Rally for S4C

Writers' Guild members ensured a high turn out at a rally on Saturday in Cardiff against the coalition's ill thought out plans for Welsh broadcaster S4C.

Nearly 2,000 people attended a rally outside the old Welsh Office building to hear speakers including Ieuan Wyn Jones AM (Deputy First Minister at the Welsh Assembly), Paul Flynn MP and David Donovan of Bectu, argue against a cut in the Welsh broadcaster's budget.

Speakers called for a re-think of the hastily made deal with the BBC over funding for the channel and certainty of the broadcaster's independence.

The Welsh Language Society is calling upon people to stop paying the licence fee from 1st of December 2010 in protest against the government's plans for the channel. Writer Angharad Tomos - who spent 3 months in prison during the hard-fought campaign to establish the channel in 1980 - spoke in support of this action during the rally.

Members of the Guild are encouraged to write to their MP calling for a review of the government's decision to cut S4C's grant and the move to make the BBC pay for it.



By Roger Williams