Why do So Many People Want to Abolish the Welsh Assembly?

Whilst I was on Wales Online's Facebook Page and reading the comments on the article The Likely Contenders to the Wales's Next First Minister, the first thing that I noticed flying in my face was the sheer number of people calling for the Welsh Assembly to be scrapped.

For example, out of the first ten that appeared, some four were calling for the devolved legislature to be scrapped, including the top two screenshot on the right.

In March 2014, some 23% of respondents in a BBC Wales poll called for the institution to be scrapped, while in the Assembly elections of 2014, 4.4% of voters chose to cast their ballots for the Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party.  

So the obvious question is why - why do so many people in Wales want to abolish Wales's own government? 

Trying to Explain the Unexplainable

Let's be clear, these people are not anarchists - they're not calling for the Welsh Assembly to be abolished because they want all government to be abolished, on the contrary, none of them seems to want to abolish Westminster - it seems to be only the Welsh Assembly that they have it in for.  

Which is odd isn't it? Because one of their main arguments every time, is that the Welsh Assembly is a waste of money.  But is it?

In August last year, there was controversy over the fact that the Welsh Assembly needed a £1.8 million refurbishment programme.  Yet, in January this year, it was announced that in Westminster, the British Houses of Parliament needed £3.5bn for restoration!  Which is more... do the maths.

The Welsh Assembly is also very cheap to run in terms of staffing costs for the simple reason that it only has 60 members.  Yes, 60.  Compare that to Westminster, which as 1435 members, of whom nearly 800 are unelected.

Yes, not only is the Welsh Assembly so much cheaper than Westminster, it is also much more democratic, with it's proportional representation and lack of hereditary and appointed peers.  Yet still, it's the Welsh Assembly, not Westminster, that those people want to be scrapped.

And then they will argue that the Welsh Assembly has run Wales badly ever since it's creation in 1999.  And yes, that may be true, but nobody in England has ever said that Westminster should be abolished whenever it cocks up.  

Likewise, you don't have Germans calling for the abolition of the Bundestag whenever they don't like Merkel, do you?  Wanting to actually abolish your country's system of government is just not the normal thing to do when you merely disagree with the party that happens to be in power.

The Real Reason

Now, I don't claim the know every single one of those people who want to abolish the Welsh Assembly, most of them, of course, I have not met personally.

But for those who I have met, or have come across either on line or on Television, I can say this.  They all seemed to have several things in common:

• They were against promoting the Welsh Language and believed that the Welsh Language, along with Devolution were the two reasons behind all of Wales ills
• They hated anything that made Wales too culturally different from England and seemed to have a naturally condescending view of the country and its potential.
• They had the tendency to think that Welsh Nationalism was uniquely evil.

Make no mistake - those people were against the Welsh Assembly not because they were anti-government, but rather because they were anti-Welshness.

This is despite the fact that many of them are people who have chosen to live in Wales.

That all pretty much sums up Jacques Protiques, and his Glasnost UK, pretty well, and it certainly sums up pretty much every other Assembly-Abolitionist that I've ever met.  

Now I don't know to what extent this is also true of the Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party, but they certainly seem to be only keen on abolishing the Welsh Assembly and not the British Parliament, for example.

Why not Rename the Bridge after Dafydd ap Gwilym?

So, the Westminster Government, with the permission of her Majesty the Queen, have chosen to rename the Severn Bridge, linking Wales and England, after the Prince Charles, by naming it the ‘Prince of Wales Bridge.’ 

This decision is not one I see as a stand-alone decision, but rather as part of a trend of naming landmark after landmark in Wales after the Prince of Wales.  It was only two years back that the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff was renamed Principality Stadium. 

Now, in an article in Nation Cymru, I, Abraham, argued that Plaid Cymru should be less republican, and more like the SNP.  But the renaming of landmark after landmark in Wales after Wales’s Principality status, particularly when, this time, the Welsh people have not been asked, is something I oppose as much as any Republican does. 

This is no doubt an act that is designed to be provocative.  Alun Cairns himself admitted that he knew Welsh Republicans would not like it, and I believe he sees it as a win-win situation where he can anger the Welsh Nationalists up the wall and hope that latter in turn alienate the electorate through their angry republicanism. 

How Plaid Cymru responds is absolutely critical.  The argument they should be making is that Wales’s landmarks should be used to commemorate the people that Wales produced – and that the people of Wales should decide, in a poll, perhaps. 

