Socialist Party Wales Socialism In Wales
By Dave Reid and Alec Thraves
Welsh Labour has won the Welsh parliament election with an increased vote and seats. Mark Drakeford’s government benefited from the “incumbency factor” and actually increased its number of seats in the Senedd to 30, half of the 60 seats. This was despite polls at the beginning of the Covid crisis indicating that it would lose a quarter of its seats.
Undoubtedly the Welsh government has benefited from appearing relatively competent in the Covid crisis compared to Boris Johnson’s UK government. But Drakeford also shared with Johnson and Sturgeon in Scotland a feel-good mood as the nations emerge from lockdown while at the same time many workers are still temporarily protected from unemployment by furlough and tenants protected from evictions by an eviction ban.
Both schemes are due to end soon and unemployment is likely to sky-rocket dispelling any feel-good mood. But elections are a snap-shot of moods and opinions at any one time and the Welsh government has benefited from the temporary relief at the end of lockdown.
In reality the Drakeford government was only marginally less incompetent in the Covid crisis than the Johnson government. It had imposed even more austerity cuts on the Welsh NHS than the UK as a whole and was ill prepared for the pandemic with shortages in staff, intensive care beds, PPE and other vital resources. The fire-break was lifted too soon, schools were re-opened too quickly and employers allowed to get away with exposing their workers to Covid danger. Care homes were left just as vulnerable to Covid as in the rest of the UK. Test and trace was and is unreliable because the Welsh government used the UK government’s disastrous privatised Lighthouse scheme.
Anger and alienation will rise
Despite the lack of change in the Senedd the election result does not reflect widespread satisfaction with the status quo. On the contrary the relief of at least temporarily emerging from Covid lockdown merely tempers the alienation of working people with the establishment parties. Less than 50% voted in the election. On many housing estates there were absolutely no placards supporting any parties in the election, which in the past would have been a sea of Labour red and yellow.
As the effects of the end of furlough and other support become apparent then the pent-up frustration of a decade of austerity and declining wages will come to the fore and undermine any support for the Drakeford government.
The Johnson government will present working people in Wales and the rest of the UK with the bill for the Covid crisis. And yet again Welsh Labour will do nothing to protect Welsh workers from its worst effects – dutifully cutting the coat of Welsh public services to fit the UK Tory spending cloth and implementing the cuts and attacks on their behalf. It will be left to working people in Wales to fight austerity and other attacks through their organisations like trade unions and community campaigns against both the Welsh and UK governments.
Welsh public services and infrastructure is already underfunded compared to the rest of the UK. But Welsh Labour has done nothing to put the Tories on the spot, let alone to fight for resources and modernisation. Welsh Labour will justifiably get the blame for the cuts and economic decline. A new political force must be built by the working class to ensure that the Tories and the right do not benefit from growing disillusionment with Labour.
As if to underline the decaying transport infrastructure on the very day of the election count all train services from London to South Wales were cancelled indefinitely due to cracks in the diesel trains that serve Wales. The line has still not been electrified and the Tory UK government has cancelled electrification from Swansea to Cardiff.
Both Labour and Tories gained vote share. The Tory gains were mainly from UKIP but Labour also won UKIP votes as well as from Plaid and the Lib Dems.
Plaid and independence
Plaid’s vote share did not rise and the party lost seats despite the rise in support for independence to over 20%. Some polls have shown that 40% of Labour voters support independence. However Plaid has not gained from this renewed support because for now other issues are seen as more important. Significantly despite Abolish The Assembly getting broadcasting coverage way above its support, including a place in the main leaders’ debate, its share of the vote did not rise from 2016.
The intensity of support for independence could change as working people look for a way out of the crises that will develop in British society. And as events in Scotland develop towards a showdown over an independence referendum the dissatisfaction with the status quo might look for a way to break free from the UK straight-jacket.
Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition
The Socialist Party participated in the election as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition standing as the lead candidates in four out of the five party regional lists.
The election campaign began under lockdown in conditions which made it very difficult for emerging electoral forces like TUSC to gain any visibility in the election. The broadcasters imposed a news boycott on TUSC refusing to even mention that TUSC was standing in the election, let alone covering events like the launch of the campaign or the manifesto, despite TUSC standing in all five regions. TUSC Wales is considering a complaint to Ofcom at the lack of any coverage at all.
That left TUSC with little option, apart from a social media campaign, but to rely on door knock and leafleting, both of which were banned at the beginning of the election. Nevertheless Socialist Party members and other TUSC activists responded magnificently had delivering over 30,000 leaflets plus thousands more in the Castle ward by election in Swansea.
TUSC was also prominent in workers’ actions like the sparks protests and BT strikes and mass movements like the Black Lives Matter protests in Cardiff.
However it meant that the vast majority of the electorate would not have realised that TUSC was even standing in the election until they received their ballot paper at the polling station or in the post. And standing on the regional party lists meant that TUSC was buried towards the bottom of 14 parties on those ballot papers.
TUSC was launched over a decade ago and had started to build up a certain electoral support as a fighting, socialist voice in local, Welsh and UK elections.
When Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party, pushing through a popular radical manifesto, TUSC withdrew from standing in elections in order to provide the maximum support and solidarity for the Corbynista movement.
But after the defeat of Corbyn in the Labour Party following the conscious sabotage of the Blairites TUSC Wales has been re-launched to challenge Starmer’s counter revolution.
After such a long gap in not contesting elections it was inevitable that TUSC Wales would be hindered by a lack of voter recognition amongst a wide layer of the population who had either forgotten or most likely never heard of TUSC, particularly the new 16 and 17 year old voters.
Nevertheless TUSC Wales’s campaign has created a solid base to campaign in the 2022 council elections against Labour and Plaid councils that are carrying out cuts to public services. TUSC activity took place in entirely new areas all across Wales and had a presence in every region. It will be well placed to develop as an electoral force in the new battles ahead.
