25.11.1999
The Welsh road to socialism
Tim Richards of Cymru Goch opened a discussion on the national question in Wales at Communist University ’99
I have been a socialist since my early 20s, when I joined Plaid Cymru, believing it could be turned into a socialist party. I was wrong, but people used to believe the same about the Labour Party.
I left by 1980, and was then an independent socialist. I was chairperson of the Rhondda Valley Miners’ Support Group in the 1984-5 strike. Then, we had three pits; now, of course, there are none. I was active in CND, in environmental agitation and against the poll tax. In 1987-88, we socialists formed Cymru Goch. It formed around the newspaper called Y Faner Goch, which means ‘the red flag’, which has been in operation since 1978.
It was originally the newspaper of the left inside Plaid Cymru, and then when we left we formed the Welsh Republican Socialist Movement - rather short-lived, as it could not make up its mind whether it was socialist or republican. The socialist element kept the newspaper going. That is how Cymru Goch came into being.
I think this bit of personal history may help explain how I came to the conclusion that that there must be a Welsh road to socialism, a road that - I must emphasise - does not mean divorce from international struggle, but is an inherent part of it. I have been an internationalist since the days when I became a socialist and joined a group called Third World First, at a time when I started to become interested in third world struggles, colonialism, etc. On one occasion I was talking about liberation struggles in Angola, and a woman said to me, “You’re Welsh. What about Wales?” I said, “I don’t see it in that fashion”, but I have changed my mind since.
When it comes to perceptions, Cymru Goch always had the problem of being seen by the left as non-internationalist. We are not nationalists, so why do we propose a Welsh road to socialism? Is it really necessary, you may ask. But I ask you, what is actually so wonderful about the British road to socialism or to communism?
What are the alternatives to a Welsh road to socialism? An international road. Of course, internationalism is vital to the success of socialism, for capitalism is international. Yet we have to recognise that the various ‘internationals’ have withered: the international trade union movement, monopolised by the trade union hierarchies, seems to be there to do deals with the capitalists on our behalf. Furthermore, as regards the British road to socialism, we have been treading that road to Westminster for the whole of the 20th century.
What is Britain? Is it a country? Well, no, obviously not, because it is made up of three and a bit countries: England, Scotland, Wales and part of northern Ireland. Is it a state? Obviously yes, a capitalist state. Where did England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland come from? We can put down the existence of Wales to the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England, which drove the original Celtic tribes back to Cumbria, which has the same root as Cymru. Does anyone know what Wales means? It means ‘foreigner’ - wallis in Anglo-Saxon. So if I call myself Welsh, I am calling myself a foreigner in my own land.
How did Britain emerge? The old concepts of statehood are no good when you go back to early history. I think it was George III who first called himself ‘British’ and thus initiated a concept that became the ‘British’ state. That developed and expanded, and developed the British empire over the centuries.
I want to argue that we believe there is a Welsh road to socialism, because our analysis of Wales is that we are a colony. Wales was the first colony of England, conquered militarily in 1282. Before the conquest, there was a Welsh set of laws, the laws of Hywel Dda, which give a fascinating insight into Celtic society, especially as regards the place of women in Welsh society. Women were recognised by Welsh law in their own right - they could marry, divorce, hold property, etc. After 1282 and the imposition of English laws, women became mere chattels.
The rebellion of Owain Glyndwr succeeded in establishing Wales as an independent state between 1400 and 1406, but the problem both before 1282, and the problem that Glyndwr had, was that Welsh society was not feudal - it was basically a form of settled tribalism, with various princes fighting each other. It was very rarely united. For a short period between 1400 and 1406, there was a Welsh parliament: emissaries were sent to Europe, deals were done, but it was pretty rapidly overcome by the larger and far stronger English foe.
