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Yes - Ie! For a Welsh Assembly

[With Brendan Thomas; September 1997; Socialist Outlook 8 (new series)]

One of the positive consequences of the election of a Labour government has been the decision to call referenda on a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly.

The proposed Welsh Assembly will be a 60 seat body, with limited powers. It will be elected by 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 gained 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. Fourteen hundred appointees sit on Welsh quangos, in contrast to 1,273 councillors elected to Welsh local councils. The Welsh Office currently has a budget of £7 billion, £2.3 billion of which is spent directly by the quangos.

Under the Tories, the post of Secretary of State for Wales was increasingly used as a testing ground for young hopefuls, such as John 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. Perhaps more importantly, the Assembly has the potential to become a focus for the demands and struggles of Welsh workers. With around 50 per cent of the Welsh vote in the last two general elections, 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, so we must demand that it speaks and acts to defend our interests.

Many in the Labour Party support the Assembly proposals for very different reasons to these. The traditional core leadership of the Wales Labour Party, based on local 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. They hope to turn it into little more than a glorified county council stuffed with the kind of yes-men who populate Labour councils in most valleys.

The Blairite project is more sophisticated. They acknowledge the need to address the demand for greater democracy in Wales and the Assembly proposals are designed to do this in a minimal fashion. But the Assembly has a second political function. Labour lacks an economic strategy that would begin to deal with mass unemployment and has to fall back upon Peter Hain's suggestions that under the Assembly a new 'economic powerhouse' development agency will revitalise the Welsh economy.

The new agency will have no increased funding however, since the Maastricht targets for European Monetary Union require reductions in state spending. Nor is there any proposal for a serious break from the existing (Tory) regional economic strategy of infrastructural development and investment incentives. This strategy has failed to alter the pattern of uneven economic development both within Wales and across Britain as a whole with mass unemployment and low wages in Wales and the North of England and relative prosperity in 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 left to reject a Welsh Assembly. On the contrary, our task is to subvert both these projects, in an effort to create a genuinely representative, popular and campaigning Assembly, unafraid of criticising the right-wing policies of the current Labour government. The demand that women are equally represented in the Assembly is crucial in this respect.

Support for an Assembly is now almost universal on the left in Wales. A conference was held in Cardiff on July 19, entitled 'Socialists and a Welsh Assembly'. The purpose of this event was to begin to develop a socialist agenda for a Welsh Assembly and to debate whether socialists should call for a Yes vote in September. The conference was attended by activists from the Labour Party, Plaid Cymru, the Communist Party, trade unions, pensioners' and unemployed workers' organisations and the far left. It was found that broad agreement existed on our approach to the Assembly and a statement, dubbed the 'Cardiff Declaration', was adopted.* The conference organising committee is continuing to meet in order to produce campaigning material under the slogan: 'Socialists say YES!'.

The No campaign, after several shambolic false starts, has now found a sponsor in the form of Sir Julian Hodge, a multi-millionaire living in tax-exile in Jersey. He is joined by a few members of Rhondda Labour Party and by Lord Tonypandy - who supported the Referendum Party in the last election - and an assortment of other reactionaries. These people share a common hatred for any expression of Welshness which goes beyond the stereotypical male voice choirs, leeks an rugby! Their campaign consists of little more than scare-mongering - about who will control the Assembly: 'North Wales under the thumb of South Wales' - and how much will cost: 'Welsh taxes soaring by £1,200 a head'. 

Anti-Assembly Labour MPs have been careful not to associate themselves with this rag-tag bunch. Nevertheless, left wing MP Llew Smith needs to explain how he can support a No vote, a position which only the Tories support in Wales! Socialism is inconceivable with-out 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 differences between this campaign and that of 1979, when Labour's devolution proposals were voted down in the Welsh referendum. The 1979 proposals were those of a deeply unpopular Labour administration, while the current proposals come on the back of a landslide Labour victory. This is acknowledged in the present Labour emphasis on a Yes vote being a loyalty vote.

The creation of the quango state, and the economic and political marginalisation of Wales under the Tories, have fuelled support for a Welsh political institution, both to address the problems of the people of Wales and to promote Welsh interests in the EU. And crucially, majority opinion within the Welsh labour movement is clearly in support of the Assembly. In 1979 the No 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 Welsh local government. Today there is no significant labour movement opposition to the Assembly. On the contrary the Labour leadership, the Wales Labour Party and the Wales TUC are all calling for a Yes vote, while support in the labour movement for the No campaign is weak and fragmented.

It is vital that socialists, in particular the Labour left, support the call for Yes votes in Wales and Scotland. Socialists in England must raise the issues within the English Labour and trade union movement. A victory in September will be a gain for the working class throughout the British state.

*The Cardiff Declaration

Socialists Say YES!

This Conference declares its support for the right of the people of Wales to self-determination and calls fur the establishment of a Welsh Assembly with the right to decide for itself which powers to retain in Wales and to determine its relationship with the rest of Britain and Europe.

Such an Assembly will need to have the law-making and financial powers necessary to begin to overcome the damage inflicted upon Wales by 18 years of Tory rule from Westminster. It should pursue policies for full employment, the expansion of public services and for greater democracy. As a first step it should cancel proposed hospital closures, abolish the quangos in their present unaccountable form, and take back into public ownership Hyder and other privatised utilities.

Its electoral system should ensure that it is representative of the whole of Wales, through a system of proportional representation for the election of all seats in the Assembly, and is composed of equal numbers of women and men. Members of the Welsh Assembly should not be able to hold simultaneously any office as MP, MEP or councillor, even though councillors are not waged.

Labour's proposed Assembly falls short of these objectives but at least offers the people of Wales some measure of democratic control over the decisions which affect their lives. Furthermore, it will be an important line of defence against any future right-wing government at Westminster. It is therefore essential to win a substantial YES vote in the referendum on September 18th.

We call upon all socialists in Wales to campaign actively to maximise that vote.

We completely reject the standpoint of those in Wales who advocate a No vote on supposedly socialist and internationalist grounds. It is a hollow internationalism that cannot recognise the specific needs and aspirations of the people of Wales, a strange socialism that is so fond of the centralist and outdated British state.

This Conference resolves to publicise this declaration under the slogan: Socialists Say YES!; to work with all existing Yes campaigns and to argue the socialist case for a Yes vote throughout the labour movement and the left in Wales. We will aim to take every opportunity to fight for a strengthening of the proposals, in line with the objectives set out above.

We call upon the Labour Party to conduct a vigorous mass campaign in support of the Assembly proposals. Victory will only be assured if Welsh working people are convinced that an Assembly will give them a real democratic voice.

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