[Here is the speech to the 2006 Annual Conference in which Aran Jones, Cymuned's Chief Executive, outlines the Pwyllgor Gwaith's strategy for the coming year.]

You’ve already heard about what’s happened in the course of this last year, but now I want to put a slightly different slant on it all for you, before presenting the strategy we are recommending for the year to come. You have heard about, and seen, the events of the year just gone as though they were part of a list – but it’s important that you also see them as part of a pattern. That is to say, not only what we have been doing, but why, and to what end. Although stories in the papers can sometimes make it look as though we respond from week to week to whatever is happening, that is not the reality of the situation – we have been trying to build something, as I will do my best to show to you now.

Before I start, I’d like to make the point that I’m including the visual presentation on this screen very largely against my will, so great is my inherent fear of this kind of technology – so I’d like to ask for your forgiveness in advance if one or two things go wrong with it – and if that does happen, I already know who I’m going to be blaming, and she knows very well who she is!

Two and a half years ago, when I accepted the request to serve as Chief Executive for ‘a month or two’, if someone had asked me to describe Cymuned, I would have answered with a few words about demanding fair play for local people, about housing problems, work problems, and language problems in the Fro Gymraeg. As regards the basic elements of the movement, how it worked, who did what exactly, on the Pwyllgor Gwaith and outside it, I wasn’t really that clear. I suspect that many of you here today aren’t always very sure about such matters either.

But you have to have a clear structure to build a successful movement, and by now the Pwyllgor Gwaith is in united agreement on a number of very specific ideas about the nature and structure of the movement, and how to get the best out of the work we all put in.

We see the movement as made up of four parts. First of all is the membership – we have to win new members, keep in touch successfully with existing members, and create a pattern whereby every member can see something clear and achievable for them to contribute to the work of the movement.

Secondly, actions and lobbying – the work of promoting and popularising our ideas. For this, we need clear, consistent ideas and a long term strategy to develop and present those ideas.

Thirdly, our community work. This has been a part of Cymuned from the very beginning, with members going out to knock on doors to ask new arrivals to learn Welsh, and then providing the lessons and running the courses for them to do exactly that. This is the constructive, positive work which gives a practical base to our political lobbying.

Fourthly, the boring but vitally important work of dealing with the Press, and making sure that what we are doing reaches a wider audience than our own membership alone.

You might think about them as four wheels, and imagine the movement as a car – remove one of them, and things would get pretty rocky – remove two, and we wouldn’t get anywhere. For Cymuned to be successful, for our ideas and wishes for the Fro Gymraeg to come true, we have to make sure that each of the four wheels is turning properly.

A great deal of the work which has been done in the last year has been about strengthening these four wheels – filling them with air, if you like that metaphor! I’ll explain now exactly what that has involved, in the hope that seeing how our car works you will also see how best you can take part in the work of driving it.

Membership. That was the first step, and the most important in many ways. The monthly newsletter has been running for over a year now, and you’ve already heard my calls for contributors – far too often, the language in the newsletter has been faulty, because I write far too much of it. Now, I do believe that I have some things to offer Cymuned, but as a second language speaker of Cymraeg, linguistic accuracy is not one of them, for which I can only apologise. In any case, we now have a number of excellent contributors becoming involved, but I still want you to feel sorry enough for me to volunteer to join their ranks.

The monthly newsletter is a very important link, and I have no doubts at all but that it has played a central part in keeping the movement alive. We have also developed a weekly email – a weekly email had been circulated previously, but somewhere between not enough people having email addresses, and turnover amongst our voluntary staff, it had come to an end. We are now using purpose-built software to run the weekly email, and are seeing an ever increasing percentage of new members with email addresses. Only a few months into the life of the new weekly email, we are already distributing to over 500 people, and that number is rising constantly.

We have also been updating our main website, cymuned.org, which now contains every press release we send out, as well as a number of other kinds of discussion – go and visit it, and you will see a clear picture of what is going on with the movement.

There you have the improved communication with our members – by now, there is no reason for anyone who is interested in our work, member or not, to fail to know exactly what we are doing. It’s not just communicating better with our existing members that we need to be doing, though – we also have to win new members, and succeed in showing them how best they can make a contribution. A reasonable contribution, a contribution which doesn’t eat up their entire lives, but a contribution which makes a real, valuable difference.

