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[April 1992; Socialist Outlook 19]

The 1980s will be remembered as the years when the Welsh coal industry was finally destroyed. Wales entered the decade with over 30,000 people employed in coal and left it with less than a thousand. This butchery was made possible by the defeat of the 1984-85 miners strike, a defeat with far reaching political and economic consequences in Wales.

Additional job losses in steel and other manufacturing industries pushed unemployment above the UK average in the early eighties. It peaked at over 15 per cent in l986 but then began to steadily decline and the gap between Wales and the UK average began to narrow.

Wales attracted a fifth of all foreign investment in the late eighties, despite containing only a twentieth of the UK workforce. Welsh secretary Peter Walker claimed a major success, and declared 'Wales entered the 1990s with remarkable economic prospects ... the 199os therefore do not contain the downside risk of the 1980s.'

A glance behind the rhetoric reveals another story. Welsh workers slipped to the bottom of the UK income table in the 1980s, earning only 88 per cent of the UK average in 1990.

The Tories have been more successful in Wales than any other part of Britain in pushing down wages while increasing productivity. They have created a low waged, low skill economy based on the entry of large numbers of women into the workforce.

Two factors made this possible. First, the huge pool of unemployment made it relatively easy to put the squeeze on wages. Second, the defeat of the miners' strike had a devastating impact. It destroyed the South Wales NUM, without doubt the union with the strongest traditions of militancy in Wales, and demoralised supporters of the strike.

The Wales TUC has enthusiastically supported the view that inward investment is the only answer. Affiliated unions have pursued a policy of single union deals and no strike agreements. Many of the US and Japanese companies which have invested in Wales do not recognise unions in any of their other locations. But they are happy to accept a workforce disciplined by their own organisations.

Following a brief, left wing flourish in the early eighties the Plaid Cymru leadership has also been moving steadily rightwards. Daffyd Elis Thomas moved the writ for Bobby Sands MP in 1981, but by 1990 he was calling for a ban on a visit by Sinn Fein councillors! Plaid also opposed mass non- payment of the Poll Tax and so failed to capitalise on the issue in the way the SNP did in Scotland.

The challenge is to build a new left in the Welsh labour movement with an alternative to the inward investment line of the right wing leaders. We need a left which positively addresses the national question and defends the Welsh language.

These demands can be focused in a call for a Welsh Assembly with real powers to defend Welsh workers, which will only be won through struggle. In this process we will need to draw on the rich history of working class organisation in Wales. Significantly, 1992 marks the eightieth anniversary of the publication of the syndicalist Miners' Next Step in the Rhondda. One sentence remains as fresh and vital as the day it was written: 'The old policy of identity of interest between employers and ourselves be abolished, and a policy of open hostility be installed.' 

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