Later, in the 15th century, Henry VII - himself of Welsh ancestry and with Welsh connections - raised an army in Pembroke and marched to Bosworth, where he defeated Richard III. It was this that drew the Welsh gentry into the mainstream of London life and the advent of the Tudor dynasty really locked them in. This development was encapsulated by the Acts of Union of 1536 to 1538, which formally incorporated Wales into the new medieval state of England created by Henry VIII. So from then on we were part of England. I can remember as a youngster looking at the books, and in the index reading that wonderful phrase, “For Wales, see England”.
It is worth quoting from one of the Acts:
“All justices shall proclaim and keep all courts in the English tongue. No person or persons that use the Welsh speech or language shall have any office within this realm of England, Wales or other of the king’s dominion, unless he or they use and exercise the English speech or language.”
It was in the 16th century that Wales began to be transformed from a self-sufficient agricultural economy into a colonial economy; by 1690 coal production had risen tenfold since the Tudor ages. It was the ending of the monopoly of the royal mines between 1689 and 1693 that set the stage for a minerals rush to Wales. Everybody talks about coal in Wales, but they forget that there were many other mineral resources: silver, zinc, tin, copper, lead and iron. This natural wealth was largely exploited by English capital. From Cornwall and Macclesfield they came in search of copper; from Derbyshire and Cheshire for lead; from Staffordshire, Yorkshire, Northumberland and London for coal. The copper-smelting industry was the first capitalist industry in Wales, as in 1717 the Vivians from Cornwall, the Percivals from Bristol, and Robert Morris from Shropshire began to build large new works using capital from English trading families from Bristol, Birmingham and London.
The crucial difference between Wales and Scotland is that Scotland always did have, and does have, a capitalist class. That has always been lacking in Wales. Underlying the expansion of capitalist exploitation was the fact that Welsh labour was very cheap: in 1768, for example, agricultural workers in the home counties were earning ten shillings and nine pence a week, while labourers in Glamorgan and north Wales got a shilling a day or six shillings a week. In 1787, the Manchester Mercury reported: “In north east Wales, workers are superabundant, and wages very low.” Yet by 1815 Wales produced a third of Britain’s iron, and 90% of her copper.
Because the early coal mining was shallow, it did not need great amounts of capital, and Welsh capitalists did exist. But by the middle of the 19th century the mines went deeper and the amount of capital necessary increased, until it began to require limited liability companies. The last half of the century - the period of the ‘black gold rush’ - saw the end of the owner-manager capitalist.
Aside from economics, it is worth remembering that up to 1870, 90% of the people of Wales spoke Welsh. What happened? First, there was an offensive against the language, which began in 1845, with a parliamentary inquiry into the state of education in Wales. A commission of three young English barristers carried out an investigation which reported in 1847 that, “The Welsh language is a vast drawback to Wales, and a manifold barrier to the moral progress and commercial prosperity of the people.” Confirming the fact that the landowners and capitalists were largely English, they found that, “Whether in the country, or among the furnaces, the Welsh element is never found at the top of the social scale.” But, to add insult to injury, they concluded that, “Because of their language, the mass of Welsh people are inferior to the English, in every branch of practical knowledge and skill.” Thus, it was officially decided that the Welsh language would have to go.
The report was naturally attacked in Wales, called the betrayal or treason of the blue books, but it was the beginning of a movement which was consolidated by the imposition of an English-language state school system. The Education Act of 1870 was the main, though not the only, reason for the decline of the Welsh language. Children in state schools literally had Welsh beaten out of them. It would though be a simplification to blame only the educational system. Immigration also played a role.
The present century has seen a massive decline in the Welsh language, down to the point where we are talking about around 20 to 25% of people in Wales speaking Welsh. It is fundamentally still in west Wales and north Wales, and there are pockets of the Welsh language: for instance to the north of Swansea there is a staunchly working class area where the Welsh language is also strong. There has also been an educational movement to restore the Welsh language. My own two sons go to a Welsh-language-medium school. My father was a Welsh speaker - he wrote in Welsh, but I never understood it - so I always thought they ought to have the opportunity. I am married to an English woman who supports that. She also thinks it would be a good idea for them to learn different languages - she is a French teacher herself.
