When I moved to Cardiff, I went to all sorts of meetings by various different leftist groups. From Socialist Appeal to Socialist Party, from The Communist Party to the Socialist Workers Party; I tried to be open minded. Every group I came across felt as if it had no place for the Welsh language in it. The Communist Party was an exception; I guessed this was because prominent members are current or ex-Welsh
language activists like Gareth
Miles; therefore it is due to influential members in the upper
hierarchy of the party that meant that they work bilingually.
I think that fundamentally, as the Socialist discourse lacks the libertarian aspect essential for democracy, and manifestations such as the use of Welsh are being used only if ‘leaders’ advocate it, is an inevitable symptom of this. Anarchism is partly about building new worlds in the shell of the old and not waiting for ‘after the revolution’ before taking matters into our own hands. We cannot wait for legislation or even a spontaneous revolution to undo the damage capitalism and globalization has done to the environment, people and minority languages and cultures, as well as everything else! In the case of Welsh, after campaigning for years with Cymdeithas yr Iatith Gymraeg, a group that was quite focused on linguistic legislation, I concluded that Welsh speakers need to create the linguistic landscape around them themselves, rather than wait for the government and multinational companies to do it for us.
