The Judge RANTS!
Date: 06/02/09
The Last Permitted Bigotry?
Warning! Long post ahead! Delays likely!
This is something I've been meaning to write about for a long time, but the time never seemed particularly apt for it.
Two things I've read online in the past three days have between them crystallised the issue, so I think it's time I got down to it.
We know that we live in a society where the sensitivities of all sorts of groups are better recognised than before. Some dismiss this under the standard John Littledick scream of "Poli'ical Correc'ness GAWN MAAAAAAD!!!", and there are times when it is taken to the giddy limit (although nowhere near as often as is supposed - many of the 'examples' cited by the meeja turn out either to be a deliberate misinterpretation of the facts or even outright fabrications), but I am very glad that I live in a country and at a time where - in the main - the doctrine of 'live and let live' seems to have penetrated deeper into the public consciousness than at any time in our history. Generally speaking (and, of course, all generalisations are potentially misleading - including this one), it is now no longer actively perilous to be, say, homosexual, or disabled, or non-white; and it's certainly now not thought in any way acceptable to discriminate against people in their daily lives on the basis of their 'difference'.
(This is not to say that the common thread of language should be carelessly pussy-footed about with in the name of sponsoring fluffiness. 'Diversity-speak' is, to put it kindly, uneuphonious, and creates weasling euphemisms ('differently abled') and confusion (I can't ever see 'LGBT' without thinking of a sandwich). What is worse, many of these terms are devised - and imposed upon the groups so denoted - by those who are actually outside those groups. That is why I approve of homosexuals reclaiming the word 'queer' for themselves in the same way that Afro-Caribbeans are in my view entitled to appropriate the word 'nigger' (or, rather, 'nigga') back to themselves. So long as it's understood that they are the only ones entitled to use it, of course. It will take until such time as 'the disabled' start banding together in organisations with names like The National Spazzes Union before we know that we've cleared the air, however. Oh, and while we're at it, can we stop using the word 'community' in this context, please? Speaking as a member of the 'diabetic community', the 'not-a-television-owner community' and the 'doesn't-drive community', I find it disobliging to be reduced down to the most mere elements of myself just to fit into somebody else's categorisations).
There are still bigotries, prejudices and ignorance left, of course, and perhaps it's naïve to think that all such attributes will ever be fully dispelled. Everyone seems to feel the need to feel superior to someone (however unwarranted or unsupported by evidence such superiority may in fact be); it may be all some people have to bolster their sense of self. At the risk of indulging in dog-psychologising, was Carol Thatcher's 'golliwog' outburst this week evidence of the scars left on her psyche by being the not-very-talented daughter of a domineering high-profile mother? Such things tend to come out in drink, which is one reason why I don't drink very much. It's like pouring tomato sauce - at first, too little comes out, and then it all comes out without your being able to stop it.
But this piece isn't about that. It's about two articles published in respected (and possibly even respectable) journals this week.
On Wednesday last, The Register published an article about how Nia Griffiths, Labour MP for Llanelli, had called for the Régime's detested National Identity Card to include text in Welsh.
Now, I needn't go over my many and varied objections to the Card and the Database State which lurks behind it - they should be well enough known to regular readers. Nor need I go into any depth as to yet another Labour MP spectacularly missing the point about the whole thing - Griffiths is an avowed supporter of state snooping - and not realising that the card could be in Azeri or Venusian for all the difference that it would make to the sinister intent behind it all.
What I can draw your attention to, though, are the comments which followed the article. Now bear in mind that readers of The Register are supposedly intelligent and well-informed, if often narrowly so. The narrowness of it can be demonstrated by some of the comments:
"I understand some welsh speakers don't speak english. But surely both of them could learn? I mean it IS the official language..." (Anonymous)
"Wales isn't even a country [...] so why should it get any special treatment? ('Richard Harris')
"Of course Welsh doesn't have equal validity, especially not outside Wales. I don't want that on any card of mine, ID or otherwise. What a waste of space. I'm not keen on the French, but at least more than 10 people speak that." ('Anthony Chambers')
"What a waste of extra ink!" ('Ben Cross')
"Although I have no proof of knowledge on the subject, I am willing to bet that everybody who speaks Welsh also speaks English, making Welsh one big waste of money." (another Anonymous)
"Wales is no more a country that Yorkshire.
Wales can no more afford to apply its regional accent on the rest of the country than can Norfolk." ('Mark Daniels')
"With all those L's, most people would mistake it for a bar code anyway." (yet another Anonymous)
"That language is just downright nuts, its like speaking Hobbit-ese!" ('Stu')
"Welsh - A dead language spoken only in Welsh schools, local government offices and the more remote regions of Patagonia. (Speaking AS a Welshman!)" ('WonkoTheSane' [sic])
"Instead of this, how about the 20 people in Wales who can only speak Welsh actually get off their arses and learn the fucking national language." ('Eddie Edwards')
"They want it, then let 'em pay for it.
