(posted to Marxmail by Mike Pearn)
Ed George, Marc Jones and myself exchanged views on this list as to how
socialists should relate to the national question in Wales both in the
present and as an historical question. Contributions on this list have
been polite, all too rare on some lists, and perhaps even served to
clarify our respective positions a little. Therefore I hope comrades who
hail from nations other than Wales will bear with this latest installment.
Ed George has argued, following GA Williams, that the nation of Wales
only came into being with the rise to global hegemony of British
Imperialism in the nineteenth century. By way of contrast and it is a
stark contrast Mark Jones argues that Wales is an ancient nation having
its roots in the Romano-British Principalities which cohered in the six
to eighth centuries C.E. Both take too simplistic a view with one
placing the emphasis on continuity and the other on the breaks within
the historical record. As is often the way with these things both are
wrong and both right.
To argue that a Wales existed prior to the nineteenth century is not to
concede legitimacy to Welsh nationalism as Ed fears but is to recognise
the facts of the continuity of community in this country. As GA Williams
argued there have been many different Wales in history but it was only
with the triumph of Britain that a nation in the Marxist sense came into
being here. The creation of this nation being within the British polity
and as a part of it. Prior to this development the position of Engels
that such communities as the Welsh were the detritus of history unable
to construct stable states and therefore lacking any meaningful history
stands as an accurate description.
There is nothing condemnatory in such a description of Wales as a
history-less nation contrary to Mark’s defence of the medieval princes
and their society. For the facts are that Wales was a backward
economically retarded area within Britain during the era of the princes.
Pummelled by the Irish, by Vikings and confined to a large degree to
impoverished hill territories it is remarkable that any literate culture
survived. Such survival of culture was confined to the Church in the
Heroic age and even after did not enjoy any significant revival due to
the backward nature of the economy. Backward that is in comparison to
the larger more prosperous economy in England.
One notes that by the time of the Norman conquest England had become a
prosperous unified state, which is why it was such a target for Norse
Kings and Norman barons alike, while Wales remained a divided and
impoverished land. In England slavery was fading away; but in Wales
remained a major economic factor. Land holdings and the area under
cultivation were increasing in size in England; but in Wales land was
divided time and time again with ever generation, and this in an already
retarded economy. Certainly this meant that for the peasant majority
such freedoms as some had enjoyed in an earlier period were lost as more
were reduced to serfdom with the rise of the feudal mode of production
but in Wales the freedoms that remained for the gentle born were nominal
when the parcelisation of land reduced them to penury.
Considered dispassionately the enterprise of most of the Princes in
Wales can be seen to be no more laudable than that of their peers
elsewhere in Europe. These were brutal men in a brutal age despite which
some do stand above the brutish scramble for power. For example one
might cite Hywel Dda, and what a title to bear, Hywel the Good - history
is kind to some - who codified Welsh law. But the law could only be
codified as he had defeated so many of his rivals and was temporarily
top of the heap commanding a great enough proportion of the surplus
value accrued from exploitation and the spoils of war to be able engage
in such a state building project. Significantly with his death his
Princedom was divided and fell back into the internecine wars that
marked the age. Following which Gwynedd in North Wales achieved a place
at the heart of any state building project as its princes sought to
build their domain into a state free of the English King. For modern day
nationalists this struggle has been portrayed as a fight for a national
state.
In reality the struggle of the Princes of Gwynedd could not be national
in character as there was at this time no sense of nationhood as a
political and cultural entity to which all in a given polity belonged.
Whether or not Pura Wallia, that part of Wales ruled by the petty
princes, could even be truly described as feudal is a moot point before
the final demise of Gwynedd in 1285 and is very dubious before the first
Norman incursions which came after 1067. Rather we see a society
dominated by kinship networks and the common ownership of land. Slavery
too remained an important institution far more so than in the English
Kingdoms to the east where the institution had fallen into almost total
decay by 1066. Given the perennial warfare tribute too had an economic
function not found in more settled societies other than those which Marx
described as belonging to the Eastern mode of production. Wales in the
heroic age and even after was an enormously backward society
economically and culturally. It’s conquest and assimilation by English
feudalism was a massive step forward for the mass of the population.
