| RETURN
TO INDEX
|
Ed George Murky Brown Water: Exploding the Myths Surrounding the Welsh Assembly Elections [May 2003] All elections generate their own mythology, and those for the Welsh Assembly of 1 May have proved to be no exception. There are at present circulating a number of interpretations of what happened that day, apparently held to be incontrovertibly true within the greater part of Welsh Labour, and, by a curious process of inverse logic, by many within Plaid Cymru too. But each of them is false.
* * *
Myth Number One: This was a night of triumph for Labour. Or, as Peter Hain put it, 'We won three-quarters of the constituency seats which by normal general election standards would be a landslide. This is the best result for Labour in the elections anywhere in Britain.'
(Independent, 3 May)
Labour did indeed win enough seats to give it the promise of a working majority in the new Assembly - although Hain's evident disdain for the brave new world of proportionality is clear - but, as
Table 1 shows, there is little other comfort Labour can draw from the election.
Looking at total votes cast in all Welsh elections since 1997 - the last British state general election to be held before the establishment of the Assembly - it can be seen that this was Labour's worst performance in this period, excepting the European elections of 1999. Of course, that the Labour turnout stood a fraction of its performance in British general elections was to be expected: no, the really telling fact - one curiously scarcely picked up on by the mainstream media - is that across Wales Labour's performance on 1 May was actually worse, 11.5 per cent worse, than its showing in the 1999 Assembly elections; elections, remember, generally held as an unmitigated disaster for the Welsh party. In fact, as
Table 2 shows, Labour only managed to increase its vote - measured in total votes cast - in nine constituencies: The Rhondda, Islwyn, Torfaen, Cynon Valley, Pontypridd, The Vale of Glamorgan, Gower, Bridgend and Merthyr; and, excepting the first three constituencies in this list (where Labour pulled out all the stops in an attempt to get its vote out in order to prevent a repeat of the embarrassments of 1999), only marginally. In every other constituency, Labour's vote was down on 1999.
Myth Number Two: The elections were a disaster for Plaid. On the face of it, Plaid's return does indeed look poor: the promise of 1999 appears to have been unfulfilled. 'A terrible night for nationalists,' as the ubiquitous Peter Hain put it (referring, of course, to Welsh nationalists, not the Great British nationalists of increasingly jingoistic New Labour).
But again surface appearances are deceptive. Table 1
shows that Plaid's 2003 performance is indeed well down on its 1999 showing, but that it compares favourably with Plaid's long term performance: excepting the exceptional results of the 1999 elections, Plaid's 180,000 votes in the 2003 constituency ballot rank as its second highest poll in history, marginally topped only by the 2001 general election (where the ripple of 1999 still made itself felt). There is a long term trend at work here, and 2003 has only confirmed it.
But it does merit asking why Plaid did poll lower in 2003 than in 1999. Now, although organisational factors undoubtedly played a role, something rather belatedly acknowledged by Ieuan Wyn Jones himself
(Western Mail, 6 May), fundamentally the explanation has to be a political one. Marginal reasons will surely include a disillusionment in the operation of the Assembly, felt most strongly among those who had most hopes of the body in the first place. In addition, a relatively (and I emphasise the word 'relatively') resurgent Conservative Party must have partially awakened barely dormant fears of a future possible Tory government in Westminster - a factor that perennially increases Labour's vote at the expense of parties who will never have the possibility of governing in London.
But most decisive has to be the role played by Welsh Labour's conscious distancing of itself from Blairism. As Adam Price acknowledged: 'Rhodri Morgan's [11 September] speech, ditching New Labour and declaring henceforth that there would be "clear red water" between Cardiff Bay and Downing Street, is massively significant. Not just for Welsh politics, but for all of us who believe in restoring democratic socialism as the animating principle of the Left.'
(Western Mail, 5 May)
But it is not the case, as Jon Osmond has argued, that 'Plaid Cymru's underlying failure in the election was that as a nationalist party it did not manage to capture any clear or distinctive national themes. Instead, it chose to concentrate on bread-and-butter health and education issues and service delivery, in a way that failed to distinguish itself from the Labour Party.'
(Western Mail, 5 May) Rather, the relationship is the reverse: with 'clear red water' (CRW) Welsh Labour moved closer to Plaid, and, in the short term, Plaid has suffered (although, as we have seen, the suffering is only relative) as a result.
