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Gaelic: Revitalising Gaelic a National Asset

INTRODUCTION

Terms of Reference

The Taskforce was appointed by The Scottish Executive in December, 1999 to "examine the arrangements and structures for the public support of the Gaelic organisations in Scotland, to advise Scottish Ministers on future arrangements, taking account of the Scottish Executive’s policy of support for Gaelic as set out in the Programme for Government, and to report by 30^th April 2000." Subsequently, considering the complexity of the task and the amount of evidence to be considered, the reporting date was extended.

The members of the Taskforce were John A. Macpherson (Chairman), Maggie Cunningham, Donald J. MacInnes, Donald MacKay, and Annie MacSween.

Chairman’s Foreword and Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Deputy Minister for Enterprise in the Highlands & Islands and Gaelic, Alasdair Morrison MSP, for giving us the opportunity to contribute to this challenging assignment and for granting us additional time to complete our deliberations. It was important that the process be right rather than rushed.

I wish to pay tribute to my colleagues on the Taskforce for their diligence and dedication. Their courtesy and consensus-building skills have been exemplary. It has been a privilege to benefit from their insights and analyses. We are well aware that the conclusions that we collectively reached will not please everyone, but they were not arrived at arbitrarily or lightly. We believe that our recommendations are realistic and achievable, and that they signal the way forward for Gaelic development.

We are grateful to the organisations and individuals who generously gave us formal submissions, information, opinions and constructive suggestions. We were guided by these contributions as well as the corpus of valuable material that has been written in recent years about maintenance of the Gaelic language and culture. While there is no consensus across the Gaelic organisations on the way forward, there is general concurrence that there is a need for change. We are particularly indebted to those who have indicated what these changes might be.

We appreciate the kindness and counsel of Micheal O Gruagain and Peadar O Fladharta, Chief Executives respectively of Bord na Gaeilge and Comhdhail Naisiunta na Gaeilge in Ireland.

The Taskforce members would not have been able to dedicate so much time and energy to the assignment without the goodwill and support of our respective spouses, employers and co-workers. We appreciate their help and forbearance.

I also want to thank Francis Brewis and William Fox of the Scottish Executive staff for their assistance and guidance.

John A. Macpherson, Chairman

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The remit of the Taskforce was to examine the arrangement and structures for the support of the Gaelic organisations in Scotland, and to advise Scottish Ministers on future arrangements, taking account of the Scottish Executive’s support for Gaelic as set out in the Programme for Government.

The Taskforce has concluded that Gaelic is in a precarious, even critical, condition and that, without significant Government support it will not survive beyond the mid-point of the 21^st century. In order to optimise the development of the language, future public funding must be needs-driven, project-based, and community-oriented.

Our vision for Gaelic is that, as a foundation-stone in the building of the new Scotland, the Gaelic language will be an integral and dynamic component of a self-assured community with economic and social stability and pride in its linguistic and cultural identity.

The key recommendations are as follows:

1. That the Scottish Executive continue to fund Gaelic and enhance its development by:

• Having Gaelic representation at a senior level within the Executive — a small Gaelic-speaking Department of the Gaidhealtachd -- to advise Ministers on policy. It is important that these appointments be made soon, so that the incumbents will be able to assist in establishing the new structures and determining priorities for action.

• Establishing a transitional Advisory Group of four members representing the four functional areas identified in Recommendation 2 below.

• Establishing a Gaelic Development Agency responsible to the Executive and Parliament for:
  
  

  • Producing an overarching strategy, and formulating and implementing clearly articulated plans with specified and achievable targets.

  • Directing four functional areas: (1) education and learning; (2) arts, culture and heritage; (3) economic and social development; and (4) language planning and development, within the three communities identified in the Framework for Development.

  • Facilitating the process of Secure Status for the language.

