19.02.2004

On the left of Wales

Leanne Wood is a Plaid Cymru member of the Welsh assembly. Mark Fischer spoke to her after the February 11 Wales Communist Forum in Cardiff

When did you become a socialist?

I’ve always intuitively felt I was a socialist. I remember being in school and feeling an identity with what I understood socialism to be. Towards the end of the 90s I started discussing ideas seriously with people inside Plaid Cymru and people outside it. I was then that my ideas solidified, I suppose.

But why would a socialist join Plaid Cymru?

The Labour Party in the Rhondda - where I grew up - was simply not an option. The local MP was awful and the local councillors were corrupt, stagnant and very rightwing. If they were councillors somewhere else, they would have happily been Tories. Politically, I viewed the Labour Party here as a rightwing, bureaucratic machine.

I looked at the Communist Party and other left parties. This left seemed very split, very insular and more interested in fighting itself. Then when I went to university in Pontypridd, I first came across serious antagonism to the Welsh language. Growing up in the Rhondda, this wasn’t an issue …

But you don’t speak Welsh, do you?

No, I’m a learner. But it’s the language of my country and I don’t want it to simply die. But I did find through being active in student union politics that there was a group of New Labour students - most from England, by chance - who were vociferously against the Welsh language and culture. They were chauvinists, really. That prompted my move towards Plaid.

How do you see the left’s view of the national question in the UK?

We get accused in PC of being isolationists, nationalists. But if you scratch the surface of some of those arguments, you’ll find a British nationalism, a defence of the integrity of the British state. So I find that hypocritical.

There are two kinds of nationalism. Small-nation nationalism is about a country struggling for its liberation. The nationalism of an imperialist nation is a totally different entity. I think our philosophy is more anti-imperialist.

But whether its small nationalism or big nationalism, surely it has nothing to do with genuine socialism? It presumes a community that does not exist - I feel no empathy with Michael Howard because we are both Welsh.

Me neither! Yes, there has to be class unity. I have more in common with a worker in the north east of England than with a country landowner in Cowbridge. But then, the vast majority of people in Wales are working class …

The vast majority of people in England are working class.

Yes. But many consistently vote rightwing …

They don’t, consistently.

Okay, perhaps that’s overstating it. But it certainly is true that if you look at electoral results for England and Wales over the last century, Wales has consistently voted to the left of England. Scotland is different: it’s had its ‘tartan Tory’ tradition as well. That doesn’t exist in Wales and never has - it is a far more working class country. There hasn’t been a strong native ruling class in Wales in the same sense as Scotland and England.

That’s what makes Wales interesting. Nationalism here is more class-based. So its not so much that we are against class solidarity in Britain: I am more in favour of moving towards a class solidarity that is initially European-wide, then worldwide. I believe we have more opportunity to make advances for our class if we break out of the confines of the UK state.

So, yes to a federal Europe. But no to a federal Britain.

I want to see the countries of Britain as part of a federal Europe, as independent entities.

Are your views typical of those on the left of Plaid? - frankly, on some questions, you sound like a Trot.

No, the left doesn’t all talk in these terms. But PC is interesting because the membership is very much to the left of the leadership. Over the years, we have passed quite radical policy positions, but the leadership has then failed to fight to for those policies.

I don’t like to split Wales up politically as we have far more in common as a people than differences. The political traditions of north and south Wales do have some unique features, of course. In the south, our experience was marked by the miners’ struggles, and other industrial battles over the years have shaped people’s consciousness in a particular way. In the north, the equivalent was the important struggle around the slate mines, for example. The north has a predominatedly agricultural tradition - but that has had its extremely radical moments also. So I see Wales as a unity, really

Despite that, the people of Wales would in general like to see things in society organised in a different way. I’m not suggesting that everyone here advocates a revolution to overthrow capitalism, but there is real feeling that change should happen. I don’t think Wales would have gone to war with Iraq, for example. We would have used our vote in the UN against military aggression, I believe.

What we are trying to do as the left in Plaid is generate as much discussion as possible. There are lots of people who now identify with the internet magazine Treban Coch, a publication very much on the left of Plaid. Debate is vital, as there is a wide range of ideas within PC, but a general consensus that we want it to be on the left of the political spectrum and we want our leadership to fight for left policies.

The left in Plaid tend to be younger, tend to mostly concentrated in the south - although that’s partly accounted for by the difficulty of travel inside Wales.

What does that left believe in? How does it reconcile its version of socialism with nationalism?