We have started winning new members through the websites I mentioned earlier. We are promoting these websites with cheap little stickers, and the occasional online advertisement, and badges like those you saw at the door – at 50p each, why not buy one at lunch time for your bag or your jacket? Once a visitor arrives at one of the websites (and with names like NotEnglish.com and Saesneg.com, they tend to stick in people’s memories!), they are encouraged to sign up for the free weekly email. Once they do that, we ask them if they would be willing to put up the occasional sticker, and an increasing number of them are agreeing to do just that. With the stickers we then send out to them, of course, they also get a membership form – and so the movement keeps on growing.

Look at the process – not only is the movement growing, but the new members and supporters have been given a simple piece of work to do which makes them feel part of something. That feeling is exceptionally important.

So there you have membership – attract people who are interested in our work, build a link with them, give them a small piece of work which also helps attract more new people, and keep in contact so that they hear about what we are doing from week to week. It’s starting to spread – not only in the Valleys, but further away – we’ve had new members from Ireland and America in the last fortnight alone.

That, if you like, is the first wheel, or even the engine, of the movement. It is membership which creates the cash flow that enables us to run an office, to run campaigns, to publish booklets, and to attract more members.

But as we have already agreed, membership alone, in and of itself, isn’t enough – one wheel, or an engine with no wheels, is good for precisely nothing. We have to translate the strength of our membership into real work.

Community work is the second wheel. We have been promoting community land trusts for some time now, and a number of our members have started community land trusts in their own areas. We are developing an information pack that will show how to do this, and what help is available – and we have seen this idea begin to spread, to a point where even the political parties are beginning to talk about it. Part of the draft manifesto for Plaid Cymru mentions the need for a community land trust unit in the Assembly, something which we would be delighted to see.

Our work with the Cymuned Business Network also has important implications for us. This is already drawing people in to support us who would not previously have considered Cymuned worth talking to. The work of promoting local businesses is work in which any member can play a useful part, and as we develop the network over the coming year, we will begin to suggest specific work to members who would like to be involved on that side of things.

Successful community work in its turn helps to strengthen the next wheel, which is actions and lobbying. By pulling the carpet out from underneath the tiresome old complaint that Cymuned ‘just says no to everything’, we strengthen our arguments considerably. Cymuned does not stand against economic development – not at all. We are simply determined to see that its advantages come to the local community and thus the language also, and we are involved in showing exactly how that can be done.

So, the third wheel – actions and lobbying. This is where the major developments of the next year will be. We have been lobbying at Assembly level recently, and the Pwyllgor Gwaith will continue to do that, but we have also lobbied very successfully at county council level. The Pwllheli Marina campaign was one of Cymuned’s most significant victories thus far, and it shows us clearly that we are far more effective at lobbying local councillors, who live amongst us, than the far-away politicians in Cardiff Bay.

That in itself would perhaps be a cause for disappointment, were it not for one remarkably important point. Some of the most important decisions of all with regards to the future of the language and our communities are in the hands of our county councils. Councy councils make the planning decisions, county councils are amongst the most important employers in every county, particularly in the Fro Gymraeg, county councils set the education agenda, and county councils set the agenda with regards to public signage.

Some commentators have accused Cymuned, over the last two years, of being ‘without a strategy’.

We might as well accept that, at times, they have been entirely correct.

We have, as I said a moment ago, been lobbying at Assembly level on some important points for the future of the Fro Gymraeg, but it is not always easy to gain attention in the press for that kind of work, and on a local level we have indeed tended to respond to events rather than to set the agenda ourselves. From today on, that changes.

By launching our new booklet, ‘Cymricising the Council – Gwynedd’s Lessons and Ceredigion’s Future’ in Aberaeron a week ago, we stated clearly our intention of starting a new campaign in Ceredigion – a campaign to improve the levels of bilingualism in Ceredigion Council by requesting them to adopt Gwynedd’s best practice language policy. We will be working to set up a Campaign Committee in Ceredigion over the next six months, and to continue with the co-operative work we have already started with Cymdeithas yr Iaith and Plaid Cymru. That is the first county campaign.

