29.04.1999
United challenge
Welsh assembly
Next week, on May 6, the people of Wales have the opportunity to vote in the Welsh assembly elections, colloquially dubbed the ‘Welsh general election’. Sixty seats are up for grabs, 40 of which will be elected by the ‘first past the post’ system, the remaining 20 to be filled by proportional representation.
Despite Labour’s slogan for the elections, ‘Standing up for Wales’, the Welsh assembly has nothing to do with democratic self-determination. Have no doubt about it, any changes that it initiates will be cosmetic. Whilst having the ‘power’ to administer in areas such as health and safety, education and economic development, the assembly will, at best, be only able to tinker with underlying policy. When it comes to major issues affecting approximately three million people, it will remain firmly under the thumb of the Westminster parliament and the constitutional monarchy system. Millbank Tower has also ensured that New Labour’s candidates are, with a few exceptions, eminently acceptable to Blair.
It is likely that this is one reason why, to date, the people in Wales are hardly falling over themselves with enthusiasm. Two decades of Tory government, superseded by a Labour Party that despises the working class, has alienated many. An assembly with the powers of a glorified council is hardly inspiring. It is no wonder interest in the run-up to the elections is still relatively weak. Indeed, in an effort to bolster turnout for the elections, Wales’s most famous Stone Age animated family, ‘The Gogs’, is now being used by S4C during peak hours to spearhead a campaign to persuade people to go out and vote on the big day.
Having said that however, the left must take the elections seriously, as they set us an important challenge. As well as giving us the opportunity to expose the cant emanating from the Welsh establishment about “devolution” and “self-determination”, they give us a chance to put forward the revolutionary democratic alternative to Blair’s Labour government.
There are a number of left forces involved in the May 6 elections. The SLP, as usual, failed to discuss calls for unity with others and is standing under the list system in two regional seats where other socialists are contesting: South Wales Central and South Wales East. The exact politics it is promoting is difficult to pin-point, as the recent edition of Socialist News does not carry a Welsh election manifesto. However, Scargill’s party does think that the assembly represents a move towards Wales having greater freedom - if only it could get out of Europe:
“We do not want to gain autonomy or partial autonomy from England simply to give it away to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels … That’s why Socialist Labour is also campaigning for a policy of getting Wales out of the European Union” (Socialist News March-April 1999).
Thankfully, there are a number of left organisations in Wales who have recently begun to pool their resources. For all its fragility the formation of the Welsh Socialist Alliance was a healthy political development. The main components are the Socialist Party, Socialist Democracy and Cymru Goch. The CPGB is represented in Cardiff.
One important outcome of the WSA has been the agreement of a common platform for next week’s elections. The United Socialists platform was produced following debate by the affiliated organisations. Each organisation standing for the assembly will use this platform in their election addresses, having the right to criticise it as they see fit while distributing their own political propaganda throughout the campaign. Although not an active participant within the alliance, the SWP was also consulted during its drafting. It agreed to stand under the United Socialists banner.
A look at the platform reveals a number of limitations. For example: no position on Ireland; a below-subsistence-level £6-an-hour minimum wage; the scrapping of only ‘racist’ immigration controls; and, perhaps most important, given the fact that the assembly is an integral component of Blair’s programme of strengthening the constitutional monarchy system, no demand for the voluntary union of the peoples of Britain in a federal republic.
Having said that, the platform does deserve critical support. The working class throughout Wales (and of course Britain) exists as an atomised, generally demoralised mass. Socialists have the opportunity to attract new layers of supporters and enable all organisations involved to build towards future joint campaigning. This will facilitate open discussion of political differences, thus strengthening unity.
This is necessary, particularly as there are big political differences within the WSA. For example, both the SP and SWP meekly supported Blair’s sop in Wales, as opposed to boldly fighting for self-determination: “Socialist Party Wales supported the establishment of the Welsh assembly” (The Socialist April 23). The SWP echoed a similar line. Charlie Kimber confesses:
“The Welsh assembly has very few powers. But socialists supported a ‘yes’ vote in the referendum as a small step towards raising confidence … and intensifying the feeling for a break from the Tories’ agenda” (C Kimber Wales, class struggle and socialism, p42).
From the outset the assembly was a sop, a plank in Blair’s constitutional revolution from above. The right of the people in Wales to democratically choose how to run their own affairs, including the right of separation from the UK state, was never part of Blair’s agenda and will not be within the remit of the Cardiff Bay assembly. As such it was necessary to fight for more. As a minimum the CPGB argued for genuine self-determination through a parliament with full powers.
A quick word on Cymru Goch. Fond of referring to other socialists as the ‘Brit left’, it has a vision for Wales which is thoroughly nationalist. At the launch of the WSA it put out the call for a Welsh workers’ republic. It was, correctly, defeated. Subsequently Cymru Goch has been arguing for permits for companies wishing to operate in Wales. At the Merthyr WSA conference in February it proposed a motion which called for a ‘three strikes and you’re nationalised’ policy for factories that pollute the environment.
Finally, mention is needed of Plaid Cymru, which now claims to be a viable alternative for the people of Wales. A recent poll showed the party’s president, Carmarthen MP, Dafydd Wigley, only one percent behind Labour’s Alun Michael for the post of first secretary, with increased support coming from industrialised and traditionally Labour-voting areas of Swansea, Newport and Cardiff.
Plaid Cymru has positioned itself to the left of the Labour Party in an attempt to woo voters. Over past months, speeches from Wigley and Cynog Dafis, the party’s deputy president, have emphasised the failure of the Labour Party to deliver. At the launch of its campaign in March, for example, Wigley stated that people expected a change for the better following the end of Tory rule: “Now we see problem schools being sold off to the private sector and London New Labour is spending a billion on Trident, but cannot restore the value of the basic state pension.”
Recently, the party’s candidate for Swansea East, John Ball, highlighted the utter parochiality of Plaid Cymru: “The local economy has been hit simply because our major employers are owned by organisations outside Wales”(my emphasis South Wales Evening Post April19). His argument implies that if major companies were owned by Welsh capitalists then the people would enjoy much greater prosperity. Incredible!
The ‘party of Wales’ has certainly shifted its political rhetoric since conception 64 years ago. In 1925, Ambrose Bebb, one of Plaid Cymru’s founding leaders and admirer of the French fascist movement, Action Française, placed the party well to the right. He announced that Wales needed a Mussolini and, with Saunders Lewis, a campaign was launched to establish an independent Wales managed by “small capitalists”. English was to be “annihilated” and Welsh made the only language.
Nowadays, Plaid Cymru talks left. It claims to champion not only democracy, but even socialist democracy. It aims, for example, to “secure self-government for Wales and a democratic Welsh state based on socialist principles”.
It is a bourgeois nationalist party in socialist clothing.
Gareth Phillips
United Socialists: candidates for the Welsh Assembly
Dave Bartlett (SP) Cardiff South
Julian Goss (SWP) Cardiff Central
Alec Thraves (SP) Swansea West
Nick Duncan (SWP) Neath
Mike Jenkins (Cymru Goch) Merthyr
Tim Richards (CG) Caerphilly
Morris Jones (CG) Clwyd South
Huw Pudner (SWP) Aberavon
Ian Thomas (SWP) South East Wales
Nimisha Trevedi (SWP) South Wales Central
Alex Frazer (SP) South West Wales