Screengrab taken from Senedd.tv of UKIP's Neil Hamilton at the Welsh Assembly at the Senedd in Cardiff Bay, Wales, May,2016. Senedd.tv Press Association. All rights reserved. It is not a good time to be a minority in the UK, and it is sometimes forgotten that this includes indigenous language groups. In Wales, the Welsh Labour Government has backed a bold target of achieving 1 million Welsh speakers by 2050, nearly twice the current number. Whilst the majority of its members, and the majority of the Welsh public are broadly supportive of the aim, there are longstanding institutional and cultural obstacles to its achievement. These tensions are currently being played out in Llangennech, where Labour members have been accused of working with Neil Hamilton, leader of UKIP in Wales, to campaign against a Welsh medium school in the village. This article provides a personal account of another long-running campaign for a Welsh medium school, which uncovers some of the underlying issues.
Where should one begin an essay on the Welsh language and the Labour Party in Wales? It is all too tempting to begin with a quote from the single most important and evocative figure in Welsh Labour’s history. The person Owen Smith so readily invoked during the Labour leadership contest in order to present himself as a radical man of the people. I refer of course to Aneurin Bevan.
