Socialist Party Wales Socialism In Wales
By Dave Reid, Socialist Party Wales secretary
Eluned Morgan, Labour First Minister of Wales, took the first steps to distance Welsh Labour from the historically unpopular Starmer-led Westminster government, declaring that she would “call out” UK Labour if they undermined Wales. She called for Starmer to halt part of the UK government’s plans to cut disability benefits, rethink cuts to the winter fuel allowance, and demanded Wales benefit more from wind power via the Crown Estate.
The reason for this sudden distancing from UK Labour could be seen in an ITV poll published the day after Morgan’s speech. Senedd (the Welsh parliament) elections are due in twelve months and, as 18th Century writer Samuel Johnson observed, “when a person knows they are to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates their mind wonderfully.” The poll put Labour in third place on just 18% and Reform on 25% but top of the poll was Plaid Cymru on 30%.
The polls confirm the UK-wide fracturing of support for the main parties – the Tories in Wales were fourth with 13% of the vote. But in Wales, as well as Reform, Plaid Cymru provides an outlet for the mounting anger with the status quo.
Clear red water?
Morgan’s declaration to pursue a “red Welsh way” echoes the declaration of Rhodri Morgan, one of her predecessors, who promised in 2002 “clear, red water” between Welsh Labour and Tony Blair’s government. In reality the differences were small and came during a period of increased public spending. Now, after 15 years of austerity, the effects of the “clear red water” are invisible. In every important social measure Welsh public services are at the bottom of the UK league table: worst health and education outcomes, highest poverty levels, highest prison incarceration rates.
In a nation hit hard by deindustrialisation, the effects of Tory austerity were bound to hit hardest, but Welsh Labour did nothing to fight austerity, effectively administering spending cuts in Wales on behalf of the Tories. And now Starmer’s Labour is piling on even more misery.
Morgan points out correctly that Wales will be hit hardest by Labour’s benefit cuts – disability cuts for example are likely to hit “six times more proportionally in some areas of Wales, compared to England”, for example. She described the budgeting of HS2 as an England and Wales project “as a massive injustice”.
Reform UK
Reform has won some council by-elections in seats that have never been lost by Labour before. Its increased vote does not reflect a simple swing to the right in Wales. More, it shows the absolute anger, bordering on hatred, that is felt for all the establishment parties (including Welsh Labour) that have inflicted this misery on working people. The Financial Times comment that Britain “does not have a populist problem. It has an unpopularist problem” applies to Wales too. And when there appears to be a viable left alternative in the form of Plaid Cymru most of the dissatisfaction spills to Plaid.
Plaid Cymru
Plaid-run councils like Carmarthen and Gwynedd have carried out cuts in exactly the same way as Welsh Labour councils. In 2007 it very comfortably joined a coalition government with Labour and probably will after the next Senedd election. It supports independence as a long-term aim, but, despite the growing support for independence, Plaid’s leader Rhun ap Iorwerth has promised that a Plaid government would not even call an independence referendum in its first term.
But in opposition in the Senedd it has been able to criticise Labour attacks on public services and benefits. Its support is more to do with its posing as an alternative to Labour from the left. Growing interest in Welsh independence and its appearance of being ‘left’ has given it its highest poll figures ever.
Port Talbot steel
It has not been lost on Welsh workers that Labour responded to the threat to the British Steel plant in Scunthorpe by calling an emergency weekend session of parliament to rush through the effective nationalisation of the plant, but allowed thousands of jobs to be lost at the Tata plant in Port Talbot. However Plaid Cymru, like Welsh Labour, did not campaign for nationalisation. Socialist Party Wales consistently campaigned for the nationalisation of Tata at Port Talbot and Llanwern. Our members fought for the trade unions to adopt this demand and called on the Welsh government to act to save jobs. The demand was dismissed by Welsh Labour, Plaid and trade union leaders as “unrealistic”.
The truth is none of the establishment parties, including Reform, that work within the confines of decrepit British capitalism can turn around the managed decline of Welsh society and improve the lives of our communities.
The working class needs its own party in the Senedd elections, that can fight for its interests and implement socialist policies. The potential for that party can be seen in the huge support that councillor Anthony Wedlake has received from his constituents in Wrexham after he resigned from Labour and joined the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. Socialist Party members are fighting in the trade unions to stop coat-tailing discredited Welsh Labour and return to their traditions by coming together to discuss the next steps to form a party that represents the working class.
