Treachery of the Blue Books

Blue Books pt 2, no. 9, p. 66, on the Welsh Language: "The Welsh language is a vast drawback to Wales, and a manifold barrier to the moral progress and commercial prosperity of the people. It is not easy to over-estimate its evil effects."

The Treachery of the Blue Books or sometimes the 'Treason of the Blue Books' (Welsh: Brad y Llyfrau Gleision) or just the 'Blue Books' are the three-part 'Reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales' published by the British Government in 1847, which caused uproar in Wales for disparaging the Welsh; being particularly scathing in its view of the nonconformity and the morality of the Welsh people in general. The Welsh sobriquet Brad y Llyfrau Gleision (meaning treachery or conspiracy of the Blue Books) was from the name of a play satirising the reports, and those who gave evidence to the inquiry, by the poet Robert Jones Derfel and which was published seven years after the reports. The historian John Davies notes in The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales that the name 'took hold of the public imagination to such an extent that ever since the report has been known by that name.

According to the historian Simon Brookes, the Blue Books are regarded today as "colonial dictat", and are "the most important ideological intervention by the British state in Wales in the 19th century."

Background

During the second quarter of the 19th century there was much public unrest in Wales and this persuaded the British Government that the root causes of this needed to be understood. There had been labour problems in Tredegar and Merthyr, trouble related to land enclosures in Ceredigion, the Rebecca Riots and the Chartist march on Newport. As was the case throughout England and Wales at the time, there seemed to be a compelling need to provide quality education to all levels of society. The government establishment assumed, even before the inquiry took place, that this would be mainly in the English language, and thus would require trained teachers to be provided.

The majority of people in Wales at that time spoke only Welsh; Cardiff, the industrial Valleys and the coalfields of the North-east were bilingual. The three commissioners sent to Wales were English monoglots and they had a team of assistant commissioners at their disposal to do the groundwork.

Inquiry

The public inquiry was carried out as a result of pressure from William Williams, Radical MP for Coventry, who was himself a Welshman by birth and Welsh-speaking, and was concerned about the state of education in Wales. At that time, all schools in Wales were privately run - state schools didn't appear until 1870. It was carried out by three English commissioners, Ralph Lingen, Jelinger C. Symons, and H. R. Vaughan Johnson appointed by the Privy Council's committee on education. The commissioners visited every part of Wales during 1846, collecting evidence and statistics. They spoke no Welsh, but it was generally the army of assistant commissioners who were also appointed who visited the schools, villages, and towns. The evidence collected from Anglican witnesses was treated seriously whilst that from Nonconformists may have been ignored. This was a time when Wales was a stronghold of Nonconformism.

The report

The work was completed in 1847 and printed in November of that year in three large blue-covered volumes ("blue books" being a widely used term for all kinds of parliamentary reports). The report, mildly pornographic in parts, was detailed and its authors criticised several sectors of society, including the gentry, clergy, and capitalists for their lack of interest in providing schools. They were also damning of the Welsh people, characterising them as dirty, ignorant, lazy, and immoral. They concluded that schools in Wales were extremely inadequate, often with teachers speaking only English and using only English textbooks in areas where the children spoke only Welsh, and that Welsh-speakers had to rely on the Nonconformist Sunday Schools to acquire literacy. They also said that amongst the causes of this were the use of the Welsh language and nonconformity.

The commissioners often simply reported verbatim the prejudiced opinions of landowners and local Anglican clergy. The more bilious editorial attacks on Welsh culture mostly emanated from Commissioner Lingen and others who worked with him.

Of the 1,656 schools in Wales surveyed in the inquiry the language of instruction for 2 was Welsh only, for 1,321 it was English only, for 325 it was English and Welsh and for 8 unknown.

Schools by language of instruction

Counties	Commissioner	Welsh only	English only	Welsh and English	Unknown	Total
Glamorgan, Carmarthen and Pembroke	R. R. W. Lingen	0	465	239	8	712
Brecon, Cardigan and Radnor	J. C. Symons	1	206	33	0	240
Monmouth	J. C. Symons	0	120	7	0	127
Anglesey, Caernarfon, Denbigh, Flint, Merioneth and Montgomery	Henry Vaughan Johnson	1	530	46	0	577
Total		2	1,321	325	8	1,656

With the exception of Monmouth the report provides a breakdown of the different types of day schools in Wales.

