Dafydd Rhys and ONE OF the positive consequences of the election of a Laour government has been the decision to call reterenda on a Scottish Parliament and a The proposed Welsh Assembly will be a 60 seat body, with limited powers. It will be elected bv an additional member system, 40 seats being elected by first-past-the-post based on the Westminster boundaries and 20 seats allocated from Party lists, based on the vote gainea across the 5 Euro constituencies.
Democracy is central to the arguments being put in favour of a Welsh Assembly. During their 18 years in office the Tories constructed a highly undemocratic quango-state in Wales 1400 appointees sit on Welsh quangos. in contrast 1273 councillors elected to Welsh local councils. The Weish Office currently has a budget of £7 billion, £2.3 billion of which is spent directiv by the quangos.
Under the Tories, the post of Secretarv of State for Wales was increasingly used as a testing ground tor vole one a sch as oka Redwood and William Hague. Far from being representatives of Wales in London, they were very much the representatives of London in Wales.
Labour's current proposals for Wales, though limited. would at least give control over most Welsh Office functions to an elected body. Socialists should support any measures which extend the control of ordinary people over their politicians and the state.
Perhans more imnortantlv. the Assembly has the potential to become a focus for ne cemo eno struggles of Welsh workers. With around 50 per cent of the Welsh vote in the last two general elec. tions, Labour will more than likely have a majority in the Assembly.
The dominant political force in the Assembly will therefore be elected by and claim to speak in the name of the Welsh working class, sc we must demand that it speaks and acts to defend our interests.
Many in the Labour Party support the Assembly proposals for verv different reasons to these. The traditional core leadership of the Wales Labour Party, based on loca government and the trade union bureaucracy, has grudgingly conceded that an elected body should be set up.
This is due to a steady growth of support for an Assembly at all levels of the labour movement in Wales Help to distribute the Cardiff DeclaraThey hope to turn it into little more than a glorified county council, stuffed with the kind of ves-men who populate Labour councils in most valleys.
The Blairite project is more sophisticated. They acknowledge the DWEUD the South-East.
So the Assembly proposals are part of a move towards the creation of regional assemblies across Britain in a strategy that seeks to spread the blame for the difficult times that lie ahead.
Neither of these scenarios should cause the leit to reject a Welsh Assembly. On the contrary, our task is to subvert both these projects. in an eifort to create a genuinely Socialism is inconceivable without widespread national and local autonomy and yet Llew Smith seems to prefer the existing British state, which is both centralist and anti-democratic, to the limited democratic gain which a Welsh Assembly would represent.
There are a number of differmajority opinion within the Welsh labour movement is clearly in support of the Assembly.
campaign was led by a group of prominent Welsh Labour MPs. It also received serious funding from a number of trade unions in Wales and significant opposition to devolution existed in