Tied to the English Crown Wales suffered the fate of many a conquered
land and it’s language was discriminated against, it’s laws abolished
except in the most backward of rural fastnesses and it’s nobility used
as hirelings for an alien King. In short Welsh society improved for
every class but the Princes who passed into legend. Compared to the
endless wars of the past seven hundred years the late Middle Ages were a
time of prosperity for Wales and as such the gentry experienced a
growing prosperity. This in turn led to a revival of culture and Cymraeg
again dominated areas, such as the Vale of Glamorgan, from which it had
been pushed by war. And yet it was and remained a backward region
comparted to England and this ensured that the gentry, the descendants
of Princes who traced their ancestry back to Troy, were willing to turn
to arms to improve their lot. The result was the rising of Owain Glyndwr
the last native Prince of Wales.
The rising originated as Ed George has pointed out as a local dispute
between factions of the gentry. Yet within a short time it had escalated
into an insurrection that encompassed almost every part of Wales.
Glyndwyr was even for a very brief time, little more than one season
passed before he was again driven to the hills, able to send envoys to
the King of France and summon a Parlement to Machynlleth. Following this
brief episode the full weight of the English state was brought to bear
and Glyndwyrs defeat was ensured and he passed into myth. The question
that Ed cannot answer given his position that a nation only came into
being in Wales with the triumph of British imperialism in the nineteenth
century is why this local dispute assumed national dimensions. The
answer lies in the consciousness of the Welsh gentry that they were a
people, a national community, separate and different from the English
state. Given that they had prospered as a class from the peaceful
conditions that prevailed after the defeat of the last Prince of
Gwynedd, except in so far as they participated in the wars of the
English king in France, this consciousness of constituting a distinct
community might never have produced political consequences were it not
for the land dispute which began Glyndwrs rising. Yet the unexpected
success of Glyndwrs rising did bring aspirations to form their own state
to the surface among a large part of the Welsh gentry particularly in
Gwynedd and the west. To acknowledge that Glyndwrs rising did reach its
apogee in the attempt to form a feudal state in Wales is to surrender
nothing to the nationalist case, it is simply an acknowledgement that
this Wales, that of Glyndwr, was one of the many Wales that might have
been.
There is much to be learnt from Glyndwrs rising not least the power that
ideology has, particularly in a largely illiterate society, for part of
the reason for the man’s momentary success was due to his use,
consciously or otherwise, of the orally transmitted mythologies of this
Wales. It might even be the case that Glyndwyr became the tool of these
mythologies rather than their master. Their grip on the minds of the
gentry and the peasants legitimised his rebellion against the English
king when no other means existed to do so. The bards, that is the
transmitters of this oral tradition, acted as the guardians of this
communal consciousness and in so far as they preserved a national
consciousness preserved it in Cymraeg and in Cymraeg alone.
It is an irony of history that having been repeatedly defeated in war
the Welsh gentry class finally ascended the throne of their enemies. For
having gambled on Glyndwyr and lost the gentry turned back to support of
the English monarchy. Typical of all exploiting classes they were quick
to reconcile themselves with an alien power when assured that they were
secure in their social position. And like all such classes they were
gifted with more than one adventurer although only one was needed to
sire the first of the Tudors who gleefully proceeded to annex Welsh
legend as the personal possession of their dynasty. The result was the
end of all punitive laws which discriminated against the Welsh and
eventually the incorporation of Wales within the new British state with
the Acts of Union in 1536-43. The gentry class gained thereby entry to
and incorporation within a new British Empire. As an economically
backward and impoverished region Wales substantially passed from the
stage of history.
From the Acts of Union to the birth of Imperial Wales no class in Wales
was able to play any independent role either socially or politically. A
rural society shorn of its own indigenous leaders Welsh society decayed
culturally to become no more than a region distinguished by little more
than its own peculiar language. And it was this language that marked out
the Welsh as being different that was now relegated to having the status
of pariah and was then if not persecuted at least treated at best with
benign neglect and outlawed from any official status. The backwardness
of Wales and its marginal situation being best illustrated in these
years of eclipse by the seeming indifference of almost all of society to
the English Revolution. Where the gentry did participate in this
momentous struggle it was on the side of the Stuarts. While in England
the growing bourgeoisie played a revolutionary role in Wales this class
could scarce be found in the tiny towns of the day.
