21st August 2014

In praise of Gaelic
You are never far from water in North Uist. The island is a paradise for rod bearing
fishermen, drawn there from all over the world by the lure of hooking the indigenous
brown trout or its larger, silvery cousin, the sea trout.
The skilful, or lucky, angler can also find himself on the end of a line doing battle
with the King of the Fish, the Atlantic salmon, drawn back to the same stretch of
water year after year. Like the salmon, I also have a homing instinct that regularly
draws me back to the same beach on my native island where I first saw a large orange
sun fall into the wide expanse of ocean that separates the west coast of North Uist and
the eastern seaboard of Canada.
And just as someone tried to explain to me the wonders of the natural world around us
nearly five decades ago, on every holiday I have tried to answer my daughters
questions as she grew up. Dad, do they put glitter on the sea up here? Mairi Kate
asked me a few short years ago, as we watched the sunlight dance towards us across
the waves.
This summer as we drove west to the same beach, arguing about which radio station
to listen to, she asked me another unconsciously penetrating question.
After flicking between Radio 1, Radio nan Gaidheal and Radio Scotland we
eventually agreed on Radio 2.
Instantly, we were both struck silent by the beautiful lilt of a female island voice
explaining the meaning of the Gaelic puirt-a-beul (mouth music) she was about to
sing. Dad, how does a Gaelic singer manage to get onto Radio 2?
Mark Radcliffe, is the simple answer. But, just like the glitter on the water, this
question can be answered on many different levels.
I grew up in North Uist in the 1960s as a native Gaelic speaker. This was the norm.
Only the laird, the vet and a handful of mainlanders were not conversant in our
language. Everything else in my world was immersed in Gaelic. We played in Gaelic.
We ate in Gaelic. We prayed in Gaelic. Every hill, river and village around us had a
Gaelic name.
Playing on the floor in a neighbours house I learnt about the achievements of Celtic
and Rangers in domestic and European competitions, heard amazing tales of exotic
foreign countries from the mouths of Gaelic speaking sailors and listened in awe to an
incredible story about the first moon landing. But on the first day in school my whole
world changed forever.

In Paible Junior Secondary school where Primary one, two, three and four shared a
small room, a Gaelic speaking teacher, who lived along the road from us, welcomed
me to school in English. Switching to Gaelic she complimented me on being
extremely well dressed but then explained that from now on I would be speaking
English. To my horror, she asked me to describe what I was wearing in this alien
language of which I could not speak a single word.
The older pupils, who were by now bilingual, listened quietly as the teacher prompted
me again to describe what I was wearing. Responding to the third prompt, from some
fold of my young memory, I remembered being in a shop in a town far away with my
mother. And a trembling five year old began to speak his first faltering words of
English: Two grey shirts, please.
The rest of the class burst out laughing but, somehow, I survived this head on collision
with the English language and within a few months, thanks to a remarkable teacher, I
was achieving a reasonable level of fluency in my new language. At school, we all
spoke English in the classroom, except for a couple of hours a week when we were
taught to read and write in our native language. Outside, we played football,
cowboys and indians and built rafts to cross the local loch in Gaelic. This was soon to
change.
Slowly, English began to gain more of a foothold in our young lives. By the time I
had moved to the big school, English had almost replaced Gaelic as the language of
the playground. We may only have had two and then three television channels but
there was very little Gaelic on screen. Top of the Pops, Match of the Day, Play for
Today made English cool.
The number of classmates who did not or would not speak Gaelic was also increasing
due in part to the lively military base on the neighbouring island of Benbecula. The
presence of young people who had been schooled in England, Germany or in other
countries where the British Army had a sizeable presence, enhanced our lives and
education. But they swung the balance more firmly in favour of English as our
everyday language.
There was also a misguided theory among some local parents that if they encouraged
their children to speak Gaelic it would somehow reduce their ability in the language
that was their key to employment and getting on in the world. This mind set is not
peculiar to Gaelic or to Uist but it damages the smaller language that is already
battling for survival against a larger one.
At the end of Secondary Two I rebelled against a teacher who wanted me to take an O
Level in history. When she asked me why, I replied, with all the cocksure insolence a
13 year old can muster, that I know as much as I need to about the Kings and Queens
of England. The teacher, and she was a good one, seemed genuinely bemused when
I explained that I would like to study local history.