I believe the cultural and economic history of Wales reveals that Wales is not just a region. It is a nation that was the first colony of England, and remains a colony today. Only when we confront that fact can we move forward and consider a Welsh road to socialism. We in Cymru Goch want to make it absolutely clear that we are not nationalists like Plaid Cymru. We are socialists. So what is the difference? Well, simply that nationalism is not really an ideology at all. It is a position on the nation question and statehood. Nationalists want the nation to become a state, and fail to hold any class analysis because - for them - the nation comes first. Of course, that begs the question: if the nation were to become a state, which class would run that state, and in whose interests?
When it comes to Plaid Cymru, the answer is clearly that the new Welsh state would be run by the leadership of the nationalist party - Welsh-speaking, non-conformist ‘liberals’ with a small ‘l’. The fact is that Plaid Cymru is a capitalist party, which still manages to sell itself as a socialist party in south Wales, and sells itself as a liberal party in mid to north Wales - a balancing act which I believe is going to go off the rails fairly quickly. They have managed it in opposition, because they have never had to actually do anything. But now they are running two councils in south Wales, with horrendous financial results.
When it comes to Cymru Goch, we are socialists, and we believe that the national liberation of our working class can only be achieved through a socialist state, led by the working class and run in their interests. But when we talk about the national liberation of Wales and Welsh workers, we do not see it in isolation. We are talking about autonomy within an international movement. Far from wanting to have Welsh trade unions, we must remain part of the British trade union movement, and should campaign for the internationalisation of the trade unions to reflect the global reality of domination by an increasingly monopolistic capitalist movement, which continues to consolidate into ever larger multinationals. I do not think British trade unionism is enough. We have got to look beyond British organisation. It was absolutely correct to organise in that way at first because they were facing capital organised on a British basis. But anybody who believes that it is just on a British basis still is making a grave mistake. So I think part of the whole project, in fact, should be reinventing our internationalism.
Our position on the British trade union movement would be that we believe in organising from the grass roots up. We do not have much faith in hierarchies.
I probably would not be here talking to you today, had it not been for 20 years of Tory rule, dominated by Mrs Thatcher. That heralded the successful politics of English domination. What I mean by that is that the bulk of Mrs Thatcher’s support was from England, including sections of the working class, particularly in the south east of England, and here policies were directed towards benefiting them. When it came to the coal industry, she delighted in destroying it for political reasons. The miners in northern England, Scotland and Wales had real political power, as she never forgot after she had been booted out of office by the 1974 miners’ strike. The political thrust was to weaken the working class by repressive anti-trade union legislation, to cut public spending, and to bribe the electorate with tax cuts. But essentially it was a regional concept. It was: ‘Sod Scotland and Wales. I don’t need them. They never vote Tory anyway. Let’s concentrate on winning over the working class through the right to buy their own council houses’, etc.
What about the concept of centralisation? There are those who claim it means unity. Not for me. I have had decades of being patronised, and being told, ‘Forget about it. Stick with Britain; stick with British politics: you’ll get nowhere in Wales.’ The working class in Wales spent a century being told that - ‘Don’t worry, we’ll do it for you’ (the Labour version was - ‘We’ll do it for you up at Westminster’); or ‘You can’t do that. What about the unity of the working class?’ I must admit it sounds to me like having your cake and eating it: ‘The only way you can get unity is on the basis of what we’ve described.’