But this is not to say, as Osmond seems to imply, that Plaid should now retreat to its traditional base in rural Wales. As we shall see below, this would be to refuse to pick up the gauntlet that history has thrown down. For CRW is but a temporary measure: an electoral finger in the breech. If Plaid wants really to present itself as the Party of Wales, it needs to ask this question: what does CRW mean for the people of Wales if, one, Westminster is so hostile to it, and, two, the very Welsh Assembly itself still lacks the powers to implement it in any meaningful way? That would be the concrete way in which Plaid would be able address the 'clear and distinctive national themes' that Osmond wants them to address without effecting a forced retreat to their historical rural redoubt.
Myth Number Three: Labour voters 'came home'. As Rhodri Morgan himself rather arrogantly put it: 'I do not really think we have to worry about the other parties. Our lead over them is so large because Wales has come back to Labour.'
(Western Mail, May 3) But this is precisely, as both Table 1 and
Table 2 show, what did not happen.
It is worth reminding ourselves of what happened in 1999. Then, traditional Labour voters, especially in the Labour heartlands of the south Wales coalfield, did two things. First, massively, they abstained. Second, in smaller numbers, they voted
Plaid.
Very concretely, we are now in a position to offer an explanation of 1 May: the Labour voters who abstained in 1999 abstained (with the limited exceptions noted above) - frequently in greater numbers - in 2003 as well; the Labour voters who voted Plaid in 1999 did not vote Plaid in 2003. (Why this second feature occurred has already been addressed above.)
Myth Number Four: Plaid's bubble has burst. Or, to put it another way, as spinmeister Hain gloated: 'Plaid Cymru's fantasy of an independent Wales has been buried for ever.'
(Guardian, 3 May) Now, aside from the real status of the project of an independent Wales in Plaid's strategy, and without going into the fantastic (in both senses of the word) nature of the notion, I am sure that the thinkers behind Welsh Labour would want this to be true, but, away from such wishful thinking and the triumphalist insobriety intended for public consumption, it is clear that they are clever enough to know that it is not.
Table 3 is probably the most interesting of all: here we can see the relative shift of Plaid's vote (again, looking at total votes cast) from the 1997 general election (the last to be held before the establishment of the Assembly) to 1 May. And a very curious picture emerges. Plaid's total vote in Wales increased slightly over this period, by some 11.2 per cent. But this rise has by no means been even. Plaid has in fact lost heavily in those areas commonly denominated as its traditional heartlands, Welsh-speaking, rural Wales (in part this would account for the rise in the Tory vote in these areas: frankly, this is Plaid's gain); but has increased spectacularly were it has historically been weak - precisely in urban, Welsh-speaking as well as English-speaking, Wales.
And this, long term, is what is happening: as New Labour moves to the right, many in traditional areas are prepared to see Plaid as a better means of defending what they see as traditional 'Old Labour' values. This is what fundamentally happened in 1999: but what happened in 1999 in the south Wales Valleys was so extreme that the longer term process was lost sight of. There is a structural shift taking place in the consciousness of the Welsh working class, of which 1999 was but one reflection. Yet this is a long term process, which is underway but nowhere near completed (and which does not even have an inevitable conclusion). Fundamentally, this shift reflects the fact that a section of the Welsh people, at this stage a relatively small section, have been forced to look politically elsewhere: it is not that the Welsh working class is turning nationalist - Plaid gains in these areas where it does not specifically run a 'nationalist' campaign - nor is it the case that the Welsh working class is becoming less social-democratic: it is that it has increasingly to look for its social democracy elsewhere, since it seems that it is increasingly unable to find it in Welsh Labour.
This is the dynamic that Jon Osmond is addressing in his Western Mail article of 5 May.
But the danger of a repeat of Labour's poor showing in 1999 - or even worse - seems to have strengthened Rhodri's nerve and pushed him into revealing himself in all his glory as
'a socialist of the Welsh stripe'. In order to carry this through convincingly, however, he has to be able to show that he has something new to offer for the second term, rather than simply recapitulating the story so far. [...] Part of the problem is that many of the levers of economic policy are beyond the reach of the devolved administration - yet Rhodri now dismisses the debate over further powers as the preserve of
'the narrow circles of political anorakism'.
This maps the contours of the next period of Welsh politics. Plaid (and every socialist in Wales) has to decide whether it wants to be a part of this history, or be swept away by it. The choice is as clear as that.
