RETURN TO MAIN PAGE

The Nature of the Welsh Socialist Republican Movement

[1981; south Wales IMG internal discussion document]

Criticism of the Previous Document

This new document has to correct the previous one on the Welsh Socialist Republican Movement, which we discussed at the last Area Aggregate. It is open to a basic criticism. The mistake of the previous document, and the discussion, was that it did not proceed as we are now - first, an historical analysis of Welsh nationalism and, second, an examination of the WSRM's position in the light of that analysis of Welsh nationalism. As we didn't do that, the nationalist roots of the WSRM lay hidden and the emphasis in our analysis miscued. We tried to analyse the WSRM in terms of a group with Marxist traditions, just because they presented themselves as Marxists or Socialists. We kept to admiring the foliage instead of digging up the roots. Thus we saw them implicitly as left-centrist, people vacillating between reformist and revolutionary positions, with no political understanding of reformism or labour bureaucracy, no definite stand on whether socialism could be achieved through parliament (whether a British or Welsh one), and no concept of what forms of organisation the working class would organise itself through in the struggle against British capitalism (workers' councils, workers' democracy, dual power). Obviously, we recognised nationalist tendencies within that the WSRM's call for a separate Welsh state, confusion over whether the character of such a state should be socialist or capitalist, and putting Wales on the same parallel as Ireland in its oppression by the British state and British capitalism. Rather than seeing these nationalist tendencies as the dominant ones, the all-encompassing ones, we presented them as certain strains within a centrist framework. The present document has to correct this.

Where Has the WSRM Come from and Why?

Plaid Cymru's policies are typically radical bourgeois nationalist - they want a separate Welsh capitalist state with its own capitalist institutions. It promotes a national culture, a national tradition and heritage, and a national future, that cover over class divisions and claim class conflicts can be overcome because of the common class origins in the Welsh nation. The Welsh nation, and a separate Welsh national state, will unite classes in a common cause. As Marxists, we know of course that class conflict runs right through society - culture, education, sport, religion, personal life - leaving nothing untouched. Any talk of one nation, or of classes having a higher commitment to  , is wrong. Furthermore, any such talk or politics directed to that end serve ultimately the purpose of perpetuating capitalism and keeping the working class in subordination to the capitalists. This is so with any nationalism, whether from the oppressor nation or the oppressed nation or from the nation suffering from inequalities. Naturally, how we tackle these different nationalisms will vary - you cannot draw an equals sign between the nationalism of the oppressed and the nationalism of the oppressor - but in doing that we should not be confused about their common class origins or intent.

Historically, national parties always emphasise national culture. Plaid up to the 1960s was no exception. But it ran into a problem - there is no uniform culture or language in Wales because of the specific nature of capitalist development, namely the assimilation of the Welsh bourgeoisie into the British capitalist class and state, and the huge emigration of English workers into south Wales industry. The old Welsh-speaking culture was broken up by capitalist relations, which has intensified in the rural 'backwaters' since the 1940s. So Plaid could not appeal to a Welsh working class on national-cultural demands. It had to appeal by taking up wider economic and social issues and put these into a nationalist framework and advocate a nationalist solution by establishing a separate Welsh state. This is the road Plaid took in the 60s. Since then it has gone further, with influential spokespersons and conference resolutions advocating socialism as the basis of any future Welsh state. Naturally, such moves are designed to win the Welsh workers of south and north east Wales away from the reformism of the Labour Party based on a creaking and decrepit British capitalist state. The recent internal enquiry in Plaid confirms these moves - Plaid has an urgent and pressing need to hitch its radical bourgeois nationalist wagon to the concerns of Welsh workers. Plaid's problem of winning support in the decisive class in Welsh society, the industrial working class, has led to split-offs - the Gwerin in the 1950s, and the WSRM today. The Gwerin attacked the Plaid leadership for ignoring the need to win the Welsh working class to Welsh nationalism, and instead concentrating on the cultural and language aspects of Welsh nationalism which English-speaking Welsh workers considered irrelevant. Rather, Gwerin said, Plaid should take up the social and economic side of industrial decay, unemployment, emigration, low wages, etc.

