We all know that the internet is the mother of all lies. The world wide web of falsehoods. Which is why I so rarely let anything I read or see on it get to me. However every now and again something comes along to turn even the mildest of us into something resembling a keyboard-chewing Tea Party supporter exposed to an online clip of “Modern Family”. Over the last few weeks we’ve seen something like a concerted effort in the right-wing British press to stir up a renewed atmosphere of hatred towards the Welsh language. Or more accurately towards the speakers of the Welsh language. For though certain Anglophone fundamentalists will claim that they hate the Welsh language without hating Welsh speakers that is like certain Christian fundamentalists saying they hate homosexuality without hating homosexuals.
And who believes that one?
The latest in this series of propagandist pieces comes via the Daily Mail and regular anti-Welsh hack Roger Lewis. Yes, that Roger Lewis, the British writer who last year informed us of his opinion of the indigenous speech of the Welsh people:
“I abhor the appalling and moribund monkey language…”
Oh yes, he really did say that. Understandably the article sparked an outrage in Wales with demands for Lewis to be charged under legislation covering allegations of incitement to hatred. Then to make matters worse the centre-left and London-based Independent newspaper launched a blistering defence of Lewis and his appalling views. Despite the fact that he wrote them in a rival newspaper!
Now he is back again with a lengthy article attacking pretty much everything that is Welsh in Wales, with an ideological claim that is common to Anglophone supremacists everywhere:
“…his was the view of my great-grandparents in Bedwas. ‘English was embraced for reasons of social and economic advancement.’
This is what those teachers in Ceredigion – and those who support them – can’t accept: what my friend at Oxford called ‘the evident cultural superiority of English’…”
Sigh. Why is it that there are so many English-speakers who believe that their language and their culture is inherently superior to the indigenous languages and cultures of the island of Britain, be it Welsh, Scottish or Cornish? And why are there so many English-speaking Irish people who believe the same?
What is it that turns some English-speakers in Britain or Ireland into unashamed hate-mongers? Despisers of other peoples’, other communities’, languages and cultures? Deniers of others peoples’ identities? People they share the same nations with.
Why the need to twist language and views to promote something that is little different from racism? Something, in fact, that is simply racism.
And why is it that in modern 21st century Ireland to identify with the indigenous language and culture of this island-nation is to render oneself a second class citizen with second class rights?
Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Cornwall. Different nations – but the same discrimination.
Related articles
- The Culture War In Wales Hots Up (ansionnachfionn.com)
- United In Hatred – Anglophone Fundamentalists In Ireland (ansionnachfionn.com)
- Language Wars In Wales (ansionnachfionn.com)
- Anglophone Propaganda And The British Press (ansionnachfionn.com)
- An English-Speaking Supporter Of The Welsh Language (ansionnachfionn.com)
- Dot Éire – An Irish Solution To An English Problem (ansionnachfionn.com)
- Hibernophobes – Or Ireland’s Gaeilgeoir-Hating Press (ansionnachfionn.com)
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
With thanks to Seán Padraig Ó Cearbhaill for the heads-up on the Daily Mail article.
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Iontach!
Once again you have composed a beautiful article which is informative and expressive. I’m glad there are people like you confronting the cultural and linguistic destruction of our nation with logic and reason. So keep it up and never give in. For your writings provide inspiration to people like me on days where the indifference of others, who you share life with, pulls you down.
Furthermore I would like your opinion on something. As well as linguistic diversity, do you think we need to encourage cultural diversity? And what would you consider Irish culture apart from Irish Dance, Music, Song, Claddagh Rings and Storytelling? Would art of Celtic design/influence be included? What about literature and clothing? And should we focus on separating Catholic identity from Irish, or as some people call ‘Gaelic’, culture?
Go raibh maith agat,
Pádraig Ó Dhéin
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Hi Pádraig, and thanks for the Comment and very kind words.
