01.03.2007

Farcical battle for votes

Elections to the Wales national assembly on May 3 promise to be tale of two battles. The first battle will, of course, take place amongst the major Welsh parties for control of the devolved administration; the other a quite farcical contest between a bewildering array of left groups fighting it out for the title of the 'largest sect in Wales'. Cameron Richards reports

As the New Labour project continues to come unstuck, the party of Tony Blair and Rhodri Morgan will do extremely well to maintain its overall control of the assembly. Only a tiny shift of emphasis separates Welsh Labour from the New Labour mainstream and the party is no more likely to be spared embarrassment on election night than in England or Scotland. The Labour vote looks set to slump, with some gains for Plaid Cymru.

Whilst Plaid will probably not perform as well as it did in the first elections in 1999, it is certain to recover some of the ground it lost four years ago. Yet there is no discernible rise in nationalist sentiment (unlike in Scotland) and the constitutional 'settlement' of 1997 continues to hold.

The most likely scenario is that, while Labour will remain by far the biggest party in the assembly, it will be unable to form even a minority administration on its own. Hence the party is raising the spectre of a possible Plaid-Tory coalition.

Plaid is categorically denying that there is any prospect of this happening and, indeed, it does seem a very remote possibility. Plaid will, instead, promote itself as the real left-of-centre party of Wales - at the same time playing down its nationalist politics in an attempt to win the support of working class voters in English-speaking south Wales. Nevertheless, stranger things have happened in politics.

Labour's preference would be to do a deal with its former partners, the Liberal Democrats. However, if this proves to be numerically impossible to achieve, then the alternative spectre of a Labour-Plaid coalition might appear on the horizon. Although Labour AMs (a spineless collection of lackeys, not one worth voting for) would grudgingly put up with this, it is tempting to speculate whether a revolt might take place within the ranks of Plaid.

Some attention will also focus on two constituency seats - Blaenau Gwent and Wrexham. The former is held by Trish Law of the 'old Labour' People's Voice, who won the seat in a by-election in 2006 after the death of her husband, Peter Law. He himself had defected from New Labour after the last assembly elections and then went on to dramatically win the parliamentary seat in the general election of 2005. It seems likely that People's Voice will hold onto the seat and complicate the election arithmetic a little further.

More uncertain is the position of John Marek in Wrexham. A former MP, he was elected on the Labour ticket in 1999, but quit after he was deselected in the run-up to the subsequent elections. Standing as an independent in 2003, he narrowly held on to the seat.

Of course, Marek went on to form Forward Wales and for a time received overtures from the far left, as it portrayed itself as the sister organisation of the Scottish Socialist Party. Spurning unity calls from Respect, Forward Wales performed lamentably in the 2004 European elections. Since then, Marek's party has become virtually moribund - a remarkably rightwing left-of-centre nonentity. Even his former bag-carriers in the left nationalist Cymru Goch have flown the nest.

Indeed, it seems likely that Marek and his 'running mate', ex-cabinet minister Ron Davies, will stand as independents, with Forward Wales contesting the regions on the list. 'Leaders' who reject standing for their own party can only be regarded with contempt.

Yet if the Forward Wales project has become a joke, equally pathetic will be the array of sects facing it in the regional contests. It promises to be a dream election for those who like to mock the '57 varieties', with all the main left groups disguising themselves as old Labourites, albeit with slightly different recipes. On the menu will be Stalinist Labourism, Trotskyite Labourism and Labourism with an islamic twist.

Already the Communist Party of Britain has announced that its lethargic organisation will contest the five regional seats. Not to be outdone, February saw the virtually non-existent Socialist Labour Party announce on its website that it too will be contesting all the regions. Just how many more times can king Arthur come running into the valleys before even his most loyal henchmen say enough is enough?

If the stench of Stalinism is unpalatable to the voter, then Trotskyite Labourism is also available. Although a little more modest in the scope of its electoral activity, the Socialist Party in England and Wales will be contesting two regions - South Wales Central and South Wales West.

Somewhat more circumspect in its intentions is Respect, which has yet to declare where precisely it will be standing. This is hardly surprising, given that the Socialist Workers Party's on-off 'unity coalition' has done next to nothing in Wales since the general election two years ago.

In an effort to whip up some enthusiasm amongst Welsh Respect members for another campaign, John Rees came to Swansea on the evening of February 27 to launch the coalition's election campaign. Except that in a rather bland speech to about 40 people (the Tower Hamlets councillor who was listed to speak did not turn up) neither he nor any of the SWP contributors from the floor were keen to let on about their intentions.

Instead, only at the end of the meeting was it announced that there will be a selection meeting on March 8. Only when pressed by the CPGB about whether this will be an all-Wales or a Swansea-only meeting, did the announcer confirm it was the former, adding that no motions would be allowed. The fact that Swansea again is the location for this meeting, and that George Galloway is down to speak in the city soon, suggests that Respect's campaign might, in any case, be confined to the Swansea West constituency or the South Wales West region.

So the lucky voters in South Wales West might face the unedifying prospect of being able to choose between Forward Wales, the CPB, Socialist Labour, Respect (perhaps) and SPEW. It would be highly amusing if it was not so tragic. Some of these organisations see fit to lecture the French left on its divisions in the presidential elections! What all this shows is that the glimpses of left unity seen in previous elections (the United Left in 1999 and the Welsh Socialist Alliance in the 2001 general election) have been shattered for the time being.

However, what does unite these sects is the plain fact that they will all be campaigning on practically the same, Labourite programmatic demands. Perhaps some of the these will hail Havana, whilst others will give back-handed support to the islamic republic of Iran. But 'Tax the rich', 'Defend the NHS', 'Save our pensions', 'Renationalise the railways' and 'Increase the minimum wage' will form the backbone of their puny economistic campaigns (Respect will add, 'No to islamophobia').

In themselves, of course, all those demands are supportable. But the method of Marxism, long since abandoned, will not feature. No propaganda will be directed against the UK constitutional monarchy system and for principled opposition to the politics of Welsh nationalism - a federal republic of England, Scotland and Wales. Respect still does not have any position on the national question.

In short, they will all eschew the method of fighting for the working class to take the lead in the battle for democracy. Reformist incoherence will be the order of the day, not revolutionary politics. Let us hope that, at some point in the future, the left begins to reconsider the CPGB's call for principled left unity, based on a Marxist programme.

CPGB members will go to Respect's March 8 selection meeting calling for the adoption only of candidates from the working class political tradition, not those said to represent some cross-class 'community'. We will argue that, unless it does so, it is scarcely worth Respect adding its name to the long list of left parties already declared.