Why Doesn't England have an Eisteddfod?
Last weekend I was at the National Eisteddfod in Abergavenny. Even if you do not know where Abergavenny is, you know that I was not in England. England does not have Eisteddfods (English plural) or Eisteddfodau (Welsh plural). This year I watched Will Gompertz, the BBC’s Arts correspondent walking around the event and I wondered if he stopped to consider why this does not take place just a few miles east of where he was standing.
What is the National Eisteddfod? For those who do not know, it is a Welsh language cultural event that takes place over a week in August, covering competitions in music, poetry, writing, dancing and other branches of the arts and it is also a celebration of Welsh language culture. There is a large field – the ‘Maes’ (pronounced ‘mice’) – where organisations, charities, local producers, political parties and other organisations set up stalls so they can sell you things, promote things and give out free pens. You can live for years on the pens that can be collected from the Eisteddfod. It is held alternately in North Wales and South Wales so that there is always fifty percent of the country who can say that last year was better (old joke).
However, it stands at the head of a huge range of local eisteddfodau, especially in schools, and the international Eisteddfod, which always takes place in Llangollen and features performs and competitors from all around the world.
Yes, it is a celebration of specifically Welsh language culture. This has prompted some odd responses, notably in 2011 when the Daily Mail decided that it was something along the lines of a festival of race hatred and bigotry. You will see it reported that English is banned from the event, but this is misleading. You will hear plenty of English spoken by visitors, but competitions are done through the medium of Welsh. Asking why you cannot compete in English is rather like asking why Gareth Bale has never won the award for growing the longest marrow in the Caerphilly Allotment Festival. Gareth Bale is a footballer, not a marrow-grower (unless his lawyers contact me to disagree) .
Talking of Gareth Bale, there has been some controversy this year as to whether the Welsh football team should be honoured by the Eisteddfod. Prominent Welsh speakers do receive various awards each year, I remember in 2011 seeing the odd juxtaposition of awards going to First Minister Carwyn Jones and Wynne Evans, best known for being ‘the bloke in the Go Compare adverts’ (actually an accomplished opera singer and TV presenter, but outside Wales you may not be aware of this). The problem is that Carwyn and Wynne are both Welsh-speakers and there has been some debate over whether a team made up of a mixture of Welsh speakers and non Welsh-speakers should be honoured at a Welsh language cultural event.
I have not the space or the knowledge to go into the way that a person is honoured by the Gorsedd of Bards but I would just add that when I saw Carwyn Jones and Wynne Evans in the same ceremony, I was with a youth group and the chair of Youth Cymru, Helen Mary Jones. One of the young people asked Helen Mary what it was all about and she replied, ‘it’s like getting an OBE if you are English’. Given that the UK honours system is reported to be being used by David Cameron to reward party donors and chums, you have to say that recognition from the Eisteddfod has considerably more worth.
This is the largest cultural event of its kind in Europe. I am not sure how many events there are ‘of its kind’ but you should be aware just how large it is and how much activity goes on outside the competitions. I settled in ‘Maes D’, the learners’ tent, and was persuaded into taking part in a singing event and then stayed for a talk on the history of language in Britain and so on ... the image of the National Eisteddfod as scary or unwelcoming is a real red herring.
My question though is why does England not do this? Let me propose how it would work – it would rotate between North, South, Midlands/West over a course of three or four years. Local Councils would bid for the right to hold it – you can imagine that it brings a lot of people to an area and it is also an opportunity for local businesses to sell direct to the public. There would be a central Eisteddfod budget but it would be up to Councils to supplement this with fundraising and organisation by local volunteers. It would be a matter of pride for local communities to be a host area.
There would be an emphasis on competition in all forms of the arts. Music, poetry, literature, dancing – all of it would be featured and schools would compete to reach the finals to be held there. Just as schools hold mini-debates for aspiring debaters who want to compete in national debating competitions, so this structure would apply for all those wanting to pursue a creative talent. It would be completely inclusive too, open to anyone from any school in England. Given the size of England, you would probably need regional heats and the like, but that only makes it more competitive – who will represent the best that Yorkshire has to offer in dance at this year’s Eisteddfod? Of course, the winners of the English Eisteddfod could then go on to Llangollen to compete in the International Eisteddfod.
Why does this not happen? Some people have made some suggestions to me. One is that Wales has to do this kind of thing because its culture is ‘under threat’. I am not convinced by this argument, not least because you can trace the traditional Eisteddfod back to the twelfth century and the modern Eisetddfod to before the twentieth century concerns about the Welsh language. That is not to deny that the event is a promotion and celebration of the Welsh language in a way that English speakers probably do not think that they need, but the wider Welsh identity seems decidedly secure.
However, here we have strayed off into identity and not language. The English language may rule the world but it is a language of Americanisms and the culture of corporate America. British English speakers are not the majority of speakers of English on this planet by a long way. Perhaps the English speakers are not so confident after all and if you are looking at identity then an England that does not know how it relates to the words British, European, International, World, Western could perhaps do with some more cultural security.
Others suggest that the geography is an impediment. There is a point to this. Wales is a small country but it is a geographically diverse country. Travelling from one place to another takes time and there is a very definite sense of place to each town. Six miles out from Cardiff is Llanbradach but people there will not necessarily identify with Cardiff at all. I am not sure where in England you would find such a strong sense of place, though I suppose that the occasional bitter dispute when a village is moved from Yorkshire to Lancashire suggests that it exists to some extent. However, I think that the size of England should actually be an advantage. People from across England could discover a different part of it and the road and rail systems should make it easier. It might even draw journalists out of London – can you imagine a small town in the East Midlands becoming a focus for English cultural life instead of London for a week?
I do wonder if there is an anti-intellectual side to this. There is a kind of sneering disregard for the arts among many who would see them as elitist and irrelevant to the majority of the population. This is only another reason why an English Eisteddfod would be useful. You could be going for a day out, to do some shopping or hear some music, but you are drawn into a competition or a lecture or some other kind of activity than you might have previously thought was ‘not for you’.
It seems to me that we live in a world that is both global and local. Young people fly off to Australia to meet Friends that they made on facebook without thinking about the national boundaries as a barrier or a delineation of separate culture. At the same time, you can find just as strong emotions about the town you live in as opposed to the next town. What seems to have declined to me is the bit in the middle. Obviously in the UK this is a little bit more complicated as we have a ‘UK level’ of identity which many English people still refer to as ‘national’ (in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, ‘national’ tends to mean something else). We have seen how that is in decline – UKIP may call themselves ‘UK’ but they are a force in England (indeed their Welsh Chair said several years ago that Welsh speakers should not speak Welsh in public. I looked in vain for a presence from them at the Eisteddfod, though all the other political parties were there).
If England is in a time of introspection and struggling for a definition of itself then why not create an England level cultural institution , especially one that will be accessible for all and will help to re-inforce English culture in schools? Why do the English not have an Eisteddfod?