'The bad boy of Welsh politics'
Witness History
BBC
4.4 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2023
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the 1960s, the singer Dafydd Iwan started campaigning for the Welsh language to gain official status in Wales.
For years, Dafydd received little support. In January 1969 he decided to up the pressure, defacing a police station sign written in English with paint.
He ended up in prison, but soon young people across the country were picking up paint pots and taking up the cause.
Today, the Welsh language is found in schools, on documents and on police station signs. Dafydd tells Anoushka Mutanda-Dougherty about his activism and singing.
(Photo: Dafydd after his release from Cardiff prison. Credit: Central Press/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the |
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| 0:36.1 | you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds. Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:49.0 | Today I'm taking you back to 1969 when one man equipped with only a paint pot and a guitar led |
| 0:56.6 | one of the most successful Celtic language campaigns. |
| 1:00.1 | If you take apart in direct action campaigns you know you get a lot of reaction for and against. |
| 1:05.6 | And I've lived with that dilemma all my life. And it's good to come out the other end, as it were, by now. |
| 1:12.3 | But for many years, I was seen as a the bad boy of worst politics. |
| 1:18.7 | That's David Iwan and although he may be a political bad boy, he was far from a rebel without a cause. |
| 1:27.0 | When we started campaigning in earnest in the 60s of last century, it was a question of getting the Welsh language |
| 1:34.8 | recognized officially. I mean it was strange that half the people of Wales |
| 1:39.5 | then spoke Welsh and yet the language was not officially recognised. |
| 1:43.8 | So we started a campaign to get official status, but it's not so much protecting as enhancing |
| 1:51.6 | and getting it into the mainstream of Welsh life. |
| 1:55.0 | David was committed to seeing the Welsh language become an official part of day-to-day life, |
| 2:00.0 | like having it on legal forms and on road signs. |
... |
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