THE Hedley Gibbard Memorial Lecture, organised by Cymdeithas y Cyfieithwyr Cymru / The Association of Welsh Translators and Interpreters, at this year’s National Eisteddfod in Pontypridd, was delivered by local Communist Party member and trade unionist Guto Davies. The following is a translated precis of the lecture.

The title of my talk, “A Little In Welsh,” is in contrast to the powerful past slogan of the Welsh Language Society “Everything In Welsh — Popeth yn Gymraeg” and reflects the struggle to promote the language on its boundaries, in its no-man’s land where it is not at its strongest.

I have worked and lived in this community, which is mainly English-speaking, but which bears an affinity towards a language which has been lost to so many of the population.

I have long been involved with the local Rugby Club, Pontypridd RFC — “The Valley Commandos” — as a stalwart supporter, as media officer and as a former director of Ponty Rugby Ltd. 

Over the past decades we sought to introduce the Welsh language, a little at a time, into the club’s activities, formulating an official language policy, publishing Welsh articles on the website and in the match programmes, playing Welsh songs over the tannoy on match days and providing Welsh voiceovers and titles on the videos produced for the club’s YouTube channel Ponty TV. 

In doing so we were way ahead of the Welsh Rugby Union, which at the time produced no Welsh language content and ahead of most if not all other clubs. I’m glad to say that other clubs are now more proactive in promoting the language and that those who lead the way are from the more anglicised areas of Gwent, such as Ebbw Vale RFC and Newport RFC.

It was sometimes a struggle to persuade some of the young Ponty players, from English-speaking families but who had been educated at local Welsh-language schools, to take part in activities through the medium of Welsh, because they lacked the confidence to do so. 

That reflected, in microcosm, the problems faced by the Welsh language in these valley communities, the language of the classroom, an official language, a language that is statistically on the rise, but a language that is not a natural means of communication and as such is low on confidence. 

I have partaken in numerous conversations, even within my own household, or in local pubs, behind the bar in Clwb y Bont, conversations that change from Welsh to English as if someone was flicking an unseen switch, and doing so because the speakers, the young people of our community, do not feel an obligation to speak Welsh even though they are able to do so. 

And in the end, always, it is the English language that prevails. Our valley communities are among the most Welsh in terms of population, but not in terms of Welsh speakers, and we must remind ourselves that the big immigration here occurred a century and a half ago as people flocked to work in the coalmines, many from rural north and west Wales, and even the incoming English and Irish being naturally integrated into the Welsh-speaking community. 

These were not second-home buyers, not retirees or people escaping from the “rat-race” of the big English cities, but the new-born proletariat of the Industrial Revolution. When the National Eisteddfod was last held in Pontypridd back in 1893, 66 per cent of the local populace were natural Welsh speakers. That percentage saw serious decline but is by now regaining some lost ground.

I recently read a biography of the popular author and broadcaster Gwyn Thomas from nearby Porth in the Rhondda valley, and the history of his family in the early decades of the 20th century provide an insight into the fate of the Welsh language in these valleys, and the serious decline it endured. Thomas’s parents were both Welsh speakers, his father being a collier, but in the tempestuous decade of the 1920s, the coal industry and the Welsh language were in simultaneous decline, and within one generation the Thomas family lost its grasp of the native tongue. 

The parents and elder siblings could speak Welsh but Thomas and the younger siblings could not.

“I was one of the Rhondda generation,” said Thomas, “whose language with an almost malignant ease, had changed from Welsh to English … I entered late boyhood in complete ignorance of the language my father spoke if he wanted to say anything really significant … Politics in English, gossip in Welsh and downright lies in both.”

In the previous centuries in the valleys of Rhondda Cynon Taf, the language, in the form of its local Gwenhwyseg dialect, was specifically owned by the new working class in the melting pot of the Industrial Revolution, and as such was the language of conflict and of revolution. 

When the red flag was raised on Hirwaun Common during the Merthyr Rising, when the Chartists marched on Newport town, when the Scotch Cattle inflicted their reprisals across the valleys, they all did so predominantly in Welsh. It was the language of Lewsyn yr Heliwr, who was exiled, of Dic Penderyn who was hanged, of George Shell who was shot dead by the soldiers of the crown. I ask whether the Welsh language was more resilient and more relevant when in conflict with the imperialist British state than it is now, as a language of officialdom, translated in the corridors of power?

What then does the future hold for the language in these post-industrial communities, on its borders with the global, capitalist Anglo-American culture? 

The Welsh government target is to reach one million speakers by the year 2050. Will these be speakers in the classroom, in the office, over the answer-phone, or natural speakers, ordering a pint in the pub, celebrating a try or a goal on the terraces, swearing in an argument on the pavement or shouting in protest on the picket line? That is the struggle the language faces and it is a monumental one. 

I will end on a positive note, that I can sense a mood of optimism and that progress is being made, and as such the legacy of the National Eisteddfod in this area will be crucial. A young Pontypridd player greeting me in Welsh by the bar after a game, a customer ordering a pint in Clwb y Bont using some unfamiliar Welsh words, and my 10-year-old granddaughter in the middle of a WhatsApp chat turning easily from English to Welsh. 

And during Eisteddfod week, Welsh Language Society gigs being staged at Pontypridd RFC — “Popeth yn Gymraeg,” Everything In Welsh, not a Little In Welsh, for one week at least, and that having a galvanising effect on the young staff members serving behind the club bar.

My personal opinion, as a dedicated Marxist, is that we need once again to radicalise the Welsh language, to give it an adrenalin shot of anti-imperialism in order to revitalise its future. If this can be done, to reiterate the words of Evan James, resident of Pontypridd, who composed the lyrics to our national anthem “Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau” back in 1856 — “o bydded i’r heniaith barhau / may the old language endure.”

Guto Davies has resided in the Pontypridd area for over 40 years, employed as a track maintenance worker and supervisor on the Valleys Railway Lines, a member and officer with RMT, and volunteering as media officer with Pontypridd RFC, bar manager at local community venue Clwb y Bont and with the Rhondda Heritage and Aberdare Museums.