Wales celebrates its national saint’s day in 2013 in a mood of growing national self-confidence. Hyfrydol! ‘Wonderful!’ as they say in Wales. Not only is its Rugby team playing well again, having defeated France and Italy on their travels in a bid to retain the Six Nations’ Championship they won so magnificently last year, but last weekend saw Swansea City AFC triumph in the League Cup at Wembley, in their centenary year, and Cardiff City AFC beat my team, the Wolves, to go eight points clear at the top of the Championship (the old division one). The fact that a third of the rugby team were born in England, with its captain hailing from King’s Lynn, and that Wolverhampton Wanderers AFC have more Welsh international players in their first team than Cardiff or Swansea, plus a Welsh team coach, hardly seems to matter. Neither should it, though it would have done in the past. There’s a renewed confidence about Wales which doesn’t simply come from returning exiles or ancient into modern Iberian connections. The Welsh Rugby team used to do better when the coal industry was booming, but there’s hardly any industry left to boom in the south Wales valleys, and, whenever the British economy catches a cold, Wales gets influenza. When England gets flu, Wales gets pneumonia, and the current general economic malaise is no exception to this pattern. However, in recent years, Wales has developed a strong government of its own, controlling its Health and Education services, able to follow its own policies in response to the needs of its people, independently from the Westminster Parliament.
All this seemed light years away when I left Wales three decades ago, having studied for two degrees in both North and South, representing its students as the Chair of UCMC (the National Union of Students, Wales) and training as a teacher in the West Wales (notice the capitals). During my eight years as a student there, I learnt Welsh, climbed all its mountains over 3,000 feet and a few more besides, lived in three of its fine cities, visited many of its valleys, watched its sporting successes, socialised in many of its pubs and worshipped in some of its chapels! Oh, and I managed to do a fair bit of discussing, debating, researching and writing. In fact, I’m still writing about the country and its people today, albeit from a safe distance!
St David, Dewi Sant, was the only one of the four patron saints of the four countries of the British Isles to be born in the country he represents, although it was then part of a much larger post-Roman British territory, stretching from Cornwall to Strathclyde. The rugged and picturesque Pembrokeshire Coast hosts many small chapels dedicated to the Celtic saints whose Christianity predated the arrival of the Papal envoy in Canterbury to covert the pagan Saxons. I once camped by the chapel dedicated to Non, David’s mother, looking out to Ireland and the Atlantic. David was born near here in the time of the legendary Arthur, the early sixth century, a time when the Welsh still controlled much of the west and north of Britain, including modern-day Scotland, the north, midlands and south-western counties of England and, of course, Wales itself.
Saint David’s Cathedral (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
However, by the mid-eighth century, these three ‘British’ heartlands of the ‘Cymru‘ or ‘Compatriots’ had become separated by the Anglo-Saxon settlers, to whom they had become known as the ‘Welleas’, the ‘foreigners’ in their own land. Little is known of David himself, except that he became Primate, or Archbishop of the Church in Wales, then independent from Rome, and that he established a monastery in what is now called St David’s, still no more than a village in population, but now the smallest city in Britain, due to the Cathedral which stands there today, dedicated to the patron saint, and a place of pilgrimage since the Norman Conquest of England and south Wales in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
The other surviving stories about David, and there are many of them in the Welsh tradition, are, as they say, the stuff of legend. Wells and mountains were said to spring up at his feet and he miraculously cured the blind, the lame and the sick. According to one of these legends, St David’s spirit was taken up to heaven by a host of angels amid great singing to his glory and honour, on 1st March 589. According to the history of the next 1500 years, his people have never stopped singing since, nor could anyone or anything stop them. A poem in Hungarian, written by János Arany in the mid-nineteenth century, Walesi Bárdok (‘The Bards of Wales) draws inspiration from this determination to maintain independence from the invading Normans, whose Edward I built the castles which surround the country.
Many visitors to the National Eisteddfod never go into the Pavillion (background), being able to view the competitions on the big screen (foreground). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Besides Rugby, which the Welsh did not invent but turned into an art and craft, the other great ‘Cymric’ institution is the ‘Eisteddfod‘ or ‘Settlement’. It is a purely Welsh invention, and not as old as it seems, with its processions of white-robed druids. It dates from the Romantic Revival of the late eighteenth century and the Royal National Eisteddfod is an annual occasion when musicians, poets, artists and craftsmen gather during the first week in August on a site announced a year and a day before. The Archdruid of the Gorsedd of Bards presides over the chairing and crowning of the bard, which can only take place if the assembly answers his question A oes heddwch? ‘Is it Peace?’ in the affirmative by repeating the word ‘Heddwch’. The language of the National Eisteddfod is Welsh, and besides the main competitions there are many ‘side-shows’ from folk concerts to political gatherings, both of which I attended as a student in Wales, also speaking, in my faltering Welsh, to a meeting of Welsh students in 1979.
