25.04.2001

Wales - Cymru

Weakest link in chain

Our Welsh Socialist Alliance is about to enter the general election campaign without the same optimism that characterises the progress of the Socialist Alliance in England. Instead, there is a state of paralysis in the WSA leadership, which has seriously impeded the plans of the branches as they prepare to fight the general election.

Examples of the retarded progress are numerous. The WSA was only registered as a political party by the Electoral Commission in early April, perilously close to a general election. Furthermore, no press launch for the WSA election campaign has taken place. There is still no WSA website. Nor has any WSA literature yet been produced for the election. Also, preparations for a broadcast in the election amount to no more than the hope that the Ken Loach film for the Socialist Alliance in England can also be used in Wales.

In any case, it is far from certain whether there will be such a broadcast in Wales. It appears that the WSA will have to stand in six or seven of the 40 Welsh seats to be entitled to a broadcast. As yet, the WSA is definitely standing in four seats - in Cardiff Central; Cardiff South and Penarth; Swansea West; and Torfaen. The April edition of Unity, the newsletter of the WSA, states that the alliance is also "looking at the possibility of two other seats". Whether this happens and is enough to secure air time for the WSA remains to be seen.

At the same time, the WSA fought shy of organising a special election conference, as happened when the Socialist Alliance in England came together in Birmingham in March. Moreover, joint campaigning work was sabotaged by the officers of the WSA when they chose to ignore the decision of the national council to hold a WSA day of action over the huge job losses in the Corus steel plants.

Yet the inaction at the centre of the WSA has contrasted with the growing dynamism of its branches. Since the entry of the Socialist Workers Party last summer, new branches have been formed in Gwent, Neath and Port Talbot, Ogmore and Bridgend to augment the existing branches in Cardiff, Swansea, Merthyr and Wrexham. Vigorous campaigning work has been the feature of many of the branches, with socialists from many different political backgrounds working together constructively.

Recently, the Gwent branch joined 120 people on a lobby of Torfaen Council to stop the closure of a local primary school. In Swansea, the WSA was at the forefront of a 150-strong Anti-Nazi League protest against a BNP meeting. Meanwhile in Neath a local WSA campaign to stop an incinerator goes from strength to strength. Cardiff and Swansea members also joined students in a protest outside the Wales Labour Party conference. Many of these actions have won the WSA valuable publicity in the press and on radio and TV.

What, then, explains the apparent contradiction between the paralysis at the centre and dynamism in the branches? Leaving aside the undoubted localism that exists within the WSA at all levels, two factors are particularly important. Firstly, the balance of forces within the WSA has not helped matters. Essentially, the Socialist Party - now the wrecking tendency of the WSA - has outmanoeuvred the SWP. Despite the entry of the SWP, the numerically smaller SP remains a significant force. Two of the five officers of the WSA are SP members, as are two of the four parliamentary candidates chosen.

For the SP the WSA has become a non-aggression pact for contesting elections. Joint activity with other socialists is normally frowned upon in the interests of its sect-building project. For example, in January the SP staged a public meeting in Newport (it has no members in the area) over job losses in the Llanwern steel plant, without inviting local WSA members to attend. Yet since then its officers within the alliance have sabotaged the efforts of the WSA to campaign together against the redundancies.

The SP in Wales remains quite dynamic, its members are disciplined and in public can be counted upon to act as one unified bloc within the WSA. The same cannot be said of the SWP. There is no question that many SWP members are genuinely enthusiastic about the alliance project and they have thrown themselves into its work. However, there is not the same degree of discipline and it is not unusual for some of the SWP's cadre to side with the SP on some issues at WSA gatherings. There is not a John Rees nor a Rob Hoveman to lead its intervention in Wales. The lack of cohesion means that the SWP has not been able to prevent the SP from negatively influencing the progress of the WSA.

There is also a second problem afflicting the WSA. That is the inappropriateness of the WSA as a separate entity. When the WSA was constituted in 1998, it had a grain of coherence, given that the SP and Cymru Goch were its main backers. The SP was still enthusiastic about the success of its comrades trying to ride the nationalist tiger in Scotland and did not rule out in the future the prospect of a separate 'Welsh road to socialism'. This was music to the ears of the consistent left nationalists in Cymru Goch.