Statistical Appendix
Table 1: All-Wales Elections 1997-2003: Total Votes3 for Labour and Plaid Compared
1997 G 1999 A-C 1999 A-L 1999 E 2001 G 2003 A-C 2003 A-L
Key: G = British-state General Election; A-C = Assembly Election Constituency Vote;
A-L = Assembly Election Party List Top-up Vote; E = European Election Sources: 1997: Beti Jones,
Etholiadau'r Ganrif - Welsh Elections (Talybont, 1999); 1999 Assembly Election:
Barn (May 1999); 1999 European Election: Welsh Agenda (Summer 1999); 2001:
The BBC results page (here); 2003: calculated from raw data from
the Guardian's results page (here).
Table 2: 1999 and 2003 Compared: Change in Total Votes Cast for Labour by Constituency (Constituencies Ordered by Size of Change)
% change 1999-2003
Aberavon Key: 'Coalfield' and 'semi-coalfield' constituencies
shaded ('coalfield' consituencies in bold).
Methodology: The percentage change in the party vote is established by:
(100[V Sources: 1999:
the BBC results page (here); 2003: calculated from raw data
from the Guardian (here).
Table 3: Percentage Change in the Plaid Vote 1997-2003 by Constituency
Constituency % Change 1997-2003
Key: 'Coalfield' and 'semi-coalfield' constituencies shaded
('coalfield' consituencies in bold).5
Methodology: The percentage change in the party vote is established by:
(100[V2-V1)]/V1, where
V1 = number of votes cast in
1997 and V Sources: 1997:
(here); 2003: calculated from raw data
from the Guardian (here).
Addenda
1. The Global Picture Table
4: Votes and Seats by All Parties in Both Ballots
% Votes
Cast %
Elect-
orate
% Votes
Cast %
Elect-
orate Source: the
BBC results page (here).
(With the exception of the Labour total in the constituency vote: the BBC gives Labour 7 641 votes in Newport East, a figure 20 votes higher than that given by both
the Western Mail (here)
and the Guardian (here).
One can only assume that the BBC figure is wrong. The Labour total has therefore been calculated from the raw data supplied from the latter of the last two sources.)
The figure for votes as the percentage of the electorate has been calculated using the total party figures from
the BBC (here)
- appropriately amended with respect to the Labour constituency vote) and a total electorate calculated using the raw data from
the Guardian (here).
2. Parties to the Left of Plaid and Labour
Table 5: Parties to the Left of Plaid and Labour: Constituency Vote by Constituency
Welsh
Socialist Alliance
Votes
% Votes
Cast
Cardiff Central 541
2.6
Neath 410
1.9
Newport West 198
0.9
Swansea East 133
0.8
Swansea West 272
1.4
Socialist
Party
Votes
% Votes
Cast
Aberavon
606
3.2
Cardiff South
585
2.9
Socialist
Labour Party
Votes
% Votes
Cast
Marek
Votes
% Votes
Cast
Clwyd South
Table 6: Parties to the Left of Plaid and Labour: List Vote
% Votes Cast South Wales Central South
Wales East South
Wales West
Mid & West Wales
North
Wales Source: The Guardian results page (here).
Further
Comments
Really, the figures relating to the parties to the left of Plaid and Labour speak for themselves: in effect, these parties failed even to register on the political map. Once again, Wales has proved itself to be not Scotland. What we are dealing with here is what is known as the 'BT vote': family and friends. Where there is a electoral wellspring critical of Labour it expresses itself either through abstention, or by turning to Plaid. This is the long-term dynamic analysed above, even if this time it has been relatively mitigated by the phenomenon of 'clear red water'.
There are two exceptions to this trend evident here. The first is the Marek phenomenon. Now, despite the attention paid to Marek by sections of the left, this in no way represents a kind of Welsh mini-SSP. What lies behind the Marek vote is popular discontent at the shabby way that a respected and honest sitting representative has been treated by his party. Marek is essentially a maverick, not afraid to speak his mind and principled enough not to put currying favour over saying what he thinks. This was at the root of his downfall within the Labour Party, and it is this that the voters of Wrexham have responded to. That it is not a generalised phenomenon is indicated by the huge difference between, on the one hand, the constituency votes in Wrexham and Clwyd South, and, on the other, by the difference between the percentage of votes cast of these constituency votes and the Marek party list vote. This is a purely local issue, which, barring unforeseen circumstances, will quickly fade. That Marek now appears to be in contact with the SSP means very little: he really has no-one else to talk to these days. That he does not appear to be in contact with the Welsh Socialist Alliance speaks volumes. In this respect it is unfortunate that the forces around Seren, especially Marc Jones of Cymru Goch (who stood in Clwyd South under the Marek ticket), invest such expectation in the phenomenon. They have clearly hitched their horse to the wrong cart, and it is a pity that they are unable to turn their not inconsiderable resources around a more useful project.
