The New Welsh Language Act

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Sunday, May 20, 2007

The New Welsh Language Act

One policy that the new Assembly Government will be committed to is a new
Welsh Language Act. This will be one of the policies that makes a
statement that things have changed. But it will need to be carefully
handled. And one of the joys of being a blogger is that I can give advice
- even if nobody wants it. A commitment to early action is crucial to
reassure Plaid supporters that the Rainbow Coalition is 'a risk worth
taking' for them. But it is just as important to reassure people that what
they will see as a Plaid-led Government is not going to impose
unreasonable language demands on everyone who lives in Wales ( and many
people will think and fear this).

Over recent months my party supported a new Welsh Language Act - even if I
was not entirely clear in my own mind what this meant in practice. I'd
like to see some form of external 'review and recommend' group set up with
a tight timetable - rather like last year's Clos Stephens review into the
arts. It would be a smart move on Plaid's part to give a high profile in
this exercise to well known non Plaid people, such as Deleth Evans, Ron
Davies and Lisa Francis - if any of them were interested. We need to make
sure the new Welsh Language Act is something that fosters unity in support
of the language. There is potential for disunity on this issue - which the
new Government should try to avoid if at all possible.

http://glyndaviesam.blogspot.com/2007/05/new-welsh-language-act.html

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