Cultural relationship between the Welsh and the English
Encyclopedia
The relationship between the Welsh
and English
within Great Britain
is mostly characterised by tolerance, respect, and an intermixing of people and culture
s. However, elements of mutual mistrust or dislike, and occasionally overt racism
, also persist. Hatred or fear of the Welsh by the English or others has been termed "Cymrophobia". Antipathy to the English, by the Welsh or others, is termed "Anglophobia
".
The relationship has developed historically from the origins of the two nations, and been shaped by the military, political, economic and cultural power exercised by the much more populous English over the Welsh for many centuries; the marked differences between the English and Welsh
languages, both spoken and written; and the high degree of cultural importance given by many in Wales
to signifiers of national identity such as the language
, literature, history
, traditions, and the national sport of rugby union
.
The Anglo-Saxon
invasions of Britain led to the formation of Wales between the 5th and 7th centuries. The Anglo-Norman
kings of England had conquered Wales militarily by the 13th century, and under Henry VIII
the country was legally (but not physically) incorporated to the kingdom of England
by the Acts of Union in the 16th century. Many elements of the Welsh economy and society since then have been shaped by demands from England, and Wales has been described as "England's first colony". However, Welsh identity remained strong and recently there has been an increasing awareness and acknowledgement of Wales' cultural and historical separateness from England, which has latterly been reflected politically
.
The Welsh language is in the Celtic language group
, whereas English is in the West Germanic group
; consequently many English speakers find it harder to learn and speak Welsh than German or Dutch. Conversely, the majority of Welsh speakers can speak English. As for spelling, the letters w and y represent vowels in Welsh, but often represent consonants in English. Welsh also makes extensive use of digraphs
such as ll and dd, and consonant mutations
which are rarer in English.
(born in Scotland to English parents) who in the Sunday Times described the Welsh as "loquacious, dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls." The English writer A. N. Wilson
stated: "The Welsh have never made any significant contribution to any branch of knowledge, culture or entertainment. They have no architecture, no gastronomic tradition, no literature worthy of the name." (Evening Standard
, 1993)
In 2000, a cross party group of Members of the National Assembly of Wales, representing all four political parties in the Assembly, called for an end to what they termed "persistent anti-Welsh racism" in the UK media.
English television personality Anne Robinson
appeared on the comedy show Room 101
in 2001 and made derisive comments about Welsh people, such as "what are they for?" and "I never did like them". The show is designed to draw extreme views from interview subjects in order to generate controversy and humour. The people she was thinking about were supposedly those who spoke Welsh around the market stall operated by her mother in Liverpool
during her childhood. Her comments upset some who accused her of racism
. North Wales Police
spent 96 hours investigating the issue, and concluded that no crime had been committed. She was cleared of racism by the Broadcasting Standards Commission, who stated that her comments "came close to the boundaries of acceptability"
The North Wales Police have also investigated allegations of anti-Welsh racism made against Tony Blair
and columnist Cristina Odone
. Again, no charges were brought.
Writer Neal Ascherson
commented that: "Southern views of the Scots over the last hundred years have been faintly sceptical – "chippy, lacking in humour, slow to unbend" – but on the whole affectionate. (Contrast English attitudes to Welshness, which, for reasons I am not sure of, are often genuinely hostile)."
BBC
presenter Jeremy Clarkson
is well-known for his xenophobic comments which sometimes take an anti-Welsh direction, e.g. "It’s entirely unfair that some people are born fat or ugly or dyslexic or disabled or ginger or small or Welsh. Life, I’m afraid, is tragic." Another example, in the context of Wales's 2008 Grand Slam
victory: "You can never rely on the French. All they had to do was go to Cardiff last weekend with a bit of fire in their bellies and they’d have denied Wales the Six Nations Grand Slam. But no. They turned up instead with cheese in their bellies and mooched about for 80 minutes, seemingly not at all bothered that we’ve got to spend the next 12 months listening to the sheepsters droning on about their natural superiority and brilliance. Or worse. Give them a Grand Slam and the next thing you know, all our holiday cottages are on fire. There are, of course, other reasons I hoped the French would win. I’d rather live in France than Wales; I’d rather eat a snail than a daffodil; I’d certainly rather drink French fizzy wine; and I’d much rather sleep with Carole Bouquet
than Charlotte Church
."
On his BBC2 show he placed a plastic map of Wales in a microwave and burned it to audience applause. On Sep 4 2011, writing in his weekend column for The Sun newspaper, he said "I think we are fast approaching the time when the United Nations should start to think seriously about abolishing other languages. What’s the point of Welsh for example? All it does is provide a silly maypole around which a bunch of hotheads can get all nationalistic."
In October 2010, Rod Liddle
, an associate editor of the The Spectator
magazine, described the Welsh as "miserable, seaweed munching, sheep-bothering pinch-faced hill-tribes" in a short post calling for the closure of S4C
as a result of the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review.
On the 12th of August 2011, Roger Lewis
columnist for the Daily Mail
said of the Welsh language "I abhor the appalling and moribund monkey language myself, which hasn't had a new noun since the Middle Ages..." whilst reviewing a book by Jasper Rees, Bred of Heaven.
player Phil Bennett
is reputed to have inspired his team mates for the Wales
v England
game with a pre-match speech: "Look what these bastards have done to Wales. They've taken our coal, our water, our steel. They buy our homes and only live in them for a fortnight every year. What have they given us? Absolutely nothing. We've been exploited, raped, controlled and punished by the English – and that's who you are playing this afternoon."
Llew Smith then Labour MP for Blaenau Gwent, gave a Commons speech critical of Welsh nationalism claiming (for example) that Nationalists resisted evacuation of children from English cities during WWII. HM Prison Parc reported problems with anti-English racism, as well as racism towards other ethnic groups. In 2000, The Chairman of Swansea Bay Race Equality Council said that 'Devolution has brought a definite increase in anti-English behaviour'.
