12.11.1998

One step forward

Welsh Socialist Alliances

Over 50 people including guests and visitors came to Cardiff for the first annual conference of the Welsh Socialist Alliances on Saturday November 7. Predictably, the meeting was dominated numerically by Socialist Party Wales supporters, with around 10 comrades from the left nationalist Cymru Goch and five from the loose network that comprises Socialist Perspectives.

Observers also attended from Socialist Outlook and the Socialist Workers Party - though both organisations have currently refused to join. Hugh Kerr MEP, a smattering of Socialist Labour Party members and the ubiquitous Nick Long made up the numbers.

The Socialist Alliances in Wales sensibly adopted the type of inclusive structure championed by the Communist Party for the SAs in England. Centrally, this means that all WSA “affiliates are entitled [ie, have an automatic right - IM] to delegates to the national council” on a proportional basis according to their numerical strength (WSA constitution, section 2 ‘Membership’, subsection 2:2).

Foolishly, John Nicholson (joint convenor of the Network of Socialist Alliances), Socialist Outlook and others of this ilk have denounced this as an attempt to impose a “central committee” (as if central committees reflect affiliate structures!) on the Alliances in England. We would be interested to hear of their thoughts on developments in Wales.

Such an inclusive approach has generated what seems to be a healthy atmosphere in the movement. There were clear differences of opinion, sharply expressed. But the general feel of the conference was, as one delegate put it, “businesslike, focused and comradely”. What a contrast to England.

Politically, the meeting revealed two important features. First, the decline of the Socialist Party. Second, and by no means unconnected, a certain growth of petty nationalism.

The Socialist Party Wales claims around 90 members and was - apparently - estimating that 40 of its comrades would attend. In the event, just 25 were present and these were the more long-term, experienced cadre. This reflects the fact that - as we have consistently predicted - the ‘Scottish contagion’ has mutated and adopted new variants, this time in Wales.

In this context, it is perhaps instructive that comrade Roy Davies from Swansea has recently left SPW. Comrades will recall that this is the comrade who wrote those ominous words in the organisation’s Members Bulletin of April 2 1998: the conclusion reached by some comrades arising from “discussions in Wales over the past period” was that the “Scottish Socialist Alliance offers the answer” (Weekly Worker May 7). He even added that these views of his were not something that “have arisen from a clear blue sky” - with the strong implication that he was not simply reflecting personal opinions.

Could the resignation of this prominent comrade reflect a bigger haemorrhaging of the Socialist Party Wales waiting to happen over the national question? This notion is given weight when the behaviour of the Llanelli SPw branch comrades is considered.

Essentially, these comrades are in open rebellion, selling Scottish Socialist Voice - paper of the left-nationalist Scottish Socialist Party - at the conference and voting as a group against the main SP bloc on important issues.

Thus, when a motion on education from the Cardiff Socialist Alliance was debated, it provoked the closest vote of the day. An amendment from Socialist Perspectives (whose comrades provided the most visible and energetic opposition on the day) proposed that an attempt by SP to single out its Save Free Education Campaign for support “in particular” be deleted.

This was supported by others, including the Llanelli dissidents, and was only defeated by a very small margin - 16 votes for the amendment, 20 against.

An ideal chance to assess the Llanelli comrades’ real orientation - and thus perhaps that of others in the SP in Wales - would have been the Cymru Goch-motivated motion for a “Welsh workers’ republic”. Unfortunately, the comrades had left the meeting by this stage. The motion was easily defeated, with the main SPW contingent and Socialist Perspectives uniting to vote it down.

Nationalism clearly does not have the same mobilising force in Wales as it does in Scotland. Hugh Kerr MEP found this to his cost when he delivered his solidarity speech to conference and provoked a chorus of groans as he beat his breast about sharing the experience of oppression by “English nationalism”. (The comrade also took the opportunity to attack the CPGB and the Weekly Worker, complaining of distortions. He is welcome to write any corrective letters or articles he feels are needed, of course.)

This opposition to nationalism is something positive. But are comrades programmatically equipped to fight its evident growth both in their own ranks and in wider society? Llanelli may be an ominous portend of future developments.

The conference resolved to debate and produce a ‘Charter for socialist change’ before mid-February of 1999, in time for a socialist intervention in the Euro-elections in Wales.

Ian Mahoney