I can still remember her puzzled expression as she looked out the window of Room
Six across the island she had moved to a couple of years earlier. Slowly she turned
back to tell me: But there is no history here.
From a 2014 vision, this comes across as a remarkably ignorant analysis from any
teacher, but particularly a teacher of history. Years later, I think I now understand
where she was coming from. In the early 1970s, no one had written the history of the
Islands or the Highlands from the perspective of its persecuted people.
History is written by the victors and at that time the story of highlands was drawn
from official sources, records held by the lairds, the churches and by government. No
historian had paid any attention to oral stories passed from generation to generation,
to Gaelic poetry or to the testimony from the stone ruins of houses in glens and bays
around the north and west of Scotland. The seminal work by Dr James Hunter, The
Making of the Crofting Community, was still a Phd thesis in progress.
However, something was stirring in the Universities. As part of our studies for a
Gaelic O Level a young teacher straight out of training college got the class involved
in a project about the local kelp industry and how its collapse led to mass evictions in
North Uist.
It is hard to explain how radical this seemed at the time and to my shame, I have never
thanked this teacher for introducing me to my own history and politics,
in my native language. I did not recognise it at the time, but my life philosophy was
beginning to take shape. Three decades later we are in a different world.
In 2005 the Scottish Parliament, with endorsement from all the political parties,
passed the Gaelic Language Act which is the first piece of legislation to give the
language formal recognition. Gaelic is now an official language of Scotland and
Bord na Gaidhlig was set up as an arm of Government to provide strategic direction
for the development of the language.
The Labour Cabinet Minister, Peter Peacock who, at the time of the Act coming into
force, had ministerial responsibility for Gaelic, said: "This is a momentous day for
Gaelic as we open a new chapter in the language's history. We have come a long way
since the dark days of 1616 when an Act of Parliament ruled that Gaelic should be
'abolishit and removit' from Scotland."
However, official status has not silenced the siren voiced critics of Gaelic who
proclaim loudly that no public money should be spent on this worthless and dying
language. No aspect of Gaelic is spared from their scorn.
Currently about 3000 children are now being taught in Gaelic Medium Education
primary classes throughout Scotland with approximately 1500 students continuing
into secondary. Many of these schools have an impressive story to tell.

Sgoil Ghaidhlig Ghlaschu, the Gaelic shool in Anderston in Glasgow, has the fastest
growing school roll in the city, and possibly in the country. Academically, the school
is outperforming all other state schools in the city. Parental demand has ensured that
a second Gaelic school will open on the south side in 2015. This month, 60 five year
olds have enrolled at a Gaelic Medium school in Edinburgh. Most of the parents are
not Gaelic speakers but are drawn by the quality of the education.
This is all very encouraging but Bord na Gaidhlig has recognised that if the language
is going to survive in any meaningful sense, more kids have to learn it. The
organisation has the stated aim of doubling the number of children entering Gaelic
schools by 2017, which will be challenging.
However, they are helped by the fact that parents can now send their children to the
local Gaelic school secure in the knowledge that every in-depth survey has shown that
bilingualism enhances educational attainment. Indeed, a recent survey in Wales
showed that children who were taught through the medium of Welsh were
outperforming their peers who learnt through English in most subjects, including
English.
So, when I hear critics complaining that Gaelic Medium Education does not represent
value for money for the hard pressed taxpayer, I gently make several observations.
The state still educates our children, which means the taxpayer would be funding the
education of these kids wherever they attend school. The Gaelic schools generally
punch well above their weight academically, which means that graduates from the
schools can be found in every walk of life in Scotland contributing to the cultural and
economic well being of the nation. And, importantly, paying an increasing share of
the countrys taxes.
Another target of the critics, Gaelic television, has also been a vitally important
development. In the late 1980s the then Tory Government created a Gaelic television
fund to ensure more programmes were produced in the language. Twenty years later a
new Gaelic channel, BBC ALBA, took to the air.
BBC ALBA has quickly established itself as part of the broadcasting landscape in
Scotland. Cleverly, the commissioning editors have focussed on football and music
to draw in a large nonGaelic speaking audience but there is clear evidence these
viewers are hanging around to watch other programmes, mainly factual and
documentaries.
Audience statistics show nearly 90% of Scots are aware of the existence of BBC
ALBA, no mean feat in the digital age of hundreds of channels. Every week around
750,000 Scots watch the Gaelic channel. Increasingly programmes produced for
BBC ALBA are being seen around the world on channels like APTN, the fourth most
popular channel in Canada.