English immigration to Wales has frequently been a point of contention. From 1979 to 1994, the Welsh militant group Meibion Glyndŵr
(Sons of (Owain) Glyndŵr
) firebombed 300 English owned homes in Wales. In 1989, the group attempted arson against several estate agents in Wales and England, and against the offices of the Conservative Party
in London. Welsh businessman characterised English migration as the human version of foot-and-mouth disease. Author Simon Brooks recommended that English-owned homes in Wales be 'peacefully occupied'. The vice-president of Plaid Cymru
, Gwilym ab Ioan, was forced to resign when he said that Wales had become a "dumping ground for oddballs and misfits". Both comments were reported to the Commission for Racial Equality although the cases were dropped after an apology. A county councillor from the Plaid Cymru was criticised as anti-English when he said that English migration to Wales ought to be controlled, and that English incomers ought to be required to learn and speak Welsh. BNP leader Nick Griffin was accused of playing on concerns over the decline of Welsh when his party aired a Welsh-language broadcast which tied racism towards ethnic minority immigrants to Wales with racism towards English-speaking incomers to Wales. In response to this Dafydd Elis-Thomas
, a former leader of Plaid Cymru, said that there was an anti-English strand to Welsh nationalism. His remarks were condemned by the Welsh Language Society and others.
The native inhabitants of Roman Britain
were regarded as Britons (Britanni), and spoke the Brythonic
(Celtic
) languages which evolved into Welsh
, Cornish
and Breton
. By the time the Roman troops left in the early 5th century, the Britons (Brythons) had started to come under attack from Angles
, Saxons
and other peoples from the European mainland, who set up their own kingdoms and settled in what became England
. Some recent analyses (including work by Brian Sykes and Stephen Oppenheimer
) indicate that the majority of the indigenous English and Welsh populations share common genetic roots, although other studies come to different conclusions.
The native Britons established independent kingdoms such as Gwynedd
, Powys, Gwent, and (under Irish influence) Dyfed
in the more mountainous and remote west. The Battle of Chester
in 616, won by the Angles of Northumbria, contributed to isolation of what became Wales. Around 730, the English historian Bede
described the (Welsh) Britons as "for the most part, through innate hatred... adverse to the English nation." By that time, the Saxons had full control of Wessex
and Mercia
. Mercia, in particular, came into conflict with Powys, and Offa's Dyke
was built around 790 to define the boundary between England and Wales and create an effective barrier against Welsh incursions. By the 11th century, if not earlier, Wales – with its own distinct legal system
, though only intermittently unified as a political entity – had developed a national identity as Cymru, or "Land of the compatriots" (Cymry
), in contrast to the Saeson or Saxons. In England, the Anglo-Saxon language
had long supplanted the old Brythonic languages, and the English words "Wales" and "Welsh", meaning "foreigners", came to be used to describe the unconquered land to the west.
's conquest of England in 1066, responsibility for keeping the Welsh under control was in the hands of Marcher Lords
in the border areas. Gwynedd and Powys initially remained independent, but were gradually forced to recognise the technical overlordship of the kings of England. The writings of Giraldus Cambrensis
, setting out both positive and negative aspects of what he saw as the Welsh character, date from around this time. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, building on the policy of his grandfather Llywelyn the Great
, had his title of Prince of Wales
accepted by the English crown in 1267. Following Edward I
's invasion in 1282, the Statute of Rhuddlan
legally annexed Llywelyn's Principality of Wales
– but not the whole country – to the kingdom of England, and Welsh longbowmen
became one of the numerous groups of foreign mercenaries serving with the English army. English settlers were sent to live in the newly created borough towns which developed in the shadow of Edward I's castles, particularly in the south and east. Over the next few centuries, the English dominated these garrison towns, from which the native Welsh were officially excluded. The settlers called themselves "the English burgesses of the English boroughs of Wales" and proclaimed that the new towns had been raised "for the habitation of Englishmen", excluding "mere Welshmen" from their privileges on the grounds that they were "foreigners" in the implanted boroughs. As historian R. R. Davies notes:
They imposed an English legal system, and the Welsh were not allowed to hold office in the government or church. Owain Glyndŵr
's rebellion in the early 15th century was the last armed rebellion of the Welsh against the English. Anti-Welsh riots were reported in Oxford and London, and Parliament imposed more repressive measures on Wales.
, thanks largely to the support of the Welsh who hoped he was the Mab Darogan who would restore Britain to the Brythons. However, this led to the cementing of Wales into the English administrative and legal system under his son, Henry VIII
. The Laws in Wales Acts of 1535–1542 annexed Wales to England
, abolished the Welsh legal system, and banned the Welsh language
from any official role and status. It also allowed members representing Wales to be elected to Parliament for the first time, although these were often not Welsh. The second of the Acts of Union (1542) established the Court of Great Sessions
to deal with major misdemeanours in Wales: of the 217 judges who sat on its benches in its 288 years of existence, only 30 were Welshmen and it is unlikely that more than a handful of the latter – members of the higher gentry – actually spoke Welsh.
Gradually, use of the Welsh language – which had remained the language of the overwhelming majority of the Welsh – began to revive. There were translations of the full Bible
into Welsh by 1600, and over the next two centuries there was a steady growth of education in the Welsh language, and the revival of traditions such as the eisteddfod. The attitude towards the Welsh language in England was generally hostile, however. A flood of anti-Welsh pamphlets were printed in the 17th century, such as Wallography by William Richards (1682), which wishes the speedy demise of the Welsh language:
Distinct democratic and religious movements also began to develop in Wales. However, legislation in 1746
introduced the legislative notion that, in all future laws, references to "England" would by default include Wales.
The racist rhyme
"Taffy was a Welshman
" was first published around 1780, and seems to have been particularly popular in the English counties that bordered Wales. The name "Taffy" for any Welshman may derive either from the name Dafydd
, or from the River Taff
which flows through Cardiff
.
. By attracting labour from the rural areas, this produced new urban concentrations of Welsh speakers, and helped build the culture of the South Wales Valleys
communities. The Merthyr Rising of 1831 was a protest against exploitation by the mine owners which began a period of unrest, including the "Rebecca Riots
" and the Chartist movement
, and a process of radical thinking. In Parliament, Lord Melbourne
declared that south Wales was "the worst and most formidable district in the kingdom." The concerns of the English political establishment were shown in the 1847 Royal Commission
on Welsh education, which reported that "The Welsh language is a vast drawback to Wales and a manifold barrier to the moral progress and commercial prosperity of the people. It is not easy to over-estimate its evil effects." As a result, English-only schools were set up in much of Wales, and children speaking Welsh were punished with the "Welsh Not
".
Although 18th and 19th century English writers increasingly recognised the beauty and grandeur of the Welsh landscape, many contrasted this with a negative view of the Welsh people themselves. For example, The Times
newspaper wrote in 1866: "Wales... is a small country, unfavourably situated for commercial purposes, with an indifferent soil, and inhabited by an unenterprising people. It is true it possesses valuable minerals but these have chiefly been developed by English energy and for the supply of English wants." At the same time, rural areas close to England became more depopulated and anglicised, as many people moved to the growing English cities in the north west and Midlands. Welsh culture was important in these areas; for example, the National Eisteddfod of Wales
was held in either Liverpool
or Birkenhead
six times between 1884 and 1929.
