ABSTRACT
Although the publicly announced beliefs of the eminent AngloWelsh poet R.S. Thomas cannot generally be held to be shared by the majority of his compatriots, his rejection of the term ‘British’ is by no means extremist or unrepresentative in the Welsh context. Surveys have shown that the majority of people who live in Wales, even in the most Anglicized or border regions, will identify themselves as ‘Welsh’ rather than as ‘British’. The proportion of Welsh speakers who reject the designation ‘British’ is, predictably, higher than that of non-Welsh speakers. Nevertheless, the willingness to be identified as ‘British’ is not dependent on linguistic factors only, but is strongly linked to the geographical territory inhabited by a given group. This fact has led one sociologist, Denis Balsom,2 to construct a ‘Three-Wales Model’ of the country, based on his analysis of survey questions on language and perceptions of identity. The model posits a tripartite division of the country into territories designated as follows: ‘British Wales’, ‘Welsh Wales’, and ‘Y Fro Gymraeg’ (the mainly Welsh-speaking area). In this study, the designation ‘British’ is evidently used to indicate an attenuated sense of a distinctively Welsh identity, as the statistics quoted in the study show. The territory covered by ‘British Wales’ is, in the main, a wide border country, which might be expected to exhibit the division of identity which the habitation of a border implies.