2. That the Gaelic Development Agency:

• Is headed by a Chief Executive Officer, assisted by Heads of Function for each of the four functional areas, and with a Board comprising the Chief Executive Officer and five non-executive directors representative of the Gaelic community and appointed with due diligence by a formal selection process. It is recommended that the non-executive directors receive appropriate remuneration commensurate with other public bodies.

• Is the sole channel of Government funding, to be provided in accordance with clear objectives laid out in an agreed timeframe.

• Administer initial government funding of £10 million annually for Gaelic development (not including broadcasting), in order to create the minimum conditions that will stabilise and develop the language.

• Monitor the application and impact of the funding for which the organisations will compete on the basis of the criteria outlined in the Framework for Development.

• Subsume the strategic direction and activities of the currently public-funded organisations. The number of existing organisations would be reduced and some or all of the remaining ones would become wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Agency.

• Concentrate the management of Gaelic activities in locations in the Gaelic heartland, with appropriate distribution to accommodate the "energy centres" and the language’s national disposition.

The bottom-line for Gaelic is that, in a new Scotland, the survival and revival of a national asset is surely desirable and possible. It’s time for revitalisation, so that the Gaelic language becomes a dynamic component of a self-assured community with economic and social stability and pride in its linguistic and cultural heritage.

PROCESS

The work of the Taskforce commenced by seeking written submissions from Gaelic organisations, local authorities and other interested bodies. This was followed by letters to newspapers requesting views from members of the public. After reading the written submissions, as well as the supporting documentation accompanying them, the Taskforce met with each organisation to discuss its position in detail. We also met with selected individuals who had either submitted interesting responses or who had experience and expertise in different aspects of Gaelic development. These face-to-face meetings took eight days. A total of 40 submissions were received from organisations and 65 letters or e-mail messages from individuals. (Listings are given in Appendix 1. The organisations receiving public funding are listed in Appendix 3). The Taskforce members met for a further four days and were in regular communication by teleconference and e-mail.

Since another Taskforce was already examining the feasibility of a dedicated Gaelic television channel, and since broadcasting is a reserved power within the mandate of the Westminster Parliament, we excluded broadcasting from our detailed deliberations but we met with the Broadcasting Taskforce to exchange information. Since Gaelic broadcasting is vital to the development of the language, we wish to express our support for the concept of a dedicated Gaelic television channel.

It was suggested by some organisations and individuals that the Taskforce should make recommendations beyond its limited remit. While it is tempting to do so we feel that the framework, arrangements and structure that we are suggesting heralds the onset of a dynamic process and that it would not be helpful to pre-empt its implementation with prescriptive propositions at this stage. We have not attempted to write an encyclopaedia of Gaelic do’s and don’ts. That has been done many times and it is not necessary to reiterate thoughts that have been better expressed by others. We were not asked for a scholarly dissection of the Gaelic dilemma, but for recommendations of how it might be resolved. We were guided, however, by the valuable and thorough research carried out by Professor Kenneth MacKinnon and others.

GAELIC AND THE SCOTTISH EXECUTIVE

The Scottish Executive Partnership for Scotland agreement pledges the Executive to support the Gaelic language and culture. The agreement states that the Executive will work to achieve secure status for Gaelic and will invest in Sabhal Mor Ostaig, the Gaelic College in Skye.

Direct Scottish Executive support for Gaelic is in three main areas: broadcasting, education and cultural organisations. The total support in 2000-2001 amounts to £13.2 million. Out of this allocation £8.5 million is allotted to broadcasting, £2.6 million to education under the specific grants scheme, £605,000 to other educational initiatives, £693,000 to Sabhal Mor Ostaig, and £608,000 to cultural organisations.

In addition to direct support by the Scottish Executive, approximately £500,000 is allotted annually by the Scottish Arts Council to projects that are directly or indirectly related to Gaelic.

