Institute of Welsh Affairs

IWA Annual National Eisteddfod Lecture 2003

The Welsh Survival Gene: The 'Despite' Culture in the Two Language Communities of Wales (bilingual).
Professor Jane Aaron
August 2003, £7.50
ISBN 1 871726 97 2

Whenever Welsh identity appears to be most under threat an in-built survival gene is triggered that responds with a burst of new creative activity, often in a different direction from before.

This is the theory put forward by Professor Jane Aaron, a professor in the school of humanities at the University of Glamorgan, in the Institute of Welsh Affairs lecture to be delivered at the National Eisteddfod in Meifod, Powys on Tuesday this week.

Professor Aaron offers her “survival gene” theory as an explanation for a range of historical comebacks by Wales, ranging from the defeat of Llywelyn at Cilmeri in 1282 (leading to a golden age of Welsh poetry), through greater integration with England in the 17th and 18th centuries (out of which came the Nonconformist revolution in Wales) to various last minute Welsh rugby victories, and finally the hair’s breadth vote in favour of devolution.

The threat to Welsh identity in the years immediately before the referendum had been the Thatcher government years, which had seen the disappearance of the bulk of the Welsh coal industry and with it a way of life in the Welsh valleys. Significantly, Dr. Aaron notes, the greatest rise in the numbers of Yes voters between 1979 and 1997 occurred in the south Wales valleys areas, which also recorded the greatest growth in the numbers of Welsh speakers in the 2001 census.

Professor Aaron warns, however, that it is dangerous to live from crisis to crisis, without any certainty that the necessary resistant response will kick in the next time. “That creativity which only appears to be released in Wales at a time of crisis needs to be harnessed. One way of bringing this about might be through disseminating more effectively the realisation that when it comes to the survival of so numerically a tiny culture and language base within a global economy, there is no respite from the threat.”

She suggests Welsh people need to be more fully informed about their own history and culture, in both languages. “A curious dual culturalism is being forged in Wales. Those children who attend Welsh-language schools are steeped in the culture and history of Wales but, apart from some history lessons, students at English language schools learn very little about the culture which was created despite difficulties in the villages and townships in which they were born.”

As in Scotland, she suggests, one text from Welsh writings in English should be compulsory for all students taking English literature at either GCSE or A level in Wales. The Welsh curriculum should also give a more prominent place to comparative studies of the struggles for survival of other stateless nations and minority languages and cultures.

“The content of a Humanities syllabus in Wales, apart from the specifically Welsh component, differs very little from its English equivalent, fort all that Welsh needs are very different from English ones. Wales simply apes England when it tries to operate culturally at an international level. Why should it not rather attempt to gain an international reputation as a country that through long experience and concern has much to contribute to world understanding of the processes of cultural survival in extremis and can empathise with similar struggles wherever they occur?”

For further information please contact John Osmond (029 2057 3944 or johnosmond@iwa.org.uk) or Rhys David (029 2057 3942 or rhysdavid@iwa.org.uk)

Published copies of the lecture are obtainable from the above number price £7.50 (free to IWA members).