Changes to the electoral system meant that, by the end of the 19th century, a Welsh presence began to be felt in British politics. In 1881, the Sunday Closing Act
was the first piece of parliamentary legislation that granted Wales the status of a distinct national unit. Around the turn of the 20th century there was considerable anti-Welsh feeling in the English establishment. Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
H. H. Asquith
said in 1905 "I would sooner go to hell than to Wales." One of Evelyn Waugh
's characters in the novel Decline and Fall (1928) was made to say: "From the earliest times the Welsh have been looked upon as an unclean people. It is thus that they have preserved their racial integrity. Their sons and daughters rarely mate with human-kind except their own blood relations..... I often think that we can trace almost all the disasters of English history to the influence of Wales"
In the early 20th century, Welsh politicians such as David Lloyd George
, and later Aneurin Bevan
rose to UK-wide prominence.
The apparent powerlessness of Welsh politicians in affecting their own affairs, in the face of the English numerical superiority in Parliament
, was highlighted in the mid 1900s. Liverpool City Council
had decided to expand the industry of Liverpool
and The Wirral. Believing that they would need access to an increased water supply, they chose the Afon Tryweryn Valley
, near Bala
, even though the development would include flooding the village of Capel Celyn
. In 1956, a private bill
sponsored by Liverpool City Council was brought before Parliament to create Llyn Celyn
reservoir , thus circumventing planning consent from the relevant Welsh Local Authorities, by obtaining authority via a Parliamentary Act.
Despite thirty-five of the thirty-six Welsh Members of Parliament
(MPs) voting against the bill, with the other abstaining, Parliament – with 630 MPs
, the majority of members represented constituencies in England – still passed the bill. Years of democratic, nonviolent, Welsh protest were in vain, Capel Celyn was drowned, and a new wave of Welsh nationalism, including the Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru
(Welsh Defence Movement) and the Free Wales Army
, were born.
The Welsh Language Acts of 1967
and 1993
gave the language equal status in Wales, and in 1997 the Welsh electorate voted to established a Welsh Assembly.
Welsh people
The Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language.John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman departure from Britain, although Brythonic Celtic languages seem to have...
and English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
within Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
is mostly characterised by tolerance, respect, and an intermixing of people and culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
s. However, elements of mutual mistrust or dislike, and occasionally overt racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
, also persist. Hatred or fear of the Welsh by the English or others has been termed "Cymrophobia". Antipathy to the English, by the Welsh or others, is termed "Anglophobia
Anglophobia
Anglophobia means hatred or fear of England or the English people. The term is sometimes used more loosely for general Anti-British sentiment...
".
The relationship has developed historically from the origins of the two nations, and been shaped by the military, political, economic and cultural power exercised by the much more populous English over the Welsh for many centuries; the marked differences between the English and Welsh
English and Welsh
English and Welsh is the title of J. R. R. Tolkien'svaledictory address to the University of Oxford of 1955.The lecture sheds light on Tolkien's conceptions of the connections of race, ethnicity and language....
languages, both spoken and written; and the high degree of cultural importance given by many in Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
to signifiers of national identity such as the language
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
, literature, history
History of Wales
The history of Wales begins with the arrival of human beings in the region thousands of years ago. Neanderthals lived in what is now Wales, or Cymru in Welsh, at least 230,000 years ago, while Homo sapiens arrived by about 29,000 years ago...
, traditions, and the national sport of rugby union
Rugby union in Wales
Rugby union is the national sport of Wales and is considered a large part of national culture. Rugby is thought to have reached Wales in the 1850s, with the national body, the Welsh Rugby Union being formed in 1881...
.
The Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Saxon may refer to:* Anglo-Saxons, a group that invaded Britain** Old English, their language** Anglo-Saxon England, their history, one of various ships* White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, an ethnicity* Anglo-Saxon economy, modern macroeconomic term...
invasions of Britain led to the formation of Wales between the 5th and 7th centuries. The Anglo-Norman
Anglo-Norman
The Anglo-Normans were mainly the descendants of the Normans who ruled England following the Norman conquest by William the Conqueror in 1066. A small number of Normans were already settled in England prior to the conquest...
kings of England had conquered Wales militarily by the 13th century, and under Henry VIII
Henry VIII of England
Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...
the country was legally (but not physically) incorporated to the kingdom of England
Kingdom of England
The Kingdom of England was, from 927 to 1707, a sovereign state to the northwest of continental Europe. At its height, the Kingdom of England spanned the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and several smaller outlying islands; what today comprises the legal jurisdiction of England...
by the Acts of Union in the 16th century. Many elements of the Welsh economy and society since then have been shaped by demands from England, and Wales has been described as "England's first colony". However, Welsh identity remained strong and recently there has been an increasing awareness and acknowledgement of Wales' cultural and historical separateness from England, which has latterly been reflected politically
Welsh Assembly Government
The Welsh Government is the devolved government of Wales. It is accountable to the National Assembly for Wales, the legislature which represents the interests of the people of Wales and makes laws for Wales...
.
The Welsh language is in the Celtic language group
Celtic languages
The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic"; a branch of the greater Indo-European language family...
, whereas English is in the West Germanic group
West Germanic languages
The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three traditional branches of the Germanic family of languages and include languages such as German, English, Dutch, Afrikaans, the Frisian languages, and Yiddish...
; consequently many English speakers find it harder to learn and speak Welsh than German or Dutch. Conversely, the majority of Welsh speakers can speak English. As for spelling, the letters w and y represent vowels in Welsh, but often represent consonants in English. Welsh also makes extensive use of digraphs
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
such as ll and dd, and consonant mutations
Welsh morphology
The morphology of the Welsh language shows many characteristics perhaps unfamiliar to speakers of English or continental European languages like French or German, but has much in common with the other modern Insular Celtic languages: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, and Breton. Welsh is a...
which are rarer in English.
Anti-Welsh sentiment
Recent examples of anti-Welsh sentiment in the media include the journalist A. A. GillA. A. Gill
Adrian Anthony Gill is a British writer who uses the byline A. A. Gill. He is currently employed by The Sunday Times as their restaurant reviewer and television critic and Vanity Fair magazine as a restaurant reviewer...