The Gwerin and WSRM splits had a common underlying bond - how to reconcile socialism with nationalism, and how to attach the Welsh working class to a separate state. But the WSRM split-off was on a much more advanced basis than Gwerin's and was influenced. by the rise of revolutionary struggle in the 1960s and 1970s. The WSRM openly calls itself revolutionary and Marxist; the Gwerin, whilst seeing itself as socialist, kept its politics firmly within the limits set by social democracy, one of its main planks being economic planning for Wales as a separate unit by the capitalist state without in any way questioning the class character of that state. The Gwerin split from a Plaid that ignored and rejected any orientation towards the working class by adapting their nationalist politics to the latter's class concerns. The WSRM split because of the way Plaid was trying to edge in on the working class and not because of their ignoring the working class. Plaid's tactic was one of playing up to influenceable sections of the reformist labour bureaucracy. It was based on the Labour Party's and trade unions' (including the Wales TUC) acceptance of devolution, and the Labour Government's legislation on devolution and a Welsh Assembly. However, the tactic brought disastrous results - a silent Plaid mimed second fiddle to the Wales Labour Party in an unsuccessful Yes campaign in the referendum, that failed dismally to win even a substantial minority of the working class to devolution. The future WSRM split because of this fiasco, drawing the following conclusions - against covering up the pro-separation position and for an independent Welsh republic; against Plaid's lip-service to the socialism of the future Welsh state and for a Welsh socialist republic; against humouring the Labour Party and the TUC and for attacking them as sellers-out of socialism and the Welsh nation.

The WSRM has not broken with its nationalist traditions but has redefined them, and strengthened them, with a firm commitment to an independent Welsh state, to freeing the Welsh nation from the national oppression and domination of the British state, and to achieving a Welsh state on the strength of the Welsh working class which would be won to such a strategy by struggling for socialism within the independent state or as the basis of its foundation. By calling for a separate Welsh state through the overthrew of the British ruling class in Wales, and the transfer of state power to the Welsh working class, the WSRM was moving to a revolutionary nationalist position as against the radical-reformist nationalist one of Plaid.

Consolidation of Revolutionary Nationalism by the WSRM

The recent conference of the WSRM (March 1981) consolidated its revolutionary nationalist position at the programmatic level.

The Welsh socialist republic was put in the aims of the constitution. We have to strip this demand of its seemingly 'socialist' content. It is saying that the national oppression of Wales, including the Welsh working class, is of such intensity - like Ireland's, or any country of the old British Empire - that a separate national state is the only possible solution. In other words, the key struggle for the Welsh working class is not the overthrow of the British capitalist state but its removal from Wales, secession from it so as to found a socialist state in Wales. For all its socialist veneer, its talk of socialist republic, this slogan puts national separation out at the front as the key step to be taken. As revolutionary Marxists, we cannot accept this - Wales was part and parcel of the controlling centre of the British Empire, namely, the British capitalist state; south. Wales was the workshop of the imperialist world with its coal, iron and tinplate. The economy of Wales was an imperialist economy - an economy and wealth that dominated and milked colonial countries, and not a colonial economy exploited by an imperialist English or British capital and state. The Welsh bourgeoisie were happily assimilated into an all-British capitalism and state. And their capital, like any other in the British state, had the run of the vast British Empire and its political and military backing, which opened even larger markets like the USA, Russia and Spain. At the level of capital, there was no national discrimination. At the level of culture and language, there was official discrimination by barring Welsh language from schools and public administration. But above all, the demise of Welsh culture and language was due more to the commercial relations of capitalism - the buying and selling of commodities including labour power - as highlighted in the rapid spread of heavy industry, the break up of rural society, mass immigration. National discrimination as codified in the law and state was minimal when compared to the national oppression of colonial countries (racial segregation, no education, no training, forced Christianisation, forced labour, no free speech or right to vote, no right to form trade unions or to strike, no free movement and confinement to unproductive land).

Whilst recognising the national inequalities and discrimination present in Wales, for long fought against by Welsh nationalism, and whilst upholding the right to self-determination of nations, we should not let this lead us into a miscalculation of its extent and its intensity, and therefore of its weight in the class struggle. The progressive side of Welsh nationalism has been, and is, to spotlight national rights and defend them. But it has only managed to keep that role because the labour movement, for historical reasons, has ignored these grievances. As Marxists, we fight for the labour movement to recognise national inequalities and to combat them, not by a strategy of separation as the WSRM advocate, but by a strategy of class struggle directed against all discrimination and privilege that unites all oppressed layers behind it.

Marxists favour the association and unity of workers of different nations on the basis of full equality and elimination of all national privileges engendered by capitalism - not just at the level of their own organisations and in the struggle against the capitalists, but also in post-revolutionary societies in the economic, social and political fields. For Wales, which has come to form a single economy and society with England and Scotland, albeit under the command of an assimilated British capitalism, that means being opposed to the WSRM's strategy, being opposed to the separation of Wales from England and Scotland and to the false elevation of the issue of national rights and inequalities to a level that diverts the Welsh working class, and splits it away from a united all-British struggle.

