English speakers are also native toWales

WHEN I was a child I remember a calendar in Rhodesia, which had a picture of a white couple on their lawn surrounded by playing dogs with a message beneath it, “this is our country.”

There was no thought to add, “this is our country, too.”

Yet that same small-minded racism is still alive.

On Anglesey, where a decreasing number of people speak Welsh, the council wishes to make Welsh the sole medium of its council.

There is one English medium secondary school on the island and English speakers are becoming almost as discriminated against as those in Quebec.

Eighty-five per cent of council employees speak Welsh and yet only 57 – probably even less than that now – islanders speak it.

It’s time that the Welsh Assembly took note of discrimination against the majority, and that the English language is also native to Wales and has been spoken here in its evolving forms since the 12th century.

To pass it off as foreign should be illegal under the law. Just as Welsh is the successor to the native language of all Britain, until it was usurped by Germanic, Norse and Gaelic settlers.

If Welsh is declining it is due to the collapse of the Welsh birthrate.

Plus, now we are a nation dependent on immigration, the overwhelming majority of our new countrymen and women opt for English.

Even in apartheid South Africa there was parity between English and Afrikaans speakers, and every child had an absolute right to be taught in their mother tongue.

If the council take this decision, a case should be brought before the equalities board. You don’t have to be a person of colour to be discriminated against.

British English-speaking Welshmen and women are Welsh too. Plus they have a right for their national United Kingdom flag to be flown alongside the Welsh dragon. Robert Ian Williams Bangor is y Coed