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This “New Welsh Labour” vision is really just a warmed up version of New Labour’s dish that Blair and Brown had prepared earlier in the mid 90s - garnished with a few leeks. Then Blair and Brown claimed that the working class had fundamentally changed and that an appeal had to be made to “Middle England” to win over the aspirational C1 and B social classes, the skilled workers and white collar professionals. A false distinction was made between industrial workers and the alleged middle class groups like teachers and civil servants.
The problem for Hain is that this New Labour dish is now over 10 years old. It has gone mouldy and is giving off a rather nasty smell. New Labour in government has done nothing to improve society in this fictional place they called “Middle England” or for the “core” working class. Teachers, college lecturers and civil servants were all on strike last month against New Labour policies in the public sector and local government workers have voted to take action as well.
In practice New Labour has not represented the “aspirational” layers. The army of New Labour ministers, MPs, consultants and spin doctors paraded before us for the last 11 years have marched in the service of big business. Digby Jones, the former director-general of the CBI, and other business leaders actually have places in the government.
Even though New Labour was lucky enough to be at the helm during a sustained global economic upturn neither the low paid not the middle layers gained very much from this boom except huge debts. Top rate income tax and corporation tax has been reduced while taxes and prices have gone up for the rest of society. In exchange public services have been cut and privatised.
The low paid and the sick have fallen further behind under New Labour. The cutting back of Invalidity Benefits is one of the cruellest cutbacks in benefits, not even attempted by the vicious Margaret Thatcher. Housing benefits have been capped, forcing further the poorest further into poverty. And hundreds of thousands of families have still not recovered from the effects of the overpayment crisis of the much-vaunted Family Tax Credit.

Few gains from boom

The working class and even the middle class gained very little from economic boom while suffering overcrowding, housing shortages, MRSA, NHS waiting lists and privatised railways and strained under a huge burden of debt. New Labour smiled benevolently as the super-rich got a whole lot richer following the dictum of New Labour guru Peter Mandelson "We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich." In reality, New Labour has been intensely relaxed about people staying dirt poor.
The big winners under New Labour have been the super-rich who have wallowed in unprecedented wealth as a shower of tax-free multi-billion bonuses poured down on them. Last year one British hedge-fund executive made over £200 million - more than a whole small town in “Middle England” or an entire estate in “Middle Wales”.
Now as the debt-fuelled economic upturn is coming to an end, New Labour’s luck has run out. Working class people in general have turned from New Labour as decisively as New Labour jettisoned them in the mid 90s. And “Middle England” has turned out to be the fantasy land it always was.
In this context Hain’s vision of the aspirational classes in Wales, a “Middle Wales”, is even more illusory. In Hain’s view, seen until recently through the tinted windows of his ministerial limousine travelling along the M4, the new estates and ‘luxury’ apartment buildings in Wales house thousands of aspiring new professionals who have cast off the cloth caps of their parents and have left Welsh Labour behind. Hain argues that “New Welsh Labour” is
needed to win the support of these new aspirers.

A vote against poverty and cuts

Hain’s vision conveniently ignores the terrible results Labour received in those areas furthest from the luxury apartments and Barrett housing estates. In Merthyr for example, where scandalously after 11 years of Labour government in an economic boom one third of the adult population is still out of work, Labour lost control of the council. In this area that elected the first ever Labour Party MP, working people decisively rejected Labour. But they did not turn to Conservatives or even Liberals but voted for independents.
And what do they aspire to? Things like a decent NHS with their local hospital being upgraded not downgraded, council services that work and local post offices that the pensioners can reach on foot. They are not demanding the earth.
The same is true in Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly, Torfaen and Newport where solid working class communities gave Labour the boot. In this period when there is currently no political alternative to the left of Labour then opposition is reflected in abstentions, or votes for independents, Plaid Cymru or even the apparently left-looking Liberal Democrats. There are now more independent councillors in Wales than for any party.
In Gwynedd it is likely that working people have saved their community schools by rejecting Plaid Cymru and voting for Llais Gwynedd, a split-off from Plaid Cymru. Where Plaid Cymru did gain in the elections it was as posing as a left alternative to Labour, like in Rhodri Morgan’s constituency, Cardiff West, where Plaid Cymru now have more councillors than Labour. Plaid in Cardiff have now signed a coalition deal with the Liberals and demanded the saving of schools in Cardiff West as a price for their support. Working people in the rest of Cardiff will demand “what about our schools?”. Plaid did gain in this election but this was a vote for independents rather than for Independence.

Playing the language card

Incidentally, Hain hints that he is considering playing of the language card to counter Plaid Cymru when he writes “Where [nationalists’] instinct is to make Welsh speaking almost obligatory, ours is to ensure choice for all”. There are certain tensions over school resources between Welsh speakers and non-Welsh speakers as a result of spending constraints imposed by Hain’s government. Socialist Party members have attempted to unite both groups in schools campaigns, but Hain is clearly considering deliberately dividing the two communities by whipping up an anti-Welsh language campaign in the name of choice. This must be resisted by working people as an attempt to stir up a sort of language sectarianism for short term partisan advantage. There has been no attempt to make Welsh-speaking “obligatory” but with Welsh schools being expanded in South Wales and English-speaking schools being closed it could appear that Welsh-speakers are gaining an advantage if presented in the way that Hain does.

Beginnings of a real alternative

It is in Blaenau Gwent that we can see the faint outline of a real alternative. Blaenau Gwent had always been one of the top three Labour seats for a decade. When Peter Law won the seat for Blaenau Gwent People’s Voice (BGPV) as a left alternative standing in the tradition of Aneurin Bevan, Labour leaders claimed it was a one-off, a flash in the pan. Since then Labour has lost six elections in Blaenau Gwent to People’s Voice: three parliamentary elections, two Assembly elections and a council election. It remains to be seen how the People’s Voice will develop, but imagine the potential if all the opposition to New Labour revealed in the election of candidates to the left of Labour in Wales were channelled into a party formed by the trade unions based on the working class.
And what of the inhabitants of the new housing estates and ‘luxury’ apartment blocks in the M4 corridor? Are they awash with cash, confidently looking forward for a new party of aspiration? Most of them are workers up to their necks in debt having paid over the odds for their home in insecure jobs with the same concerns as everyone else over the NHS, public services and price rises. With one third of Welsh workers in the public sector, many of Hain’s “aspirants” work for public services and are angry about being offered pay rises by Hain’s government that fall far behind the rises in food and fuel prices, in effect a pay cut. Some are factory workers concerned at the threat to manufacturing and are fighting for their jobs like the Visteon workers in Swansea.
The picture of an aspirational “Middle Wales” painted by Peter Hain is a mirage, it will never materialise and most workers in the trade unions reject the prospectus offered by Hain. But what effect can they have on Hain and the other Labour leaders? Labour’s branches are empty because rank and file workers know they can have no influence on what party bosses can decide (a fact alluded to by Hain when he bemoaned “a lack of hard campaigning” for the council elections). Labour is no longer a party that working people can influence.

Campaign For A New Workers’ Party

As the Welsh trade union movement gathers in Llandudno this week at the Wales TUC most trade unionists know that what is needed is for the “core” ex- Labour voters and for the new workers alluded to by Hain are policies that defend workers living standards as we enter a new recession; defend trade union rights and defend and expand public services delivered by the public sector. Trade unionists are increasingly aware that for these aspirations to be delivered a new party for working people needs to be created. The Socialist Party in Wales and in England is campaigning to that end, working with others in the Campaign For A New Workers’ Party whose conference takes place in London on June 29th. It can be found at www.cnwp.org.uk