How the Demand for a Welsh Socialist Republic Splits the British Workers

Because of the nationalist strategy underlying it, the WSRM's 'Welsh socialist republic' leads to a policy of splitting working class organisations, like the trade unions and Labour Party, on national lines. In its Founding Statement (adopted by the conference 'in general') the WSRM call for 'the fullest autonomy or independence of Welsh working class organisations, for complete self-reliance', and for trade unions to be organised on an all-Wales basis whilst retaining 'closest links with English and Scottish workers'. There is no ambiguity here - 'complete self-reliance' over-rules any previous hesitancy in 'autonomy'. The Welsh workers are to be split away from their present, nationally-oppressive all- British trade unions in the pursuit of a Welsh socialist republic. From this, it can only be concluded that the WSRM think the anti-Welsh chauvinism of the English workers is no different from the national oppression practised by the British ruling class. Thus, national trade unions organised separately under national TUCs are to replace the existing all-British unions, built up over years by the British workers as the best means to combat the British capitalists and their British capitalist state.

Trade unions based on nationality would only serve to obscure the class basis of unions, their necessity to group and organise all workers irrespective of colour, sex, religion or nationality in order to resist the exploitation of the class enemy, the capitalist. In the present situation, what would it mean for the class struggle? An emerging mass anti-Tory struggle based at an all-British level and directed at the government of the British capitalist state, a struggle spearheaded by trade unionists who are also taking up the fight against their own bureaucrats inside the unions and the Labour Party, would be diffused and diverted in Wales into a struggle against the 'nationally oppressive British state' and Tory government. Unity in action of the class would be broken on national lines. Obviously the WSRM are not of sufficient strength to put forward such a strategy as a realistic alternative, but nevertheless we should raise these points - how does the splitting of the trade unions on national lines aid the anti-Tory struggle? How does it strengthen the Welsh, Scottish and English workers against the British capitalists?

And what of the struggles of the English and Scottish workers? The WSRM's conference documents refer little to them, which is curious considering any future Welsh socialist republic would survive or go under depending on the attitude of the English and Scottish workers and the state of their class struggles. It is even more curious as the new separate Welsh unions are supposed to have 'the closest links' with them. Are the English and Scottish workers, especially the former, considered by the WSRM as allies of the Welsh struggle against 'national oppression'? Are the English workers willing or duped partners in this 'national oppression'? Hints dropped by the WSRM as to how they would answer these questions give cause for concern. In the 'Founding Statement', references are clearly made to the English workers' 'quiescence' and 'integration into the British state'. 'Integration' suggests that English workers' material interests have benefited from Wales' oppression, and thus they have an interest in maintaining that oppression. Such a view of the English workers would elevate 'nationalism' above class interests. It mirrors the old Maoist/Third Worldist theories that argued that the working class in the imperialist countries was no longer capable of revolution because it had been incorporated into the imperialist bourgeoisie through sharing in imperialist wealth. A theory that thereby reduced imperialism from a class system to a battle between rich nations and poor nations. No working class interests can be advanced by collaborating in the oppression of another working class or nation. It only weakens itself by splitting and dividing the international class forces lined up against its own bourgeoisie, which is allowed off the hook. Certainly no working class can share in the exploitation of another working class or nation - to exploit needs capital for the buying of labour power.

For the WSRM, exploitation is not seen as a class structure, the domination of labour by capital, but as to do with relations between nations above all else. As part of the English nation, therefore, English workers can be exploiters and 'integrated into the British state'. And naturally enough, if the English workers are 'integrated', why pay any concern to their struggles, which are a sham anyway because they don't take up the fundamental political issue, as the WSRM sees it, of the 'national oppression' of Wales and the necessity for a separate Welsh state. The fact that the English working class, along with the Scottish and Welsh ones, although not in any way in its entirety, has engaged in mass campaigns and actions on women's rights (abortion), and against the racist provocations of the fascists, and now on nuclear missiles as well as on unemployment and closures, is pushed into the far background.