English: Cofio/remembering Waldo Williams The upright bluestone on Rhos Fach near Mynachlogddu was erected in memory of the great Welsh Nationalist, poet, pacifist, and Quaker who lived and taught in the area. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldo_Williams (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When I arrived in Wales in 1975, an ‘eisteddfod’ was not a new concept to me. In fact, I had already taken part in one in Birmingham, winning singing, recitation and drama competitions. It was also known as a ‘Festival of Arts’ and the competitions were in English, but the nature of the event was based on earlier events held by Welsh exiles in the city for more than a hundred years, mostly connected with the Welsh chapels. In the 1960s the ranks of these exiles had been swelled by Welsh teachers who formed at least half of those who taught me, whether at school or Sunday school. They twice helped my father, a Baptist pastor in the city from 1965 to 1979, to put on a very broad festival of competitions between the Baptist chapels in the west of the city. So, when I was asked to compete as a Welsh learner in the Inter-College Eisteddfod, involving students from all the universities and colleges in Wales, I was happy to do so. I learnt ‘Cofio’ (‘Remembering’) by Waldo Williams, and remember it to this day, though I still don’t know the exact meaning of all the words. Unfortunately, I got flu just before the event was to be staged that year, 1976, in Aberystwyth, and was unable to compete since I had lost my voice. However, I did take part in local ‘Noson Lawen’, ‘Happy Nights’, and ‘Gymanfa Ganu’, Community Singing.
Photograph of Valle Crucis Abbey, Denbighshire, Wales – detail of tracery (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By the time I left Wales in 1983, I was so in love with these events that I took a group of Lancashire kids from the school where I held my first teaching post, to the Llangollen International Eisteddfod, where we sang ‘I like to go a-wandering’ in Valle Crucis Abbey and watched Hungarian folk-dancing by the picturesque River Dee. We also visited Welsh and Norman castles on either side of Offa’s Dyke, acting out sheep-raids in both directions!
I have yet to find a daffodil blooming here in Hungary on 1st March, but am sure that there are already magnificent displays of them below the castle walls around Wales, as well as beneath the city walls in Canterbury, where I sojourned last in Britain.
Blwyddin Dydd Gwl Dewi! A Joyous St David’s Day, wherever and however you celebrate it!
Heddwch i chwi gyd! Peace be with you all!
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Leighton Andrews, former AM, member of the National Assembly for Wales. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The former Education Minister in the Welsh Assembly, Leighton Andrews (left), my fellow student-leader from 1975-1980, has recently published a writ which was served on ‘persons unknown’ occupying the Maths Tower of the then University College of North Wales, Bangor, in November 1976. Although I was personally ‘in occupation’ throughout the four or five nights and days from 25th November, this is the first time, on Leighton’s website, that I’ve had the chance to read this document properly, since it was served to the iron fire escape near the top of the tower on a typically blustery day, and was almost immediately blown off as the College authorities, including the Assistant Registrar, descended.
The last I saw of it was with him in hot pursuit, and I had no idea that it had been retrieved until recently, when Leighton produced it for a talk at the National Eisteddfod. Perhaps it was retrieved and reposted, or delivered to the Student Union building nearby, but no-one inside the occupation accepted it by hand, as to do so, we were all briefed, would be to accept its terms and leave us open to identification and prosecution if we didn’t vacate immediately. We were there because the College had already expelled four officers of the Cymric Society named on its membership card. As long as we remained ‘persons unknown’, they advised us, it would be difficult to enforce the writ, except through forced entry and repossession. We therefore ignored it and there was no contact, physical or otherwise with those serving the writ, or with the document itself.
Univeristy of Wales, Bangor Students’ Union as seen from Deiniol Road (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I have kept a diary from that year and papers from the following two years (speeches and statements). As a historian myself, I think it’s high time I keep my promise and publish what I can recall from these sources and my memory of these events, from a much ‘safer’ distance in time and space. Like Leighton, I was a student at UCNW from 1975-78, moving south to Cardiff to pursue my research interests in the coalfield valleys thereafter, while Leighton stayed on as a sabbatical officer and then researcher in Bangor.
