11.08.2022

From goch to pinc

Mike Macnair critiques the ongoing political degeneration of Anticapitalist Resistance and the Mandelites

Antiapcitalist Resistance published on August 3 its submission to the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales.¹ This was set up in October 2021 by the Labour (minority) devolved government as part of a deal which gets Labour support from Plaid Cymru in the Senedd. The commission is co-chaired by ex-archbishop Rowan Williams and academic (and former Plaid parliamentary candidate in 1987 and 1992) professor Laura McAllister.

The commission states it has two broad objectives: firstly, “consider and develop options for fundamental reform of the constitutional structures of the UK, in which Wales remains an integral part; secondly, “consider and develop all progressive principal options to strengthen Welsh democracy and deliver improvements for the people of Wales.”²

However, the point of the commission is fairly clear: kick issues into the long grass. For the left to make submissions to it is a useful, if limited, potential way to write about constitutional matters, but ACR’s is interestingly symptomatic of that organisation’s politics.

Cymru Goch - ‘Red Wales’ (1984-2003) - was a left pro-independence group, successor to the Welsh Socialist Republican Movement of the late 1970s-early 80s. After the failure of the Socialist Alliance, Cymru Goch liquidated itself into John Marek and Ron Davies’s short-lived ‘Forward Wales’ party (2003-10). Whatever else one may make of the politics, the WSRM and Cymru Goch by their names expressed radical opposition to the British monarchical regime. By contrast, ACR proposes ‘Cymru pinc’ (‘pink Wales’).

Submission

ACR’s submission responds to seven questions posed by the commission.³ By far the most extensive is to question 1: “What matters to you about the way Wales is run?”

Here ACR follows the traditional Mandelite (from Belgian Fourth International leader Ernest Mandel, 1923-95) method of diplomatic approach towards any sort of ‘official’ left which might be imagined to lead a slightly-left alternative to the ruling politics. This method has been followed with disastrous consequences by the Brazilian, Italian (and so on) Fourth International co-thinkers of the Socialist Resistance component of ACR over the past 40 years.⁴ A recent example is Mandelite illusions in the Podemos Eurocommunist-populist project in Spain - apparently the disillusionment phase of this affair has now finally set in.⁵ The ‘official’ lefts are happy to use the Mandelites for a while as left cover against the ‘sectarians’ who insist on serious political differences, but, once the latter are out of the way, the Mandelites will be dumped.

In the ACR submission, the ‘official lefts’ towards whom diplomacy is required are the Welsh devolved government - ie, Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru.

So the long discussion relating to Q1 is marked by welcoming various Welsh government policies: the idea of “inclusive citizenship” and welcoming refugees (mere verbiage, since the borders are a Westminster matter); “taking environmental concerns seriously” (discussed at length); free school meals; free prescriptions; the creation of “Unnos - Land and Housing Wales” (essentially, a principality-wide direct works department) is welcome, but it should be a cooperative; the Crown Estate (the monarch’s land rights) should be devolved, as in Scotland and as the Plaid leader at Westminster has proposed. Second homes need to be tackled, and are connected with the language question; ACR supports Welsh government measures, but these will only stop the moderately rich buying up property, not the ultra-rich; ACR prefers the approach of the June 2022 advisory ‘Whitby referendum”, which would ban second-home sales (if any such powers existed, which they do not),⁶ and a programme of council house building.

The ‘transitional method’ here consists of taking the policies of Welsh Labour and Plaid, welcoming them, and spinning them slightly leftwards. The same method is used in ACR’s response to Q3, “Thinking about how Wales is governed, by the Welsh government and the UK government, what are the strengths of the current system, what aspects do you most value and wish to protect?” ACR supports the present devolution and considers that Scotland and Wales did better than England in handling Covid, that the proportional representation systems used are more democratic than ‘first past the post’ (FPTP) and “ensures a balance between male and female” members of the Senedd, and votes at 16.

On Q2, “What do you think the priorities for the commission should be?”, ACR is actually unable to make any substantive suggestion, saying the commission should seek to “discover what the people of Cymru want” and “should explore all avenues and possibilities”. This is not a statement about priorities at all.

Westminster

When we come to Q4, “Are there any problems with the current system, and if so, how could they be addressed?”, these turn out all to be about Westminster. Are there really no problems in the relationship between the Senedd and devolved government and the local authorities? In fact, ACR does think that some decisions should be more localised: it says so in response to Q5. It is just that the ‘Westminster is the problem’ narrative dominates what it has to say about Q4. We are told: “The ability of Westminster to interfere within devolved matters (and the underlying concept of unitary parliamentary sovereignty) is a dangerous precedent that must be abolished in all forms.”

The expression, “dangerous precedent”, is a bizarrely understated formulation for the foundational doctrine of British constitutional law.

The submission goes on to give a series of examples, some of which relate to parliamentary sovereignty - like the Internal Markets Act and the announced intention to repeal the Trade Union (Wales) Act. Others are merely expressions of the financial dependence of the devolved government on central government: refusal to support the Swansea barrage; that Welsh infrastructure is east-west oriented and Welsh public transport gets less than ‘its share’ of public subsidy; the ‘Barnett formula’ for allocation of expenditure; and the Tory practice of diverting central funds for local government to Tory-voting areas (recently admitted by Rishi Sunak, but actually going back to Margaret Thatcher).

ACR also complains of the diversion of funds from the devolved governments to pay for arms for Ukraine. It is actually in favour of such arms supplies, but suggests that these should be paid for by a windfall tax on the arms manufacturers - a bizarre idea, since, the profits only constitute a relatively small proportion of the ‘asking price’. ACR wants the UK state to arm Ukraine: it needs to bite the bullet and accept that this does require cuts in other areas of public expenditure. And so on.