Labour Bureaucracy Seen Through Nationalist Eyes

The WSRM criticises the Wales TUC's reformism and class collaboration only in terms of selling out or bowing to the British TUC. Again, nationality is the core of the WSRM's arguments - the British TUC sells out the struggle and clamps down on the Wales TUC because it is integrated into the nationally oppressive British state. At one point, the WSRM gives the reason for the British TUC's actions as jealousy of the militancy of Welsh workers. Further depths are reached when, in an article in Y Faner Goch, the WTUC's lack of fight is put down to George Wright (WTUC Secretary) being a Midlander. The WSRM, not being Marxists, do not realise that the bureaucracy in the labour movement and its ideology of social democracy have a material base, namely British imperialism, which allowed the British bourgeoisie through its state to give reforms and concessions to the British workers. The political face of this is the reformism and class collaboration of the labour bureaucracy, which can be seen more clearly today due to the latter's inability to resist the crisis and decay of British imperialism and challenge it.

For the WSRM, the policies of the labour bureaucracy (both in the trade unions and the Labour Party) are judged on a simple nationalist criterion - what nationality are they or what national state are they based on. Therefore, the British TUC is wrong because it is linked to the British state as is the English labour movement. The Wales TUC is potentially OK, once it recognises that Welsh workers are nationally oppressed, and that it need no longer be dominated by the British TUC or the foreign leaders imposed on itself. Past failure to analyse historically Wales as part of British imperialism characterised by the assimilation of Welsh bourgeois and to recognise the growth and maturing of the Welsh working class in a unified British labour movement in the most powerful, most wealthy and most adaptable imperialist state the world has ever seen, now strikes home with a vengeance. And odd as it may at first seem, rather than resulting in a strident and telling attack on the labour bureaucracy, it allows it off the hook, both its British and Welsh contingents. By WSRM logic, if the Welsh workers were oppressed by the British state and excluded from the benefits it extracted from countries within its imperialist grasp, then no sections were bought off, and integrated into the British state. The Welsh working class remains pure and potentially revolutionary once it discards the blinkers put on it by bad and cowardly leaders.

A brief examination of the WSRM's positions in the steel strike and closures reveals this weakness:

On the first news of BSC's plans to axe, the WSRM saw little hope for the steel workers fighting back due to the 'treacherous British leadership of the ISTC'. Also considering the Welsh regions had a substantial minority on the National Council, this was a bit one-sided. (Y Faner Goch, No. 4 Nov-Dec 1979).

This nationality reason for the ISTC leaders' lack of fight was continued in spirit in the leaflet put out by the WSRM on the WTUC's January 28th Day of Action: 'Britain imports coking coal - Welsh pits have to close.' 'Bungling by British management in steel industry - Welsh steelworks have to close.' 'Get-rich-quick English firms pull out of Wales - Welsh workers on the dole'. All the closures and dole queues are put down to 'Britishness'. On the burning question of the day - why has the all-Wales general strike been postponed? - there is not a single word about the co-responsibility of the WTUC, but 'Britishness' looms again: 'the orders came down from the big boys in London. Are we going to be sold out by British trade union leaders?' No mention is made of building opposition to the British and Welsh TUCs, and extending the more advanced and vocal response of the Welsh workers to their English and Scottish brothers and sisters, particularly those in steel also faced with redundancy.

On the Wales TUC's stalling of the all-Wales general strike to March, and obviously a big step in the direction of calling it off - 'It was the railway and transport workers' leaders, Archie Kirkwood and WTUC Secretary George Wright, who bowed to pressure from the British TUC. These London bureaucrats fear the political implications of a Welsh general strike - but are unwilling to call for action on a British scale.' Why did Kirkwood and Wright so willingly bow to pressure is not explained. Perhaps these Welsh bureaucrats weren't exactly bowled over at the prospect of a Welsh general strike either. What political implications did they and the TUC fear? Despite the WSRM's hints it wasn't the threat of Welsh workers embarking on an all-Wales action confined to Wales only and encouraging 'national' solutions. Their fear was an all-Wales general strike that would naturally spread to English and Scottish workers, posing a challenge to the Tory government. It seems the British TUC is more alive than the WSRM to the possibilities of class solidarity and unity within the British capitalist state.

After the WTUC's postponement, indefinitely, of the all-Wales strike, the WSRM drew the balance-sheet: '...the struggle against mass redundancies in Wales was hi-jacked by a jealous British TUC in London' they wrote under the headline 'Wales TUC decide London is a Dead-End. Everything is now alright'. The steel closures will be stopped, because the WTUC has recognised its mistake. This article could only mislead Welsh workers about the nature of the WTUC leadership - the Wrightists used the line of no more talks in London next time as a way of heading off criticism of their own back-sliding by the NUM. The leadership of the WTUC had not changed its spots. The WSRM also revived their argument that the crisis of steel-making in Wales was due to the anti-Welsh bias of the 'Yorkshire Mafia' running BSC. And, rather surprisingly, to back up their views the WSRM quoted similar statements from Bill Sirs, leader-in-chief of the 'treacherous British leadership of the ISTC'. Probably, coming from Humberside, Bill Sirs didn't realise Yorkshire is part of British England

After the British TUC's May 14th Day of Action fiasco, the WSRM's position in the autumn 1980 Y Faner Goch became even more conciliatory to the WTUC's misleadership. The headline ran: 'Welsh trade union leaders face a stark choice: WALES OR LONDON'. That Welsh trade union leaders are, by and large, of the same species as the British ones is rejected. That the choice for Welsh workers is a class question - mass struggle against the Tory government or capitulation to it - is never stated.