Although having no Welsh family connections myself, I had grown up among Welsh miners and teachers in Coventry and Birmingham, many of whom attended my father’s Baptist Chapel and were often ‘surrogate’ parents to me and my siblings as part of its broad community. Indeed, the presence of the Welsh in these cities was so strong in the sixties and seventies, that my pastor-father organised what were called ‘eisteddfodau’ for the chapels in the West Midlands, and in which I competed ( in English, of course). It therefore seemed a natural choice to study History and Biblical Studies at Bangor, and I immediately felt at home among the Welsh Nonconformists, both Welsh and English-speaking. I quickly came into contact with a wide variety of them through my involvement in the Christian Union, many of them theological students living in ‘Bala-Bangor’, their college in Upper Bangor. Some spoke very little English in their everyday lives. Others were from south Wales and, like me, attended Penrallt English Baptist Church, where Rev Roy Jenkins, now a regular contributor to Thought for Today on BBC Radio Four, was then the young pastor.
I also understood the history of the Nonconformists in the Liberal and Labour politics of Britain since, in an ideological sense, my father did indeed know Lloyd George! So it was not by accident that Leighton and I got to know each other through membership of the Young Liberals, then led by Peter Hain, in our first year, becoming active in the students’ union, he as a Council member and I, in my second term, as Undergraduate Representative for the Arts Faculty. Before arriving in Bangor, I had made contact with the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Christian Pacifist organisation, and in the late summer of 1976 became closely involved with Welsh Baptist Pacifists and Quakers, helping to establish the Welsh section of the F.o.R. that autumn, following a week-long Conference on Devolution, Nationalism and Pacifism in Iona, with delegates from Scotland and other parts of Wales. My diary also shows that I attended anti-Fascist meetings in Birmingham and was increasingly involved in non-violent direct action campaigns, inspired by the writings of Gandhi, Martin Luther-King jnr. and John Ferguson. It was in this spirit that, on returning for my second year in Bangor, I resolved to learn both the Welsh language and, at the same time, more about the culture and politics associated with it. After some weeks spent in a village on Anglesey, I moved into Neuadd John Morris-Jones, the Welsh-speaking Hall of Residence in Upper Bangor in October, and quickly developed a network of friends among the Welsh learners and student-teachers there, many of whom hailed from south and west Wales. At the same time, I became acutely aware of the linguistic and cultural ‘apartheid’ which existed between English and Welsh-speaking students in Bangor, the latter making up only 10% of the student population in a town which was 60% bilingual and a surrounding area which was up to 90% first-language Welsh. I could also detect that there were deep divisions between those from this ‘Fro Cymraeg’ (Welsh-speaking heartland) and Welsh-speakers from other parts of Wales, who, though speaking the language from birth, were often not literate enough to study in it as a medium, unless they had attended bilingual schools in these areas. ‘Cymraeg Byw’ (Living Welsh) was their Welsh, and this is what I learnt, in the main.
Seven years later, although fairly fluent, I had to find my first post in England, since I, too, was not literate enough to use it as a medium of education. These were often referred to, somewhat condescendingly, as ‘Myfyrwyr Cymreig’, Welsh in culture but not in academic language, being slightly above the lower tier of ‘Cymru-di-Cymraeg’, the anglicised and monoglot English-speakers. It was largely from these ‘second and third class’ Welsh-speakers that the teachers of ‘Cymraeg Byw’ were drawn, many of them having learnt it themselves. Naturally, this group of committed Welsh Learners and Language Activists, although committed to direct action in defacing property, mostly English-only official signs, were also keen, through the students’ union, to teach the language to anyone, for any purpose, and were therefore more willing to elicit a more sympathetic view of Welsh culture among the English and international student population. Elen Rhys-Tyler was typical of this group, and was the Chair, or ‘Cadeirydd’ of the Welsh Learners’ Society.
It was also about this time that I first met Ann Beynon, a first-language Welsh-speaker, who had been the Student Union President in 1974-75, the year before I arrived in Bangor. By the time I met her, she was a postgraduate student in the Department of Welsh Language and Literature. She told me that two years earlier, in November 1973, students in both Aberystwyth and Bangor had gone on strike over the seemingly uncontrolled expansion of both University Colleges. In spite of this, and the Student Union’s opposition to its plans, the Bangor College planned to grow to 3,500 places by 1980/81, to include 150 places resulting from the amalgamation with the teacher-training college, St. Mary’s, on the opposite hillside of the town, representing an increase of at least 10%. Most of these new students were to be added in departments which traditionally drew their intake from ‘over the border’ and further afield, thus adding to the anglicising influence of the College on the town and surrounding area. This was exacerbated by the College authorities’ continuing refusal to implement a full bilingual policy for documents and signs throughout its administration and buildings, a policy which had already fully implemented by the Student Union under Anne Beynon’s leadership. The parallel campaign for Welsh language rights had already led to the setting up of an autonomous union of Welsh-speaking students in Aberystwyth, within an ‘Urdd’ or ‘Guild’ of students.