We have been raising the need in Gwynedd for a simple, clear answer to the housing problem. The work of providing affordable housing is very important, but against the entire momentum of the open housing market, it simply doesn’t have enough effect. We now have a workable pattern to suggest – the decision of the Yorkshire Dales National Park to permit new building only for local need. That is the answer that has been needed – it doesn’t shut anyone out, because the existing housing market remains available, but it does create a local, sustainable housing market which has no choice but to be affordable to local people. A house which can only be sold to local people cannot set a price above what the local market can afford. We have already received enough volunteers to set up a Campaign Committee in Gwynedd to request the council to adopt this policy.

We also have enough volunteers in Sir Gâr to start a Campaign Committee, with the intention of calling for the same housing policy as we are asking for in Gwynedd, and also of opposing the proposed gas pipeline which is forcing people to sell land for a pipeline which will be taking 100% of its contents to England, without any benefits whatsoever for Cymru.

Do you see the pattern? Local campaigns in the counties of the Fro Gymraeg which contribute directly to building the Fro Gymraeg from the bottom up. We will continue to lobby the Assembly, to develop the political concept that votes are available for whichever party will do a real job of protecting the future of our Welsh-speaking communities, but the local work, the county campaigns, will be going at it to build the Fro in the here and now.

We are also eager, once the work has been done of developing the campaigns mentioned above, to begin an education campaign in the Fro. Not to call for bilingual education – others are already doing that, and doing it well. We want to emphasise the unacceptably damaging impact of English-medium schools in the Fro Gymraeg – in other words, schools with pupils from Welsh-speaking communities which fail to provide their students with the necessary linguistic skills to play a full part in their own communities. This has got to be stopped – Ysgol Ffriars in Bangor and Ysgol Penglais in Aberystwyth are not only denying their natural inheritance to children in the Fro Gymraeg, they are also creating an unjust and dangerous social division.

Three campaigns in four counties? Or more, if it turns out to be possible (as looks likely at the moment) for us to start a Campaign Committee in Sir Ddinbych. Three campaigns in five counties, then – and every one of them winnable. I’ll come back in a few moments to some of our other structural developments, but there, to all intents and purposes, you have the strategy that we want to build on the back of the internal development work that has already been completed.

The fourth wheel, then, is dealing with the Press. This is where our most significant victories were in the early days – we had leading members who were extremely talented in the field, we had a remarkable early growth of membership and ideas we wanted to share, and for two years the name Cymuned could be seen almost everywhere. But the actions lessened, the numbers in the rallies started to decrease, and eventually the Press realised this. That’s where we are today – with a few exceptions, the Press has effectively decided that Cymuned isn’t ‘news’ any more.

But when the other three wheels are turning properly, there will be no choice but for the fourth to begin again. We will not be winning a name for ourselves based on ideas or press releases, however successfully presented – we will be making a name for ourselves with successful, popular and obvious work, with campaigns that make a measurable difference to the future of our communities. Campaigns that will build a future for us, and our children, and our children’s children.

I’ve mentioned a number of other things – weekly emails, membership websites, stickers, campaign committees – but there’s one other new thing yet to mention. Some of you may have looked at the pattern of membership websites, emails, stickers, membership, campaign committees, the Pwyllgor Gwaith, and seen a kind of ladder – and that is our intention. But there’s one rung missing – between new members and the campaign committees. That’s why we will be setting up Information Stands everywhere we can manage.

The information stands will promote the membership websites, they will ask people to sign the local campaign petition, they will sell T-shirts and badges and, of course, they will distribute membership leaflets. They won’t create tension, as the picketing could sometimes, and we won’t need huge numbers to run them, either. We don’t want to see anyone committing more than one Saturday morning a month – if we get teams of four running an information stand once a month, part of their responsibility will be to encourage other people to volunteer to help with the stall. Once eight volunteers are available, we will be able to run the stalls once a fortnight – and we will only need 16 in order to have an information stall on the streets of the local town every Saturday. Think of it like this – if you could find 3 people, and each of them could find another 4, you would already have enough to run an information stand in your local town every week.

The campaign committees will do the work of corresponding with the council and the local press, of arranging occasional local publicity stunts, and of arranging a social night once every three months for everyone who helps with the stalls and the committees, in order to strenghten the natural community networks that grow out of working in co-operation with other people who are determined to create a better future for us all.