We embraced the motion for independence as a means to turn back some of the historical disadvantages Wales has suffered, as capitalism has developed in Britain. Europe becomes a key forum for those disadvantages to be addressed - although some of us are stronger on the fight for a workers’ Europe than others.

We also try to develop a radical campaigning profile for the party - being involved in grassroots campaigning.

Yes, but how does all this knit together? How does the call for independence, the day-to-day mechanics of what you do in the assembly and then the fairly bog-standard campaigning work fit with the socialism of the left in Plaid? What’s the bridge?

It’s about making people think, trying to raise consciousness. In this, I think the assembly has to be used primarily as a platform for socialism, not a means to socialism itself. Debate and discussion amongst the general left is absolutely key - Plaid Cymru is hardly going to change the world by itself. At the same time, we need some unity in action - which is often hard, given the state of the left today!

I think Plaid has changed quite dramatically. There are small numbers of people who still would adhere to a very conservative version of nationalism, but they are in a tiny minority in the party now. They have been defeated, pretty much. The only area that remains contentious in that context is the debate on the Welsh language.

I think some people, both inside and outside Plaid, and all over Wales in fact, have such a passionate commitment to the survival of the language, that they have a knee-jerk reaction to what they see as any threat to it. Some elements have made statements whose logic - if they thought it through - would be quite abhorrent, even to the people making them. But the party as a whole is clear that the solution to this problem is not a ‘race’-based one, or a matter of chauvinism against an English ‘invasion’.

I view the left outside PC with a lot of sadness, disappointment and frustration. There is so much energy and talent there, but so much of it is spent on attacking each other. Why can’t we galvanise our energy in attacking our real enemies? I personally am very much committed to working with other comrades and organisations on the left - but they often drive me up the wall.

In this context, the opportunity offered by the Respect coalition was potentially very good. But as soon as George Galloway told us that everyone is included in Wales - apart from Plaid Cymru - that was that. How does he reconcile that with his soft attitude to the Scottish Socialist Party - does he really think he is going to beat us down here in Wales? Add to that the apparent lack of democracy in the new organisation, the way the man appeared to be making policy on the hoof, and we seem to have another wasted opportunity.

The Socialist Workers Party should be very wary of developing a new version of the cult of personality around George. A lot of attention seems to be focused around Galloway as an individual - and history shows how dangerous that is in politics.

How can Galloway demand that Plaid drops its demand for independence when none of the other partners have been given political ultimatums in this way? So sharia law is okay, but not Welsh nationalism? I find that astounding.

You’re right that sterile, sectarian divisions on the left are useless. But there are serious differences here - we have to debate them in a serious way. That doesn’t rule out organisational unity.

Sure, but sometimes the divisions seem petty, not the questions being debated. There are so many versions of what happened in Spain in 1936, I am now confused, whereas I once thought I knew where I stood. It’s important - we have to learn from history and not repeat its errors. But we are talking about fine-tuning our theory to deal with a revolutionary situation in Britain, which is nowhere near at the present time. Surely we have to get a sense of perspective - otherwise the left seems like a completely alien world. A lot of younger people I come across feel this. They reject what they understand as socialism, as they see it as a lot of small sects squabbling amongst themselves.

I’m not advocating some dumbed-down workerism, where nothing matters unless it’s of immediate interest to ‘the workers’. But there must be relevance - you were talking about the link between my activity and socialism earlier. But what about the link between the socialism of the left and its present-day activity in society? I think the debate we started to have at last night’s forum about what the term ‘working class’ actually means in contemporary society is a vital one - how do we make our understanding of class relevant to the people if there are conflicting understandings, conflicting versions?

Yet you call yourself a “committed socialist” on the national assembly website - how many versions of ‘socialism’ are out there? Surely this is a matter for struggle and clarification, not a question of blurring edges? Otherwise we end up with an opportunist project, trying to find short cuts around hard questions.

Okay, true. But there’s a balance. Politics continues to move to the right. Millions are disillusioned and are disengaging. There has to be a balance between intensive, private, specialised debates about the content of what we think and telling the mass of people out there what we actually stand for.

Otherwise, they will have nowhere to go - they will view us as people with our heads up our arses. We need to concentrate on what unites us.

So much more unites us than divides us?

Yes, of course!

Like the working class in Britain? If yes, why not voluntary unity - a federal republic?

Because we have to redress the balance. Everything is skewed towards London and the south east of England - politically, economically and socially. The ‘periphery’ gets shafted and has done so historically.

To turn that round, to remove the national resentments which could act as a barrier to working class unity, the Welsh people must have the power to determine their own future.