14.03.2002

Paper launch

This month has seen the launch of a new publication of the left. Issue 1 of Welsh Socialist Voice, the paper of the Welsh Socialist Alliance, is now out and represents a serious attempt to widen the appeal of the WSA, the weakest part of the Socialist Alliance project in Britain. Indeed, WSV must, to some extent at least, reflect the profound weaknesses of the WSA. Put together by a small editorial board, all gainfully employed in day jobs, WSV is a light read compared to many other publications on the left. An eight-pager of A4 size, WSV, nevertheless, is attractively produced and one is struck immediately by the time and effort the editorial team have put into its production. It puts to shame those forces in the Socialist Alliance in England who argue that an SA publication is premature. There are undoubted political deficiencies, however. The content largely reflects the localist and economistic preoccupations of much of the left. If one is looking for the overtly political and polemical tone of a publication like the Weekly Worker, then you will be disappointed. Nevertheless the editorial team have pledged themselves to publish articles of a more polemical style and no doubt these will come in due course. That is not to say that the various snippets of information and the signed articles are uninteresting. Comrade Richard Morse, now restored to Socialist Workers Party membership (he resigned in the middle of the December 9 WSA national council meeting - see Weekly Worker December 13), has written an interesting article on David Ivon Jones, a Welsh immigrant to South Africa who helped to forge a communist movement in the continent of Africa. A participant in the early congresses of the Comintern, he rose, in Richard's words, "to become one of the major figures in world socialism as a spokesperson for Africa". Not only this, but comrade Morse notes that Jones is remembered in South Africa today as "the first socialist to realise the centrality of black liberation to socialism in Africa". Jones died in Russia in 1924 and was given a state funeral in Moscow. Comrade Steve Bell also provides an idiosyncratic and rather tongue in cheek article on the plight of Welsh rugby, an important topic of debate to any son of Wales born south of Wrexham. Steve calls for the Welsh Rugby Union to be "overthrown, democratised and controlled by true rugby fans". Let us hope that Steve keeps to such an uncompromising revolutionary position in his politics too. Undoubtedly the first issue of WSV has a rather shallow feel to it. Indeed it looks and reads not just a little like Y Faner Goch, the paper of the left nationalist Cymru Goch. This is unsurprising. With the SWP taking an arms length approach to WSV (most of its members abstaining on the vote on the publication at the recent WSA conference, some hoping that WSV will fail), and in the absence of strong trend advocating an all-Britain Socialist Alliance party, then it is natural that left nationalism will fill the vacuum. Members of Cymru Goch have shown a commendable enthusiasm for the publication project. Yet the first thing that any serious partisan of a Socialist Alliance party should acknowledge about WSV is that its publication represents an important, if modest, advance for those of us who wish to see the alliance project break out of the sect mentality that has so tarnished the revolutionary left in Britain. A common paper uniting the ranks of the SWP, Socialist Party, Cymru Goch, Workers Power, Alliance for Workers' Liberty, CPGB as well non-aligned socialists is, by any reckoning, a remarkable achievement. Our unity is still brittle, to say the least. As well as the national question continuing to haunt the abstentionist WSA, the sect interests of some of the political affiliates still means that the partyist project in the principality remains in an embryonic stage. 2002 could still witness the virtual disintegration of the WSA, especially if a fight ensues between the SWP, SP and Cymru Goch at the September special conference to determine the constitution and our response to the national question. However, one can hope that the appearance of WSV helps the components of the WSA to recognise their wider responsibility to the working class in reforging a communist alternative to capitalism. At the very least, it provides us with the opportunity to debate out in the open those political questions that need to be addressed if partyist unity is to be forged. In this sense WSV could become a tool for debating how socialists throughout the UK unite to fight the British state. Three cheers to the editors!. Cameron Richards Welsh Socialist Voice First issue of the paper of the Welsh Socialist Alliance out this week. £6 for 12 issues, payable to WSV, PO Box 369, Cardiff, CF24 3WW.