That, then, is the complete ladder – to think of it through the eyes of someone new to the movement, they will see a sticker or banner somewhere, go to a website, subscribe to a weekly email. Later, they will offer to put up stickers themselves, and then to become a member. Once they have become a member, they will receive an invitation to help with their local information stand, and through that they will come to know other volunteers in the area, including members of the campaign committee. In due course, it won’t look so intimidating for them to offer to help with the campaign committee – and by gaining experience there, the step onwards to the Pwyllgor Gwaith won’t look as far away as it does to a new member today.

That is the mechanism we are building. That is the engine, the structure that will push the movement, and our campaigns, onwards. And that, I hope, is the structure that every one of you here today can see a rôle for yourselves somewhere within it – as volunteers on a stall, or putting up stickers, or sending letters, helping with campaign committees or with the Pwyllgor Gwaith. The vehicle is ready and waiting only for you. You are the ones who have to drive it.

As some of you know already, I’m not one for emotional, romantic dreaming – I’d much rather see exactly what needs to be done, what I can do today to make a better tomorrow. Put a poster up, write a letter, arrange an action, that’s what I like doing.

But if you will allow me, I would like to ask you for a moment to look beyond the details of the mechanism and think about our new strategy as a whole. I would like to ask you to imagine that the clock has moved on five, or ten, years, and that we have succeeded with the three campaigns in the five counties. In Môn, Gwynedd, Ceredigion, Sir Gâr, Dinbych – heck, we might as well throw Conwy in for good measure – in every one, the public sector is administrated internally through the medium of Welsh, in every one there is an affordable housing market for local people, in every one the schools are all succeeding in helping their students to become fully bilingual citizens.

Imagine driving around those counties, on the roads we know so well today – perhaps some of those Welsh-speaking councils will have decided that their public signage should be in Welsh only (as in the Gaeltachtai in Ireland, or the Islands in Scotland, or Basque Country). Everywhere you go, you will see Welsh-speaking people with good quality work, with houses in their own communities, and the children in every school chattering away naturally in Welsh.

Wouldn’t that be the Fro Gymraeg?

We don’t need to wait for the Assembly. We don’t need to change the Labour Party. The answers are at the level of our county councils, and Cymuned’s greatest successes have been in lobbying the county councils. Our new future begins right here, right now – we have what is needed to build it.

But to achieve that, to make real the beautiful future we have all just seen in our minds eyes, we have got to be prepared to work. Specifically, every one of us must decide two things – where in the mechanism we can best contribute, and how to go about encouraging other people to get involved, so that we can fill this vehicle that has been built for us, and turn it from a car into a bus, into a train, into a great ship that will carry us the whole way to the Fro Gymraeg.

The members of the Pwyllgor Gwaith have already challenged themselves with this – their work for the year is to spread the word. The mechanism is ready and waiting – we only need to fill it. The Pwyllgor Gwaith has accepted the responsibility of encouraging other people to help with the campaign committees – now, if you will respond to the challenge to spread the news about Cymuned this year, to find people who will help with the information stands, with the campaign committees and the Pwyllgor Gwaith, with promoting the websites… and if you yourselves will help with stickers, stands, your local campaign committee or the Pwyllgor Gwaith…

If you respond to that challenge, in a year’s time we will all be able to see that the car is moving, faster and faster, down the road towards the Fro Gymraeg. I beg you to respond to this challenge – for utterly selfish reasons. Simply put, I long to live in the Fro Gymraeg. I long to know that I can raise a family who will speak Welsh, who will be able to afford houses in our own little community, who will receive the priceless inheritance of our language and culture. I have spent my life wandering the world, looking for something – looking for home. I know now where my home is – and I am so close to reaching it that my heart bleeds. My home is in the Fro Gymraeg.

Come. Answer the challenge. Volunteer for the information stands and the campaign committees. Spread the word.

[To offer help with Cymuned's work, please email cymuned[at]cymuned.org]

[Here is the speech to the 2006 Annual Conference in which Aran Jones, Cymuned's Chief Executive, gives his Annual Report.]

To begin, I would like to echo the words of the Pwyllgor Gwaith’s Chairman, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here today. It is very easy to forget about the work of the movement when we don’t get coverage in the press, and it is very easy to expect someone else to do the work that is needed – but you have made the effort to be here today, and by doing so have given support and credibility to the new Pwyllgor Gwaith, and credibility to our work. Without your presence here today, it would not be possible for the movement to continue, because it would not be possible for us to claim that our fears and concerns are shared by other people. As the Irishman Edmund Burke said, ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.’