And there are a great number of famous Welsh people to choose from – David Lloyd George, Owain Glyndwr, Dic Penderyn, Iolo Morgannwg, Llywelyn Fawr, and many more. 

But I would choose Dafydd ap Gwilym, and here’s why.  Dafydd ap Gwilym was perhaps one of Europe’s greatest poets in the fourteenth century – some of his most notable works include Merched Llanbadarn,   Trafferth mewn tafarn and Cywydd Y Gal, among many others, although the last one mentioned is considered very naughty.

He is arguably the Chaucer, if not the Shakespeare, of Welsh literature.  Yet unlike those two men, how many Europeans today will have even heard of him?  How many Welshmen even will have heard of him?  Not very many. 

I once read an anti-Welsh Language article by a Monmouthshire man, who seemed to believe that Welsh did not even have any historic literature at all – and I am sure many people in Wales, if not the majority, have that idea.

Chaucer and Shakespeare however, are names that are known throughout the world.  The only reason why Dafydd ap Gwilym isn’t a tenth of a hundredth as widely known as Shakespeare, even in Wales itself it seems, is not because Dafydd ap Gwilym was a bad poet – far from it – but because his language was not one that would be spread and glorified by Empire – but rather one that fell victim to it. 

Naming Wales’s greatest entry point after one of Wales’s greatest writers wouldn’t make Dafydd as widely known as Shakespeare on the global stage – but at least it will make his name more widely known amongst his own countrymen. 

It would also be sufficiently apolitical, and so could unite both nationalists and unionists, although the anti-Welsh Language brigade would probably scream and shout – and that, of course, would be no bad thing.    

Mae’r Iaith Gymraeg yn dda I Loegr hefyd

Os dych chi’n edrych ar map y byd, wnewch chi weld fod y gwledydd Eingl-Sacsonaidd yn sefyllfa tipyn rhyfedd.  Er bod y mwyafrif gwledydd yn y byd gorllewin, ac yn Ewrop yn enwedig, rhannu gororau efo gwledydd eraill a iethioedd eraill, dydy hwn ddim yn wir am y gwledydd eingl-sacsonaidd. 

O’r gwledydd hwnna ei gyd, dim ond yr Unol Daleithiau America sy’n rhannu gororau efo gwledydd ieithoedd estronol – efo Mecsico yn y de a Canada Quebec yn y gog – a dydy’r berthynas rhwng America a Mecsico ddym yn gydraddol iawn fel y berthynas rhwng Ffrainc a’r Almaen. 

Ar y llaw arall, mae pob wladd yn tir mawr Ewrop yn rhannu goror efo gwlad iaith estronol – Ffrainc efo’r Almaen, Spaen efo’r Portiwgal a mae lot o siampl eraill.

 

Fel Sais fy hun, rwy i’n teimlo bod ein ynysu daearyddol iaithol wedi cael effaith arnon ni, ar agwedd ni ag ar ein weld ar y gweddill y byd, a hefyd ar ein agwedd am yr iethiodd estronol – dydy’r y mwafrif arnon ni ddim yn licio dysgu! 

Mae’r effaithiau gwleiddydol yn bob man dw i’n meddwl, ond mae hyn yn gryfach ar y de gwyleiddol – Brexit sydd canlyniadau o hyn. 

Yn fyr, mae’r diffyg o gororau tir efo gwleiddydd iethioedd estronol wedi rendro ni yn fwy ynysig ag ar wahan I’r ieithoedd a ddiwylliannau eraill a mae hwnna mor drist.

Pam ydy Canada yr wlad y fwya flaengar ohonon ni?  Rw i’n meddwl bod yr ddwyieithrwydd yn ateb y kestiwn hwnna.  Felly, dw i’n meddwl bod hi mor drist fod iaith gymraeg wedi cael ei syrthio – nid i Gymru yn unig, ond i Loegr hefyd. 

Why aren’t there Three Languages in Wales?

Below are three verses from a poem, probably written in the 18th century.  What language do you think it is? How much of it can you understand?

Well, gosp, c'hull be zeid; mot thee fartoo, an fade;
Ha deight ouse var gabble, tell ee zin go t'glade.
Ch'am a stouk, an a donel; wou'll leigh out ee dey.
Th' valler w'speen here, th' lass ee chourch-hey.

Yerstey w'had a baree, gist ing oor hoane,
Aar gentrize ware bibbern, aamzil cou no stoane.
Yith Muzleare had ba hole, t'was mee Tommeen,
At by mizluck was ee-pit t'drive in.