Percentages of Welsh speakers in the principal areas of Wales. Based on the GFDL Image:WalesNumbered.png. (Notice that no principal area falls within the 37,5-50% range!) Based on 2001 census data. QuartierLatin1968 02:30, 6 September 2005 (UTC) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By the autumn of 1976, however, the Welsh-speaking students in Bangor had become alienated by the College’s intransigence over the bilingual policy and through the growth of a hard-line element of nationalists in a group called ‘Adfer’ (‘Reinstate’) which had broken away from the Welsh Nationalist Party’s support for an independent, bilingual Wales, and were advocating language and immigration controls for Gwynedd (the three ‘shires’ of Caernarfon, Anglesey & Merioneth). This group, led mainly by Theology students from ‘Bala-Bangor’, were becoming increasingly influential in the ‘Cymric Society’, which although operating with a grant from the Student Union, was becoming increasingly separated in practice, based on the Welsh Halls of Residence.
Following an initial declaration of intent, the Society launched a campaign of direct action against the College, without reference to the Student Union, and despite the urging of restraint and patience by members of the Welsh Learners’ Society.
In a coordinated night-time action, slogans were daubed throughout the College’s buildings, including a large slogan proclaiming ‘Justice for the Language’ on the long wall of the main upper college, overlooking the town. Monolingual English signs and notices were torn down. The following day the College authorities met in a secret, emergency session, and immediately expelled the four members of the Cymric Society named on its membership card, including its minute’s secretary and entertainment secretary, the latter of whom had had no involvement or prior knowledge of the action. The injustice of this victimisation was obvious, and the Student Union’s bilingual solicitor in Menai Bridge was immediately called into action to write to the Principal, Sir Charles Evans, following a lengthy briefing with the four students. I remember well the sombre mood which attended that meeting in his office, even though I could understand only a little of the content of the discussion. However, the predicted backlash in the student body as a whole to the precipitate action, meant that, when the General Meeting was held on 18th November, there was an understandable mood of antagonism against the Cymric which defeated a motion calling for concerted action to secure the reinstatement of the four officers.
The Society again took matters into their own hands by announcing a strike, which was swiftly followed by an occupation of the main lecture theatre. There seemed little alternative for the Welsh learners but to support this unofficial action, and I well remember the defiantly spontaneous, harmonised singing of Welsh hymns by the whole of the Cymric gathered there. For someone brought up in a Nonconformist household and church, this was a very moving experience, evoking a deep sense both of shared values and of the injury and injustice over the treatment of the language which these students felt so keenly, but were enduring so stoically and endeavouring to overcome.
When a second motion proposing direct action against the College by the whole student body was narrowly defeated a week later, with only a small number of Welsh ‘delegates’ present and refusing to vote, the substantial minority of English-speaking students who had supported it decamped to Neuadd John Morris-Jones, where an impromptu meeting was held in its main hall, declaring its support for the Cymric and the setting up of an autonomous, ‘sister’ Welsh-speaking Union such as existed at Aberystwyth. Only then, we agreed, could the Welsh-speakers have the official voice necessary to deliver the bilingual policy without further victimisation from the College authorities and having their protests continually voted down by an English student majority with little sympathy for their cause. Speaking in response, the provisional Cymric leadership called upon the Welsh learners and their supporters to show their support by occupying the Maths Tower. A set of keys was produced and a small, advanced party gained unforced entry, followed by larger numbers, so that control was swiftly established. After a small group of cleaners were allowed access in the early morning, the stairwell was well-barricaded, and the Tower remained closed for lectures the next day and into the next week, despite the writ being granted.
The permanent occupiers were led by Elen Rhys-Tyler, while Vaughan Roderick, Leighton Andrews and myself acted as go-betweens for the Welsh learners, the Cymric and the Student Union. A further Student Union Emergency General Meeting was called for the middle of the following week, as the term was coming rapidly to an end, there was a need to ensure that any threat of action would not be seen as idle and could result in the reinstatement of the four students for the beginning of the next term (I had joined the student strike as Undergraduate Representative, since my main concern was for the academic progress of the four).
