Survival of the Welsh Language

Lewis, a major Welsh poet and dramatist, generally considered as the greatest literary figure in the Welsh language of this century, was born in

Cheshire into a Welsh family; he later became a lecturer at the newly established University College, Swansea. Heavily influenced by events in

Ireland and the struggle for national identity in that country that took place in the political sphere, he was one of the founders of Plaid Cymru in

1925 at the Pwllheli National Eisteddfod, becoming its president in 1926.

Lewis envisioned a new role for the people of Wales that would transform their position as a member of the British Empire into one in which they could see themselves as one of the nations that helped found European civilization. As he viewed it:

What then is our nationalism?...To fight not for Welsh independence but for the civilization of Wales. To claim for Wales not independence but freedom. (Egwyddorion Cenedlaetholdeb, 1926)

Ten years later, with two companions, D.J. Williams and Lewis Valentine,

Lewis deliberately set a fire at Penyberth in the Llyn Peninsular, North

Wales, a site that the military wished to use for construction of a bombing school. The three then turned themselves in to the authorities and were duly indicted and summoned to appear in court. The failure of the court to agree on a verdict at Caernarfon, a town sympathetic to their cause, meant the removal of their trial to London, where they were each sentenced to nine months imprisonment. Lewis was dismissed from his teaching post at

Swansea even before the arrival of the guilty verdict at the Old Bailey.

Leading Welsh historians agree that The fire at Penyberth should be regarded as a cause celebre in the struggle for Welsh identity; it certainly had its impact on Welsh thinking, an impact that was not wholly dampened by the onset of Word War ll which again focused the people of

Britain on their shared identity in the face of an enemy that threatened their survival as a nation. The pacificism of Lewis was an affront to many, even within Plaid Cymru who saw the need to defeat as overriding any other concern.

Part IX

The improvements in the road system meant that many areas in Wales were easy to get to. Their beauty and tranquility became an irresistible magnet to thousands ready to retire from the squalor and overcrowding of the big industrial cities of northern and middle England. Welsh communities, especially along the North Wales coast, found themselves inundated with a flood of newcomers who were either too old to learn the language or couldn't be bothered. Many of the younger couples had no idea that Wales had a language of its own, or when they did find out were adamant that their children be educated through the medium of English. Far more significant was the fact that it was far too easy to get by perfectly well in Wales without knowing a word of its language.

The whole north Wales coast, known as "the Welsh Riviera" became first a weekend playground for, and then an extension of, Merseyside. The mid-Wales coast, similarly was transformed by a huge influx of people from the

Midlands. LIverpool accents were more common in Llandudno than Welsh;

Birmingham accents common in Borth, or even Aberystwyth. The author vividly remembers visiting a pub in Bangor where every customer but one could speak

Welsh, but all of whom used English to defer to a monolingual Englishman

(who had been in the area forty years without learning a single word of

Welsh). The same situation was found throughout much of North Wales.

The result of such massive invasions, often by retirees, certainly by those with little incentive to learn Welsh was drastic. From almost a million

Welsh speakers in 1931, the number fell to just over 500,000 in less than fifty years.despite the large increase in population. Strongholds of the language and its attendant culture were crumbling fast, and it seemed that nothing could be done to stem the tide. In 1957 occurred an event that exemplified the situation: the Liverpool Corporation got the go-ahead from