Thank you for doing something. Thank you for being here today.

As Richard said earlier, it has been a very, very busy year (or ten months!). Sometimes it has felt as though we haven’t even had the time to breathe! It all began with the Marina campaign, winning which gave us such a boost, and since then we have been working to build on that momentum. It would take a book to talk about everything that’s happened, but here is a report of the key points.

Soon after the Marina came the Eisteddfod, and as Richard said, it was extremely successful for us – far more than we had expected. And straight after the Eisteddfod, of course, I escaped for three weeks in order to try and persuade my new wife that I really did have enough spare time for our marriage – fortunately, she still believes that… more or less!

I came back from our honeymoon to a fairly quiet time in the press, but it was nonetheless remarkably busy behind the scenes. In co-operation with the Pwyllgor Gwaith, a number of websites were build to target new members, and a weekly email was set up to offer our news to everyone who was interested. YnyFro.com, Saesneg.com, NotEnglish.com, DeadWelsh.com, NotLikeUs.com and WalesNeedsYou.com all targeted different kinds of people, and every single one of them has successfully drawn new members into the movement. We went down to Cardiff to launch NotEnglish.com with a large banner in the middle of the city on the day of the Cymru-New Zealand rugby match, and the response was startlingly good – people laughing, rows of people wanting to have their pictures taken in front of the banner, including plenty of English people. The element of leg-pulling to NotEnglish.com clearly works extremely well.

Then, we began offering free stickers to promote the websites and through this drew in over 50 new volunteers, many of them non-Welsh speakers. By now, over 500 receive our weekly email, new people continue to volunteer to put up stickers, and the effect of all this is only going to increase over the next year or two.

We have continued to produce our monthly newsletter ‘Newyddion y Fro’, something which we see as being vitally important in making sure that members of Cymuned know exactly what’s going on even when the press don’t pay attention.

‘Newyddion y Fro’ will be developing further over the coming months, with new contributors having agreed to write for us on a regular basis, including a Brussels-based journalist who will be looking at some of the other minority languages on the continent. We will also have other contributors from around Cymru who can give a clear picture of what is happening, and what answers we are offering, as well as a humorous column to give everyone a well-earned break!

With regards to the newsletter, I would like to ask everyone here today to consider contributing 500 words a month. Looking around, and knowing many of you, I know that there is without doubt the raw material for an outstandingly interesting newsletter sitting in this hall right now. If we could work with each other, and make something of real worth, we would once again be able to consider selling the newsletter, which we have always wanted to do.

So, that’s the work which has been happening behind the scenes – but it hasn’t all been quiet, internal work, by any stretch of the imagination!

We have continued to develop our important relationship with the Commission for Racial Equality, organising a public consultancy session for their proposed housing policy, and receiving an invitation to be part of their largest project ever in Cymru, the ‘Croeso’ project, which emphasises the need for local people to be welcoming and for incomers to make the effort to integrate. We are working towards a public statement from the Commission to support language conditions as part of affordable housing developments, a statement which will, when it comes, be of enormous importance. I spoke on behalf of Cymuned as part of the Commission’s panel in the project’s public meeting in Caernarfon, and we are starting to see the benefits of this relationship – when the news came that our caravan near Griffiths Crossing, with the innocuous words ‘Speak Our Language’ on it, had been burnt to the ground in an arson attack, Chris Myant, Director of the Commission, agreed to make a statement to the press condemning the attack. We can now declare confidently that it is no longer possible for anyone to dare to make public accusations of racism against us, without looking extremely stupid.

We have also been working to draw attention to individual cases of injustice, such as the case of the Dolgellau farmer who has been forced to stop using land that his family have farmed for over half a century, and the situation where a member of Cymuned suffered violent attacks against his home for speaking out in favour of the Welsh language in Mynydd Llandegai, as you will here later on. We have also responded to the claims that the Prime Minister swore about the Welsh, a case which has been mentioned on page 4 of the London newspaper the Times within the last week. As the attack on our caravan shows clearly, comments which help create this kind of atmosphere of hostility towards the Welsh are in no way acceptable.

Three members of Cymuned, Llion Jones, Seimon Brooks and I went to Basque Country in order to continue to develop an exciting relationship with linguistic campaign groups in that country and in Catalonia and Galicia also, and in order to make a start on the work of building an umbrella group to speak on behalf of language pressure groups on a European level. We have agreed to set up exchange visits between language activists in Cymru and Basque Country, and if any of you would be willing to offer hospitality to visitors from Basque Country, particularly those who have suffered deeply under the oppression of the Spanish state, please let us know, and we will add your names to the list.