Schools by Type (Excluding Monmouth)

Type Of School	For Profit	Schools	Scholars
Private Schools (including Dame Schools)	Yes	708	18,726
Church of England Schools (Parochial or National Society)	No	567	34,710
British Schools	No	64	7,654
Other Non Sectarian Schools	No	29	1,726
Nonconformist Schools (Baptist, Wesleyan, Methodist etc)	No	91	4,104
Workmen's Schools (including one Factory school)	No	25	3,037
Workhouse Schools	No	19	851
Mrs Bevan's Circulating Schools	No	14	890
Other Denomination Schools (inc Roman Catholic)	No	13	504
Total		1,530	72,202

Schools in Wales (and England) were provided and managed by the local community or local businesses. The two Voluntary Societies (the National Society and the British Society) provided some financial assistance towards the construction of schools aligned with their ideals. After 1833 the government would also provide grants for up to half of the cost of new school buildings. However all running costs had to be raised locally.

School Income

Source	Amount	%
School Fees	£21,103	53%
Subscriptions and Donations	£12,750	32%
Endowments	£5,224	13%
Collections	£675	2%
Total	£39,752	100%

Reaction and calls of treachery

The report's publication resulted in a furious reaction in Wales which lasted for years. The initial response was a counter-attack by indignant Anglicans, next came the satirical attacks and statistically-based analytical challenge of the facts from Evan Jones (Ieuan Gwynedd), a Nonconformist journalist. Angry nationalistic responses came from editors of the Welsh journals, particularly from Lewis Edwards in Y Traethodydd and David Rees in Y Diwygiwr. As time passed, informed opinion in Wales accepted that reform was needed as there were some valid points made in the reports. In an apparent attempt to turn the attacks to the advantage of the Nonconformists, Jones (Ieuan Gwynedd) suggested that the Welsh nation had been unjustly condemned on religious rather than nationalistic grounds. Radical leaders led mass meetings to protest against the defamations in the reports.

Seven years after the report was published, the poet Robert Jones Derfel published a play, Brad y Llyfrau Gleision ("Treachery of the Blue Books"). The play satirised the government commissioners and their Welsh witnesses. According to Phil Carradice, in his book Snapshots of Welsh History, "the play opens in Hell where the Devil decides that the Welsh people are too good and too godly and are becoming more godly by the hour thanks to the influence of non-conformity. He promptly hatches a plan to bring down this pure and godly people". A summary of the play on the website of the National Library of Wales describes how the 'Treachery' in the play is that committed by the Welsh church goers and clergymen and it says that Derfel, and others, "thought that their evidence enhanced and even fed The Blue Books' anti-Welsh judgements". The play's title referenced the reports' blue covers and evoked a much earlier Welsh myth, The Treason of the Long Knives, a story of the Anglo-Saxons settling in Britain by trickery, when, according to Nennius and Geoffrey of Monmouth, the Saxons began their campaign of conquest against the native Britons. The play so gripped the imagination of the Welsh public, that the reports have been known in Wales by that sobriquet since then.

The play, published in 1854 by I. Clarke in Ruthin, had no immediate political consequences, but was instrumental in the birth of the modern Welsh self-government movement.

Legacy

The Books remain an invaluable, although slanted, source of information on mid-19th century Welsh society.

Saunders Lewis, in Tynged yr Iaith, maintained that the Blue Books were for Welsh history "the most important nineteenth-century historical documents we possess". Such a judgement also reflects the fact that the publication of the reports, and the controversy that followed, was the catalyst for a much greater level of nonconformist involvement in the politics of Wales than hitherto. Critics such as Evan Jones (Ieuan Gwynedd), William Rees (Gwilym Hiraethog), Henry Richard, Thomas Price and Sir Thomas Phillips gained wide publicity for their trenchant criticisms of the reports. Over time these criticisms evolved into an organised political action, which culminated at the general election of 1868.

Accessibility

Digital scans of the Blue Books (amounting to 1,252 pages) were published online by the National Library of Wales in 2005.

See also

• Welsh Not
• Elen Egryn
• Education (Scotland) Act 1872

Further reading

• John Davies, Hanes Cymru (1993) (also in English translation as A History of Wales, Penguin, 1994, ISBN 0-14-014581-8)

External links

• The Blue Books at the National Library of Wales: introduction and historical context
  • Part 1: Carmarthen, Glamorgan and Pembroke
  • Part 2: Brecknock, Cardigan, Radnor and Monmouth
  • Part 3: North Wales, comprising Anglesey, Carnarvon, Denbigh, Flint, Meirioneth and Montgomery