With pound notes printed only in English!" (one more Anonymous)
"you mean the welsh don't already have them? they're allowed to roam free? unchecked? unsupervised? oh the horror! will no-one think of the sheep?" ('Spider')
"...comedy made-up language, like Welsh..." ('Stef')
Well, OK, I know that the world of IT has its fair share of the de-socialised, but I have to say that I had expected better.
That, however, was light relief compared to what I had read the day before.
On Tuesday, Hywel Williams wrote in The Guardian about the proposal by the National Assembly for a Legislative Competence Order (LCO) which would require large, private-sector bodies (corporations, in short) to provide Welsh-language service for their customers in Wales in the same way that public sector bodies are already bound to do.
(An LCO is a request to the imperial parliament in London to grant the National Assembly the powers to legislate in a given area. Note: 'request', 'grant'. We are not deemed to be sufficiently 'adult' a nation to be able to pass or amend laws without someone else's permission. As such a request would have to be passed by both houses of the British legislature, the odds against such an order - particularly in a contentious area - passing without being amended into uselessness are enormous in any case. But, I suppose that those who don't ask, don't get).
As Williams points out, the companies which will be affected by any such legislation are the large utilities, such as water, power and telecom providers. Most of them already provide some services in Welsh, if only because it is politic for them to do so. However, this provision is purely voluntary and if one or more of them decides, for whatever reasons, to stop providing it, then there is nothing short of having my duffle-coated former colleagues in the language campaign turning up mob handed and painting the company's vehicles green which can stop them; certainly there would be no legal measures which could discourage the companies from such a course of action. All that the LCO would do would be to put such provision on a legal footing and require the proper expansion of that provision into all areas of those companies' operations in our country.
There have been the usual distortions from the usual suspects, of course. The Home & Colonial Branches of the Confederation of British Industry (sic x2) and the Institute Of Directors have already started screaming about the terrible costs involved, and Labour's MPs in Wales (those perennial guardians of every nation's rights except their own) have already begun their customary threatening growling.
What I want to talk about here, though, is not Williams' article, but about the comments published below it. Here, in the pages of what is supposed to be a newspaper of the centre-left in British politics, we can find many remarkable examples of one of the many things wrong with the centre-left in British politics: its sheer brute ignorance of one of this island's native cultures.
Firstly, the "they can all speak English anyway, can't they?", argument:
"You're asking for companies to print things in a language which only a few people can read alongside a copy in a language almost everyone can read. If there was a significant section of the population which could only speak welsh then I'd understand, but as far as I know this is not the case." ('Sealion')
"(a) Three-quarters of the Welsh speak English by preference, most exclusively, knowing it's the world language of the future,.
(b) All the rest can speak English if they have to.
(c) Those who refuse to do so are mostly antiquarians, posturing pseuds or pressure groupies with a vested interest in obscurantism.
(d) Nearly every idea or concept dating from later than 1800 in this somewhat contrived tongue is straight from English...
(f) The burden on the public purse of bilingualism is incalculable..." ('EndaClarke')
Next up, we have the "you fucking Taffies are spending our hard-earned English dosh" ploy:
"The Welsh language would be fine if the Welsh were prepared to pay for it all. Until the English get free prescriptions, I suggest we save the cost of all such disposables as Welsh language TV, road signs and anything else that isn't sufficiently important that the Welsh themselves aren't prepared to pay for from their own pockets.
What about my bloody rights for a change?" ('TPTFC')
"It's a good way of committing fincial suicide.
If the Welsh want to do that, I have no issues at all.
BUT I refuse to pay any more tax in England to support the increased costs of the Welsh unemployed as a result!" ('Madasafish')
"Wales is entirely welcome to exercise is rights as a country, principality, region or whatever it chooses to call itself - but without the benefit of money stolen without the consent of the occupants of other countries, thanks." ('TMAP')
This is followed by the time-honoured "middle-class fascist Taffia" argument, as presented by the Labour Party since about 1965:
"Who is it for anyway - a few Welsh language users who want to beat their chest in cultural 'victories' over the English - or so it seems from here." ('daddysgonecrazy')
"I am Welsh and I do not want this nor do the vast majority of Welsh people. This is thrust upon Wales by single issue fanatics in Plaid Cymru" ('bluebirds')
"More makework for the Taffia. What's not for the average Guardianista public sector parasite to like?" ('EndaClarke' - again)
"Great stuff. It's all the more well paid jobs for us boyos" ('Barpropper')
"...welsh school, i.e. where first language is Welsh means nice middle class enclave." ('555555')
"Seems to me this is really about providing key positions for the Welsh speaking minority and excluding all kinds of foreigners." ('david119')
"The majority of Welsh people couldn't give a monkey's toss one way or the other.