We have campaigned strongly against the plans to grant extended planning permission to the new ASDA branch in Pwllheli, and after the extremely disappointing decision by the local councillors to grant the extension (in the face of a public meeting where over a hundred local people were against it), we have begun the work of developing a Cymuned Business Network to try and help to withstand the damaging side-effects the shop will have for local businesses. We have based many of our ideas for the Business Network on examples of networks which have succeeded in regenerating local high streets in England and in Scotland, and we are working hard to attract enough members to make the network a success. We have received the first standing orders, and are hoping to launch the network in the near future.

We have given evidence to the European Council’s Panel of Experts in Cardiff with regards to the Westminster Government’s responsibilities under the Charter for Minority and Regional Languages, and have also presented written evidence to the Panel. The Panel said that our presentation, in co-operation with the Mentrau Iaith, was one of the most useful presentations they had received.

Recently, we have been discussing the proposed plan to unify the Welsh police forces with Heddlu Gogledd Cymru, noting the very real danger that this will undermine a great deal of the very important work that has been done by Heddlu Gogledd Cymru to normalise and promote use of Welsh within the police. We will respond formally to the consultation process with is happening currently, noting our fears and our support for the successful work that has been done by Heddlu Gogledd Cymru.

We have held a meeting with Alun Pugh and feel that a potentially interesting relationship is developing there. One or two members have written to us worrying that we might swallow every political promise rather too easily, so I would like to take this opportunity to assure you that we are not quite as innocent as that! Our aim is to draw the Minister’s attention to the importance of our Welsh-speaking communities, and to some of our specific ideas for improving their situation. We are also emphasising the need for the new branches of the Assembly, in Aberystwyth and Llandudno, to operate internally through the medium of Welsh. This looks like a more difficult challenge, but we will not give in easily.

We have presented an argument to theAssembly’s Regional Committee for North Wales in favour of following the example of the Yorkshire Dales National Park by permitting new housing developments for local need only. We are suggesting that such a policy would not only be extremely popular in Gwynedd, but throughout the whole of Cymru, and given that the Labour Party in Westminster have warmly supported the policy in Yorkshire, it would be very hard for them to argue against it in Cymru.

Last week, we launched the latest booklet by Cymuned, ‘Cymricising the Council – Gwynedd’s Lessons and Ceredigion’s Future’. I see this, along with the previous point about new housing for locals only, as being in many ways the two most important events for us this year. I’ll talk about why a little later on, but it is worth noting here that the Chair for the Ceredigion Regional Committee of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, as well as a current member of Plaid Cymru’s executive committee, spoke in the launch, and it is looking increasingly likely that the campaign to increase the internal useage of Welsh in the council will be a very popular one in Ceredigion – Councillor Dai Lloyd Evans, the leader of the Council, and ex-MP for Ceredigion Cynog Dafis have already agreed to hold meetings with us on this subject.

Right – I think I’ve touched on everything of importance. Sometimes, so much is happening in the office that I feel as though I must have forgotten something! But I must warn you – you haven’t heard the last of my voice today. Having now reported on the work that has been done in the last year, I will be back later on to present the Pwyllgor Gwaith’s strategy for the year to come. As you will see in your copies of the Conference Agenda, there will be a chance for you to discuss the strategy offering after lunch, before we vote formally on its contents in the session dealing with today’s motions. The Pwyllgor Gwaith has worked hard to develop a strategy about which I personally feel very excited, and I’m very hopeful that you will share my enthusiasm once you have heard the proposed strategy – but it is important to remember that you, here, today, are the chief authority of this movement, and it is you who will make the final decision on the strategy that the Pwyllgor Gwaith is presenting.

[To read the strategy presentation for 2006/7, please click here.]

[Here is the speech to the 2006 Annual Conference by Richard Evans, Chair of Cymuned's Pwyllgor Gwaith.]

First of all, many thanks to you all for being here today – your presence is of vital importance to the movement, because without you here today, it would be impossible for us to win the attention of the press or of our politicians, or to claim that we are expressing genuine fears shared by other people. Thank you for coming – and next year, how about each of you bringing one person extra with you?!