The other discordant note is sounded by the Greens (even if to include them under the rubric of 'to the left of Labour and Plaid' stretches the category a little). For a fringe party they registered relatively well in the party list ballot, especially in North and Mid Wales.
Nevertheless, excepting these two developments, it is clear that there is still no real political space in Wales to the left of Labour and Plaid. Here it is necessary to address the long term process underway - in part analysed above and further illustrated here - that underlies all these developments. Since the 1970s, the unitary political system in the British state has been progressively breaking down, especially in relation to working class politics. The consequence today is that in England, especially in metropolitan England, there is no significant political space existing outside of and to the left of the organisational and political confines of Labourism. The consistently truly miserable performances of both the SLP and the Socialist Alliance illustrate this. There is no pleasure to be taken in pointing this out: it would be far better were it not true. But it is a fact, and no amount of wishful thinking can make it otherwise.
Scotland is clearly different. The concrete features of the development of Scottish nationalism, which in recent times gave rise to qualitatively more developed radicalisation in Scottish working class politics, most recently in the shape of the anti-poll tax movement in the 1990s (greatly more inclusive and politically developed than in England and Wales), have resulted in the appearance of a genuine large-scale radical current that is beginning to break from the dominant current of British working class politics, Labourism: a current that today manifests itself in support for the SSP.
But Wales is clearly different again, a difference that arises in turn from the specificities of Welsh nationalism. In Wales what we can discern is a long-term small but significant shift in political allegiance from Labour to Plaid, a shift that the results of 1 May only confirm, once one looks behind the surface.
That the British state left needs to grasp the consequences of all this should really brook no argument. That the English Socialist Alliance cannot become another SSP because England is not Scotland is a point rammed home with every election. That neither the Welsh Socialist Alliance nor John Marek can become another SSP because Wales is not Scotland either has also been made absolutely clear. The real conclusion of the preceding analysis therefore is that a British political outlook which does not recognise that England is not Scotland and Wales is not England is going to put itself in a position of being signally ill-prepared to address the real political developments taking place within the British state working class movement. What works in one part of the British state is becoming increasingly unsuited for the others. We forget this at our peril.
Bibliographical
Note
By far the most satisfying and incisive political analysis currently coming out of Wales at present is that coming from the pen (or
rather keyboard) of Daniel Morrissey in the British journal Workers' Action. Although this journal is not available online, Morrissey's
last two articles are archived on this site: 'Welsh Politics after Four Years of the
Assembly' and 'Where
Next for Welsh Politics'.
The pamphlet by Ceri Evans and Ed George Swings and Roundabouts: What Really Happened on May 6 (Cardiff, 1999), can
be read here.
Notes 1
This is an issue that is explored in detail in Ceri Evans and Ed George, Swings and Roundabouts: What Really Happened on May 6 (Cardiff, 1999). See the bibliographical note
above. 2
Osmond's article can be read online here.
3 The reasoning behind the concentration of the base statistic of total votes cast (and votes cast as a percentage of the electorate, rather than as a percentage of votes cast) to be found here is developed in
Swings and Roundabouts.
4 For ease of formatting the names of the constituencies have been abbreviated. Their full names are, in alphabetical order: Aberavon, Alyn and Deeside, Blaenau Gwent, Brecon and Radnorshire, Bridgend, Caernarfon, Caerphilly, Cardiff Central, Cardiff North, Cardiff South and Penarth, Cardiff West, Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, Carmarthen West and Pembrokeshire South, Ceredigion, Clwyd South, Clwyd West, Conwy, Cynon Valley, Delyn, Gower, Islwyn, Llanelli, Meirionnydd Nant Conwy, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, Monmouth, Montgomeryshire, Neath, Newport East, Newport West, Ogmore, Pontypridd, Preseli Pembrokeshire, Rhondda, Swansea East, Swansea West, Torfaen, Vale Of Clwyd, Vale Of Glamorgan, Wrexham, Ynys Môn. To see where these places are, the BBC's results page has a geographically useful if politically uninformative interactive
map.
5 By 'semi-coalfield' constituency, what is referred to is either a constituency immediately adjacent to the south Wales coalfield itself which incorporates a part of the coalfield within its territory (e.g. Gower), or a constituency immediately adjacent to the coalfield which is notably similar in socio-economic profile (e.g. Swansea East). |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Return to index |
