What’s going on with Wales and withWelsh?

A COUPLE of your recent contributors, seemingly of a nationalist leaning, have made references to Welsh history. Sandy Acathan (July 29) complains that Wales has suffered “subjugation and oppression for centuries. Our culture, ancient language, and customs all forbidden”.

What surprises me is that they and other nationalists haven’t lobbied harder for Welsh history to be included as a compulsory subject in the school curriculum, like the Welsh language.

It would increase the interest of a largely apathetic and ambivalent population to the culture, history and language of Wales. Surely this educational exposition would motivate the youth of Wales and their elders to reclaim what is theirs? Incensed, many would embrace the Welsh language and culture of which they have been deprived for generations.

However, I believe the nationalists fear the outcome of the resultant forensic study of objective empirical evidence will undermine their claims, which will be tested with such questions as:

In medieval Britain was Wales a peace-loving nation of poetry, music and democratic debate or was it like other nations at the time, a divided country of battling warlords fighting for supremacy?

When Edward I invaded Wales was nearly half his army Welsh?

Wasn’t it a Welshman, Henry Tudor, who invaded and conquered England to create a dynasty of Welsh kings and queens of England?

Was the “Welsh Not” introduced and implemented by the colonial English or was it imposed by a Welsh elite getting above themselves?

Is it true that Saunders Lewis, leader and founder member of Plaid Cymru, was an anti-semitic Nazi sympathiser who, like many other nationalists, refused to fight alongside the English imperialists against Hitler?

In 1911 we had about half a million more Welsh-speakers, so why the drop? Was it because Welshspeakers prevented their children from speaking Welsh in favour of English to improve their prospects, like the parents of Dylan Thomas?

Is it true that there are currently 200,000 Welsh-speakers in England? If so, why have they turned their backs on Wales and the Welsh language? Dennis Coughlin Llandaff, Cardiff