This situation of profound backwardness only began to change with the
first wave of industrial capitalism which still left Wales lagging
behind much of Britain. Yet this first wave of development does repay
study because it begins to illustrate a pattern followed by far larger
groups of workers at a later stage. Its geographical location is
interesting too as for perhaps the only time in the history of Wales the
empty lands of mid-Wales took the leading role. That role was a producer
of wool for the booming markets in England illustrating the intimate
relations between production in Wales and England. Much of this area
also became Anglicised at this time too as a modern workers movement
began to appear in the small towns. Socialism too also appears for the
first time and the name of Robert Owen of Newtown should be well known
to all.
As this early wave of industrialisation developed apace Wales became
urbanised and the newly cohering industrial proletariat began to develop
class consciousness. The struggles that ensued are well known and Ed
George has referred to some in his post. But it is well to note that
South Wales was amongst the most violent of areas in Britain during the
early stages of industrialisation. In fact many of those sucked into the
mammon’s slathering maw from the more rural fastnesses of the west had
themselves experienced or knew of the riotous Hosts of Rebecca. The
newly industrialising society of this new South Wales was then explosive
and violent to its core. The grip of what G A Williams has described as
Jacobin views in this dynamic and mobile but undemocratic society led to
the Merthyr Rising of 1931 where the Red Flag was raised for the first
time in Britain. For more details comrades are referred to Williams
excellent book on the Rising where he demonstrates that this local
insurrection was born of an intensely democratic society and even at
this early stage exhibited tendencies towards the development of
independent working class leadership and demands.
The subsequent history of class struggles in industrial South Wales is
the history of the class struggle everywhere with a terrifying variety
of tactics and strategies being tried and failing during the first half
of the nineteenth century. Chartism and the Newport Rising stand as the
most stark illustration of the tendency of autonomous working class
politics to become both politicised and revolutionary. Contrary to Ed
Georges earlier assertion however Chartism in Wales was not
wholeheartedly on the Physical Force - revolutionary - wing of the
movement. Nor was the Newport Rising an isolated regional miscarriage as
there is some evidence that risings were planned in the North of England
which were to join up with the Welsh Chartists in a state wide
insurrection. In fact only such a supposition makes any sense of the
attempted tactics of the leaders of the rising in Wales which are
otherwise inexplicable.
With the massive expansion of coal mining in the final years of the
nineteenth century Wales did enter its Imperial period full well. As has
been noted in earlier posts it was in this period that a national
consciousness emerged in Wales that united both English and Welsh
speakers; rural and urban; north and south. It was a consciousness that
was for a brief moment encapsulated in the Liberal party of David Lloyd
George and would find a home within the Labourist consensus from 1945
onwards. But it would be an error to presume that this Imperial Wales
was built solely on coal. Steel, tin and even slate had their places in
this period as did the rail and shipping needed for transportation.
While coal had a central role the weight of other industries should not
be underestimated nor should the sheer magnitude of the Labourite
consensus after 1945.
It is peculiar to reflect that if one considers Wales in isolation from
the rest of Britain as a separate entity we might almost be looking at a
Stalinist country in the nineteen-fifties. Consider that coal, steel,
rail and the new National Health Service were all state capitalist
trusts. That the country was in all essentials a one party state and was
as drab as any provincial backwater in the USSR cannot be
underestimated. Symbolic of this the Labourite establishment inspired,
if mediocrity can be so described, the Welsh Museum of Folk Life just to
the north of Cardiff. Set in the grounds of St Fagans Castle, an
Elizabethan Mansion and site of the only major battle of the English
Civil War fought in Wales (the good guys won), this was designed as a
mythic Wales by the rising Welsh intelligentsia. Until recent years one
could find a plethora of labourers homes and a goodly number of chapels,
the picture painted was of a rural Welsh speaking nation. What was not
permitted was even the merest shadow of the class struggle. Amusingly
with the defeat of the miners strike of 1985 this changed and an urban
area was introduced with the rebuilding of a Miners Institute and but
yards away a Police Station was undergoing reconstruction on my last
visit! Perhaps most ludicrously the last remaining pit decided to hold a
Miners Eistedffordd on the grounds a few years ago as if to enter
history in advance of one’s generation! My friends I considered
photocopying some old long dead socialist papers and selling them on the
day but alas as happens with paper sales it rained and I remained in
bed. (Should any rich comrade visit the area feel free to contact me btw)
But even the mythic Wales of How Green Was My Valley and the related
mythology of left labourism in which the miners featured as the cavalry
coming to rout the Tories at the last minute has passed. As Ed George
wrote an entire series of state enterprises were established throughout
the country during the post war years diversifying the economic base.