Over the past twenty years there has been an expanded scale of government support for Gaelic. Besides financial support there have been other encouraging recent developments including the appointment of a Minister for Gaelic by the Government at Westminster and the continuance of this post by the Scottish Executive, government initiation of and continued support for the Columba Initiative, the first Gaelic debate in the Scottish Parliament, the provision of Gaelic signage and translation facilities in the Parliament building, the appointment of a Gaelic Parliamentary Officer, the start of the project to produce a Gaelic dictionary for use by the parliament, the establishment of an Inter-Party Parliamentary Committee for Gaelic, and the identification of Gaelic education as a National Priority Action Area. A further impetus for development came with the signing by the UK Government of the Council of Europe Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, making provision for the use of Gaelic in defined circumstances in civil proceedings in areas of Scotland where Gaelic speakers form a substantial proportion of the population. The fact that Gaelic now has a place within the statutory parameters of National Priorities is a major advance, and every effort must be made over the next few years to ensure that this paves the way for significant progress in the delivery of Gaelic Medium Education.

But, as we indicate in another section of the report, Gaelic is in a precarious, even critical, condition. Without significant Government support it will not survive in any meaningful way beyond the mid-point of the 21^st century. That Scotland should abandon it is inconceivable. It must remain one of the Scottish Executive’s national priorities.

"Gaelic is a precious jewel in the heart and soul of Scotland. It is not constrained within strict boundaries or herded into tight corners. Gaelic is national , European and international. It is fundamental to Scotland; it is not on the periphery or on the fringes. It must be normalised and its rights must be secured."

Alasdair Morrison, MSP, Minister for Gaelic (Debate in Scottish Parliament)

THE CURRENT STATE OF GAELIC

The last major review of Gaelic was in 1982, when the document "Cor na Gaidhlig" led to the formation of Comunn na Gaidhlig in order to undertake new initiatives to energise the language. Despite some significant successes, beneath a façade of well-being induced by palliative measures Gaelic is a critically ill patient on life support.

Although it is one of Scotland’s primary national assets, it might be argued that Gaelic has been the nation’s greatest casualty of the second millennium. It is hanging on by a thread which is getting more frayed by the day. Despite occasional signs of remission, the prognosis is bleak.

The statistics tell a story of decline. The 1991 census showed 65,978 Gaelic speakers in Scotland (1.35% of the national population), down from 79,307 in 1981(1.6%) and 210,677 in 1901(5.2%). One frequently hears that the percentage of Gaelic speakers is so low that that any attempt at survival, far less revival, is futile. Less prevalent is the question of why the percentage is so small, and what should be done to reverse the decline. The late acclaimed poet Sorley Maclean said: "If Gaelic dies Scotland will lose something of inexpressible worth, and the Gaels will lose almost everything."

It’s a tribute to its tenacity, if not a miracle, that Gaelic has survived thus far. Within an overall ideology of linguistic assimilation and the stranglehold of a dominant language and powerful external forces, Gaelic has been neither an official nor promoted language. At worst it was discouraged, sometimes by restrictive legislation including Education Acts, and at one time it was even proscribed. At best it was tolerated by the authorities. The history of the Gaelic language has been a chronicle of dereliction: official negligence; malicious intent; deliberate denial; and, perhaps most damaging of all, benign neglect. The language has suffered from stigmatisation and from attrition through outward migration, loss of population and decline of community. But there are encouraging signs that it is no longer being marginalised. Gaelic has an important contribution to make to a socially-inclusive Scotland.

While much is being done by committed and dedicated activists to develop Gaelic, and while significant headway has been made on a number of fronts in recent years, further progress is being quantitatively and qualitatively constrained by lack of resources, lack of focus and lack of language planning. The Taskforce was reminded by all of the organisations of the inordinate time and energy they have to expend on raising funds to enable them to remain viable. The situation is compounded by the absence of an overall development policy and helps to nurture and embellish perceptions that the Gaels do not have their act together, that resources are being duplicated, and that public money is not being prudently apportioned or spent. While much of the "Gaelic debate" is candid, open and healthy it occasionally generates more heat than light and the rhetoric sometimes assumes greater importance than the language itself.