We left the tower reluctantly, but of our own free will, a day or so after the writ was issued. This was at the request of the Cymric, who had also begun the unofficial supportive action through the Welsh Learners’ Society. We had been invited to take action as its members, not as officials and members of the Student Union, since the Union had rejected such action. We therefore had no mandate for the action on behalf of the student body as a whole. The Cymric Society also ended the occupation because of a small, but disruptive, group of ultra-left activists in the occupation, who had no real interest in the campaign for a bilingual policy and were advocating a more violent campaign solely on the issue of College victimisation. In reality, we feared that they simply wanted to foment disorder and destruction of property. Since ‘the Cymric’ were committed, in the long-standing tradition of the Welsh Language Society, to pacifism and non-violent direct action, they considered that this was too much of a risk to take both with the College’s property and with the future of a campaign that was already in its fourth year and set to run for some time. As Welsh learners, we also felt responsible for the backlash the action had already provoked among both students and staff, as well as for the tutorial work we had abandoned. In addition, we needed time to win support from the wider community in Bangor and the surrounding villages, since the College, as a major employer, was already manipulating the media to claim that important employee and student records had been trashed in the original actions taken by the Cymric Society a fortnight earlier. We therefore agreed to resume both our academic studies and constitutional/ diplomatic campaigning activities through the Student Union. In this, we gained the support for a second Emergency General Meeting from its officers, especially its Deputy-President and Leighton Andrews, to be held in Neuadd Pritchard-Jones later that week.
The Welsh learners withdrew from the Maths Tower following the release of hundreds of balloons declaring ongoing support for ‘the Four’ and the bilingual policy all across the town, put bilingual flyers under every door in every Hall of Residence, so that Neuadd Pritchard-Jones, the main Assembly Hall in the old ‘Top’ College, was filled to its 2,000 capacity, despite the non-attendance of all but a handful of Cymric members, since their occupation was continuing in the lecture theatre nearby. A simple but vaguely worded motion calling for ‘all peaceful actions’ to reinstate the four expelled students was proposed by the Union’s Palestinian Deputy-President, Mohammed Abu Koash. It was supported, with reservations clearly aired, by an overwhelming majority of those present, which meant that, had the votes of the otherwise ‘occupied’ Cymric been taken into account, two-thirds of the College’s students were unmistakably behind some form of concerted and coordinated non-violent direct action. A few days later, on receipt of written assurances of ‘good behaviour’ from the four, the College backed down, commuting their punishment to a suspension until after the Christmas holidays. All four stood together in accepting responsibility, including two brothers who were talented musicians and members of a soon-to-be internationally acclaimed Welsh folk group. Everyone in the College, except (it seemed) Sir Charles Evans, knew or accepted that at least one of them had taken no part in the action which led to their expulsion, but this brother, to his lasting credit, had steadfastly refused to deny responsibility while the other brother and the two other students stood likewise accused. Many lecturers, regardless of their views on the language issues, had been deeply concerned both for these obviously talented students and for the precedent that their continued expulsion would set.
The College gradually implemented a bilingual policy over the next two years, and the focus of campaigning shifted to the linguistic and cultural effects of its continued expansion. Although the Welsh learners urged the Cymric to work in tandem with the Student Union to achieve this, its leadership was heavily influenced by the separatist ‘Adfer’ group into setting up a ‘culturally pure’ Welsh Student Union, ‘Undeb Myfyrwyr Colegau Bangor’, operating out of its ‘Caffi Deiniol’ in Upper Bangor, and drawing membership from the Bala-Bangor Theological College and the Teacher-training college, Coleg y Normal. They rejected the overtures for a con-federal union structure, similar to the Guild of Students in Aberystwyth, with autonomy on Welsh language issues and campaigns and sole use of the third floor of the Student Union building, together with the Welsh Learners’ Society. Jim Bloice-Smith, a prominent English ‘home counties’ student member of the Christian Union, an independent College society, offered to chair negotiations, but even this approach from a respected member of the overall student community was dismissed, albeit politely. There followed a variety of rather sinister attempts to spy on and ‘purge’ members of the Welsh Learners’ Society in ‘Neuadd JMJ’.
