The battle to get Welsh on the box

Thirty years ago this week, the Welsh-language television channel S4C broadcast for the first time.

From that historic moment until today, the channel has ensured the survival of Welsh as a community language, used every day across the country. Modern Wales would be unimaginable without it.

That achievement alone cannot be understated.

But the inspirational story of the channel's establishment is also one of triumph over the Tories that resonates through the decades to today's austere times.

Before the 1979 general election both Labour and Tory parties had promised to establish a Welsh language channel, a result of a decade of campaigning by Welsh language activists.

But all too predictably, once the Tories had won power and Thatcher was through the doors of No 10 they reneged on their promise.

Incensed by the decision and motivated by his desire to ensure a future for the language, then Plaid Cymru president Gwynfor Evans said he would embark on a hunger strike unless the government delivered on their manifesto pledge.

"Without Gwynfor Evans's hunger strike threat, there would be no S4C. Thatcher was reading Irish history then and feared a Welsh martyr," Labour MP Paul Flynn wrote on Twitter this week.

And Flynn, MP for Newport West, told the Star: "I was up to my neck in broadcasting politics at the time.

"I was acting chairman of the Broadcasting Council for Wales and I resigned because the home secretary announced that there was going to be no fourth channel [for Wales].

"My resignation didn't do any difference. It caused a little stir but the issue was dead, they weren't going to provide the money for the fourth channel and it was then that Gwynfor Evans announced his hunger strike.

"People want to deny it and say it was Thatcher changing her mind, but it wasn't, she changed her mind under duress of the possibility that a figure that had great respect in Wales, by all parties, would die.

"I made a speech at the '88 Eisteddfod about the sacrifice of one man for the channel. I had a very angry letter from one of my Labour colleagues, but this is the truth, this is what really happened."

Despite this Evans's actions aren't without critics.

Tyrone O'Sullivan, who led many strikes in the '70s and '80s, and led a workers buyout of Tower colliery in south Wales, warned today's trade union leaders against relying on individual acts of protest.

"I was doing so much myself in and around that time I would say that I'm not much into the Gwynfor story," he said.

"Martyrs in working-class movements are very rarely remembered and many times the lessons are not learned.

"Being willing to go on strike is definitely the way forward. There is no alternative - if you don't stop the creation of wealth you will not hit the rich and powerful."

But seven years after his death, Evans's passion for his language and for fairness for people around the world still burns brightly.

"You turn if you want to, but the lady's not for turning", Thatcher told the Conservative Party's 1980 conference to her party's delight.

It's a sentence that encapsulates the myth of the "iron lady," but Thatcher's speech came soon after she was forced to back down to Wales's wishes.

And to mark the Tory U-turn some new graffiti appeared near Westminster. It read "Gwynfor 1 Whitelaw 0," - a reference to Thatcher's home secretary William Whitelaw who tried to block the channel's creation.

Justice had been won, Thatcher and her Tories had been beaten and, perhaps inspired by people like Gwynfor Evans, they can be beaten again.

• There is a documentary about Gwynfor's struggle on S4C on Sunday November 4 at 9am with English subtitles. In Wales, S4C is available on Freeview 4, Sky 104, Virgin TV 167 and Freesat 104. In England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, S4C is available on Sky 134 and Freesat 120.