(born in Scotland to English parents) who in the Sunday Times described the Welsh as "loquacious, dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls." The English writer A. N. Wilson
A. N. Wilson
Andrew Norman Wilson is an English writer and newspaper columnist, known for his critical biographies, novels, works of popular history and religious views...
stated: "The Welsh have never made any significant contribution to any branch of knowledge, culture or entertainment. They have no architecture, no gastronomic tradition, no literature worthy of the name." (Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
, 1993)
In 2000, a cross party group of Members of the National Assembly of Wales, representing all four political parties in the Assembly, called for an end to what they termed "persistent anti-Welsh racism" in the UK media.
English television personality Anne Robinson
Anne Robinson
Anne Josephine Robinson is an English journalist and television presenter, known for her assertive views and acerbic style of presenting. She was one of the presenters on the long-running British consumer affairs series, Watchdog, from 1993 to 2001 before returning in 2009...
appeared on the comedy show Room 101
Room 101 (TV series)
Room 101 is a BBC comedy television series based on the radio series of the same name, in which celebrities were invited to discuss their pet hates and persuade the host to consign them to a fate worse than death in Room 101, named after the torture room in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is...
in 2001 and made derisive comments about Welsh people, such as "what are they for?" and "I never did like them". The show is designed to draw extreme views from interview subjects in order to generate controversy and humour. The people she was thinking about were supposedly those who spoke Welsh around the market stall operated by her mother in Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
during her childhood. Her comments upset some who accused her of racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
. North Wales Police
North Wales Police
North Wales Police is the territorial police force responsible for policing North Wales. The headquarters are in Colwyn Bay, with divisional headquarters in St Asaph, Caernarfon and Wrexham....
spent 96 hours investigating the issue, and concluded that no crime had been committed. She was cleared of racism by the Broadcasting Standards Commission, who stated that her comments "came close to the boundaries of acceptability"
The North Wales Police have also investigated allegations of anti-Welsh racism made against Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
and columnist Cristina Odone
Cristina Odone
Cristina Patricia Odone is a journalist, editor, and writer living in the United Kingdom. She has written for several newspapers, and was formerly the editor of The Catholic Herald, and deputy editor of the New Statesman.- Career :...
. Again, no charges were brought.
Writer Neal Ascherson
Neal Ascherson
Charles Neal Ascherson is a Scottish journalist and writer.- Background :He was born in Edinburgh and educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, where he read history. He was described by the historian Eric Hobsbawm as "perhaps the most brilliant student I ever had...
commented that: "Southern views of the Scots over the last hundred years have been faintly sceptical – "chippy, lacking in humour, slow to unbend" – but on the whole affectionate. (Contrast English attitudes to Welshness, which, for reasons I am not sure of, are often genuinely hostile)."
BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
presenter Jeremy Clarkson
Jeremy Clarkson
Jeremy Charles Robert Clarkson is an English broadcaster, journalist and writer who specialises in motoring. He is best known for his role on the BBC TV show Top Gear along with co-presenters Richard Hammond and James May...
is well-known for his xenophobic comments which sometimes take an anti-Welsh direction, e.g. "It’s entirely unfair that some people are born fat or ugly or dyslexic or disabled or ginger or small or Welsh. Life, I’m afraid, is tragic." Another example, in the context of Wales's 2008 Grand Slam
Grand Slam (Rugby Union)
In rugby union, a Grand Slam occurs when one team in the Six Nations Championship manages to beat all the others during one year's competition...
victory: "You can never rely on the French. All they had to do was go to Cardiff last weekend with a bit of fire in their bellies and they’d have denied Wales the Six Nations Grand Slam. But no. They turned up instead with cheese in their bellies and mooched about for 80 minutes, seemingly not at all bothered that we’ve got to spend the next 12 months listening to the sheepsters droning on about their natural superiority and brilliance. Or worse. Give them a Grand Slam and the next thing you know, all our holiday cottages are on fire. There are, of course, other reasons I hoped the French would win. I’d rather live in France than Wales; I’d rather eat a snail than a daffodil; I’d certainly rather drink French fizzy wine; and I’d much rather sleep with Carole Bouquet
Carole Bouquet
Carole Bouquet is a French actress and fashion model, who has appeared in more than 40 films since 1977. Bouquet was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France....
than Charlotte Church
Charlotte Church
Charlotte Maria Church is a Welsh singer-songwriter, actress and television presenter. She rose to fame in childhood as a classical singer before branching into pop music in 2005. By 2007, she had sold more than 10 million records worldwide including over 5 million in the United States...
."
On his BBC2 show he placed a plastic map of Wales in a microwave and burned it to audience applause. On Sep 4 2011, writing in his weekend column for The Sun newspaper, he said "I think we are fast approaching the time when the United Nations should start to think seriously about abolishing other languages. What’s the point of Welsh for example? All it does is provide a silly maypole around which a bunch of hotheads can get all nationalistic."
In October 2010, Rod Liddle
Rod Liddle
Roderick E. L. Liddle is an English print, radio, and television journalist.He is an associate editor of The Spectator, and former editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he is the author of Too Beautiful for You , Love Will Destroy Everything , and co-author of The Best of Liddle Britain...
, an associate editor of the The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
magazine, described the Welsh as "miserable, seaweed munching, sheep-bothering pinch-faced hill-tribes" in a short post calling for the closure of S4C
S4C
S4C , currently branded as S4/C, is a Welsh television channel broadcast from the capital, Cardiff. The first television channel to be aimed specifically at a Welsh-speaking audience, it is the fifth oldest British television channel .The channel - initially broadcast on...
as a result of the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review.
On the 12th of August 2011, Roger Lewis
Roger Lewis
Roger Lewis , a former Fellow of Wolfson College at Oxford University, is the biographer of Anthony Burgess. Lewis's book, Anthony Burgess: A Life, was published in 2002....
columnist for the Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
said of the Welsh language "I abhor the appalling and moribund monkey language myself, which hasn't had a new noun since the Middle Ages..." whilst reviewing a book by Jasper Rees, Bred of Heaven.