Yet in 2001 the organisational separation of socialists in Wales is proving to be disastrous. With the SP now a semi-detached part of the WSA and Cymru Goch despairing about the alliance's prospects (see the letter of Mike Davies Weekly Worker March 22), the result has been an organisation ill equipped to fight the general election. Isolated from the upward momentum of the alliance project elsewhere and frequently ignored by its 'international' allies, curiously the WSA remains dependent on the latter for the tools it requires for the general election - there is, presently, little or no distinct WSA campaigning propaganda. Lacking much of the political infrastructure which exists in England and Scotland, the WSA has been left floundering.

The main left groups and the leadership of the Socialist Alliance in England must take a large share of the blame for this sad state of affairs. Offering to work together closely and uniting our organisations was deemed to be 'interfering with Welsh autonomy'. A bad case of inverted English nationalism if ever there was one.

What then of the letter by Steve Bell, ex-Socialist Labour Party member and WSA candidate for Torfaen, calling for there to be, at some stage, a Welsh Socialist Party modelled on the Scottish Socialist Party (Weekly Worker April 12)? Steve is surely right when he writes that those who are not serious about building the WSA "will fall by the wayside and will be overtaken by events". This, I presume, is aimed at the SP. He is also absolutely right to recognise that the alliance project must be the prelude to a bigger, party project. However, the call for a separate Welsh Socialist Party seems misconceived. Even assuming that the organisational problems in Wales can be ironed out and a professional apparatus emerges with its own printing press and full-time workers (which any party requires), the key question would remain: what would be the politics of the Welsh Socialist Party?

If the WSP did model itself on the SSP it would have to inhabit the world of left nationalism. It would need to draw the conclusion that the interests of the working class in Wales are not the same as those of its counterparts in England and (presumably) Scotland, and that the struggle for socialism in Wales can only be obstructed by political unity with these forces. Objectively, the programme of Plaid Cymru becomes progressive as it seeks to free Wales from 'English oppression' (even if it does not advocate an independent Wales like the radicals of this imagined WSP). Separation from England and Scotland becomes a necessary stage in the struggle for a Welsh workers' republic.

The WSP then seeks to forge an anti-imperialist united front with Plaid Cymru and plays second fiddle to PC in a Welsh parliament. Of course the theoreticians of the WSP will insist they are not nationalist: their demand is not for a bourgeois Wales. They might even choose to crucify Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution to claim that the struggle for national liberation will spill over into the socialist revolution. At this stage the WSP will win a majority in the parliament, the Marxist programme will be declared and Red Wales triggers off the international revolution.

Of course, I caricature the politics of Steve Bell. I know he does not subscribe for one moment to the fantasy scenario above. It is the programme of Cymru Goch, the champions of the WSP in the alliance (and of Tommy Sheridan in Scotland). Indeed, however ludicrous the scenario, it constitutes the only theoretical justification for a separate Welsh road to socialism. If you go down the road of the WSP, you will end up with the politics of Cymru Goch.

Gradually, this is dawning on many SWP members in Wales. Although in Scotland the SWP apparently sees "no problem" with dividing our forces within and against the British state and seems blind to the dangers of nationalism, many comrades are slowly recognising there is no basis for the divide between English and Welsh socialists. They recognise that Wales is not oppressed by England and cannot conceive of a separate Welsh road to socialism. However, these conclusions do not result from a reasoned critique of the dead end politics of nationalism: rather they derive from the practical experience of working in the WSA, and at least some of this has to do with frustration with the SP.

Whether the 'London centre' of the SWP takes this on board remains to be seen. Is it too preoccupied with events in England and Scotland to be bothered with Wales? Will it continue to fudge the national question in the British Isles? Does the entry of the SWP into the SSP have implications for its members in Wales? If so, will it push its Welsh comrades into a Welsh Socialist Party at some stage in the future? One might even speculate about how convinced SWP members are about any call from their leaders for unity among socialists, when Alex Callinicos and co see fit to boot out of their international tendency 1,000 comrades in the USA who had the temerity not to bow down to the SWP central committee.

Unless the politics of the national question are brought out into the open in the WSA, it runs the risk of being confused about the way forward. Undoubtedly, politics will determine whether the WSA chooses to go down the separatist road or unites with wider socialist forces within the British state. Those who argue for wider unity must be the champions of the right of self-determination of Wales and Scotland, and argue, at the same time, for the closest political unity with workers in Wales, Scotland and England.

This requires fighting for a federal republic. It is a demand that must be won not only in the WSA and the SSP, but even more so in the Socialist Alliance in England. Our slogan should be 'one state, one party'.

Cameron Richards