger age groups continuing to speak Welsh just as before, since, by definition, the under-65s are not going to be the retirees.

Is this scenario what has actually happened?  There are a handful of communities that genuinely do fit this pattern.  Take the Llyn Peninsula village of Tudweiliog, for example.  There, in 2013, 94.3% of children in the village primary school were from Welsh-speaking homes, while at the 2011 Census, only 73.9% of residents could speak Welsh.  Clearly, the school stats showed that that those residents of school-attending and parenting age were nearly all Welsh-Speaking, which suggests that the 2011 Census figure genuinely was brought down by non-Welsh retirees, and indeed, in 2011, 31.3% of the village's population was born outside Wales.

Thus, there are indeed communities, like Tudweiliog, where the percentage of Welsh-Speakers has fallen due to the in-migration of retirees; and where it has genuinely had nothing to do with any shift to English amongst the younger residents.  But the communities that follow this pattern are not very many.  They are also all rural, all in North West Wales, and all very Welsh-Speaking.  And yes that's right; wherever retirement in-migration has been the leading factor for the decline of Welsh, not much of a decline has actually happened at all, since the younger age groups, by definition, have not been affected.

But that is not what's happened in most areas that Welsh-Speaking half a century ago - instead it has largely been the percentage of children speaking Welsh at Home, a statistic given by School Data, that has plummeted, and it would be difficult to blame retirees for that.

The table below shows how the percentage of primary school children from Welsh-Speaking homes in the three counties of Dyfed has more than halved since the 1950s.

And similarly, on Anglesey, the percentage of primary school children speaking Welsh at Home has fallen from around three quarters mid-century, to just under 40% today, although the drop has slowed down significantly there.  This leaves Gwynedd as the only local authority area where a majority of children still speak Welsh at Home.

Yet are such Misconceptions Really that Unfounded?

Nevertheless, there clearly is a link between in-migration and the disappearance of Welsh-Speaking areas, and for me, as an English learner of Welsh who has lived in Aberystwyth, that is a great tragedy.  

Generally, the traditionally Welsh-speaking areas that are still Welsh-speaking now,  in terms of language spoken by children at home, are the very same areas where less than 30% of the population was born outside Wales, with places like Tudweiliog being the exception.

The link is particularly striking in Gwynedd, where all the areas where Welsh has collapsed are also areas of higher levels of in-migration.  Indeed, throughout the traditional Fro Gymraeg generally, it appears to be the case that when non-Welsh migration into a particular community increases, then the percentage of children from non-Welsh-speaking homes will skyrocket much faster.

The table below shows how this trend has played out by comparing three example communities not far from each other in southern Gwynedd.

Clearly in Dolgellau and Barmouth, in-migration has indeed been what's caused the percentage of children from Welsh-Speaking homes to drop, but it's not the over-65s who are the incomers bringing about the decline of Welsh; instead it's mainly school-aged children and their parents who are the non-Welsh-Speakers.  Similarly, the 2012 Estyn report on Ysgol Ardudwy, the secondary school in Harlech, a town where half the population was born outside Wales, stated that only 40% of children were from homes where at least one parent could speak Welsh.

Blaming the Wrong Kind of Migration
Clearly, where in-migration has actually led to the collapse of the Welsh Language, ie, in places like Harlech, Barmouth and Dolgellau, it has not been retirees who are to blame.  In places where retiree in-migration has been the cause of the decline of Welsh, like in Tudweiliog, Welsh has not actually died out at all, since there the younger age groups have continued speaking Welsh at Home just like before, while in Barmouth and Harlech, they have not.

Clearly then, retiree in-migration is the least harmful kind of in-migration with regards to the Welsh language since it does not affect the speech of younger age groups in the area in question.  And that begs the question, why do we blame retirees for the disappearance of Welsh-Speaking areas?

Whatever people's reasoning is, blaming the wrong people for anything is something that needs to stop.