Tag Archives: Welsh Labour

By Mariam Kamish “They don’t understand our lives – the people who make these decisions. Without the library, my granddaughter would be trying to concentrate on her homework, sat in front of the telly.” Caerphilly Labour council is closing ten libraries and three leisure centres. People are fighting to save Abertridwr library. ‘Use the hub library in Caerphilly’, the Labour ...

By Mariam Kamish Mariam Kamish, Caerphilly Trades Union Council secretary “Blackwood Miners’ Institute is staying open”, I told the meeting, “because people fought for it. Why not Aber Library? If we fight, we can win.” Eagerness wiped frustration off the faces around the room. “Put down your details”, I said, writing my own and passing on the sheet. “You can’t ...

By Mark Evans, Swansea and West Wales Socialist Party My family’s recent experience of the NHS was an example of what most people know – the NHS in Wales is on the critical list. My wife’s mother suffered a fall and, after waiting for five-and-a-half hours for an ambulance, then spent over five days on a trolley in A&E with ...

By Aris Prevost, Cardiff University Socialist Students The Welsh Labour government announced recently that it would be following the Labour government in Westminster by raising university tuition fees. From September 2025, Welsh students in Wales will be charged £9,535 a year, an increase of £285. Fees had already been raised by £250 this September. The changes bring the university sector ...

By Mariam Kamish (RCT Socialist Party) Like most councils in Britain, RCT Council faces a funding gap, after years of austerity under Tory and Labour governments. And councillors are proposing devastating cuts. The Labour council is trying to divide us. The consultation process asks you to explain how a cut or closure would affect you – and where you think ...

By Dave Reid Labour-run Caerphilly council has doubled down on its £45 million cuts agenda by announcing 600 job losses at the authority. This follows threats to close meals on wheels, Blackwood Miners’ Institute and Llancaiach Fawr house (as reported in The Socialist Issues 1287-1292). At its latest meeting the Labour administration gave in to pressure not to close the ...

By Dave Reid The more things change, the more they stay the same. Eluned Morgan has taken over as leader of Welsh Labour, the third First Minister of Wales in five months. She was nominated unopposed and will be crowned First Minister on August 6th. But the more the personnel at the top of Welsh government changes the more things ...

By Dave Reid Vaughan Gething has resigned as first minister for Wales after an ongoing scandal that pre-dated his election as Welsh Labour leader in March. Gething had accepted a £200,000 donation to his leadership campaign from an environmental company that had been fined for multiple breaches of polluting offences and in which workers had been injured and killed on ...

By Gareth Bromhall (Secretary Swansea Trades Council and socialist parliamentary candidate for Swansea West) Welsh Labour leader Vaughan Gething, who took up the position just three months ago, lost a vote of no confidence after two Labour Members of the Senedd (the Welsh Parliament), both critics of his leadership, were absent. At the centre of the controversy is a £200,000 ...

By Alec Thraves, delegate from Swansea Trades Council With a rebranding its name, on the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Wales TradesUnion Congress (TUC), the 2024 biennial congress of ‘TUC Cymru’ in Llandudno was arefreshing and largely combative event, which took up the key issues facing the trade unionmovement in Wales.A big factor in this changed mood, compared ...