ROSC Ean�ir 1973

Editor forced to break law

le P�l � Duibhir
The latest addition to the long and distinguished list of those in Wales refusing to pay their tele�vision licences is Clive Betts, edi�tor of the WELSH NATION, the Nationalist Party's weekly news�paper. Clive's protest is against the very small proportion of Welsh on TV in Wales and for a separate Welsh language channel. He was born in Southampton and his first language is English. His wife's first language is Welsh.

On the 4th of October this year he was fined �10 with �2 costs for not possessing a TV licence by Cardiff magistrates. The court hearing was in English.

He told the court: "I am taking this action as part of a bid by thousands throughout Wales to prevent the nation becoming a one language country, with that lan�guage English. One of the most important factors in this anglicisation is television, particularly as it affects the very young.

"Quite a large number of people have chosen to break the law for the first time in their lives as part of this fight to help a language that is in crisis. It is important that you know their reasons and why, in a supposedly democratic state, they chose to act outside Parlia�mentary channels.

"We only wish that Westminster would show the remotest interest and action over the language prob�lem: it has become clear over the last few years that they only move when forced to. We only wish that the interest were equal to that taken by the Swiss Government of its 500,000 Italian speakers who receive twice as many hours TV each night as Welsh speakers of whom there are a gr�a!er number.

Or that we had the equivalent of the TV station of the 200,000 Ice�landers who speak a language all of their own.

"Breaches, or threats of breaches of the law have suddenly and dramatically forced several governments to change their minds and give Welsh equal treat�ment with English. If the govern�ment takes notice of the demands for a Welsh language television channel, running side by side with the present English ones, it will not be because of Westminster's love of the Welsh language, but because sufficient people in Wales have shown they are not afraid to defy the law in their fight for jus�tice for a language.

"Only last week, the Union of Welsh Independents, the Congre�gational Church in Wales, called on all Christians to consider to re�fuse paying their television licence fees until a Welsh TV channel was set up.

"It is becoming increasingly evi�dent that the people who are being taken before the courts by the Post Office and police are those groups who are fighting for justice. The Post Office and police by their actions are condoning and sup�porting injustice. Magistrates who support these forces of so-called law and order are in their turn putting a stamp of approval on in�justice.

"For the adults this preponder�ance of English programmes is not nearly as serious as for the young child. I have two children, the elder a boy of two-and-a-half. My wife, whose first language is Welsh, and I are trying to bring them up truly bilingual with a command of Welsh that will enable them to take a full part in the life of their nation. Although we speak next to no English to him, is it surprising that almost the little boy's first words were 'One, two, three, four, five, six' in faultless English picked up from the television screen! It is heartbreaking and a wicked injustice.

"I have never been in the dock in a court before in my life. But when I see an injustice as terrible as that over Welsh television I am forced to break the law just as others throughout the world fight�ing other injustices find them�selves forced to take similar action. I am not the first English-speaker to appear in the dock in these cir�cumstances. I undoubtedly will not be the last."