The report carries on: 'WTUC Secretary George Wright wants Welsh workers to fight'. And this after Wright's refusal to get all constituent unions to back the WTUC's January Day of Action, and then the calling off the all-Wales general strike using the British TUC's excuses and doubts as an excuse! Wright, now having derailed the movement, was, trying to recover some of his prestige with militant words, which were in no danger of being followed up by a diffused and down-hearted movement. And the WSRM were helping him out with their headline and comments. The WSRM then ask: can the Welsh workers re-capture the tremendous spirit of January, and mobilise for a general strike? Only if the biggest stumbling block can be overcome, which for the WSRM is not the sabotage of the WTUC leaders but is 'will the struggle be placed in the hands of a jealous British TUC once again, with the same disastrous results as earlier this year?' The WTUC's connivance in these 'disastrous results' doesn't get a mention.

As for the WTUC leadership's new strategy, the WSRM fail to criticise it. In fact, they don't recognise how bogus it is for them: it's a faithful return to resistance, and they quote Wright approvingly when he remarks that the Welsh and British TUCs can emulate the Welsh nationalists in challenging the Tory government successfully. Anybody knowing the WTUC leaders' past role would have received this with scepticism. The emulation of Gwynfor Evans' (Plaid President) civil disobedience tactics could only be an attempt by the WTUC leaders to shift the working class away from using its mass industrial strength, to take the mass leaders out of the workplace and away from their base of support to sit in roads or chain themselves to railings or not pay rates and bills and to appear regularly in the courts. The WTUC dropped it after its sole use, at an anti-Thatcher picket in Cardiff which resulted in one arrested martyr, from the Wales TUC's Research Department, and the decision not to support any of those arrested. Instead, they took the safer option of sending a fact-finding team to the Basque country to promote the idea of co-operatives. What was obviously a turn to the night by the WTUC after their diversion or the mass movement was misinterpreted by the WSRM, and even supported at first, because the latter had no class analysis of the labour bureaucracy.

Comrades should re-read the Socialist Challenge of the time to see how we were unsparing in exposing the common roots of the labour bureaucracy, at both the British and Welsh TUCs, in class collaboration. Any differences between them were due to the extreme pressure the WTUC was under from the Welsh working class, whose resistance was naturally advancing at a faster rate due to the large-scale shutdown basic capitalist industries in Wales. The class struggle in Wales was proceeding at a different speed to elsewhere - the WTUC leaders had to go along further with it in order to head it off, which in fact they successfully did in the short-term. Their criticism of the British TUC came after things had quietened down and when it could not be used by the mass movement to challenge the British TUC. Criticism was only voiced to take the heat off themselves and their sell-out tactics.

The latest closure, Velindre, again showed up the WSRM's nationalism - there was no criticism of the regional ISTC leadership nor of the WTUC's lack of support. Unity of the tinplate workers is called for, but as all tinplate workers are Welsh, this is not an advance on the WSRM's previous positions. No call is made for the unity of all steel workers throughout Britain. During the closure struggle, the WSRM failed to put any coherent strategy against the WTUC's, apart from a few generalities about a Welsh Steel Corporation, which the workers would have a say in. No position was taken on import controls or subsidies. Criticism of the WTUC's leaders remained at the level of 'giving into pressure', etc., as if the WTUC's weaknesses didn't also extend into the area of demands and policy. The only time demands were taken up was in an Y Faner Goch number 6 editorial after the calling off of the all-Wales strike, and in the WSRM Chairman's article in Y Faner Goch number 5 coming up to the scheduled March strike. In the former, the WSRM conclude: 'the politics of British labourism have been exposed as hypocritical and - if we continue on this road - suicidal. The vital affairs of the Welsh nation must be inside Wales, by our country's working class and local committees.' The intent is in favour of a decision by Welsh workers on major economic and political issues within the framework of a separate Welsh State; not a decision be Welsh workers within the framework of the British class struggle.

