Still speaking our language

ON the day the census returns were published showing the number of Gaelic speakers to be at a historic low, my wife was reminiscing with a Lewis contemporary about their experiences as children who entered school with Gaelic as their first language.

Her own experience was straightforward. In seven years of primary education in a tin shack perched on the edge of the Atlantic, not a word of Gaelic was spoken. Her friend fared rather worse - greeted into the school system by an English-speaking monoglot who belted the children whenever they lapsed into Gaelic.

As recently as the 1960s in this phobia-ridden little land of ours, tiny children were being assaulted by psychopaths under the auspices of state and local authorities for the crime of speaking their own language.

My experience was a variation on the same theme. Of Gaelic- speaking parentage, I went to a secondary school in Argyll which had a dozen Gaels on its staff and drew Gaelic-speaking children from its rural hinterland. It never occurred to anyone in authority that the curriculum should make the merest gesture towards Gaelic.

In the face of such attitudes, it is a miracle that there are almost 60,000 people left in Scotland who not only speak Gaelic but also register it on a census form. That was not the intention of the bigots and self-styled improvers who shaped these policies. The language was supposed to have gone by now, eradicated by oppression, neglect and shame.

Last week, commentators lined up either to bemoan the inexorable decline of Gaelic or dance on its grave by attacking the money spent on it. In spite of Gaelic's lowly place in the league table of public expenditure, it is a budget that attracts a disproportionate degree of angst. The old prejudices are alive and well - and the uncomfortable truth is that Gaelic's enemies are all in Scotland.

What angered me about much of the comments was the demographic illiteracy they revealed. The read-across between these new statistics and recent expenditures on Gaelic is illogical. How can 10 years of modest investment be expected to negate, in one fell swoop, a long-term pattern of hostility and decline?

Eighty years ago in the black houses of Lewis and distillery cottages of Islay, big families were raised. These people are now coming to the ends of their lives. The "decline" in Gaelic numbers tells us no more or less than that. The generation that should have taken its place was largely cut off from its birthright by the attitudes I've described. We knew that already.

By definition, the only impact of recent efforts on behalf of Gaelic can be upon those who have grown up in this period. All the indications are that the census evidence, when it is published, will be very positive in this respect. The anti-Gaelic lobby has merely been getting its defences in first since the last message it wants to come out of the census is that maybe the corner has been turned and Gaelic will be part of Scotland for a very long time to come.

So can Scotland show maturity by recognising less grudgingly the value of what it has? Can we agree that any minority language, to survive in the Global Village, needs access to the tools of education and communication? Can we celebrate the richness of the culture rather than diminish ourselves through a sterile, offensive debate? These aren't bad litmus tests for the enlightenment of 21st century Scotland.

Brian Wilson is MP for Cunninghame North, UK Energy Minister and was the first Minister for Gaelic

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