English NHS chief working in Wales is disciplined for comparing plight of non-Welsh speakers to black victims of apartheid
- James Moore compared non-Welsh speakers to South African apartheid
- Mr Moore worked for Health Education and Improvement Wales for 18 months
- He wrote that it was time for non-Welsh speakers to ‘stand up to the oppressor’
- Amid proposals to make two primary schools predominantly Welsh-speaking
A Welsh NHS chief has been disciplined for comparing non-Welsh speakers to black victims of apartheid.
James Moore, once responsible for organisational design and development at Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW), made the comparison in a Facebook post last week.
Mr Moore, from Sheffield but living in Llansteffan, wrote: ‘Just imagine if you changed the word English to ‘black’ or (historically in South Africa) ‘coloured’… perhaps non-Welsh speakers should use different buses? Maybe different drinking fountains?’
He had been working on a ‘secondment contract’ with HEIW for 18 months when he wrote that non-Welsh speakers should ‘stand up to the oppressors’. The Welsh Ambulance Service said ‘appropriate’ action would be taken.
James Moore (pictured), once responsible for organisational design and development at Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW), compared the plight of non-Welsh speakers in Wales with black victims of apartheid in a Facebook post last week
He had been working on a ‘secondment contract’ with HEIW for 18 months when he wrote that non-Welsh speakers should ‘stand up to the oppressors’. The Welsh Ambulance Service said ‘appropriate’ action would be taken
His comments came in response to proposals to change the primary teaching language at two primary schools – Model Church in Wales and Ysgol Y Felin – to Welsh from September 2022.
He left his post after ‘internal discussions’ with his former employer were sparked by an intense backlash to his remarks.
Aled Roberts, the Welsh Language Commissioner, and Eluned Morgan, the Minister for the Welsh language, criticised his comments while Plaid Cymru MS Bethan Sayed called for him to resign.
Mr Moore has now returned to his ‘substantive employment’ with the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust, the HEIW said.
The trust described the comments as ‘ill-judged and inflammatory’. It said they ‘fly in the face’ of its ‘commitment to the Welsh language’.
Mr Moore compared Welsh speakers to white people in South Africa during the time the country was under a system of institutionalised racial segregation, which ended in the 1990s.
Mr Moore has now returned to his ‘substantive employment’ with the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust, the HEIW said. Pictured, an ambulance drives on the A470 near Pen y Fan mountain on January 3 in Brecon, Wales
A Welsh Ambulance Service spokesperson said: ‘We are aware of ill-judged and inflammatory comments by a member of our staff who until recently had been on secondment to Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) for 18 months.
‘We neither condone nor support these comments, which fly in the face of our commitment to the Welsh language and our role as the national ambulance service of Wales. The appropriate action has been initiated in line with the NHS Wales disciplinary policy.’
In his Facebook post Mr Moore said: ‘The English language is the single most important export from the UK and gives us all a huge advantage in the world. Anything that undermines this in the cause of meeting nationalist zealotry harms us all.
‘As was the case in South Africa where the whites were a small minority, is it time for the 80% non-Welsh speakers to stand up to the oppressors to stop the ongoing apartheid?!’
He added: ‘Bilingualism is great in many parts of the world; however, narrow mindedness, insularity and petty nationalism (which seems to be entirely linked to the Welsh language) opens your mind only to yourself…leaving Wales trailing even further behind in an increasingly global world.’
HEIW works alongside Health Boards and Trusts as the only Special Health Authority within NHS Wales and has a role in the education and training of health workers in Wales.