Anti-English sentiment
Concerns over the decline of the Welsh language and its historical proscription have contributed to anti-English sentiment in Wales. Other factors include sporting rivalry, particularly over rugby; religious differences concerning nonconformism and English episcopacy; industrial disputes which usually involved English capital and Welsh labour; resentment over England's historical conquest and subjection of Wales; and perception that England was unfairly benefiting from Wales' natural resources such as coal and water. In 1977, Welsh rugbyRugby union
Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...
player Phil Bennett
Phil Bennett
Phillip Bennett was a Welsh international rugby union fly half from 1969 to 1978. His flair and range of tricks, including his famous sidestep and swerve, meant he was a firm favourite with crowds.-Rugby career:...
is reputed to have inspired his team mates for the Wales
Wales national rugby union team
The Wales national rugby union team represent Wales in international rugby union tournaments. They compete annually in the Six Nations Championship with England, France, Ireland, Italy and Scotland. Wales have won the Six Nations and its predecessors 24 times outright, second only to England with...
v England
England national rugby union team
The England national rugby union team represents England in rugby union. They compete in the annual Six Nations Championship with France, Ireland, Scotland, Italy, and Wales. They have won this championship on 26 occasions, 12 times winning the Grand Slam, making them the most successful team in...
game with a pre-match speech: "Look what these bastards have done to Wales. They've taken our coal, our water, our steel. They buy our homes and only live in them for a fortnight every year. What have they given us? Absolutely nothing. We've been exploited, raped, controlled and punished by the English – and that's who you are playing this afternoon."
Llew Smith then Labour MP for Blaenau Gwent, gave a Commons speech critical of Welsh nationalism claiming (for example) that Nationalists resisted evacuation of children from English cities during WWII. HM Prison Parc reported problems with anti-English racism, as well as racism towards other ethnic groups. In 2000, The Chairman of Swansea Bay Race Equality Council said that 'Devolution has brought a definite increase in anti-English behaviour'.
English immigration to Wales has frequently been a point of contention. From 1979 to 1994, the Welsh militant group Meibion Glyndŵr
Meibion Glyndwr
Meibion Glyndŵr was a Welsh nationalist movement violently opposed to the loss of Welsh culture and language. They were formed in response to the housing crisis precipitated by large numbers of houses being bought by wealthy English people for use as holiday homes, pushing up house prices beyond...
(Sons of (Owain) Glyndŵr
Owain Glyndwr
Owain Glyndŵr , or Owain Glyn Dŵr, anglicised by William Shakespeare as Owen Glendower , was a Welsh ruler and the last native Welshman to hold the title Prince of Wales...
) firebombed 300 English owned homes in Wales. In 1989, the group attempted arson against several estate agents in Wales and England, and against the offices of the Conservative Party
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
in London. Welsh businessman characterised English migration as the human version of foot-and-mouth disease. Author Simon Brooks recommended that English-owned homes in Wales be 'peacefully occupied'. The vice-president of Plaid Cymru
Plaid Cymru
' is a political party in Wales. It advocates the establishment of an independent Welsh state within the European Union. was formed in 1925 and won its first seat in 1966...
, Gwilym ab Ioan, was forced to resign when he said that Wales had become a "dumping ground for oddballs and misfits". Both comments were reported to the Commission for Racial Equality although the cases were dropped after an apology. A county councillor from the Plaid Cymru was criticised as anti-English when he said that English migration to Wales ought to be controlled, and that English incomers ought to be required to learn and speak Welsh. BNP leader Nick Griffin was accused of playing on concerns over the decline of Welsh when his party aired a Welsh-language broadcast which tied racism towards ethnic minority immigrants to Wales with racism towards English-speaking incomers to Wales. In response to this Dafydd Elis-Thomas
Dafydd Elis-Thomas
Dafydd Elis Elis-Thomas, Baron Elis-Thomas, PC, AM, is a Welsh politician and was the Presiding Officer of the National Assembly for Wales until 2011...
, a former leader of Plaid Cymru, said that there was an anti-English strand to Welsh nationalism. His remarks were condemned by the Welsh Language Society and others.
Celt and Saxon
- See also Sub-Roman BritainSub-Roman BritainSub-Roman Britain is a term derived from an archaeological label for the material culture of Britain in Late Antiquity: the term "Sub-Roman" was invented to describe the potsherds in sites of the 5th century and the 6th century, initially with an implication of decay of locally-made wares from a...
The native inhabitants of Roman Britain
Roman Britain
Roman Britain was the part of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire from AD 43 until ca. AD 410.The Romans referred to the imperial province as Britannia, which eventually comprised all of the island of Great Britain south of the fluid frontier with Caledonia...
were regarded as Britons (Britanni), and spoke the Brythonic
Brythonic languages
The Brythonic or Brittonic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family, the other being Goidelic. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning an indigenous Briton as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael...
(Celtic
Celtic languages
The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic"; a branch of the greater Indo-European language family...
) languages which evolved into Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
, Cornish
Cornish language
Cornish is a Brythonic Celtic language and a recognised minority language of the United Kingdom. Along with Welsh and Breton, it is directly descended from the ancient British language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate...
and Breton
Breton language
Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...
. By the time the Roman troops left in the early 5th century, the Britons (Brythons) had started to come under attack from Angles
Angles
The Angles is a modern English term for a Germanic people who took their name from the ancestral cultural region of Angeln, a district located in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany...
, Saxons
Saxons
The Saxons were a confederation of Germanic tribes originating on the North German plain. The Saxons earliest known area of settlement is Northern Albingia, an area approximately that of modern Holstein...
and other peoples from the European mainland, who set up their own kingdoms and settled in what became England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. Some recent analyses (including work by Brian Sykes and Stephen Oppenheimer
Stephen Oppenheimer
Stephen Oppenheimer is a British paediatrician, geneticist, and writer. He is a member of Green Templeton College, Oxford and an honorary fellow of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and carries out and publishes research in the fields of genetics and human prehistory.-Career:Oppenheimer...
) indicate that the majority of the indigenous English and Welsh populations share common genetic roots, although other studies come to different conclusions.
The native Britons established independent kingdoms such as Gwynedd
Kingdom of Gwynedd
Gwynedd was one petty kingdom of several Welsh successor states which emerged in 5th-century post-Roman Britain in the Early Middle Ages, and later evolved into a principality during the High Middle Ages. It was based on the former Brythonic tribal lands of the Ordovices, Gangani, and the...