What’s more important, of course, is that nothing has fundamentally changed under Tony Blair. His landslide victory means he has so much support in England that he can afford once again to ignore Wales and Scotland. When it comes to devolution, the power of Scotland is meaningful, but so weak is the Welsh assembly that many working class people wondered whether it was worth having. Having said that, it is clear that it was the Welsh working class that delivered the assembly in the referendum - it was in the valley areas where the bulk of the support was found. In the end, it was a very close thing - Caernarfon brought in the final ‘yes’ vote. When I was campaigning for a ‘yes’, I said to people, “What if you were getting what was offered in Scotland?” They answered, “Well, we might be a bit more interested in that. What they are offering us here is a glorified council.” I have got no particular problem with that analysis. The Welsh assembly, as I am sure you are aware, is only able to scrutinise legislation on the level of delegated legislation and pass statutory instruments - no primary law-making powers, and of course no tax-raising powers. I am tempted to say that Wales was given an assembly because we are a nation, but not given any powers just in case we decided to act like one.
There is no doubt that what happened in the assembly elections is that a very disillusioned section of the working class, who traditionally vote Labour, voted Plaid Cymru, basically to give the Labour Party and Tony Blair a kick up the arse. I was on the ground, campaigning as a united socialist candidate, in Caerphilly, Ron Davies’s constituency. I heard time and time again: “Tony Blair is a rightwinger, a Tory. I’m voting Plaid Cymru”. And I would say, “They’re just as bad.” It needed no great political prescience to see that Plaid Cymru would do well. I pointed out three years ago, when we got the left together in Cardiff at a Welsh socialist forum, that when Labour got in Plaid Cymru would get a good vote. The same thing happened in the 1970s, when they took councils, and increased the number of their MPs from one to three. And in the 1960s Plaid Cymru first made a breakthrough during the Labour government. It has always been the case.
What is the Welsh road to socialism about? What are the various traditions? Obviously the dominant tradition of socialism in Wales is Labour. There has also, of course, always been a traditionally strong Communist Party in Wales. There is no real Trotskyist tradition. The Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party are essentially coastal-based - Newport, Cardiff and Swansea. I like to think that Cymru Goch is the Heineken party. We reach the parts of Wales that the rest of the left can’t reach, because we have members throughout Wales.
On one level, the Welsh road to socialism is not really fundamentally different to your position. We are all in defensive mode, are we not? We really have got to go back and invent the wheel. We have to fight the class struggle all over again. Strengthen the trade unions, and try to get organised against the rolling back of the welfare state. I want to emphasise that, even though we talk about the Welsh road to socialism, we will join in any campaign right across Britain, because we are all up against the same problem - the British state, the New Labour government.
During the Welsh assembly elections, having formed a Socialist Alliance on the basis of joint discussions held last November, we put together an election platform. We are not copying the Scottish Socialist Alliance (now the SSP) - this is a different situation - but there are similarities. Perhaps the biggest difference is that in Scotland there is no equivalent of Cymru Goch. Essentially, the Welsh Socialist Alliance stitched together an electoral platform with the SWP. That was an experience and a half, as you can imagine. But we managed it. Tempers did get frayed occasionally. At one point, I directed the party election broadcast, and had an up and downer with the SWP organiser as we were talking.
There was no future in it. They thought of course that they were going to zoom ahead in the elections, but they discovered that in fact they were at the same level as us - their results were no better than ours. In fact our votes were rather pathetic on one level. But it has to be taken into account that we were very late in starting. We did not have the electoral platform stitched up until eight weeks before the election. We won about one to two percent of the vote, which is credible - no more than that. We did not stand for the Welsh assembly thinking we were going to gain socialism through it. Of course not. It remains the case that extra-parliamentary activity, and trade union activity, will continue to be very important.
I suppose there is an irony, in that on one level we believe that it is necessary for the left to unite, certainly in Wales, but on the other hand people might accuse us of fragmenting an all-Britain movement. But I do not see it in that fashion. I see it as autonomy. I see it as very much maintaining our links with what is happening in Scotland and England - and any part of Europe, to be honest.