But this by no means tells the entire story of the continued reshaping
of Wales since 1945. That much of this investment was state driven is
true but there was also considerable private investment such as the Ford
engine plant in Bridgend. The role of the Labourite barons who were
based in Wales should also be noted as despite the apparent power of the
likes of Jim Callaghan and Michael Foot neither was able to secure
additional investment as a result of that power. These men served as the
CEO of Great Britain PLC and Leader of Her Majestys Opposition but real
power they rarely glimpsed. Despite Ed Georges assertion neither
developed much of a retinue from the ranks of the Labour Party in Wales
being creatures respectively of the right and left of the Labour Party
machine. Kinnock the only Welshman of the three Ed mentioned was never
able to translate the following he had into a developed retinue as he
never so much as smelt power let alone tasted it. Except now as an
unelected Eurocrat.
The alternative story of South Wales since the hey day of state
capitalism in the 1950's is that of communications and diversification.
The decline of coal and steel are a counter-point to this serialist
symphony where each sequence of investment is succeeded by another of
redundancy and destruction. As Ed outlined there was considerable state
investment in South Wales during the fifties and sixties but this
essentially left untouched the reliance of the region on coal and steel,
merely mopping up that part of the labour force displaced from these
industries. That the region did not collapse into outright depression
during the seventies is attributable to private investment however
although even this was state directed by judicious use of subsidies, a
different form of state capitalism but none the less state capitalism.
As is so often the case with Wales this story of communications and
diversification begins in London. Rather give a historical summery of
how this developed it is as well to look at the geography of a road. The
road is the M4 which runs from London to Swansea. All on this list will
know that London, the very maw of Mammon, is the very headwater of
capital investment to which all the priests and acolytes of capital must
pray thrice daily. This is certainly true for Wales and the profits
generated most always find their way to The City and to that holiest of
holies all must repair to for needed capital investment. But to a large
degree the needed capital for any project will not travel along the
entire M4 but will find various more hospitable niches along the way.
The first stop might well be in Reading where large numbers of high tech
research and development jobs are located as is also true of Swindon
further to the west. Continuing west we cross one or other of the two
Severn crossings, the first opened in the sixties and considerably
cutting road transport costs.
At this point the road enters Wales and the first town on importance is
Newport, once a coal port still the home of Llanwern Steelworks. As we
pass Newport we reach a series of electronics and microchip factories
which skirt the lower edge of the M4 into north Cardiff. In general
these facilities are either aging assembly plants, all too often
threatened by newer cheaper facilities in the east, or plants only
partially commissioned as a result of over capacity in the market. North
of the east-west line formed by the road run the various valleys where
the main commodities produced are surplus labour power and despair.
Although parts of the coastal belt are impoverished and islands of
prosperity can be found in The Valleys, especially on the eastern and
southern edges, in general The Valleys are a wilderness of smack and
crackheads with an aging population and few resources. Were all the
communities which make up The Valleys to be considered as a single
entity the results would reveal perhaps the most devastated urban area
in Western Europe. If we in Britain possessed the democratic right to
keep and bear firearms killings would be daily. The road then continues
west past Llantrisant, where that funny money stuff grows, and Bridgend
with its large Ford Engine complex. It ends at Swansea near where the
second of the major steel works in Wales is to be found at Neath. Past
Swansea dragons dwell.
Cardiff is very much the regional centre and this tendency is becoming
more accentuated. The result is a recasting of the identities of the
various communities of the region. Without their pits and chapels the
communities of The Valleys are nothing but cheap dorms for workers who
toil by day in factories and offices in or around Cardiff and like as
not spend their recreational hours in the super clubs and multiplexes of
Cardiff Bay or the similarly characterless leisure parks strung along
the road. In fact as with most communities in the highly developed
economies that little word community should actually read dormitory.
Cardiff too has been a victim of the destruction of long standing
communities although the destruction was at its peak long before most of
the left were willing to recognise the process. Not only was the
docklands community removed or redeveloped but much of working class
Cathays was pushed out to new housing developments allowing it to become
the largest concentration of student accommodation in Britain, a
veritable ghetto for the under graduate population.