"When I think of my tongue being no longer alive in the mouths of men, a chill goes over me that is deeper than my own death, since it is the gathered death of all my kind."

David Malouf, Australian author (1985)

The failure to plan for language shift is well-described in a reflective paper by Wilson MacLeod of Sabhal Mor Ostaig and we are grateful to him for his permission to quote the following extract from it:

"Over the course of the last fifteen years, Gaelic in Scotland has benefited from an unprecedented programme of public investment, transmitted through a wide range of initiatives across a number of fields, notably education, the media, and the arts. The perceived success of these initiatives has prompted many to speak of a Gaelic ‘renaissance’ in Scotland (Rogerson & Gloyer, 1995). The visibility and public profile of the language have been substantially increased through this process, and the political and cultural ramifications of these developments have unquestionably been significant. At the same time, however, relatively little consideration has been given to matters of language development in a more formal sense, to language planning, or to language policy. There has been a serious lack of strategy to this ‘renaissance’, and fundamental questions have been sidestepped. Initiatives have tended to be uncoordinated and haphazard, driven without the guidance of theory or the control of planning. Resources have been allocated unevenly, with some fields receiving disproportionate funding and others being severely neglected.

"Most disturbingly of all, there is no meaningful evidence to suggest that this ‘renaissance’ has worked any change in patterns of Gaelic language use, whether at community or family level, yet little attention has been paid to the key problem of ongoing demographic decline. Instead of grappling with the fundamental challenge of halting or reversing language shift, there has been a disturbing tendency to rely upon and perhaps even to believe the rhetoric of the glossy brochure and the press release.

"Set against the achievements of lesser-used language communities in other European countries — Wales, Catalunya, Euskadi for example — the level of initiative and provision for Gaelic in Scotland remains startlingly low."

While the efforts and accomplishments must be acknowledged and those who spearheaded them applauded, new and bold initiatives are now imperative. A lack of strategy, policy, planning and focus is not the way forward.

There are three basic options confronting Gaelic. The first is to do nothing and let it die quickly. The second is to apply palliative care and delay the demise. The third is radical remedy. If Gaelic is to survive, the third option is the only choice. It’s not the easiest option. It requires strong leadership, frank dialogue, sensitive and elegant management, creative vision and a strong institutional structure. The Scottish Executive role in creating and nurturing these features is crucial.

"Ultimately, the issue of Gaelic is not just a Scottish issue. It is an issue of human dignity, of belonging, and of justice."
Comunn na Gaidhlig (Secure Status for Gaelic, December 1997)

Language planning usually has two dimensions: status planning and corpus planning. Status planning protects or changes the function of a language and the rights and aspirations of its users. For instance, speakers of a minority language may be denied the use of that language in educating their children or in courts of law. So it does not have any status. On the other hand a government may declare that more than one language will be officially recognised, thus awarding status to the newly recognised one.

Corpus planning takes place within a policy planning framework. It sanctions the systematic development of a language, sometimes by standardising it or by developing orthography, vocabulary and new uses (in broadcasting and government, for example). With languages that have no status planning corpus planning is difficult at best and chaotic and counter-productive at worst. Lack of corpus planning usually leads to a proliferation of organisations pursuing disconnected objectives.

There are alternative organisational models that could be applied to Gaelic development. The current one is fragmented and lacking a coherent framework. While each organisation is dedicated and striving hard to achieve its own aims, there is little evidence of a united or holistic approach. The various activities are all laudable and necessary but they are perceived as discrete projects that are not part of an overall policy or an overarching strategy. The start of a new millennium is an opportune time to change that paradigm. The catalyst for change must be the Scottish Executive. The agents for change must be dynamic forces that will advance the process with a constructive fusion of strategy and tactics. Gaelic can no longer depend on doing the right things, but on the right people doing things right.