, Powys, Gwent, and (under Irish influence) Dyfed
Kingdom of Dyfed
The Kingdom of Dyfed is one of several Welsh petty kingdoms that emerged in 5th-century post-Roman Britain in south-west Wales, based on the former Irish tribal lands of the Déisi from c 350 until it was subsumed into Deheubarth in 920. In Latin, the country of the Déisi was Demetae, eventually to...
in the more mountainous and remote west. The Battle of Chester
Battle of Chester
The Battle of Chester was a major victory for the Anglo Saxons over the native Britons near the city of Chester, England in the early 7th century. Æthelfrith of Northumbria annihilated a combined force from the Welsh kingdoms of Powys, Rhôs and possibly Mercia...
in 616, won by the Angles of Northumbria, contributed to isolation of what became Wales. Around 730, the English historian Bede
Bede
Bede , also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede , was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth, today part of Sunderland, England, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow , both in the Kingdom of Northumbria...
described the (Welsh) Britons as "for the most part, through innate hatred... adverse to the English nation." By that time, the Saxons had full control of Wessex
Wessex
The Kingdom of Wessex or Kingdom of the West Saxons was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the West Saxons, in South West England, from the 6th century, until the emergence of a united English state in the 10th century, under the Wessex dynasty. It was to be an earldom after Canute the Great's conquest...
and Mercia
Mercia
Mercia was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands...
. Mercia, in particular, came into conflict with Powys, and Offa's Dyke
Offa's Dyke
Offa's Dyke is a massive linear earthwork, roughly followed by some of the current border between England and Wales. In places, it is up to wide and high. In the 8th century it formed some kind of delineation between the Anglian kingdom of Mercia and the Welsh kingdom of Powys...
was built around 790 to define the boundary between England and Wales and create an effective barrier against Welsh incursions. By the 11th century, if not earlier, Wales – with its own distinct legal system
Welsh law
Welsh law was the system of law practised in Wales before the 16th century. According to tradition it was first codified by Hywel Dda during the period between 942 and 950 when he was king of most of Wales; as such it is usually called Cyfraith Hywel, the Law of Hywel, in Welsh...
, though only intermittently unified as a political entity – had developed a national identity as Cymru, or "Land of the compatriots" (Cymry
Welsh people
The Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language.John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman departure from Britain, although Brythonic Celtic languages seem to have...
), in contrast to the Saeson or Saxons. In England, the Anglo-Saxon language
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
had long supplanted the old Brythonic languages, and the English words "Wales" and "Welsh", meaning "foreigners", came to be used to describe the unconquered land to the west.
Anglo-Norman Conquest – the English Empire
After William of NormandyWilliam I of England
William I , also known as William the Conqueror , was the first Norman King of England from Christmas 1066 until his death. He was also Duke of Normandy from 3 July 1035 until his death, under the name William II...
's conquest of England in 1066, responsibility for keeping the Welsh under control was in the hands of Marcher Lords
Marcher Lords
A Marcher Lord was a strong and trusted noble appointed by the King of England to guard the border between England and Wales.A Marcher Lord is the English equivalent of a margrave...
in the border areas. Gwynedd and Powys initially remained independent, but were gradually forced to recognise the technical overlordship of the kings of England. The writings of Giraldus Cambrensis
Giraldus Cambrensis
Gerald of Wales , also known as Gerallt Gymro in Welsh or Giraldus Cambrensis in Latin, archdeacon of Brecon, was a medieval clergyman and chronicler of his times...
, setting out both positive and negative aspects of what he saw as the Welsh character, date from around this time. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, building on the policy of his grandfather Llywelyn the Great
Llywelyn the Great
Llywelyn the Great , full name Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, was a Prince of Gwynedd in north Wales and eventually de facto ruler over most of Wales...
, had his title of Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales
Prince of Wales is a title traditionally granted to the heir apparent to the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the 15 other independent Commonwealth realms...
accepted by the English crown in 1267. Following Edward I
Edward I of England
Edward I , also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England from 1272 to 1307. The first son of Henry III, Edward was involved early in the political intrigues of his father's reign, which included an outright rebellion by the English barons...
's invasion in 1282, the Statute of Rhuddlan
Statute of Rhuddlan
The Statute of Rhuddlan , also known as the Statutes of Wales or as the Statute of Wales provided the constitutional basis for the government of the Principality of North Wales from 1284 until 1536...
legally annexed Llywelyn's Principality of Wales
Principality of Wales
The Principality of Wales existed between 1216 and 1542, encompassing two-thirds of modern Wales.It was formally founded in 1216 at the Council of Aberdyfi, and later recognised by the 1218 Treaty of Worcester between Llywelyn the Great of Wales and Henry III of England...
– but not the whole country – to the kingdom of England, and Welsh longbowmen
English longbow
The English longbow, also called the Welsh longbow, is a powerful type of medieval longbow about 6 ft long used by the English and Welsh for hunting and as a weapon in medieval warfare...
became one of the numerous groups of foreign mercenaries serving with the English army. English settlers were sent to live in the newly created borough towns which developed in the shadow of Edward I's castles, particularly in the south and east. Over the next few centuries, the English dominated these garrison towns, from which the native Welsh were officially excluded. The settlers called themselves "the English burgesses of the English boroughs of Wales" and proclaimed that the new towns had been raised "for the habitation of Englishmen", excluding "mere Welshmen" from their privileges on the grounds that they were "foreigners" in the implanted boroughs. As historian R. R. Davies notes:
"Nowhere was the spirit of conquest and of racial superiority so vigorously and selfishly kept alive as in the English boroughs. It was little wonder that they were the most consistent target of Welsh resentment throughout the fourteenth century".
They imposed an English legal system, and the Welsh were not allowed to hold office in the government or church. Owain Glyndŵr
Owain Glyndwr
Owain Glyndŵr , or Owain Glyn Dŵr, anglicised by William Shakespeare as Owen Glendower , was a Welsh ruler and the last native Welshman to hold the title Prince of Wales...
's rebellion in the early 15th century was the last armed rebellion of the Welsh against the English. Anti-Welsh riots were reported in Oxford and London, and Parliament imposed more repressive measures on Wales.
The Tudors and the early modern period
In 1485, Henry Tudor, who was of Welsh descent, gained the English throne as King Henry VIIHenry VII of England
Henry VII was King of England and Lord of Ireland from his seizing the crown on 22 August 1485 until his death on 21 April 1509, as the first monarch of the House of Tudor....
, thanks largely to the support of the Welsh who hoped he was the Mab Darogan who would restore Britain to the Brythons. However, this led to the cementing of Wales into the English administrative and legal system under his son, Henry VIII
Henry VIII of England
Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...
. The Laws in Wales Acts of 1535–1542 annexed Wales to England
England and Wales
England and Wales is a jurisdiction within the United Kingdom. It consists of England and Wales, two of the four countries of the United Kingdom...
