WELSH LANGUAGE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 135, 24 June 1937, Page 6

WELSH LANGUAGE

Use in Courts of Justice LONDON, May 16. Judge Sir Artemus Jones, K.C., Lenten Recorder at the Middle Temple, in a reading in hall on the union of England and Wales, dealfc with the question whether or not an Act of Henry VIII prohibiting the use of the Welsh language in Courts of Justice ln Wales is still in effect. The Reader said the statute 27 Henry VIH c. 26 was passed in 1535 to set up a new judicial systein in Wales and to put an end to the different jurisdictions of the Marcher Lords. His policy was designed to bring about the extirpation of the Welsh language. That was why a clause was inserted in the Act forbidding the use of the Welsh language' in Courts of Justice in Wales, and providing th,at the official language must be English, and that Welsh Court ojcials must speak English as well. There had been an acute controversy lately on the question whether this pro* vision had been repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act, 1887. Having studied the original statute; roll and the reports of the Public Records Commission dealing with statute revision he (the Reader) had come to the conclusion that the veto on the Welsh language in the Act of 1535 had not been repealed. Though it might be suggested that it was t?o obsolete to be enforced, no English Act of Parliament could e.ver be safely regarded as abrogated by desuetude. He proceeded to illustrate the difiiculties of the bi-lingual problem' in the Welsh courts, and said that as the result of a Privy Couneil decision a few years ago the monoglot Welshman and semi-ihonoglbt Welshman was (deprived of his constitutiondi"' right of jury service sdlely ' 011 the ground that he could speak only his own language. - He sug- . gested a Departmental inquiry with a view to finding a remedy. -