A Welsh eye
Election: Why it's different in Wales
In Wales, the voting pattern in the British general election seems certain to reflect – but not to answer – the desperate need for a new, Welsh national agenda in social, political and economic policy.
Two years ago, the Welsh people elected their first National Assembly. The low turnout at that election suggested widespread disillusionment about the political process and a lack of conviction that devolution would provide any answers to Wales’ problems.
Among the more politically engaged, there was a massive loss of support by Labour within the party’s core working-class constituency. Hundreds of thousands of supposedly reliable voters failed to support ‘their’ party at the ballot-box, and tens of thousands switched to Plaid Cymru, which presented a more traditional social-democratic platform, in contrast to the neo-liberal policies of New Labour.
Two years of a devolved administration that has failed to exercise any real autonomy from Westminster is unlikely to have won back the deserters. Many disaffected working class voters will still be prepared to vote Labour, in a British general election, in order to keep out the Tories, but nevertheless 1999’s two trends of increasing abstention and a swing from Labour to Plaid are likely to be repeated.
While Assembly Members (AMs) won’t themselves be held to account until 2003, their failure to develop a new politics in Wales, that might inject some real content into the shell of self-government, has heaped further discredit on all political parties, at all levels of government.
The crisis in the steel industry has underlined the Assembly’s ineffectiveness. From the earliest suggestions that the days of steel-production in Wales might be numbered, Welsh politicians were reduced to pleading with Corus to put the interests of its employees and their communities before those of its shareholders.
There followed a desperate scramble for any financial inducements that might be permissible within the tight constraints of European competition legislation, and which could therefore be offered to the Anglo-Dutch multinational.
As it became increasingly clear that nothing available was sufficiently attractive to keep Corus here, AMs lined up to condemn Corus boss, Brian Moffat, for his lack of social conscience – demonstrating an almost childlike naivete about the motivation of capitalist enterprises.
Radical solutions to prevent the destruction of the Welsh steel industry were conspicuous by their absence. To some extent this is due to the Assembly’s limited powers: there is genuinely very little that it could legally have done. But it is worrying that hardly anyone in the Assembly even suggested any radical action, by any layer of Government.
Only the former Plaid leader, Dafydd Wigley, called in the chamber for nationalisation (although this call was taken up by Ron Davies in a TV interview shortly afterwards, as well as by numerous other prominent Plaid politicians).
In their timidity, AMs were, of course, no more remiss than the Westminster government, whose powers are far greater. Politicians at London and Cardiff alike adhere to the neo-liberal consensus that national governments are powerless in the face of multinational corporations.
But in Wales, this timidity also reflects an unwillingness to push at the boundaries of the devolution settlement – a lack of any determination to do a more serious job, requiring greater powers, and thereby demonstrating the need for those powers.
As with steel, so with a series of other damaging developments in the economy. Wales’ political ‘leaders’ present themselves almost as passive observers. In late February, when more than 5000 job losses had already been announced since the beginning of the year, First Minister Rhodri Morgan suggested that he was powerless to protect employment in Wales: "We do not control macro-economic policy. That is left to the Treasury."
When asked how Labour plans to regenerate the Welsh economy, Rhodri and his ministers typically offer little more than vague generalities: "developing the export potential of Welsh companies … establishing an innovation and entrepreneurship culture … promoting our natural strengths", etc, etc.
With such a lack of vision, it is unsurprising that most people in Wales are hard-pressed to name a single achievement for which the Assembly can claim credit.
For the first eighteen months of devolution, Labour blamed its lack of discernible progress on the trials of minority government. The coalition with the Liberal Democrats, agreed in October, was supposed to have removed this obstacle, however.
In fact, it has pushed the administration to implement a series of worthy, but small-scale reforms: free school milk for children under seven; free prescriptions for the under-25s; free bus travel for pensioners and the disabled; free entry to all museums and art galleries.
Potentially, such measures could help to rehabilitate the idea of a public service, freed from the intervention of the market, but it is telling that there is no such attempt to present these developments as part of an overall strategy of decommodification.
Rather, reflecting the meagre vision of the Liberals in particular, they are offered as ‘one-off’ giveaways.
Rather than call for greater powers to allow it to pursue a bolder strategy, Welsh Labour pins its hopes on early entry into the European single currency. The occasional hint in this respect (never strong enough to suggest impatience with Gordon Brown’s caution) is the only suggestion that anything about the status quo might be less than perfect.
The Welsh Labour administration. invariably react with phoney anger whenever Plaid Cymru makes any statements about the devolution settlement not being final. Indeed, Plaid’s pronouncements on the national question provide Welsh Labour with the only stick with which it feels it can beat the official opposition.
This usefully distracts attention away from the fact that Plaid’s policies are generally far more in tune with the views of Labour supporters than Labour’s own. (For example: on privatisation, Plaid is critical of PFI and supports the renationalisation of the railways.)
So, Labour was quick to pounce when Seimon Glyn, a Gwynedd Plaid councillor, called for the ‘monitoring’ of immigration by affluent, and arrogantly anti-Welsh, English settlers into economically depressed Welsh-speaking communities.
Rhondda Plaid councillor, Mike Brittain, badgered by a BBC interviewer for a controversial quote, said: "the English, every country they’ve been in, to me, they have raped, they have taken the wellbeing out of the country."
Labour politicians immediately lined up to demand the head of this "racist" on a plate, despite the fact that he’d clearly meant the British Empire, not the English people. Tragically, the emphatically non-racist Brittain narrowly escaped suspension by his own party, and even then had to consent to be "re-educated", so rattled was the Plaid leadership.
The incident demonstrates Labour’s insistence that it can determine the limits of the Welsh national project.
And this at a time when national self-consciousness is flowering in Wales – particularly among young people – even if few see the Assembly as the embodiment of their aspirations on the political plane. The British state may increasingly be exposed as an outdated encumbrance, but it still finds loyal support from the unionists of the official labour movement.
Plaid’s policies do not, however, offer a real alternative to Labour’s.
Its leadership is less infatuated by the market and the private sector, and it proposes a more interventionist approach to the Welsh economy, targeting state assistance where it is most needed. But it is even more inclined than Welsh Labour to see the European Union and specifically the single currency – with all the constraints on public spending that this involves – as a panacea.
Neo-liberalism at the European level is seen as the only alternative to neo-liberalism at the British level.
Nevertheless, socialists should welcome a big vote for Plaid, and an increase in its parliamentary representation, on 7 June. Without making any concessions to its right-social democratic leadership, we should be able to recognise that people in Wales – especially working class people – will vote Plaid essentially for two reasons.
Firstly, a vote for Plaid is seen a means to defend the welfare state, and public services generally, from the ravages of neo-liberalism. Secondly, Plaid represents a greater self-confidence on the part of the Welsh people, an impatience with the conservatism of the Labour Party and a determination to develop solutions to national problems at a national level.
With the Welsh Socialist Alliance a weak and feeble creature, and the Greens having found little resonance in Wales, an increase in support for Plaid will be the only clear manifestation of the demand for a more progressive agenda.
At the very least, it will put pressure on Labour from the left and help to shift the centre of gravity of Welsh politics away from Westminster and neo-liberalism.
Moreover, several of the Plaid candidates in winnable seats – notably Adam Price (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) and Leanne Wood (Rhondda) represent a resurgent left-wing in the party: youthful, working-class and often with a trade union background. The strengthening of this new left against the more conservative forces in Plaid would be a positive development in itself.
This election seems very likely to deliver another big shock to New Labour in Wales. It is to be hoped that this will also open up the possibility of greater engagement and discussion between the Labour and Plaid lefts and other socialist and campaigning groups.