BBC ALBA takes the Gaelic language directly into homes all over the country, makes
it more accessible through subtitles and creates hundreds of jobs for speakers of the
language, many of whom have come through the Gaelic school system.
BBC ALBA costs the taxpayer about 22 million pounds per annum, roughly about
25% of the amount received by Welsh language broadcasters. Given the audience it
attracts, the appreciation for its programmes and the high quality jobs it has helped to
create, Gaelic television seems like very good value for money.
Perhaps the most vitriolic attacks on Gaelic have been reserved for Local Authorities
that have had the audacity to use the language on signposts and place names. These
resolute and determined protectors of the public purse miss no opportunity to decry
Gaelic signs on the airwaves and in the printed press. They seem to be completely
unaware that most of Scotlands rivers and hills, towns and villages owe their name to
the Gaelic language.
This will probably come as no surprise to people in the north and west of Scotland but
the Gaelic influence extends east into Aberdeenshire, south to Perthshire and Ayrshire
and even down into Berwickshire on the English border. The same is true of many
familiar place names in and around Glasgow. The meeting of rivers at Comar nan Allt
is better known as Cumbernauld, St Bridgetss Church (East) gave us Cille Bhrighde
an Ear or East Kilbride and Crois MoLiubha or St Lubhs Cross probably makes more
sense in Gaelic than it does as Crossmyloof.
Gaelic place names are sign posting our way back to our own countrys history, a fact
that most Scots are, sadly, unaware of.
So what of present and the future? The value of Gaelic to Scotland can be seen many
surprising places. Together, Gaelic schools and BBC ALBA have also contributed
significantly to the popular revival in traditional music across Scotland.
Celtic Connections in Glasgow every January attracts an international audience of
more than 100,000 music lovers in the bleakest of winter months, contributing up to
10 million to the citys economy. I wonder if the critics who would starve Gaelic
schools of public funding realise how much this festival owes to Scotland and
Glasgows Gaelic and Irish heritage.
The wonderful voice of Julie Fowlis from North Uist, who only sings in Gaelic, has
been heard by audiences all over the world on the Holywood film, Brave. A few
years ago she was voted Folk Singer of the Year by Radio Two listeners, bringing her
native language to an audience that knows little if anything about Gaelic, but can
recognise quality music and the voice of an angel.

This month, Julie will entertain audiences in Denmark and around Scotland before
embarking on a month long tour of the United States including performances at the
iconic birthplace of the blues, Memphis Tennessee.
Julies talent and devotion to Gaelic has shown that this small Celtic language can be
a national and international asset for Scotland.
It is surely a failure of our education system that so many Scots do not appreciate the
contribution Gaelic has made to Scotland and Scottish life.
When I see the glitter on the water on a Uist beach or entice a salmon from an
island loch or hear the voices of Gaelic singers dancing over the airwaves I
acknowledge that I have enjoyed a privileged bilingual life.
It is there for you too, but Scotland has to cherish and support its ancient language. If
we dont, it will slowly and surely die and a major part of our history and identity as a
people and a nation will be wiped out. Scotlands future would not be the better for it.