This last year has been challenging, colourful and very interesting. No, we can’t state that Cymuned, as a political force, is back where we were in 2001/2, but we believe sincerely that we are on the way. The Pwyllgor Gwaith is very confident that the vision for the year to come which will be presented to you in a short while by the Chief Executive is exciting, practical and deserving of your fullest support.

But let me go into a little more detail about this last year – or, to be precise, this last ten months, because we brought the Annual Conference forwards two months this year in line with the decision made at last year’s Conference. It has been a very busy ten months!

We stated in last year’s Conference that Cymuned would commit to compaigning against the proposal to extend the Marina in Pwllheli, and we were true to our word – within a few weeks, the discussion was boiling over in the press, and members of the Pwyllgor Gwaith had arranged a picket in the Marina itself to show our opposition. Many of you were there – and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for that, for your courage and firm courtesy in the face of the verbal assaults, and the dangerously threatening behaviour of the tractors driven by some of the Marina yobs. It was an experience to shake anyone, in particular with older people and women and children forming part of the picket – but as we have been reminded once again by the arson attack on our caravan, we must not expect those who would like to see our language and our communities disappear to behave in a civilised manner.

The Marina plan was overturned, as many of you know, and the day in Caernarfon that the news came out of the council chambers was a particularly happy one. It was a victory for common sense, and a victory for those of us who still see the language as an important part of our economic development – and it was an important victory for Cymuned, too.

Shortly after the decision against the Marina, we had our most successful National Eisteddfod for a long time, selling over a thousand pounds’ worth of our CDs, and seeing an encouraging number of new people becoming members. That was the last step of the financial reorganisation of the movement, and the beginning of a period of extending our work once again.

Throughout all this, and other matters that you will hear more about them from the Chief Executive shortly, the Pwyllgor Gwaith was playing an important rôle of strategy development, supporting the Chief Executive in his work to win more members for the movement, and controlling the movement’s financial situation. I would like to thank Geraint Hughes very much indeed for his important work in fulfilling the duties of the Treasurer for the last two years, and for his report here today.

The fruits of our strategy development work will be presented to you later today by the Chief Executive, and we hope very much indeed that you will be in favour of what we are suggesting.

To close, I would like to extend the congratulations of the Pwyllgor Gwaith to the Chief Executive for reaching the last three in the Leading Wales Awards. We see his success as one of a number of signs which give us confidence that this next year will be a particularly successful one for Cymuned.

In an emergency motion in their Annual Conference in Penrhyndeudraeth, the anti-colonisation movement Cymuned will today call on all Welsh politicians to condemn the arson attack on the movement’s property last Tuesday night. The attack is being treated as an incident of hate crime by North Wales Police, and the Commission for Racial Equality in Cymru has been quick to condemn it.

‘We are very grateful for the support of the Commission for Racial Equality,’ says Aran Jones, Cymuned’s Chief Executive, ‘and we believe it is vital for the politicians of Wales to follow the Commission in condemning this unacceptable example of political violence.’

The motion will read: ‘This Conference notes with distress the arson attack this week on Cymuned’s property at Y Felinheli, near Caernarfon. The Conference notes that the arson is being treated as a race-hate attack by North Wales Police. The Conference also thanks the Commission for Racial Equality for its recent statement condemning the arson.

Political violence and race-hate crime has no place in Wales. This Conference calls on political leaders in Wales, of all political parties, to condemn this arson attack on Cymuned property.’

For more details, contact Cymuned’s office on 01758-612712.

Notes to journalists:

North Wales Police are currently investigating a case of arson against Cymuned-owned property, and are treating it as a hate crime.

The Commission for Racial Equality in Wales has released a statement condemning the attack (available at www.cymuned.net/blogsaesneg).

Cymuned is a political movement which represents the interests of a minority group.

The attack is an example of political violence which is being treated as a hate crime against a democratic Welsh movement.

Previous attacks have been made on Cymuned’s property.

The anti-colonisation movement Cymuned will be holding their annual conference next Saturday (08/04/06) between 10.00 and 3.00 o’clock in the Memorial Hall in Penrhyndeudraeth.

‘Many of us are feeling very angry at the moment about the arson attack against our ‘Speak our Language’ caravan last Tuesday night,’ says Aran Jones, Cymuned’s Chief Executive, ‘and the timing of the Conference is very fortunate in terms of being able to get back to concentrating on the main work of the movement, and showing that we will not allow ourselves to be intimidated in this manner.’