Another class of cases consists merely of the Tory government leaning on the devolved administration politically, whether by threats to repeal devolution or by political campaigns (for the union flag, and so on) backed by Tory dominance in press ownership. ‘Westminster’ here stands in for the extra-parliamentary power of the Tories’ class backers.

The same approach is reflected in ACR’s response to Q5: “Thinking about the UK government, the Welsh government and Welsh local government (your local council), what do you think about the balance of power and responsibility between these three types of government?” ACR say that the balance “should be as local as possible, but also correspond to the appropriate level of strategic vision” - which is completely empty. It does recommend adoption of the Porto Alegre ‘participatory budgeting’ scheme in Brazil. This - like ‘participation’ schemes generally, because they do not involve clear subordination of the full-time officials - have run into the ground or been ‘captured’ by the middle classes.⁷

However, the main burden of the ACR response to Q5 is again the malign role of ‘Westminster’. The authors follow the old 1960s Nairn-Anderson thesis in claiming that the British constitution is “pre-modern”; but rolls into this not only the monarchy, the House of Lords and the absence of a written constitution, but also media oligopoly and the narrow (class-based) recruitment of judges, senior civil servants, etc, which are equally true of the most ‘modern’ European countries. It again mixes up the issues of the legal sovereignty of the Westminster parliament with the practical control of resources of the UK government in Whitehall - which reflects the population (56 million in England, 3.1 million in Wales) and hence the relative tax bases.

Independence

Q6 asked: “As a distinct country and political unit, how should Wales be governed in the future?” - giving a range of options, including the present arrangements and independence.

The 1938 Transitional Programme argued for “a system of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat”. And in ACR’s the basic method is the same - hence the long discussion of issues of general policy in response to Q1 - “stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers”. But the “one final conclusion” is not the conquest of power by the proletariat, but, in the response to Q6 - independence for Cymru/ Wales: “In our view the nature of the UK state means that if Cymru is to become a modern, democratic state that can only be done by separation from the UK ...”

ACR correctly says that the British state is “not a free and voluntary union”. Wales was simply conquered; Scotland was coerced into signing up by economic pressure and the Scots parliamentarians bribed. But why not a federal republic?

… we don’t believe a federal solution would answer the needs of the people of Cymru, not least because it would always be at the mercy of the government in Westminster. The anti-democratic FPTP and the sovereignty of parliament rather than the people mean that a government in Westminster could pass laws revoking parts or even all of the federal arrangements.

This statement is simply bizarre. To create a federal republic in Britain would be to overthrow the sovereignty of the queen-in-parliament, which was created by coercive operations (including a second conquest of Wales in 1642-47). To overthrow it requires the break-up of its coercive core, the armed forces and ‘security services’. Without doing so, neither federalism nor independence for Cymru is on the table. If the overthrow of the queen-in-parliament is achieved, the sovereignty of parliament ceases to be a problem for federalism.

The practical dominance of England would still be a real problem. How do we create a federation between a pike (England) and two minnows (Scotland and Cymru)? But this problem in reality still applies under independence. In responding to Q7, “Overall, what is most important to you about the way in which Wales should be governed in the future? Is there anything else you want to tell us?”, ACR admit that “There are many issues that will need to be given much further thought if Cymru is to be independent. It will require financial sovereignty (ie, a central bank) and political sovereignty; economic sustainability …”

Indeed so. ACR at several points in its responses posed issues about Cymru’s ‘fair share’ of public expenditures. But an independent Cymru would be wholly dependent on what could be raised in tax within Cymru’s borders or borrowed from outside creditors.

An independent Cymru within the European Union might be workable - but with as little power as Greece had against the creditor troika (or less). And it is perfectly clear that Spain at least and probably also other EU countries would veto the entry into the EU of Scotland, let alone Cymru, for fear of encouraging their own separatist movements.

The underlying problem is that “transitional method”, starting “from today’s consciousness of wide layers”, produces, unavoidably, efforts to evade the crunch problem of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. That is, the creation of working class political power and overthrow of the current capitalist (plutocratic) constitutional order. ACR’s version here is another way to try to con people into overthrowing the regime without actually deciding to do so: this time by imagining a “velvet divorce” of Cymru from England, leading to continental ‘modernity’. The resulting ideas are wildly incoherent.

anticapitalistresistance.org/our-submission-to-the-independent-commission-on-the-constitutional-future-of-wales.↩︎
gov.wales/independent-commission-constitutional-future-wales.↩︎
gov.wales/have-your-say-the-constitutional-future-of-wales-html.↩︎
Cf M Macnair ‘The Fourth International and failed perspectives’ Weekly Worker June 6 2012: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/917/the-fourth-international-and-failed-perspectives; ‘Strategy and freedom of criticism’ June 13 2012 weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/918/strategy-and-freedom-of-criticism; and ‘Broad parties: theories of deception’ Weekly Worker June 20 2013: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/967/broad-parties-theories-of-deception.↩︎
anticapitalistresistance.org/podemos-party-of-struggles-or-populist-operation-from-above (August 8); internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article7761 (August 2).↩︎
www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2022-06-14/whitby-residents-vote-overwhelming-against-new-second-homes-and-holiday-lets.↩︎
Run into the ground: www.wri.org/insights/what-if-citizens-set-city-budgets-experiment-captivated-world-participatory-budgeting (June 13 2018); captured: www.politico.eu/article/europe-big-city-cash-handover (April 21 2022).↩︎