The Society continued to operate within the official Student Union and was instrumental in persuading it to make the offer of a new constitution to the break-away union, a ‘covenant’ which was written simultaneously in Welsh and English, reflecting the different cultures as well as languages which would need to agree to develop a genuinely bilingual student body, rather than one which simply provided token translations. However, it became increasingly apparent that UMCB was set on a course of linguistic apartheid. In response to continued threats and intimidation, including the use of ‘kangaroo courts’, the Welsh learners within the Plaid Cymru student branch came out ‘fighting’, finding a platform for their moderate stance and almost succeeding in getting a full ‘slate’ elected to its executive in the spring of 1977. This was evidence that the ultra-nationalist position of UMCB was not as widely supported among the ordinary Welsh-speaking students of Neuadd John Morris-Jones as it claimed, even those from the Welsh ‘heartlands’ of Gwynedd. The Welsh learners also became active in UCMC (NUS Wales), which had been established some four or five years earlier, and elected Michael Antoniw, a Cardiff Law student of Ukrainian descent, as its Chairman, at a Conference held in Bangor that Easter. It established a ‘Welsh Language Action Group’, coordinating activity across the constituent colleges of the University and the teacher-training colleges. UCMC also provided a forum for research about the wider educational context of Welsh-medium education throughout Wales.
However, the opportunities for democratic debate and discussion in Welsh in Bangor were effectively stifled by the leadership of the UMCB, and the increasingly oppressive atmosphere which the Warden of ‘JMJ’ Hall strove to ameliorate led to the leadership of the Welsh Learners’ Society decamping to set up their own private residence in Upper Bangor. This proved something of a thorn in the side of the ‘Adferites’ who targeted the house for attack on at least one occasion that I can remember well.
It was during this, my final year, in Bangor, that I wrote the following speech as a Student representative on the College Court of Governors’ meeting on 1st February 1978, on the proposals put forward for the College’s future. The Court was split three ways on this. The College hierarchy wanted to continue the policy of expansion by at least 10%, while UMCB, through its sympathising lecturers, wanted a cut in student numbers by more than 15%. The Student Union’s position remained one of opposition to both cuts and further expansion:
In opposition to the motion (supporting a cut in student numbers), the Students’ Union…would not wish to deny that the imbalance of student numbers in favour of those from outside of Wales has had an anglicising effect on the College and local communities. However, we disagree with the supposed ‘solution’ put forward by the breakaway union….and supported here by Mr Griffith and Mr Orwig, for two main reasons:
1.) As we’ve said in our own motion, cutting the intake of students to 500 undergraduates would inevitably mean that many local people, many of them Welsh-speaking, will lose their jobs. About two thousand people are directly employed by the College. That is the reality which the proposers of this motion have to face. Since there is little alternative means of employment in and around Bangor, these people will be forced to move elsewhere to look for work. One of the reasons why the Welsh language is in such a weak position is…because Welsh-speakers have continually been forced out of the Welsh-speaking areas in order to find security and a decent standard of living…What this proposal does is to look at the language question in splendid isolation from the social and economic conditions in which the language exists. It looks at it from the lofty position of an intellectual élite who refuse to descend from their pedestal to ask the ordinary people in the College, the ‘werin’, what they want. The Students’ Union, however, holds regular meetings with representatives of the campus trade unions and we know what their attitudes are to this sort of policy. Mr Griffiths and Mr Orwig agree with the leaders of the ‘Undeb Cymraeg’ , who recently stated on TV that they believe that it is only this intellectual élite of university students and other literary figures which can save the Welsh language.
2.) Cutting the student intake to 500 will not make the College any more relevant to the local community. It will probably result in the closure of the College in the same way that Lampeter is threatened with closure.
Our motion restates Student Union policy going back over a period of five years…We’ve decided to bring this issue up again at this Court meeting not so much as a response to the ‘Undeb Cymraeg Education Policy’ (we didn’t know that Mr Griffith and Mr Orwig had agreed to act as their mouthpieces until we received the papers from the Registrar two weeks ago) but because, despite the consistent opposition shown by the students and local people, the College has continued to expand. Although the expansion rate has slowed, the College is still proposing to increase to nearly 3,500 by 1980/81. Only 150 of these new places result from the amalgamation with St Mary’s (Teacher-training College). The Principal himself admits that ‘even modest growth of the College presents us with problems’. In our view, this is something of an understatement, because it seems to fail to recognise that we have enormous problems already. Why is expansion not in the interests of staff and students?
1.) It would increase the sizes of already overcrowded classes;
2.) It would produce an added strain upon staff and essential resources, e.g. the Library, because the College will attempt to keep further employment to an absolute minimum.