Joud an moud vrem earchee ete was ee Lough.
Zitch vaperreen, an shimmereen, fan ee-daf ee aar scoth!
Zitch blakeen, an blayeen, fan ee ball was ee-drowe!
Chote well aar aim was t'yie ouz n'eer a blowe.

Now I don't know about you, but I would guess that you struggled quite a bit with that.  

Okay, Spoiler alert:  What you have just seen is a language called Yola, an offshoot of Middle English, spoken by the Yoles, an ethnic group who lived in a remote corner of County Wexford, Ireland.  This language was something they managed to hold on to down the centuries until into their eventual assimilation in the 19th century.   The other name for their language was 'Forth and Bargy', after the two adjacent baronies in which they lived. 

The two baronies of Forth and Bargy, in County
Wexford, Ireland, where the Yoles lived and spoke
their ancient offshoot of 12th Century English.

But who just who were the Yoles? To answer that question, you have to go back to 1169 and the Norman Invasion of Ireland.  In short, the Yoles were the descendants of English peasants brought over by their Norman lords to work their newly conquered land on the Emerald Isle. 

It was by no means only County Wexford that was affected by this forgotten 12^th century plantation of Ireland.  In many of their newly acquired fiefdoms, Norman lords brought over their own peasants and merchants too, and settler communities of English, Welsh, Flemish and French descent sprang up in Ireland. 

Although, most of these settlers, and even their lords, were assimilated by the Gaelic Irish over the next few centuries, in at least two places, these old enclaves survived – one being at Fingal in County Dublin, and the other being our friends, the Yoles of County Wexford.

In both places, separation from mainstream English back in England is what made the local dialects evolve down such unique paths until they became de facto seperate languages in their own right.

So what about Wales?

Map of Wales from around the 12th century.
Areas ruled by the Marcher Lords are in orange while
areas ruled by the native Welsh Princes are in green.

Wales, just like Ireland, was invaded by the Normans – in Wales's case starting almost as soon as 1066 itself.  The invaders were a group of Norman Barons known as the Marcher Lords and this first invasion was them acting totally 'free-lance' - the King of England had little or nothing to do with these first invasions, as I understand it.

On the contrary, the Marcher Lords were acting purely for personal gain - they each wanted to create new territories for themselves where they, (and not the King of England) could each be their own boss.

Like in Ireland, the new invaders brought over peasants with them, mostly Flemish and English settlers, and the result was that scattered along the South Wales coast, permanent enclaves of English ethnicity and language were created, which survived down the centuries.  

On the right is a language map of Wales from around 1810, and as you can see, there were 'bubbles' of English that existed along the South Coast - in Southern Pembrokeshire, the Gower, and in the Vale of Glamorgan.  

These 'Englisheries' were there because they dated back to Norman times.  

An Interesting Side Note

What is worth noting is that when, 200 years after the first Norman Invasions, Edward I launched his much more famous conquest of North and West Wales, very little changed in terms of language borders.  

Although Edward I did bring English settlers over to Wales, unlike with the Norman barons two centuries earlier, these colonists were almost exclusively urban - they settled in the new English-built castle-towns, and not in the countryside.  That is significant.

Although these new settlements began their lives as English-speaking enclaves, events such as the Black Death, which disproportionately affected towns and cities, ravaged their Anglophone populations, and the subsequent resettlement of them by the native Welsh made them solidly Welsh-speaking again.  

The town of Caernarfon is perhaps the greatest example of this - the town and its castle were founded to be the centre of English power in Wales and began its life as an enclave of English ethnicity and language par excellence, and yet today it is the most Welsh-speaking town in 21st century Wales.

So although the Edwardian Conquest is seen by Welsh Nationalists as the ultimate disaster in Welsh history, with myths of King Edward slaughtering the bards (something which has inspired poetry as far away as Hungary,)  I would argue that it was the first of the two invasions which did far much damage to the Welsh Language. 

 But I Digress

So the question that I pose is this - Why didn't the English spoken in it's medieval enclaves in South Wales diverge into something separate, as did Yola and Fingallian in Ireland?

Because, as far as I know, Pembrokeshire English and Gower English is pretty much the same as English as in England, with the exception of the accent, of course, although I may be wrong?

So the title of this blog perhaps shouldn't be 'Why aren't there Three Languages in Wales?' but Why aren't there four or five - one for each South Wales enclave?

Just imagine it - a separate Germanic Language called 'Pembroke-ish' or 'Gowerish.'