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Dave Reid (East Wales organiser, Socialist Party Wales)

The farcical events in Cardiff Bay over the last week have further diminished the standing of the four establishment parties. None of the parties have come out of this circus untarnished. The reality is that there is very little difference between them all, although this was temporarily obscured by the feverish struggle for government office.
The on-off romances of the party leaders with each other as they manoeuvred for power have diminished them all. Rhodri Morgan is on his last legs as Labour leader, condemned and then reprieved by the Lib Dems. Mike German is damaged as Lib Dem leader and Ieuan Wyn Jones, barely recognised by the electorate in the election, is now exposed by his naked greed for power.

First Labour leader, Rhodri, tried to do a sweetheart deal with Mike offering the Liberals a coalition government and proportional representation in council elections. But the Liberal councillors in Cardiff and Swansea want to blame the Labour-led Assembly for council cutbacks leading up to the council elections next year and they cannot very well do this if the Lib Dems are in the Assembly government so they scuppered the deal.

Then Rhodri tried to offer Ieuan a pact with Plaid in exchange for a referendum on a Welsh parliament. But Jones, pulled the plug on it because he wants to be First Minister even though a pact with Labour is the only way Plaid can realistically achieve its main aim of a referendum.
So with Rhodri having failed to pull together a coalition or a pact,Ieuan steps forward to form the “Rainbow Coalition” with Nick and Mike. A pretty poor rainbow with just three colours green, blue and yellow and only one principle – power. A coalition with the Tories could have destroyed Plaid’s support in the South Wales valleys, whose communities were ripped apart by the Tory government in the 1980s. Had the Rainbow government been formed then Jones would have achieved his ambition, the office of First Minister, but ruined his party. Four southern Plaid AMs threatened to rebel against the deal. In the event the Lib Dems scuppered that deal as well.

Rhodri muddles through?

So Rhodri was left to form a government even though he cannot command a majority in the Assembly and he will have to muddle through. And now, to cap it all, the Lib Dems are talking of reviving the rainbow coalition.
Significantly none of the negotiations revolved around the issues that matter to working people. The main idea was power and prestige for the politicians. Whatever the result of all this horse-trading the NHS would remain in a permanent state of crisis, schools would continue to close and even as the drama came to a close hundreds of Welsh workers were losing their jobs at Llanwern and Ebbw Vale.
The truth is that none of the parties have a mandate from the electorate. The Tories are celebrating an improved vote but they got little more of the share of the vote in Wales than they did in their hammering in 1997 when they lost every seat. Plaid still did not win a single constituency east of Llanelli in South Wales. And Rhodri Morgan’s claim that Labour has a mandate from the people wears very thin when barely 14% of the electorate voted Labour on May 3rd.
So disillusioned are people with party politics that 56% of the electorate did not vote at all in the Assembly elections. At the moment they are presented with little choice as the four main parties all present mainly pro-capitalist policies, effectively four heads of the same party. But the low turnout was not a reflection of apathy. Thousands of people have turned out to demos and rallies against hospital cuts across Wales including the hugely successful march in Swansea organised largely by Socialist Party members a few days before the election.
Rhodri Morgan statement in his acceptance speech as First Minister almost mocked the working class: “I say to this Assembly that I am not the boss. They, the people, are the boss”. To those trying to stop hospital cuts carried out by overpaid NHS trust bosses across Wales this is a sick joke. If working class people were in charge there would be no hospital closures, no school closures or council cutbacks. The truth is that the Assembly is doing its utmost to prevent the working class from having any say on the running of public services let alone on issues like jobs, pay and pensions.
What the shoddy events of the last few weeks in Cardiff Bay have demonstrated above all is the need for a new workers’ party to represent these and other aspirations of working class people. The working class has had to put up with 28 years of Thatcherism, first with a snarl under Thatcher and then with a smile under Blair as he continued her neo-liberal policies. In the past working class people could at least partially use the Labour Party as a vehicle through which to struggle. Now no-one outside of the trade union bureaucracy seriously believes that anymore.
Labour achieved its lowest share of the vote in Wales since 1918 when the newly-formed trade union-based party burst onto the electoral scene. Yet despite this terrible result Rhodri Morgan looked a relieved man on May 4th. He knows how close Labour came to a melt-down in the Assembly elections. Labour held onto 24 constituency seats but in 11 of them was reduced to a majority of less then 2,000.

