For many people the South Wales Valleys are synonymous with coal mines. The idea owes more to tradition than current economic reality.
In 1920 some 270,000 people were employed in the deep mining of coal in South Wales. Today the industry employs less than 1,000.
Traditional Welsh industry has been increasingly replaced by low wage, low skill jobs and a growing reliance on the service sector. The social and economic fabric of the Valleys is on the point of collapse.
Conference
This reality formed the backdrop to the conference, 'A Post Mining Culture - A New Agenda For The Valleys', held in Neath on September 12.
The conference (organised by Neath Labour MP Peter Hain) was attended by over 200 people, most of them labour movement activists. coincided with the publication of the Neath Declaration, which calls for a 'social and economic plan for the Valleys ... rather than simply accepting gratefully any job offered Central to the Neath Declaration's demands is the call for a democratic assembly for Wales, a view supported by speaker after speaker at the conference.
The demand for an assembly is not a diversion from bread and butter issues,' said one. 'It signals our determination to address them.' The Maastricht treaty was also discussed. The Declaration argues against Maastricht's insistence on monetarist convergence, which would lead to a Europe run by bankers, with mass unemployment permanently entrenched in areas like Wales.
Some speakers at the conference took a different view. In particular, Wayne David, MEP for South Wales, described Maastricht as an 'internationalist response to the dangers of 'rampant nationalism' in Europe.
Although recent events place a question mark over the precise future of Maastricht, issues such as the drive towards Europe-wide price stability and the construction of Fortress Europe are very much alive. The conference indicated that a big debate on these questions is opening up in the Welsh labour movement.
The current economic and social transformation of the Valleys could, in the words of the Declaration, lead to a weakening of the ties of labourism, if not a complete break, is the absence of socialist renewal!
The Declaration is a response by the most forward thinking section of the Welsh labour bureaucracy to this possibility. In essence, it represents an attempt at a renewal of labourism of Wales.
The Declaration's very ties to labourism, however, mean that ultimately it falls short of what is needed in practical terms by the Welsh working class.
It calls for the regeneration of the Welsh economy through better training, state intervention and EC regional aid. While this approach is radi cal compared to government policy, it amounts to little more than the postwar state-led restructuring of the Welsh economy which signally failed to reverse the long term decline of the Valleys.
But the Declaration's demand for a Welsh assemblv and its call to 'sweep away the old paternalism' of the Welsh labour movement means that the conference was the best opportunity in years for socialists to discuss the key issues facing Welsh workers.
Hain made it clear that the conference marked the beginning of a process. Its is a process that all socialists in Wales should both welcome and participate in. loss of its power and privileges.
The mass movement continent-wide is now at a much lower ebb than in the early 1970s. The Cuban-inspired guerrilla groups have collapsed and the workers' movement has suffered some spectacular defeats.
Out of step
But Brazil is out of step with many of these trends. Struggle during the twenty-year military dictatorship was at a low level. Meanwhile the partial industrialisation of the country immensely strengthened the social weight of the working class.
The rebirth of Brazil's workers' movement, especially the development of the PT and the CUT, has produced a radical generation of workers who have not experienced massive defeats.
Impeachment
The campaign for the impeachment of corrupt yuppie Collor has renewed mass radicalism among youth and students.
A radical left government in Brazil would be a tremendous blow to imperialism. It would knock back the myths of the complete defeat of working class struggle; it would have an enormous impact world-wide.
No. 29 For this reason the Brazilian bourgeoisie can expect massive aid from the US to keep Lula and the PT out of power.
But the military - already primed up with generous pay increases from the bankrupt regime - is waiting in the wings if media manipulation and electoral fraud should fail.
As the experience of Allende proved in the 1970s the question of government in Latin America cannot be abstracted from the question of power - and to secure power, a parliamentary majority is not enough. The mass action of the working class is essential - together with a leadership prepared to carry through the fight for a workers' The PT is a mass radical socialist party - way to the left of European social democracy. It has a powerful revolutionary component.
But for all that it has a growing social democratic wing, based on the parliamentary fraction ana come of its numer. ous city and town councillors.
Much will depend on the outcome of the political struggle over the future course of this party.
10 Oct. 1992
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