I believe the people of Ireland are incredibly lucky that our Celtic language and culture pre-dates the advent of Christianity or any of the modern religions. This allows people of all faiths and none to identify with or adopt an indigenous Irish identity. The same of course applies to other Celtic nations like Wales and Scotland. For instance if one looks at Israel one can see how hard it is to divest religion from a linguistic and cultural identity.
I personally am an atheist who comes from a “culturally” Catholic family though with agnostic parents, Protestant great-grand-parents on one side, and a mixed Irish and Scots-Irish heritage. Catholicism is already separated from my culture – and personal identity 😉
For me the heart and muscle of Irish culture is the Irish language. From that stems history, geography, literature, poetry, etc. Art and crafts are related to that. Though I also believe that ultimately, alongside people in Ireland with a strong sense of an “ethnic” Irish identity, there should also be people for whom the Irish language is simply their language, their daily spoken tongue, without any special connotations. That is normality, at least as I see it 🙂
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A Shémais,
There are sadly still some who think that the battles over Cymraeg have effectively been won. Week after week, however, we see that bigotry towards the language and those who speak it is still rife. Moreover, it is still deemed acceptable even to supposedly ‘liberal’ Brit readerships.
Such bigotry from the English is, of course, rooted in the standard false sense of superiority of Brit Statism (not ‘Brit Nationalism’, note; ‘Britain’ isn’t a nation, never has been). When it comes from people who are (or who claim to be) Welsh (and I don’t count the likes of Carol Vorderman in that category – if your cat has her kittens in the oven, it doesn’t make them scones), then it is down to the inferiority complex assiduously inculcated in the Cymry for generations, in which they have been encouraged to believe that our national language is ‘backward’ and tied up with all sorts of reactionary elements.
Going back to the Brit fake liberals, in the space of just ten days at the beginning of 2009, I came across three instances of articles attracting series of comments which – had they made about Jews or Jamaicans – would have been rightly regarded as racist.
First up was a piece on the IT website The Register, which reported on how a Labour MP wanted text in Cymraeg on the then government’s planned ID cards.
Now, I know that IT specialists are not always the most socially attuned folk, but I didn’t expect the torrent of abuse which followed: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2009/02/04/welsh_language_id_cards/
A few days later, Hywel Williams wrote a piece for The Guardian talking about the National Assembly’s plans for new language legislation (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/03/wales-language). The same bigoted abuse followed, from readers of what is supposed to be a ‘liberal’, if not actually left-of-centre, paper.
Less than a week later, and The Register reported (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/16/libra_freezes_out_welsh_legalese/) that the Brit State’s Courts Service’s computer system couldn’t handle the need (as of right) for documents in Cymraeg (this is an ongoing problem, which led to the imprisoning of Jamie Bevan only a few months ago, as you will recall). Again, the comments after the piece would have been deemed actionable at law had they been made about any other ethnic or cultural group.
But, no; we Cymry are expected to ‘take a joke’, ‘not take it seriously’, ‘stop being so up ourselves’, etc. And those calls are always made by what I call The But-heads (distinguished by their standard speech pattern of “I’m all for Welsh, but…”).
In my honest view, any such bigotry must be tackled head-on and with (non-violent) direct action until such time as the cultural supremacists and their But-head followers feel at least some sense of shame about the crap they spout.
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Great Comment, and very informative.
I quite agree with you. Positive, non-violent, direct action is the only way to tackle and ultimately defeat bigotry. All this stuff about just ignoring it is nonsense. To ignore a bully is to encourage him.
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Míle buíochas a Shionnaigh as na hailt ar chúrsaí na dteangacha seo. Tugann tú an-léargas ar an amaidí a bhíonn i gceist ag lucht dall an ghallbhéarla, nár mhaith aon rud a bheith ann ach a dteanga féin. lean leat
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Viewing from England it does look like some Irish people love to wallow in self pitty, but know very little about true history. In reality people in England could not care less if you all speak Umpalumpa, the General population in England are British by name and English by nature, you are not the only ones who have had Great Britain rammed down your throats. “Great Britain”, the dream of the Welshman, Geoffrey of Monmouth and the actions of the Scotsman and King, James the Sixth, not very English realy.