Where Europe is concerned, what about the concept of the British state? Is it not a bit old fashioned these days, now we are moving to the European federal state? In simple terms, if you analyse the single European market and the trend towards federalism in Europe, they are fundamentally the policies of the European round table of industrialists. They invented the single European market, European monetary union - it is their policy. They then persuaded the European commission to take it on. The European round table of industrialists consists of the 45 largest European multinationals - their chief executive officers form this lobbying body. And one begins to wonder, these days, in or out of Emu, whether perhaps, to a certain extent, even our talk about states is starting to lose importance. We are seeing the power of the multinationals to shift across borders, which of course is what Europe is all about, so maybe we need to start rethinking the importance of the state. It would be a mistake to just focus on Wales. I think there is a process going on, whether you like it or not. The question is whether you can actually come to terms with it and recognise that it is objectively happening. If we are Marxists, we look at these questions and deal with them accordingly.
In Wales we have higher unemployment, lower wages and greater poverty than in England, and we are rapidly moving towards the economy of the third world. I find it absolutely fascinating that Ronson, the multinational corporation, which makes among other things cigarette lighters, decided to move their operations from South Korea to south Wales, because our labour costs were lower. There is a fascinating joke going around the Welsh assembly at the moment, that we are going for ‘objective one’ European funding. That means we get huge sums of money from the European Union - millions of pounds. In order to qualify for objective one, you have to have a standard of living which is 75% of the European average or below. And we have succeeded. You get Labour politicians saying, ‘Wonderful, we’ve got the European funding.’ And what they are celebrating of course is our poverty.
What then is the Welsh road to socialism?
First, we are republicans. I am damn sure I do not want a socialist monarchy. But, let us not forget, republicanism is a position vis-à-vis the crown. It is not an ideology. There is a Peoples Republic of China, there are republicans in America. Personally I cannot believe that there is a serious socialist or communist who is not a republican.
Does the Welsh road to socialism mean ‘accommodating’ to the demands of nationalist politics? As far as I am concerned, I am fighting on two fronts: I am fighting the Labour Party because they pretend to be socialist, and I am fighting Plaid Cymru because they too pretend to be socialist. But I have to do it in a Welsh context. Does that mean I accommodate? I do not think so.
In Wales, we have what you can only really describe as a series of industrial villages. The nearest I can find to it is parts of the north east and north of England. As a result there are strong communities - not despite our poverty, but because of our poverty. In a working class community you pull together, and therefore we are in a situation where working on a community basis as well as in the workplace becomes a strong option. Very often you find that local community questions are class issues in the broadest sense of the word, in the more modern sense. For instance they can be environmental. There are plenty of minor environmental disasters dotted around south Wales, which the communities have fought against. And when you are fighting that kind of struggle you are fighting class struggle.
And finally there is a fundamental difference - the cultural difference. The fact that the Welsh-language exists. The fact that for instance in the valleys where I live there is a Welsh-language primary school. The vast majority of people who send their children to that school are working class. They want their children to have the opportunity that their own parents or grandparents had: to speak the language.
The language struggle is one aspect, but for us there is a broader question. There is a cultural socialism in south Wales. It is not an abstract concept. It is something which has been fought over for decades throughout the century. So, believe it or not, Cymru Goch does something rather unusual: I think we are the only political party in Britain to publish poetry - The Red Poets Society. We publish monthly. We see the importance of using humour and poetry as political weapons. We see it in a much broader fashion - a kind of organic road to socialism.
Objectively a certain process is occurring in Wales. What do you expect us to do? Ignore it? No, we cannot. It is a process towards increasing nationalism, which I think is inherently incredibly dangerous. But if people are thinking in terms of national identity, then we have got to combat that. You cannot combat it with Britishness. It has failed. That is the whole point: it would not be happening if Britishness were succeeding. Plaid Cymru would not be winning votes and becoming more of a threat. The way to combat it is through Welsh socialism. I have no problem with a federal solution and I am not in any shape or form in favour of any kind of isolationism. But we have to combat nationalism.
We are living in Wales: we are up against it and, as I say, what is the alternative?