Some bourgeois tossers here and there, and that's just about it. But, unfortunately, like the poor, such tossers will allways be with us." ('schlick')
And, finally, the dangerously ignorant, vacuous and vicious:
"Are we all mad in this nation? Regional languages are nothing but divisive...By all means practise your quaint customs at your own expense and where the economy will not be damaged as a result." ('TMAP' again)
"Legal welsh stopped in - was it 1497?, there was no word for most concepts. No problem that can't be fixed with lots of money [...] The Welshifying Nats are pushing all this dangerously far." ('555555' - recurring)
"We really should stop worrying overmuch about these unproductive and expensive [...] peripheral areas, just re-name thm England and cut the nonsense about regional languages." ('hertsman')
"Plaid [...] are, as was always the case, merely obsessed with pushing their myopic outdated view of Welsh culture onto the overwelming majority of the population who have already chosen to reject it." ('tish')
"Already West Cardiff is looking more and more like East Jerusalem with a humourless, supremacist master race moving in..." ('ragworm')
"...many Welsh language speaking middle class people are moving in [to Cardiff] and 'laying claim', as if speaking the Welsh language gives them a God given right." ('ragworm' redux)
"...outdated, nostalgic guff..........dangerous too. I'll give you an example of that...............an acquaintance says to me : 'I send my kids to a Welsh school........no Pakis'..........Charming......." ('ragworm' repeats)
These, let it be said, are the readers of one of the major liberal-left newspapers in Europe. It may be unfair to judge The Guardian by its readers - my late colleague Chris Brandon was a regular reader of the Daily Mail despite being as left-wing as one could be, on the unimpeachable grounds that for years it was the only daily rag which gave the sanctimonious Blair and his apostles the regular kicking they deserved. But the comments on Williams' article are - by a margin of about eight or nine to one - indicative of either wilful ignorance or sub-tabloid cultural hatred. Could you imagine comments like these being allowed by The Grauniad moderators if they had been about, say, Jews or Muslims? No, neither can I. So why should we have to take it?
The trouble, of course, is that we have very little visibility in England (my fingers started to type 'Elfland' there - goodness knows why). Perhaps as a result of being a colony for far longer than Scotland or Ireland and of having not had an autonomous political, educational or legal establishment, we have been considered as nothing much more than another undifferentiated 'region' of England - a sort of Dorset with peaks - which can be regarded as suitable for little more than allowing under-prepared tossers from Sutton Coldfield or Stevenage to come and fall off or into our landscape at monotonously regular intervals; or a ready place of refuge for those tired of the very same 'rat race' upon which they built their own advantages over us rude colonials.
We don't exactly help ourselves, it must be said. Most of the population of the north regard Liverpool as their capital city (although, as about half of them seem to have been born there anyway, this may be an understandable longing for their Heimat), and Cardiff is the capital city most atypical of the country it is supposed to be the capital of that I can think of (although Canberra and Brasilia must be in with a shout in that contest - but then they started out as artificial creations) - it is still full of the terminally provincial who are constantly looking down the M4 to see what London is thinking. We have been divided not just by the way in which our country has been developed primarily for the benefit of the ruling state - the way in which the major road and rail routes all run east-west rather than north-south, for example; to go from Holyhead to Swansea on the train, you have to go via large parts of west-central England - but by our own mutual suspicions and our innate tendency to fall out with each other over trivial issues (we're far happier fighting against each other than alongside each other against a common opponent - except in unimportant matters such as games).
I'm quietly hopeful that things are changing, however slowly. The coming of the National Assembly, for all its shortcomings and impotence where it matters at present, has loosened the old bonds of party loyalty to such an extent that there are now only two local authorities under Labour control, Plaid has lost control of Gwynedd, and we have had coalition government for most of the last decade. A broader political avenue - bypassing the decaying old donkeys of the Westminster machine - is opening up, and now the only parties committed to reversing devolution are the lunatic fringe of UKIP and their soul brothers in the BNP.
This, however, still may not be enough to combat the ignorance and hate of people such as the ones I've quoted in this piece. But, of course, they would say that we had no sense of humour and that they think the world of us, really. In which case, I'm sure they'll laugh readily when I characterise their beloved Britain in the following way (based on an old Pepsi ad). Only jokin', mun! 