, abolished the Welsh legal system, and banned the Welsh language
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
from any official role and status. It also allowed members representing Wales to be elected to Parliament for the first time, although these were often not Welsh. The second of the Acts of Union (1542) established the Court of Great Sessions
Court of Great Sessions in Wales
The Court of Great Sessions in Wales was the main court for the prosecution of felonies and serious misdemeanours in Wales between the second Laws in Wales Act of 1542 and the court's abolition in 1830....
to deal with major misdemeanours in Wales: of the 217 judges who sat on its benches in its 288 years of existence, only 30 were Welshmen and it is unlikely that more than a handful of the latter – members of the higher gentry – actually spoke Welsh.
Gradually, use of the Welsh language – which had remained the language of the overwhelming majority of the Welsh – began to revive. There were translations of the full Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
into Welsh by 1600, and over the next two centuries there was a steady growth of education in the Welsh language, and the revival of traditions such as the eisteddfod. The attitude towards the Welsh language in England was generally hostile, however. A flood of anti-Welsh pamphlets were printed in the 17th century, such as Wallography by William Richards (1682), which wishes the speedy demise of the Welsh language:
The native gibberish is usually prattled throughout the whole of Taphydom except in their market towns, whose inhabitants being a little raised do begin to despise it. 'Tis usually cashiered out of gentlemen's houses ... so that (if the stars prove lucky) there may be some glimmering hopes that the British languageWelsh languageWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
may be quite extinct and may be Englished out of Wales.
Distinct democratic and religious movements also began to develop in Wales. However, legislation in 1746
Wales and Berwick Act 1746
The Wales and Berwick Act 1746 was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain which created a statutory definition of "England" as including England, Wales and Berwick-upon-Tweed. This definition applied to all acts passed before and after the Act's coming into force, unless a given Act provided an...
introduced the legislative notion that, in all future laws, references to "England" would by default include Wales.
The racist rhyme
Nursery rhyme
The term nursery rhyme is used for "traditional" poems for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the 19th century and in North America the older ‘Mother Goose Rhymes’ is still often used.-Lullabies:...
"Taffy was a Welshman
Taffy was a Welshman
"Taffy was a Welshman" is an English language nursery rhyme with anti-Welsh lyrics, which was popular in England between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19237.-Lyrics:Versions of this rhyme vary...
" was first published around 1780, and seems to have been particularly popular in the English counties that bordered Wales. The name "Taffy" for any Welshman may derive either from the name Dafydd
David (name)
David is a common male given name and surname. The name "David" is derived from the ancient times of Mesopotamia and used as the Biblical Hebrew name דָּוִד , meaning "Beloved". "Dudi" is a common nickname for David in Hebrew, in the same way Dave and Davy are in English.The Arabic and Assyrian...
, or from the River Taff
River Taff
The River Taff is a large river in Wales. It rises as two rivers in the Brecon Beacons — the Taf Fechan and the Taf Fawr — before joining to form the Taff north of Merthyr Tydfil...
which flows through Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
.
Industrial Revolution
Around the same time, English and Scottish industrialists began establishing iron works and other heavy industry in the coalfield of south WalesSouth Wales Coalfield
The South Wales Coalfield is a large region of south Wales that is rich with coal deposits, especially the South Wales Valleys.-The coalfield area:...
. By attracting labour from the rural areas, this produced new urban concentrations of Welsh speakers, and helped build the culture of the South Wales Valleys
South Wales Valleys
The South Wales Valleys are a number of industrialised valleys in South Wales, stretching from eastern Carmarthenshire in the west to western Monmouthshire in the east and from the Heads of the Valleys in the north to the lower-lying, pastoral country of the Vale of Glamorgan and the coastal plain...
communities. The Merthyr Rising of 1831 was a protest against exploitation by the mine owners which began a period of unrest, including the "Rebecca Riots
Rebecca Riots
The Rebecca Riots took place between 1839 and 1843 in South and Mid Wales. They were a series of protests undertaken by local farmers and agricultural workers in response to perceived unfair taxation. The rioters, often men dressed as women, took their actions against toll-gates, as they were...
" and the Chartist movement
Chartism
Chartism was a movement for political and social reform in the United Kingdom during the mid-19th century, between 1838 and 1859. It takes its name from the People's Charter of 1838. Chartism was possibly the first mass working class labour movement in the world...
, and a process of radical thinking. In Parliament, Lord Melbourne
William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne
William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, PC, FRS was a British Whig statesman who served as Home Secretary and Prime Minister . He is best known for his intense and successful mentoring of Queen Victoria, at ages 18-21, in the ways of politics...
declared that south Wales was "the worst and most formidable district in the kingdom." The concerns of the English political establishment were shown in the 1847 Royal Commission
Treachery of the Blue Books
The Treachery of the Blue Books or Treason of the Blue Books was the name given in Wales to the Reports of the commissioners of enquiry into the state of education in Wales published in 1847. The term Brad y Llyfrau Gleision was coined by the author R. J...
on Welsh education, which reported that "The Welsh language is a vast drawback to Wales and a manifold barrier to the moral progress and commercial prosperity of the people. It is not easy to over-estimate its evil effects." As a result, English-only schools were set up in much of Wales, and children speaking Welsh were punished with the "Welsh Not
Welsh Not
The Welsh Not or Welsh Note was a punishment system used in some Welsh schools in the late 19th and early 20th century to dissuade children from speaking Welsh...
".
Although 18th and 19th century English writers increasingly recognised the beauty and grandeur of the Welsh landscape, many contrasted this with a negative view of the Welsh people themselves. For example, The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
newspaper wrote in 1866: "Wales... is a small country, unfavourably situated for commercial purposes, with an indifferent soil, and inhabited by an unenterprising people. It is true it possesses valuable minerals but these have chiefly been developed by English energy and for the supply of English wants." At the same time, rural areas close to England became more depopulated and anglicised, as many people moved to the growing English cities in the north west and Midlands. Welsh culture was important in these areas; for example, the National Eisteddfod of Wales
National Eisteddfod of Wales
The National Eisteddfod of Wales is the most important of several eisteddfodau that are held annually, mostly in Wales.- Organisation :...
was held in either Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
or Birkenhead
Birkenhead
Birkenhead is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in Merseyside, England. It is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the west bank of the River Mersey, opposite the city of Liverpool...
six times between 1884 and 1929.