The WSRM chairman is more explicit, with three points being outlined:

(a) Booting out the Yorkshire Mafia running the Welsh version of BSC;

(b) Establishing a Welsh Steel Corporation taking in all of the public and private steel sectors in Wales;

(c) Putting control of the steel industry in the hands of 'those who know it, work in it and are committed to it - the workforce'.

Whether control means workers' control as the basis of a fight-back stopping all closure and redundancy, imposing benefits in hours and pay, and raising the question of a socialist planned economy, or whether it means a profit-based, humanitarian, Steel Corporation with workers' participation and profit-sharing is unclear. However, the first two demands are far from ambiguous. The BSC's Welsh plants' bankruptcy is due not to capitalism but Yorkshire bias and inefficiency. The answer is a Welsh Steel Corporation - where it will differ from the British Steel Corporation is not stated, apart from being generally 'more democratic'. But is it to be profit-based? If so, if profitability reigns supreme, then once again obvious repercussions are raised for the workforce - repercussions which they already have a British Steel Corporation. How will this Welsh Steel Corporation make its way in the world market of steel with its falling demand and collapsed profit rates? All these problems, directly pointing at the future of Welsh workers, are never confronted.

If you can't confront them, then you're not going to nail the labour bureaucracy to the cross. If you think the main problem is having a Welsh-based steel corporation rather than a British or English-based one, and its social organisation as a capitalist concern is irrelevant or of secondary importance, then the labour bureaucracy's reformist solutions go unchallenged. And Welsh steel workers faced with the choice of a capitalist Welsh Steel Corporation or a capitalist British Steel Corporation will opt for the latter, because of the larger resources for subsidy of the British capitalist state.

By going soft on the WTUC because it is Welsh, the WSRM helped it dodge taking the blame for the stalling and the selling-out. By going hard on the British TUC because it is British makes no dent in the TUC's politics of class collaboration and capitulation. The arguments of Welsh nationalism have been rejected by Welsh workers in practice over the decades through building up united British organisations and fighting united British struggles. To call on the Welsh workers to go it alone, to dismiss or ignore the English and Scottish workers, and to find 'Welsh' solutions like a Welsh Steel corporation merely falls into the trap set by the British TUC's policies - namely, to isolate and contain the Welsh workers' struggle and keep it at arm's length from the labour movement in the rest of Britain. Any Welsh general strike would only be successful if it mobilised the support and sympathy of English and Scottish workers. The hesitations of the Welsh workers, as highlighted by the Welsh miners' No vote in their strike ballot, was due in large part to the very prospect of not getting English and Scottish solidarity and having the struggle isolated to Wales by the actions of the WTUC leaders and the British TUC. Militant Welsh workers rejected out of hand, in practice, the Little Wales stance of the WSRM.

The WSRM's Nationalist Approach to Welsh Language and Culture

The WSRM's view of Welsh culture and its policies for the advancement of the Welsh language also suffer from a nationalist blight. Their Conference resolution on the Welsh language attempts to present Welsh language, in and of itself, as anti- capitalist and anti-imperialist, and as a weapon capable of undermining British nationalism and its dominating culture. Like everything else, the Welsh language has developed within, and as part of, a society dominated by a ruling class. Wales has never been a society outside of class divisions and antagonisms, yet the WSRM present the Welsh language as something untouched by that, as something that is automatically a weapon for the anti-capitalist struggle. Like any other culture and any other language within the British state, Welsh culture and language was dominated by capitalism, in the case of Wales specifically through the medium of the Welsh petty-bourgeoisie. The latter's hold over Welsh-speaking workers is well-known - non-conformism and the chapel. Due in part to this, the Welsh workers were one of the slowest areas to form trade unions and to break with Liberalism. Indeed, the Welsh-speaking miners were mobilised in some cases to prevent unionisation and break strikes by their petty-bourgeois keepers, and later were used by the latter's agents in the South Wales Miners' Federation, namely its Secretary Mabon, to stall and hold back the tide for a more militant union independent of Liberalism. Welsh culture and language was therefore moulded by a radical, non-conformist petty-bourgeoisie.

