Tynged Yr Iaith - After-effects

After-effects

Gwyn Williams said there were contrary effects. There was enthusiastic uptake of the cause of the language in the middle class, both English and Welsh-speaking. But he saw the across-the-board implementation of language policies as causing the increasingly English-speaking industrial working-class (contemptuously dismissed by Lewis) to feel disenfranchised and excluded. He went on to blame this reaction for the "No" vote in the Welsh devolution referendum, 1979, the vote of which split very much on language lines.

In 1976, Clive Betts pointed out that the language movement was dissipating its efforts by ignoring Lewis's insistence that action should be restricted to Welsh-speaking areas—to the Bro Gymraeg, and called for a restricted Quebec-style policy in the Bro, as Lewis had suggested.