Changes to the electoral system meant that, by the end of the 19th century, a Welsh presence began to be felt in British politics. In 1881, the Sunday Closing Act
Sunday Closing (Wales) Act 1881
The Sunday Closing Act 1881 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It required the closure of all public houses in Wales on Sundays. The Act had considerable political importance as a formal acknowledgement of the separate character of Wales, setting a precedent for future...
was the first piece of parliamentary legislation that granted Wales the status of a distinct national unit. Around the turn of the 20th century there was considerable anti-Welsh feeling in the English establishment. Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
H. H. Asquith
H. H. Asquith
Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, KG, PC, KC served as the Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916...
said in 1905 "I would sooner go to hell than to Wales." One of Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
's characters in the novel Decline and Fall (1928) was made to say: "From the earliest times the Welsh have been looked upon as an unclean people. It is thus that they have preserved their racial integrity. Their sons and daughters rarely mate with human-kind except their own blood relations..... I often think that we can trace almost all the disasters of English history to the influence of Wales"
Twentieth century
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC was a British Liberal politician and statesman...
, and later Aneurin Bevan
Aneurin Bevan
Aneurin "Nye" Bevan was a British Labour Party politician who was the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1959 until his death in 1960. The son of a coal miner, Bevan was a lifelong champion of social justice and the rights of working people...
rose to UK-wide prominence.
The apparent powerlessness of Welsh politicians in affecting their own affairs, in the face of the English numerical superiority in Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...
, was highlighted in the mid 1900s. Liverpool City Council
Liverpool City Council
Liverpool City Council is the governing body for the city of Liverpool in Merseyside, England. It consists of 90 councillors, three for each of the city's 30 wards. The council is currently controlled by the Labour Party and is led by Joe Anderson.-Domain:...
had decided to expand the industry of Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
and The Wirral. Believing that they would need access to an increased water supply, they chose the Afon Tryweryn Valley
Afon Tryweryn
For the flooding of the Tryweryn Valley, see Llyn Celyn.The Tryweryn is a river in north Wales which starts at Llyn Tryweryn in the Snowdonia National Park and after joins the river Dee at Bala. It is one of the main tributaries of the Dee and has been dammed to form Llyn Celyn...
, near Bala
Bala, Gwynedd
Bala is a market town and community in Gwynedd, Wales, and formerly an urban district of the historic county of Merionethshire. It lies at the north end of Bala Lake , 17 miles north-east of Dolgellau, with a population of 1,980...
, even though the development would include flooding the village of Capel Celyn
Capel Celyn
Capel Celyn was a rural community to the north west of Bala in Gwynedd, north Wales, in the Afon Tryweryn valley. The village and other parts of the valley were flooded to create a reservoir, Llyn Celyn, in order to supply Liverpool and The Wirral with water for industry...
. In 1956, a private bill
Private bill
A private bill is a proposal for a law that would apply to a particular individual or group of individuals, or corporate entity. If enacted, it becomes a private Act . This is unlike public bills which apply to everyone within their jurisdiction...
sponsored by Liverpool City Council was brought before Parliament to create Llyn Celyn
Llyn Celyn
Llyn Celyn is a large reservoir constructed between 1960 and 1965 in the valley of the River Tryweryn in Gwynedd, North Wales. It measures roughly 2½ miles long by a mile wide, and has a maximum depth of...
reservoir , thus circumventing planning consent from the relevant Welsh Local Authorities, by obtaining authority via a Parliamentary Act.
Despite thirty-five of the thirty-six Welsh Members of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
(MPs) voting against the bill, with the other abstaining, Parliament – with 630 MPs
United Kingdom general election, 1955
The 1955 United Kingdom general election was held on 26 May 1955, four years after the previous general election. It resulted in a substantially increased majority of 60 for the Conservative government under new leader and prime minister Sir Anthony Eden against Labour Party, now in their 20th year...
, the majority of members represented constituencies in England – still passed the bill. Years of democratic, nonviolent, Welsh protest were in vain, Capel Celyn was drowned, and a new wave of Welsh nationalism, including the Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru
Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru
Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru , abbreviated as MAC, was a paramilitary Welsh nationalist organisation, which was responsible for a number of bombing incidents between 1963 and 1969....
(Welsh Defence Movement) and the Free Wales Army
Free Wales Army
The Free Wales Army was a paramilitary Welsh nationalist organisation, formed in Lampeter, Mid Wales, by William Julian Cayo-Evans in 1963. Its objective was to establish an independent Welsh republic.-History:...
, were born.
The Welsh Language Acts of 1967
Welsh Language Act 1967
The Welsh Language Act 1967 , is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which gave some rights to use the Welsh language in legal proceedings in Wales and gave the relevant Minister the right to authorise the production of a Welsh version of any documents required or allowed by the Act...
and 1993
Welsh Language Act 1993
The Welsh Language Act 1993 , is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which put the Welsh language on an equal footing with the English language in Wales with regard to the public sector....
gave the language equal status in Wales, and in 1997 the Welsh electorate voted to established a Welsh Assembly.
See also
- England and WalesEngland and WalesEngland and Wales is a jurisdiction within the United Kingdom. It consists of England and Wales, two of the four countries of the United Kingdom...
- English peopleEnglish peopleThe English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
- Severnside DerbySevernside DerbyThe Severnside derby is a local derby in football in the United Kingdom between Welsh club Cardiff City F.C. and English club Bristol City F.C..The term Severnside derby can also be given to a match between Cardiff City F.C...
- Little England beyond WalesLittle England beyond WalesLittle England beyond Wales is a name applied to an area of southern Pembrokeshire and southwestern Carmarthenshire in Wales, which has been English in language and culture for many centuries despite its remoteness from the English border...
- Wales–England borderWales–England borderThe Wales–England border, between two of the countries of the United Kingdom, extends for about from the Dee estuary, in the north, to the Severn estuary in the south....
- Welsh peopleWelsh peopleThe Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language.John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman departure from Britain, although Brythonic Celtic languages seem to have...
- Cornish peopleCornish peopleThe Cornish are a people associated with Cornwall, a county and Duchy in the south-west of the United Kingdom that is seen in some respects as distinct from England, having more in common with the other Celtic parts of the United Kingdom such as Wales, as well as with other Celtic nations in Europe...
- XenophobiaXenophobiaXenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
External links
- Jan Morris, Mocking the Welsh is the last permitted bigotry, The SpectatorThe SpectatorThe Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
, 22 July 2009 - Article: "The visitor to Wales is greeted with what seems unfeigned warmth and politeness. Yet underneath the surface, Welsh-English tensions remain."
- http://www.newstatesman.com/200102050015Article by Ian Hargreaves, New StatesmanNew StatesmanNew Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
, on anti-Welsh prejudice] - Discussion of reports that Welsh speakers "only start speaking Welsh when the English turn up"
- Article on relationship between the Welsh and English languages