Welsh Affairs — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Civil Rights
Paul Phillip Flynn (Labour, Centre-left): Before I return to that, I want, in relation to Welsh education, to say a word of thanks and tribute to Wyn Roberts. If anyone was responsible for the education in a second language in Wales it was him. I remember him saying in the corridor outside the Chamber, "Rhaid i ni fod yn gadarn! Rhaid i ni wneud safiad!" He was absolutely right. It was very courageous of him, as a Conservative, to have Welsh taught in the constituency of the hon. Member for Monmouth and various other parts of Wales, but it now exists and will continue to do so as a treasure for all the children of Wales, and we can hear it on their lips. If we go back to the time of the Romans in Caerleon, they spoke two languages: intra muros, they spoke Latin; and ultra muros, they spoke in Welsh. We do not hear a lot of children speaking Latin these days, but Welsh is still on the lips of children, which shows something about the vigour and endurance of the language Cyfraith Hywel Dda was arranged not by a gang of barons, but by people from each cwmwd or tiny area. Seven people were brought together to pool their wisdom, and what they did was extraordinary. We could have discussed this during the earlier debate on women’s rights No country in the whole of Europe was anywhere near as advanced as Wales on women’s rights. There were rights, which were very rare, for divorce. If the marriage had gone on for seven years, the wife was entitled to half the property: she had the sheep, and the husband had the pigs. She also had other rights. If the husband was unfaithful, he had to pay. Punishments throughout Europe at the time involved chopping off various bits of people—heads and arms, and everything else—but Wales was very advanced in that punishments mostly took the form of compensation. To give hon. Members some idea of the compensation, the price of a cat was a penny before its eyes opened, tuppence after its eyes opened and 4p after it had caught a mouse. A husband who was unfaithful to his wife had to pay 5 shillings, and if he did it a second time he had to pay £1, or the equivalent of losing 20 cats—that would dampen the ardour of any would-be adulterer Women had better rights than had existed in many countries for 1,000 years. England had 220 laws involving capital punishment in the 18th century, including for chopping down a tree or raiding a rabbit warren, but in 10th-century Wales hardly anything resulted in capital punishment. Regarding itinerants, there was an extraordinary law that if somebody who was poor and starving was refused food at three villages, they were entitled to steal without punishment—eat your heart out, Shelter and Crisis—which was an admission that the problems of the poor were not necessarily their fault We know that Cyfraith Hywel Dda was arranged in Hen Dy Gwyn ar Daf, but unfortunately we do not know when. It was a serious venture, because they stocked up with six weeks-worth of bread beforehand. As we are now celebrating the laws of Magna Carta—a significant event, but minor in terms of women’s rights and the progress of society—we need to give a lot of thought to the triumph of Cyfraith Hywel Dda.