We are opposed to any further expansion, but I must emphasise that we do not see stopping expansion as an end in itself. We want to freeze the number of students coming to Bangor so that then, as lecturers and students and local people, we can attempt to change the College into a more progressive institution more oriented towards the needs of the local community. ‘Undeb Cenedlaethol Myfyrwyr Cymru’ (NUS Wales), has been at the forefront of the campaign to obtain a more comprehensive system of further education in Wales and, as a step towards this, the devolution of the University of Wales to the Welsh Assembly. The only way, ultimately, to make the Colleges of Wales more Welsh is to encourage Welsh students to stay in Wales for their higher education, and that is why we advocate the setting up of a federated Coleg Cymraeg to coordinate teaching through the medium of Welsh throughout the University, and, ultimately, on a comprehensive basis, throughout Wales. Our policy of ‘no expansion’ is thus a means to these ends, the destruction of a binary system and of University elitism and an end to an education system dependent on ‘paper qualifications’. We must ensure that access to a decent standard of education is open to all who wish to benefit from it.
We agree that the College is at present far too large, but the way to counter this is not to cut its size…but to broaden its functions and change its nature, into a College whose prime commitment is to meet the needs of the local community. That doesn’t mean that we want a College which is parochial and inward-looking which is what you’d get if you replaced a College full of English academic students like me with a College full of Welsh academic students. However, in the short-term we can prevent the College from losing altogether its Welsh character by adopting a realistic policy of ‘no further expansion’, while rejecting the recipe for disaster which (some) would have us follow. However, by doing so, we will only be carrying out a cosmetic operation. The place of the Welsh language in higher and further education in Wales can only be found in terms of a more comprehensive system. That is why we ask you to reject motion 13, because it fails to identify the real problem. It fails to see the need for a more fundamental reorganisation in the structure of education in Wales. It also proposes to seriously damage any progressive movements by throwing out of work the very people whose support we need. I ask you to accept motion 14 as a policy around which we can unite and carry the campaign for the Welsh language forward.
The motion calling for the cut in undergraduate intake was defeated, but just over a week later, on February 9th, a group of 50-70 members of UMCB, the breakaway ‘Undeb Cymraeg’, occupied various parts of the old building in ‘Top College’. Their action was taken in protest against the then democratic decision of the College Court not to recognise the new union and to refuse the policy of limiting the number of non-Welsh-speaking students coming to the College for the next session. The campaign began on 6th February with the jamming of keyholes in Top College by means of glue. The following morning the UMCB members barricaded themselves in the Principal’s office and the Registrar’s office. When the barricades were breached they then moved into the nearby hall, Neuadd Powys. However, realising that their occupation was having little effect, they decided to end it by the early afternoon. Although it was thought that this was the preliminary action in a long campaign against the College authorities, it was also noted that the ‘Cymric’ campaign of 1976 had ‘received the support of many non-Welsh-speaking students and staff for its aim of an equitable language policy’, support which was ‘not forthcoming for this new campaign’.
Later that Spring, the Welsh Learners’ Society helped to get Barry Owen, a mature student from Flintshire, elected as the Students’ Union’s new President, the first Welsh-speaker to occupy the role since Ann Beynon. Leighton Andrews also became a sabbatical officer. I was elected Vice-Chairman for the University Sector of UCMC, succeeding Mick Antoniw as Chairman in 1979, shortly after the Devolution debacle and the success of the Federation of Conservative Students in taking control of the Student Union in Bangor and the Guild of Students in Aberystwyth, prior to Mrs Thatcher’s election. UCMC succeeded in continuing to offer a platform for progressive nationalists and Welsh language activists. Most importantly, it managed to contain the widening cracks on university expansion, bilingualism and Welsh-medium education in Bangor from spreading along a fault-line to Aberystwyth and Carmarthen. Our voice was respectfully heard on this, in Welsh, at a debate at the National Eisteddfod in Caernarfon in August 1979.
An accompanying major policy gain was the establishment of a federal Welsh-medium teaching board to develop courses throughout the constituent colleges of the University. In the autumn of 1979, UCMC also published its manifesto, Addysg yng Ngymru (Education in Wales) which elicited an editorial in The Western Mail and a great deal of more positive support from academics and administrators alike in the Welsh education system. The debate on Welsh-medium education had moved on from being simply the preserve of an intellectual elite to its central role in developing a more comprehensive system of further and higher education throughout Wales, across the binary divide. Unfortunately, until the Welsh Assembly was finally established, this policy could not be implemented outside the somewhat narrow confines of the marble halls of increasingly competitive university colleges and through the Welsh Joint Education Council (WJEC). Successive Tory and Labour governments at ‘St Stephen’s’, Westminster, simply allowed further, unbridled expansion of the university sector and the transformation of respected local specialist Colleges of Higher Education into universities, without examining the relevance of the courses offered to local needs. Leighton Andrews has written about this legacy elsewhere.
