Meinir Ffransis (born 8 April 1950;

née The birth name is the name of the person given upon their birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name or to the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a births registe ...

Evans) is a

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, of or about Wales * Welsh language, spoken in Wales * Welsh people, an ethnic group native to Wales Places * Welsh, Arkansas, U.S. * Welsh, Louisiana, U.S. * Welsh, Ohio, U.S. * Welsh Basin, during t ...

political activist, best known for her activities as a prominent member of

Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg The Welsh Language Society (, also often abbreviated to Cymdeithas yr Iaith or just Cymdeithas in English) is a direct action pressure group in Wales campaigning for the right of Welsh people to use the Welsh language in every aspect of their l ...

(The Welsh Language Society). She served jail sentences for various offences while campaigning for recognition for the

Welsh language Welsh ( or ) is a Celtic languages, Celtic language of the Brittonic languages, Brittonic subgroup that is native to the Welsh people. Welsh is spoken natively in Wales by about 18% of the population, by some in England, and in (the Welsh c ...

. Meinir Ffransis is one of the three daughters and seven children of the first

Plaid Cymru Plaid Cymru ( ; , ; officially Plaid Cymru – the Party of Wales, and often referred to simply as Plaid) is a centre-left, Welsh nationalist list of political parties in Wales, political party in Wales, committed to Welsh independence from th ...

MP and one-time party leader,

Gwynfor Evans Gwynfor Richard Evans (1 September 1912 – 21 April 2005) was a Welsh politician, lawyer and author. He was President of the Welsh political party Plaid Cymru for thirty-six years and was the first member of Parliament to represent it at West ...

, and his wife, Rhiannon Prys Thomas, both of whom died in 2005. Her political career began when, aged sixteen, she campaigned for her father in the

1966 Carmarthen by-election The 1966 Carmarthen by-election, was held in Carmarthen, Wales, on 14 July 1966. The contest was significant in that it resulted in the election of Gwynfor Evans, the first ever Plaid Cymru member of parliament. Plaid Cymru's victory in the C ...

, when he took the seat from Labour. It was suggested that the loss of the seat in 1970 was partly due to his daughter's involvement in vigorous protests by the Welsh Language Society that same year. She married Ffred Ffransis, also a keen campaigner for Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg. The couple became notorious for their frequent brushes with the law during the 1970s, with Meinir on one occasion being jailed for defacing a TV transmitter during the campaign for a Welsh-language TV channel. When her father visited her in prison, they were not allowed to speak Welsh to one another, even though they had never previously conversed with one another in any other language. They have seven children: five daughters (Lleucu Meinir, Carys Rhian, Angharad Clwyd, Gwenno Teifi and Siriol Teifi) and two sons (Hedd Gwynfor and Ioan Teifi). In 2006, their daughter, Gwenno Teifi, was jailed for refusing to pay compensation to a local radio station, Radio Carmarthenshire, for criminal damage, becoming the first Welsh-language activist to be convicted and imprisoned in eleven years. Another daughter, Lleucu Meinir, was involved in a public protest in

Grangetown, Cardiff Grangetown ( Welsh: usually ''Grangetown'', also Trelluest) is a district and community in the south of Cardiff, capital of Wales. It is one of the largest districts in the south of the city and is bordered by Riverside, Canton and Butetow ...

, for refusing to pay parking fines notified to her in the

English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

only. Ffransis appeared in a Welsh-language TV drama documentary about her father in 2013.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ffransis, Meinir 1950 births Welsh language activists Living people