Cymuned’s Executive Committee will be presenting their 2006-7 strategy in the Conference, and announcing two main new campaigns.

‘The campaign in Ceredigion to get the council to operate internally through the medium of Welsh has already started with the launch of our latest booklet lsat week,’ says Richard Evans, Chairman of Cymuned’s Executive Committee, ‘and we will also be calling on Gwynedd Council to adopt a planning policy similar to that of the Yorkshire National Park – simply put, new housing developments to be permitted for locals only.’

The Conference will also hear about the experiences of a member of the movement who has suffered a series of attacks since he distributed leaflets by Cymuned in Mynydd Llandegai last year.

For more details, contact Cymuned’s office on 01758-612712.

The anti-colonisation movement Cymuned have welcomed a statement from the Director of the Commission for Racial Equality in Wales, Chris Myant, which condemns the arsonists who set fire to a caravan belonging to Cymuned.

The Police are continuing to work on the case, and a Crime Scenes team have been working on the remains of the caravan today. A member of Cymuned has contacted the movement to give details about an individual seen behaving suspiciously near the caravan recently, and those details have been passed on to the Police.

Comment by Chris Myant

Director CRE Cymru

If this turns out to be an act of arson committed by someone who disagrees with the views of Cymuned, then it is particularly to be deplored. There is much public concern over issues to do with the Welsh language, affordable housing for people in local communities and community relations in general. It is important that these issues are discussed openly and honestly and in ways that others can listen to. We need informed debate, not shouting matches and certainly not any violence. Everyone involved has a responsibility to make sure that they are putting forward their views in constructive ways rather than in ways that lead to confrontation, closed minds and misunderstanding.

Mae Prosiect Croeso yn gweithio drwy Gymru i drafod a dathlu amrywiaeth.
Pan ddaw hi yn fater o roi darnau jig-so amrywiaeth yng Nghymru at ei gilydd, mae lle i bawb. A gymrwch chi eich lle? Am ragor o wybodaeth ewch i www.croesoproject.org

Croeso Project is working through Wales to debate and celebrate diversity.
When we’re putting together the jig-saw of diversity in Wales, there is a place for everyone: will you take up yours? For further information visit www.croesoproject.org

The caravan as it was:

Pictures from after the attack:

During the evening yesterday (Tuesday, 04/04/06) a caravan near the Griffiths Crossing in Caernarfon with the slogan ‘Speak Our Language’ painted on it, which belonged to the anti-colonisation movement Cymuned, was burnt to ashes in an attack which the police are considering a hate crime. Members of the movement often spent the night in the caravan to protect it, after having suffered previous attacks, and they consider it a matter of luck that no-one was seriously injured.

‘This vicious and dangerous attack shows the very real hatred that some people feel for our language and our separate identity,’ said Aran Jones, Cymuned’s Chief Executive, ‘and makes it clear how much more work is needed to educate people who choose to move to a Welsh-speaking area that there is a moral responsibility on them to make the effort to learn Welsh. This is the colonisation that we talk about – people who are so violently opposed to our way of life that they are prepared to burn down something which simply asks them to integrate.’

The caravan has been on the site for over a year, and the Police and Crown Prosecution Service have decided against a number of complaints that the messages on the caravan are racist.

‘It is extremely disappointing to hear that people are still trying to accuse us of racism,’ says Richard Evans, Chairman of Cymuned’s Executive Committee, ‘since we are working closely with the Commission for Racial Equality in Cymru, and are part of the Commission’s ‘Croeso’ project, which asks people to help work towards integrated communities. Unfortunately, we have here an example of the kind of violent, criminal attitude of some people who refuse to integrate into their new community.’

The crime is being investigated by the North Wales Police, and at Cymuned’s request is being considered a hate crime. ‘We don’t want to talk about the racism of these criminals,’ said Aran Jones, ‘but the fact that their actions are prompted by hatred. Hatred like this against our language and our way of life is something unfortunately only too real, and is clearly extremely dangerous. However, we will not allow ourselves to be threatened in this way, and we will not let our mouths be shut – these criminal colonists will not succeed in forcing us to sit back passively and let our language die.’

For more details, contact Cymuned’s office on 01758-612712.