Andrew James Chandler
February 2012
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Un funud fach cyn elo’r haul o’r wybren,
Un funud fwyn cyn delo’r hwyr i’w hynt,
I gofio am y pethau anghofiedig
Ar goll yn awr yn llwch yr amser gynt.
“One short minute before the sun goes from the sky,
One gentle minute before the night starts on its journey,
To remember the forgotten things
Lost now in the dust of times gone by.”
This is the beginning of the poem I learnt to recite for the 1976 Inter-College Eisteddfod in Aberystwyth when I was an undergraduate and Welsh learner at Bangor University. I got ill, lost my voice and never got to perform it in public, but it’s stayed crystal clear in my mind ever since, though I still don’t know what each and every word means, exactly. Neither did I know much about its author until I bought an anthology of Welsh language poetry, with English translations, in May of the following year. Born in Pembrokeshire, west Wales, whose wild and rugged coastline I walked round later that summer, Waldo Williams (1904-1972) was an interesting personality, and someone I came increasingly to identify with, not just through the landscapes and seascapes which inspired much of his work, but also because he too taught small children, and was a committed pacifist and a Quaker, being imprisoned during the Korean War for refusing to pay income tax. Late in life he received the Arts Council prize for his one-volume collection of poems going back to the 1930’s, Dail Pren (‘Leaves of a Tree’). Published in 1956, they won him an enduring place in Welsh language literature.
His poems reflect both his responses to war and his experience of co-operation amongst the farmers of the Preseli Hills, which he took as the pattern of an ideal social order. These ‘traditionalist’ social ideals, including the Romantic ideal of universal brotherhood, seem in conflict with his ‘modernist’ poetic style. However, his nationalism is creative rather than defensive, revealing his belief in the power of imagination to overcome difficult present realities. This can be seen in his use of imagery and symbolism, giving an unusual force and freshness to his expression of ancient themes, as in Cofio. I well remember my teacher, herself from Dyfed, telling me to be more forceful in my rendition of the final verse and, in particular, the first stanza. ‘Hiraeth’, she told me, is not simply ‘longing’, but ‘heart-felt longing’, not an insipid childish ‘homesickness’, but a mature, adult emotion of ‘deep yearning’, almost unfathomable, for, in this case, ‘the old forgotten things of the human family’:
Mynych ym mrig yr hwyr, a mi yn unig,
Daw hiraeth am eich ‘nabod chwi bob un,
A oes a’ch deil o hyd mewn Cof a Chalon,
Hen bethau anghofiedig teulu dyn?
“Often in the evening, when I am alone,
A longing comes to know you every one;
Is there anything that can keep you still in the Heart and Memory,
The old forgotten things of the human family?”
The limitations of translation in conveying the force of these words is always apparent to me when I repeat them in the original Welsh verse. It is as if the poet is grabbing each of his ghostly ancestors out of the sea mist and holding onto them with all his might. This is the conflict between Williams as modern man and the ancient bardic themes and traditions which he is confronting in order to make them come alive for a fresh audience. The Welsh modernism of the post-war period is concerned with these themes of spiritual and national renewal, seeking to follow contemporary trends in European culture, at a time when rural ways of life were declining in Wales, together with the Welsh language. Williams greatest poem is widely judged to be ‘In Two Fields’, Mewn Dau Gae, which is based on a vision of brotherhood which he had whilst working on a neighbour’s farm as a boy. In this way, Welsh modernism took on a distinctive character through its association with religion and nationalism. Emotive words like hwyl (‘deep joy’) and hiraeth have deep spiritual significance, as does hyfrydol, which expresses more than the commonplace use of ‘wonderful’ in English. Significantly, indeed, it is the name of a famous Welsh hymn tune. To end on a lighter note, Williams also wrote a poem about the national flower-emblem of Wales, the daffodil, worn on St David‘s Day. According to Pliny the ‘Asphodel’ grew on the banks of the Acheron and the Elysian fields, delighting the spirits of the dead. This may account for the popularity of the flower on graves, but throughout Wales and England it has become the symbol of new life as Spring approaches, since it usually blooms on or before St David’s Day. In Wales, they say that if you are the first to find a daffodil in bloom you will have more gold than silver for a year. It is these themes that Williams takes up in his poem, Daffodil:
“Lead on into the field, Lady of March,
Give a greeting, golden girl of cold March,
None but the little white lily will dare
Appear before you, none more pure dare grow.
I pray you, lead after you
The vast generation of the seasonal garden…
Lady of March, lead on into the field.”
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