The decay of Welsh-speaking culture was not due to its capacity to subvert capitalism, for it was under the sway of a petty-bourgeoisie well-oiled by capitalism. Rather it was due to its capacity under this petty-bourgeoisie to accommodate capitalism. However, although at the political and ideological level, Welsh culture was used to strengthen capitalism by extolling its values, at the same time it came to hinder capitalism at the economic and commercial level, where a fully-fledged industrial capitalism required a uniformity and even-ness in its smooth pursuit of profit. The end result was the increasing 'confinement' of Welsh-speaking culture to the more secondary areas of capitalism - the ruralised areas of small farmers and extractive industry (slate), although Welsh-speaking remained on the west of the south Wales coalfield. These by and large 'backward' areas, where capitalist relations were the least dynamic and least pervasive, had a corresponding 'backward' social structure, topped by a narrow, conservative, traditionalist petty-bourgeoisie. This petty-bourgeoisie has been the guardian of Welsh culture and language for the several decades up to now. In no way can the Welsh culture and language be presented in terms of a ready-made weapon to be grasped by the Welsh working class, unless, of course, like the WSRM, domination and exploitation are seen in terms of nationality alone. Indeed, the decline of Welsh culture/language was also due to the rise in the labour movement and the pressing need for class unity against the capitalists. Where English-speaking and Welsh-speaking workers combined into union branches, English became the main language of organising the struggle. Why? Simply because English was dominant as it was the 'chosen language' of the British capitalist class for their society. This meant many Welsh-speakers could also speak English, and thus the workers took the most widely and generally understood language amongst themselves (which was obviously dictated by British capitalist development) so as not to hinder their organisation and their strength. As Lenin says, it is not altogether a bad thing that workers want to be able to communicate with each other in the common pursuit of class struggle.

The WSRM commit themselves to the restoration of Welsh as the main language of the Welsh people by making it 'the major language of public life' in all areas with a Welsh-speaking majority. In other areas, a Welsh socialist republic would 'install, following a short transition period, Welsh as the main medium of instruction in every school throughout Wales ...' The WSRM conclude that 'only an independent socialist Wales can ensure the continuance of Welsh ...' That socialism, though not based on an independent Welsh republic, is the only guarantee of the survival and prospering of Welsh, we can agree. Its decay and strangulation is due to the commercial relations of profit, of which the capitalist state's discrimination in public life is an important part. The WSRM's resolution does not bring out the guilt of the commercial base of capitalism for the decline of the Welsh language, nor how the British state's discrimination is anchored in that capitalist base. Hence the WSRM see the main problem as one of counter-acting the anti-Welsh language measures of the British state with a reversal of policies by an independent Welsh state - the former follows a policy of English as the state language, the latter will follow a policy of Welsh as the state language. Understandable though this is, reversing a previous harmful discrimination with a seemingly, new, 'positive' discrimination, we have to oppose it, as it in fact replaces one compulsory state language (English) with a new one (Welsh) on the same compulsory privileged basis.

We are against any state language just as we are against any state religion. Our positive discrimination for Welsh does not lie in forcing it into people's throats, but in proper funding of it in schools, press, TV, theatre, etc.; promotion of Welsh through bilingualism in state administration; making illegal language discrimination against Welsh in all areas of life; ending the segregation of schools according to language; general education against chauvinism and against the discrimination of the Welsh language. In practice, the Welsh workers will decide themselves if they want to learn or relearn Welsh in an atmosphere of full equality, no privileges, no discrimination and the progressive eradication of chauvinism and nationalism. Any policy that calls for the compulsory imposition of a state language, including in education, will only alienate those workers who do not speak that language. Also, it will allow the bourgeoisie to play on it to divide and split Welsh workers, and prevent any raising of national rights in the mass anti-Tory struggle and the labour movement. English-speaking Welsh workers (and Welsh-speaking ones as well) must be won to a position of support for the Welsh-speakers not to be discriminated against. They will not be won to a position of discrimination against themselves, which will only increase their distance from demands for national rights.

A Revolutionary Nationalist Strategy of Exemplary Action

The way the WSRM has conducted itself in campaign work on Ireland and the second homes issue must also be looked at. Its tactics at the Margam Park Army Display consisted of confronting the army and police, and trying to break up the display. The aim of putting on a mass picket, distributing publicity to explain the role of the British army in Ireland, protesting army recruitment playing on unemployment of young people, and arguing these policies with the public was forgotten by the WSRM and replaced with a policy of confrontation. Why? Very simply because the WSRM believes that the British state has to be confronted by the chosen few so as to reveal its true vicious and repressive nature to the unconscious, passive on-looker. Observing this, the on-looker will realise what's what, all the more readily if batoned over the head by the British state's repression, and join the struggle thus making a higher level of confrontation possible. By these accumulating actions, the working people of Wales will finally defeat their enemy, the British state.

