Last week, the United Nations declared that Welsh remained one of the world’s most endangered languages, despite the fact that there are over half a million fluent speakers according to the last Census in 2001.
This finding comes at a time when the Welsh Assembly Government has announced its intentions to apply for the transfer of further powers for the Welsh language from Westminster.
Of course, there have already been massive debates on what should be contained within any new Welsh Language Act, especially with regard to its forced adoption by the private sector.
However, the whole point of the requests for powers is not the creation of the act itself but the principle that future Welsh language powers should be decided by Cardiff Bay and not Westminster.
As you would expect, I am against any move for all Welsh businesses to be compelled to be bilingual as that would be a retrograde step which would create unnecessary divisions, especially at a time when devolution needs to be seen to be for all the people of Wales. I also believe that any legislation in this direction would be defeated by the majority of AMs.
Nevertheless, I personally believe that the time has come for the Assembly, and not the UK Parliament, to be given the powers to make decisions on the future of the Welsh language.
However, if the Assembly is to have powers over the Welsh language, then it must also have responsibility for the one organisation that has possibly done more than any other to preserve the language over the last twenty five years, namely S4C.
In my opinion, it is completely inappropriate that a television channel whose primary purpose is to provide Welsh language programmes for the population of this nation remains under the control of Whitehall mandarins within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Worse still, there seems to be little political will, even amongst nationalists, to request that the funding for S4C is transferred directly to the Assembly. Why is this the case? Well, according to some in the industry, the worry is that if S4C’s funding was devolved from Westminster, then its annual £95 million budget would no longer be ringfenced and that it would have to compete with other demands on the culture budget.
Frankly, that is a weak argument as the importance of S4C to the nation and the language cannot be overemphasised enough. Indeed, I would suggest that it would be a brave politician who would make the case for cutting S4C’s budget at a time when the Welsh language clearly needs continued support. On the other hand, given the Assembly’s broken promises over the development of a Welsh language daily newspaper, those who want to protect the language may, ironically, believe that S4C’s future is safer within Westminster than it is within Cardiff Bay.
Who would have thought that we would find ourselves in a situation where politicians are arguing for a range of further powers over the Welsh language and yet seem afraid to have responsibility for their own Welsh language television channel despite ten years of devolution?
If the Welsh language is important to our country, then the time has come to bring responsibility for its future under the auspices of our democratically elected National Assembly for Wales. If this does not happen, then those in power do a disservice to the language and our nation.
Later this year, the Government will switch off the analogue signal in Wales and, at that time, S4C will become a wholly Welsh-language service with no provision from Channel 4. There could be no better time for Wales to assume full responsibility for its own Welsh language television service if only our politicians in Cardiff Bay had the courage to make such a decision.
This finding comes at a time when the Welsh Assembly Government has announced its intentions to apply for the transfer of further powers for the Welsh language from Westminster.
Of course, there have already been massive debates on what should be contained within any new Welsh Language Act, especially with regard to its forced adoption by the private sector.
However, the whole point of the requests for powers is not the creation of the act itself but the principle that future Welsh language powers should be decided by Cardiff Bay and not Westminster.
As you would expect, I am against any move for all Welsh businesses to be compelled to be bilingual as that would be a retrograde step which would create unnecessary divisions, especially at a time when devolution needs to be seen to be for all the people of Wales. I also believe that any legislation in this direction would be defeated by the majority of AMs.
Nevertheless, I personally believe that the time has come for the Assembly, and not the UK Parliament, to be given the powers to make decisions on the future of the Welsh language.
However, if the Assembly is to have powers over the Welsh language, then it must also have responsibility for the one organisation that has possibly done more than any other to preserve the language over the last twenty five years, namely S4C.
In my opinion, it is completely inappropriate that a television channel whose primary purpose is to provide Welsh language programmes for the population of this nation remains under the control of Whitehall mandarins within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Worse still, there seems to be little political will, even amongst nationalists, to request that the funding for S4C is transferred directly to the Assembly. Why is this the case? Well, according to some in the industry, the worry is that if S4C’s funding was devolved from Westminster, then its annual £95 million budget would no longer be ringfenced and that it would have to compete with other demands on the culture budget.
Frankly, that is a weak argument as the importance of S4C to the nation and the language cannot be overemphasised enough. Indeed, I would suggest that it would be a brave politician who would make the case for cutting S4C’s budget at a time when the Welsh language clearly needs continued support. On the other hand, given the Assembly’s broken promises over the development of a Welsh language daily newspaper, those who want to protect the language may, ironically, believe that S4C’s future is safer within Westminster than it is within Cardiff Bay.
