Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development
Editor and Book Reviews Editor: John Edwards (St Francis Xavier University, Canada)
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Volume: 18 Number: 3 Page: 182–192
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Language and Politics, Interests and Constituencies: The Career of the Council for the Welsh Language
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Godfrey Harrison
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Accounts of events and pressures influencing the British government's Welsh Office to set up the Council for the Welsh Language precede reviews of the Council's composition and tasks, how it undertook its
work, the recommendations to the Secretary of State for Wales in its bilingual report in English: A Future for the Welsh Language , their consequences and responses to them. These reviews show that the
Council was even-handed in approach and mostly recommended fostering existing activities it believed to support Welsh and that the Council satisfied the middle ground of public opinion but acknowledged
neither those clearly against the Welsh language nor those so enthusiastically for it as to be against the British state- even if by parliamentary means. These characteristics explain the role of the Council
in demonstrating a governmental preparedness to support Welsh and in successfully avoiding widening two divisions: one separates those who favour the resurgence of Welsh as a cultural force from those resigned
to, even content with, its becoming a cultural relic; the other perhaps similar division separates those who seek an independent Wales from those who prefer Wales to be within the United Kingdom.
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