Scotts are not indigenous to “Britain”, or Albion to give the proper name, they are Egyptians who invaded Ireland during the Iron age. The proper name of Scotland is Caledon, named from a tribe hailing from the Rhineland. the Scots invaded Caledon from Ulster. Like wise “Celts” invaded Ireland in the Iron age, only they never called themselves “Celts” since the word was invented in the 18th century. By attempting to link Iron age invaders with a Spanish tribe called the Celtoi.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Irish tribes were invading Albion to the North and along the West coast. An indigenous (British) historian, who you would today call Welsh, referred to the Irish as “savage alien races” . The Irish were notorious for invading Albion and taking slaves, one was calld Patrick, you later made him your saint, a man of Cumberland, not Ireland. Thats Cumberland in England boys and girls, he was made a slave and brutally treated by the Irish. The Irish also joined in with an attack on England in the 10th centuty when Brian Boru and his viking followers nearly destroyed England and massacred thousands.
If you have listened to the “famine” programme on RTE you will have discovered that the Irish people after the “famine” were forced to speak English by the Roman Catholic Church.
Other interesting facts are that both Strongbows Flemmish invasion of Ireland and Cromwells invasion of Ireland, were financed by the Popes agents the Jews. Both groups had also backed William of Normandy in his invasion of England in 1066, where thousands were killed and in the North of England they later committed genocide. You seem to forget that you are Roman Catholic by force, not choice, your ancestors who refused the Pope were burnt at the steak. Pope Alexander III called the Irish an “undisiplined and untamed people” who should be “led to respect the Devine law” in 1172.
The English have in fact more pitty to wallow in than most, but we just get on with things, you can not change history. The Irish are not the saintly victims that you think you are, after the “famine” those who went to America then joined in with the extermination programme against the indigenous indians, another interesting fact. But what is “indigenous”, most Irish people are not even North European, they are North African and Southern European in origin. Who are the real Irish? is there such a thing as the real Irish? Nordic people have more claim to Northern lands such as Ireland, than North Africans and Spanish, on that theory an Englishman has a right to see himself as a true Northern European with indigenous rights to claim Northern European lands. That will give you something to think about, under this notion English is the indigenous language of Ireland, your language belongs in North Africa. Dont worry we will let you keep living in our lands, as long as you behave yourselves and send us a Christmas card.
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Bob, thanks for the Comment but I do believe you may need to brush up on some of your history.
Unfortunately your Egyptian origins for the Celtic peoples, and the Scots in particular, is a mix of history and myth. And mostly the latter. I wouldn’t place too much faith in the Leabhar Gabhála Éireann, the Foras Feasa ar Éireann, the works of Nennius or Geoffrey of Monmouth. Celtic, Judaeo-Christian, Classical and Medieval myth does not make for history. The Clann Mhíle may trace their origins to Egypt but that is simply a Biblical tie-in for the good fathers of the early Church.
The Celtic peoples originated in the Late Bronze Age communities along the western-seaboard of Europe, in Iberia, western France, Britain and Ireland (the so-called Atlantic Zone). The Celts never invaded Ireland because they came from Ireland. And Britain, western France and Spain too.
No evidence that Brian Bóroimhe attacked Britain. His activities were largely in the south-west and latterly in the midlands and east coast. Though his Scandinavian-Irish allies may well have done so. Interestingly though the Irish did attack England after 1066. But that was in support of their English allies and the sons of Harold, raiding down into Bristol (or Briostó in Irish) and along southern England. That, along with several other reasons lay in the desire of the Norman-French rulers of Britain to invade Ireland.
The English are a mongrel Germanic people: Saxon, Angle, Jute, Frank, Goth, Frisian, etc. They are also invaders of the island of Britain, the indigenous population of which is represented by the Welsh, Cornish and Scots. But that was a rather long time ago!
All peoples in Europe share common genetic traits. No evidence of separation until one moves into central Europe and eastward. And mainly evidence of continuity stretching back to the Neolithic and beyond.
Thanks for the points. Interesting.
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