Who would have thought that we would find ourselves in a situation where politicians are arguing for a range of further powers over the Welsh language and yet seem afraid to have responsibility for their own Welsh language television channel despite ten years of devolution?
If the Welsh language is important to our country, then the time has come to bring responsibility for its future under the auspices of our democratically elected National Assembly for Wales. If this does not happen, then those in power do a disservice to the language and our nation.
Later this year, the Government will switch off the analogue signal in Wales and, at that time, S4C will become a wholly Welsh-language service with no provision from Channel 4. There could be no better time for Wales to assume full responsibility for its own Welsh language television service if only our politicians in Cardiff Bay had the courage to make such a decision.
Comments
Imagine my surprise, with much spluttering of tea and toast, BBC News reporting on this morning's bulletin that Lord Elis Thomas called for exactly the same thing i.e. for the Assembly to review the position of S4C under Westminster.
Either it's great minds think alike (!) or the Good Lord obviously didn't have anything prepared for his thank you speech in Cardiff last night, and lifted your column, hoping that no-one down South had read your piece yesterday.
But I had and so had 200,000 other gogs ....shameless!
Welsh is not "one of the world’s MOST ENDANGERED languages". It is classed as "unsafe", the most mild of five UNESCO categories ... and has moved up from 1993 when it was classed as "endangered".
http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/europe_report.html
The census did not ask how "fluent" people were in Welsh. The question was whether they they spoke Welsh (with other boxes for understanding, reading and writing). Of those that ticked the box, 58.4% would class themselves as "fluent" according to the Language Use Surveys 2004-06.
http://www.byig-wlb.org.uk/English/publications/Publications/Welsh%20Language%20Use%20Surveys%202004-06.pdf
As for S4C, I think it is important to distinguish between the television channel and the organization, especially with the multiplicity of channels offered on digital. Channel 4 in the RUK is responsible for a family of channels including C4, More4, Film4 and E4. S4C could do the same in Wales with the current S4C (digidol) Welsh language channel, Cyw (as a separate children's channel), S4C2 (its Assembly channel, possibly expanded to include other political coverage) and, I would suggest, an English language channel with a focus on Wales ... stepping in to fill the gap that ITV (and to a lesser extent the BBC) seem increasingly unwilling or unable to provide.
I'm sure that what you've said today was prompted by DET's comments. But why follow his lead in looking only at the small picture? Why is Welsh language broadcasting so different from English language broadcasting in Wales? In fact those who only speak English get far more of a raw deal, since there is so little about Wales on the existing RUK channels. Wales needs to be able to regulate broadcasting as a whole, not just the bits in Welsh.
It looks likely that Calman will recommend devolution of broadcasting to Scotland, so it would seem very appropriate to do the same for Wales at the same time.
Er, No.
Let me put the record straight here for those who clearly don't read the Daily Post.
The blog article which appeared today was published in my column in the Daily Post yesterday, and was sent to the editors on Sunday.
I normally post on this blog a day after the DP column to ensure that there is no clash with the printed version.
Ironically, as a Vice-President of the Cardiff Business Club, I wasn't able to attend last night and so only became aware of the Arglwydd's comments when someone responded to the post this morning.
However, as DET and I hardly swap notes on things over the weekend regarding what I am going to put in my column, you can either put this down to an amazing coincidence or to the fact that he was prompted to say something that has clearly been on his mind by the DP article.
Either way, it doesn't really matter as it is about time the issue of Welsh language broadcasting was discussed openly and I am glad that both of us, in our different ways, have put this on the policy agenda.
Hopefully, this may lead to a greater debate on devolution and the future of all broadcasting in Wales.
Shame the BBC didn't pick up on it earlier but I doubt if many at HQ in Llandaff bother reading what goes on in North Wales :)
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Nonetheless you are both suggesting more or less the same thing, so I would repeat my question: What makes Welsh language broadcasting in Wales so different from English language broadcasting? Wouldn't it be better for broadcasting as a whole to be devolved to Wales (as looks likely in Scotland).
My point is that if we only devolve half, we are in danger of perpetuating the argument that Welsh gets "preferential treatment". At a time when English language broadcasting of Welsh affairs is in a far deeper crisis than WL broadcasting, shouldn't part of our focus be directed there?
I think Wales needs a coherent strategy that embraces broadcasting in both languages.
Excellent post, which i have linked in my blog.
http://sweetandtenderhooliganwelsh.blogspot.com/2009/02/gotta-have-s-4-c-if-you-wanna-be-with.html
Criminally i havent linked your blog - will do so.
"Dylan is quite right to point out the rather obvious on this one".