If Gaelic is to survive it must receive a level of support comparable to what Welsh and Irish are receiving now. This argument is usually greeted with the retort "Ah but there are ten times as many Welsh speakers as there are Gaelic speakers." Ironically, that comment reinforces the argument. One of the reasons that Welsh is so healthy is that it has had the strong public policy and public funding support that has been denied to Gaelic in the past.

"There is widespread recognition (in the business community) of the contribution of the Gaelic arts and cultural industry is making to employment, tourism enhancement and positive attitudinal change."
Sproull & Chalmers Report, March 1998

Crucial to long term Gaelic survival is a large expansion of Gaelic Medium Education, itself dependent on solving the chronic shortage of Gaelic Medium teachers. The scale of the crisis confronting the language is best appreciated when we realise that the current number of about 2,000 children in Gaelic Medium primary and secondary education needs to be increased five-fold to maintain the present population of Gaelic speakers, let alone reverse the decline. The educational deficit is compounded by a shortfall in the Inspectorate, by lack of training and in-service provision, and by lack of awareness and promotion of the value of bilingual education. A consolidated funding system, including specific grants, is required for primary, secondary and tertiary education.

"Pupils receiving Gaelic-medium primary education, whether or not Gaelic was the language of their home, were not being disadvantaged in comparison with children educated through English. In many ways, though not in all instances, they out-performed English-medium pupils and in addition gained the advantage of having become proficient in two languages."
Richard Johnstone, Director of the Scottish Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research (1999)

Achieving language shift is a slow and complex task. It involves identity and self-assertion. It is not merely a linguistic challenge, but one that entails intensification of cultural, social and economic development. It demands acceptance of the fact that bilingualism is not a burden but a declaration of multicultural diversity. Individual and collective exertions are required to sustain a language. But there is a lot of goodwill towards Gaelic and a new pride in language, culture and heritage as a means of strengthening the life of the individual and the self-esteem of the community.

Securing and promoting Gaelic in the heartland must be a key objective. It must also be nurtured in the "energy centres" outside the heartland. And effective measures must be taken to ensure that more learners achieve fluency.

Our vision, conclusions and recommendations are predicated on two strands of strategy. The first is a short-term one that would see an arrest of the present decline and a stabilisation of the number of Gaelic speakers at the present level over the next ten years. The second is a long-term one where, given the right impetus, the number of speakers will start to increase. But that will never be achieved by goodwill alone or by superlative efforts on the part of individuals and organisations. As the eminent linguist David Crystal says: "It’s too late to do anything to help many languages, where the speakers are too few or too old, and where the community is too busy trying to survive to care about their language. But many languages are not in such a serious position. Often, where languages are seriously endangered, there are things that can be done to give new life to them. It is called revitalisation.

"Once a community realises that its language is in danger, it can get its act together, and introduce measures which can genuinely revitalise. The community itself must want to save its language. The culture of which it is a part must need to have a respect for minority languages. There needs to be funding, to support courses, materials and teachers. And there need to be linguists, to begin with the basic task of putting the language down on paper."

No doubt the arguments for evolution and gradualism on the one hand and revolutionary and dramatic action on the other will continue. The answer probably lies somewhere between the two ends of the spectrum. The bottom line for Gaelic is that, in a new Scotland, the survival and revival of a national asset is surely desirable and possible. It’s time for revitalisation. It’s time for a paradigm shift.

"Chacun recite toutefois que la supreme révélation du gènie national, la clef magique qui donne accès aux plus hautes richesses de la culture, c’est la langue."
Lionel Groulx, Canadian historian

GAELIC ACROSS SCOTLAND — 1991 CENSUS

VISION

As a foundation stone in the building of the new Scotland, the Gaelic language will be an integral and dynamic component of a robust and self-assured community with economic and social stability and pride in its linguistic and cultural identity. The intrinsic value of Gaelic and the benefits of bilingualism will be increasingly recognised. Gaelic culture will be at the heart of confident and thriving communities. After a transitional period in which the decline of the language will be arrested, it will move into an exciting phase of regeneration and renaissance.

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