Welsh Labour in long-term decline

An examination of just one area of the Labour Party’s heartlands, what used to be called the Monmouthshire valleys, reveals the dramatic long term decline of Labour as a workers’ party. When Labour was what Lenin called a “bourgeois workers’ party” most of these constituencies returned Labour MPs with majorities of around 20,000. But now it retains constituencies like Caerphilly and Islwyn with just 9,000 votes and majorities of just over 2,000. Its majorities have been literally decimated. And it has lost Blaenau Gwent in three successive elections which in 1997 attracted the highest Labour vote in Britain with 80% of the vote.
The truth is that New Labour and its pale reflection, Welsh Labour, is no longer a workers’ party. Lenin characterised the Labour Party as a “bourgeois workers’ party”, a party whose base was dominated by the working class, but whose leadership was tied to capitalist society. In Wales the social weight of the working class reflected itself in huge majorities for Labour in elections and also exerted pressure on the leadership to carry out reforms in the interests of the working class. The pressure of the working class in Britain applied at a time in the 50’s and 60’s, when capitalism could afford to make concessions, allowed the creation of the National Health Service and the welfare state.
In the modern period the bourgeois on a world scale have adopted neo liberal policies and are on the offensive, tearing down past reforms won by the working class while amassing huge profits. And they are in the process of conquering parties like the Labour Party to turn them into purely pro-capitalist parties, which might retain a small working class membership but upon which the working class can have very little influence.
The rejection of New Labour by working people of Wales in the first Assembly elections in 1999 reportedly caused Blair to rage about the “f***ing Welsh” and led directly to the demise of Alun Michael, Tony Blair’s Welsh lieutenant. His replacement, Rhodri Morgan has attempted to publicly differentiate “Welsh” Labour from New Labour, but he has carried through watered-down versions of New Labour policies. The social weight of the working class in Wales has forced him to adopt slightly less Blairite polices, no foundation hospitals or school academies for example. But the direction of travel remains the same as New Labour – towards privatised and reduced public services and greater social inequality – albeit at a slower pace.
And Welsh Labour has largely succeeded in insulating itself from the pressure of the working class. This has been a more difficult process than for Blair in England because of the heavier social weight of the working class in Wales. Elements of “Old Labour” have jumped ship and successfully rebelled against the process in Gwent and Wrexham. But the Blairites have succeeded in Wales as in the rest of Britain leading to the hollowing out of the Labour Party with a small and demoralised membership.
The 2007 Assembly election marks a new staging point in the metamorphosis of the Labour Party in Wales from a bourgeois workers’ party into a centre capitalist party. It still retains a fading loyalty from the older generation for the achievements under the old Labour Party but attracts very little support from younger working class people who are repelled by politicians in general.

Plaid in crisis - Tories haven't gained

This is why the other establishment parties did not succeed in gaining from Labour’s unpopularity. Everyone knows that the main thrust of all the main parties is the same – cutbacks and privatisation. Plaid has tried to appear “leftish” in South Wales, but the domination by a conservative leadership has not convinced many that Plaid will offer anything different. The attempt to achieve power at all costs with the Tories will reinforce this. The experience of the Liberals in power on Cardiff council has put a big hole in their radical credentials in the city as they attempted to close schools and old people’s homes.
This year Plaid did not make the breakthrough it achieved in 1999. Then appearing to be a radical or even socialist alternative it won Rhondda and Islwyn in the valleys as well as Llanelli. But the experience of Plaid councils in the valleys exposed the reality that whatever the rhetoric the majority of Plaid is not socialist in action. Plaid has always balanced uneasily between the two stools of its conservative rural base in the North West and the more radical working class electorate in the South Wales valleys. Ieuan Wyn Jones represents the conservative wing and completely failed to inspire the electorate in the South (or even the North). The very fact that he is prepared to contemplate a coalition with the Tories who hardly have a councillor in the Glamorgan and Gwent valleys shows how out of touch he is with the realities of the working class in the South. His support for deals with the Tories and nuclear power are clear signals to working class people in Wales that under him Plaid will be an establishment party prepared to carry out the same cuts (or worse) to public services as Labour and the Liberals. Whatever happens now Plaid is likely to suffer in the valleys. Their only hope is that they can scupper hospital cutbacks.
The Tories in Wales, as in Britain as a whole, have tried to rehabilitate themselves in the eyes of the majority of the electorate who have viewed them as little better than war criminals since 1992. In Wales this is has been an even more uphill battle given the devastation wreaked on working class communities by 18 years of Tory government. The mining industry employing over 30,000 in 1979 was destroyed and one third of Welsh families had experienced unemployment in the 1980s. They have never won an election in Wales and were forced to send English MPs in as Welsh secretaries to run Wales like colonial governors. The Tories were wiped out in Wales in 1997 not holding on to a single seat.
The Tories succeeded in winning five constituencies and ten list seats in the Assembly elections by trying, as in Britain as a whole, to appear new and green. As if to underline the policy overlap between the main parties they promoted the Blairite policies of foundation hospitals in Wales while Labour, worried about its working class vote, had to resist that policy. But the Tory vote has actually only increased to 22% from 20% in 1997. So while the Tories will attempt to claim a success in Wales they made only a small step forward.

Workers turn from establishment parties- crisis of political representation

Blaenau Gwent was a very significant result. This constituency used to be consistently in the top three Labour majorities in Britain yet Trish Law won it for Blaenau Gwent People’s Voice (BGPV) with 54% of the vote. And this is no flash in the pan. People’s Voice has won three successive elections in Blaenau Gwent. People’s Voice candidates also achieved creditable votes in neighbouring Gwent valley constituencies. The achievements of BGPV show what is possible for a new workers party in Wales. But this potential must be broadened into the rest of the valleys and Wales with a clear socialist programme for the whole of Wales.
The defeat of John Marek in Wrexham shows the dangers of not seizing opportunities when they arise. Marek refused to collaborate with the Socialist Party and others in South Wales to build a new workers’ party, preferring to rely on his base in Wrexham. He did not distance himself from the unpopular “politicians” tag defending the bloated salaries and expenses of Assembly members. And he did not fight for clearly socialist policies against the establishment parties. In this period new formations that split from Labour must clearly differentiate themselves from the unpopular establishment parties and clearly be seen to fight against the evil twins of cutbacks and privatisation or eventually decline.

The working class in Wales is facing further attacks on its living standards and public services, but the recent developments at the Assembly highlight the crisis of political representation. Overwhelmingly working class people are opposed to cutbacks in public services and privatisation, but that is all that is on offer from the four main parties. The situation is ripe, rotten ripe even, for the trade union movement to take the lead to organise a political alternative. The call by Bob Crow, general secretary of RMT, the rail union, for a new party at the Wales TUC conference will be well-received by workers across Wales, but these words must be turned into action.

Socialist Party members are championing the cause of a new broad party for workers through the Campaign For A New Workers’ Party and will strive to work with all formations and individuals on the left to achieve this. New opportunities are opening up as the events of the last few weeks demonstrate that all four parties offer nothing for working people.