With regard to the second homes, the WSRM, whilst opposed to the fires, saw some good coming out of them because the British state had to reply with oppression that affected all the population. That the police harassment could only disrupt any mass sentiment surfacing against holiday homes in a mass campaign directed against the Tory government with specific demands was rejected by the WSRM. As revolutionary Marxists, we saw the only way to stop second homes advancing was by getting the mass opposition organised into the open, with public activity like petitions, marches, pickets of councils, despite, the difficulties faced in limited consciousness and social background of the people affected. The onus was on mass mobilisation and organisation, which meant an orientation toward the Plaid, and the Labour Party and the trade unions. Not for the WSRM, though - even when it could have started modest campaigning through the Welsh Council for Civil and Political Liberties it never managed to extend it into the Welsh-speaking areas, rarely put forward a mass orientation for it and played down the crucial necessity of getting Plaid and Plaid members involved and committed to a defence campaign. The WCCPL's importance for the WSRM was always subordinate to that of raising money for the defendants' dependants, to give aid to the dependants of those in the front line, as it were. Consistent with this, no attempt at a political defence of the accused was made by the WSRM.

At the time we labelled these actions as ultra-leftism, but ultra-leftism is a tactical mistake with its origins in the Marxist movement - it is an impatience with the struggle to undermine the labour bureaucracy and seeks out more militant tactics which underestimate the resources of the bureaucracy to retain the workers' allegiance. The WSRM's exemplary action strategy, however, is a tried and trusted method of the revolutionary nationalist movement over the decades. Hence its use today by all the main revolutionary nationalist organisations in Europe - the Provisional Republicans in Ireland, the ETA groupings in the Basque country in the Spanish state, the Corsican nationalists, the Breton Liberation Front in Brittany in the French state, and also in the Canadian state by the Quebec Liberation Front. And as the actions of these groups have shown, the exemplary action strategy of substituting for building a mass movement rapidly drifts over into militarism.

The first issue of the WSRM's Welsh Republic (Jan-Feb 1981) contained a centre-spread on the British Army. Its drift was on assessing its military capacity - there was no analysis of its role as strike-breaker, nor any demands to weaken its cohesion like trade union rights for its personnel, the right to free information and to free speech. The weighing up of the British Army had alongside it an article extolling the tactics of guerrilla warfare and hinting heavily at the need to take it up now to turn the coming class confrontations into the decisive struggle. The elitism and rightism of such a strategy is obvious - in the middle of a rising mass struggle on the part of the workers, self-appointed saviours would attack the police or military thus calling down on the workers a capitalist state of siege preventing and harrying their mass organisation and confusing a section of them with talk of terrorism. In the light of the second homes fires and the traditions left by MAC and the Free Wales Army, despite. their total failure, such militarist pretensions and bravado can be very dangerous to the nationalist and labour movements.

Tactics towards the WSRM

Our orientation to members of the WSRM is to break them from revolutionary nationalism. Revolutionary nationalism is incompatible with Trotskyism - fundamental principles divide the two. Revolutionary nationalism bases its actions and strategy on a nationalist view of the world; Trotskyism bases itself on a class view. Revolutionary nationalism as opposed to radical-reformist nationalism has recognised the social force of the working class, but only in the sense of a means to carry out its nationalist programme.

Thus the tensions within revolutionary nationalism are not insignificant because the working class, though dominated by social democracy, pursues its own class interests, and exerts an influence on revolutionary nationalism. The Fourth International won ETA-VI to revolutionary Marxist positions by a hard ideological struggle against the 'background' of the Basque and Spanish workers asserting their class strength and confidence against Francoism. We cannot predict such a favourable outcome in Wales, but should pursue a similar ideological struggle to break WSRM militants from revolutionary nationalism. Naturally, as the WSRM is every uneven in political consciousness, individuals will be won first of all, and they will have to combine and work together in order to carry on the ideological struggle inside the WSRM. Given the WSRM's nationalist traditions, and its alignment internationally with organisations like the Provisionals, the Breton Liberation Front and ETA, future prospects will be slow and difficult, resources are modest and it is a secondary aspect of our tasks.

We should pursue the aim of establishing a tendency sympathetic to Trotskyism in the WSRM by:

(a) seeking to involve the WSRM in united front work and initiatives around our prioritised campaigns (unemployment, anti-Cruise, Ireland, women's oppression).

(b) Encouraging a written debate with the WSRM through articles in Socialist Challenge and International and through any suitable local channels, primarily based on the Nationalist Movement Commission's documents.

(c) Concentrating on discussions with selected individuals in the WSRM, who have come from a Marxist background or who have shown sound class instincts, to explain our criticisms of revolutionary nationalism and our alternative to it.

Return to main page