Like most cities Cardiff has seen the working class pushed away from the
centre and out to housing estates on the cities periphery. The nineties
saw this ongoing process reach a climax of sorts. Most notoriously so
called Tiger Bay the multi ethnic community in Cardiff’s docklands was
finally consigned to history as the surrounding Cardiff Bay area
underwent massive development, although in large part this famous
locality was actually gutted in the sixties with the final end of the
port as a major employer in the city. The working class districts of
Splott and Tremorfa were also gutted when their original focus, the East
Moors Steel works closed in 1979 - the last remnant of Cardiff’s blue
collar past Allied Steel and Wire closing only a few months ago (Ed may
be interested that a Spanish company may reopen a reduced operation).
The end result is a city with three linked central zones, stretching
from the Bay to the University taking in the primary retail zone along
the way. Grouped around this core are the more established residential
areas and on the fringes of the city anonymous dorms for the proles.
Little wealth is actually generated in Cardiff today with the cities
employment stemming from service industries. None the less South Wales
as a whole has large numbers of smaller industrial establishments which
survive on the basis of low skills and thus low wages. But the profits
made flow through Cardiff and along the road to the City.
What has developed is an economy which has specialised in those areas
which feature a low skill level and require low levels of investment
creating a Wales which is a reserve of low wage labour. The fantasies of
Welsh nationalism cannot deal with this as their entire strategy is to
argue for a Wales that can compete as an equal partner within the
European Union. The problem for this strategy being that as state
subsidies are banned by the EU such competition would then be on less
equal terms than previously. That Plaid Cymru, the nationalist party,
adopts at election times some of the demagogy of Labourism is tribute to
the shallow roots of new labour in a region where neither the
Conservative epoch had much impact on fundamentals outside of the
Cardiff area. But the use of language is mere demagogy and when Plaid
has a share of power at local level it acts as much the trained dog of
Westminster as any Conservative or Blairite council could wish to. Nor
have any trade union bodies so much as thought to break from the Labour
to back Plaid which remains a petite bourgeois party at root. If Plaid
offers no way forward for workers the same must be said of the left of
that party which is minuscule in point of fact. Although
organisationally separate the tiny Cymru Goch (Red Wales) grouplet
represents a parody of a political group having neither a coherent
doctrine or practice. The sole activity of this tiny group is to act as
critics of all ‘British’ parties and the mainstream of the nationalist
movement while providing the ideology of the latter with a socialist
gloss. Thankfully no one is listening.
The changes in the constitution of the working class in Wales have been
less dramatic than in Britain as a whole and Trades Union membership is
commensurately higher. However the grip of the traditional Labourite
right is also stronger here than is the case elsewhere. Unlike most
regions of England and Scotland there is not so much as one notable
figure in the workers movement aligned in even a loose sense with the
socialist left. Attendance of union branches is also very low and
although no statistics are available lower than in Britain taken as a
whole. Naturally this differs from area to area and from one
occupational group to another but the attitude often taken to branch
meetings was summed up for me on a firefighters picket line on Thursday
as “mostly its just seen as an excuse for having a drink”. This from a
man with fifteen years service as a firefighter in an occupation marked
by a high degree of commitment and in the last few years by a number of
disputes culminating in the present dispute. While I don’t wish to pour
cold water on those who see a revival in the workers movement, because
it does exist although it is by no means as buoyant as might be thought
from reading the socialist weeklies, this revival is partial, often
sectional and markedly stronger in London being fuelled by factors
specific to that city. In general class consciousness remains at a point
somewhat lower than at any time since 1900 and Wales is perhaps the
weakest area in Britain.
This is reflected in the political organisations that make up, along
with the unions, the workers movement. In prime place is the Labour
party and at the level of Wales this is fairly solidly Old Labour with
Blairism only having any roots in Cardiff and even here they are more in
terms of appearance than reality. The city’s Labour Party being fairly
Old Labour and rotten in most respects but at the municipal level
dominated by a particularly odious machine politician whose actual
politics would fit any of the four major parties operating in the city
with only minimal changes in demagogy. That the city’s three Labour
Westminster members are more firmly Old Labour was evidenced by Blairs
opposition to the personally popular Rhodri Morgan becoming boss of the
new Assembly. Having won the position Morgan has of course proven
himself to be a safe pair of hands for his masters and maintained a
coalition administration in the Assembly with the Liberal Democrats
despite having an over all majority. In general the roots of the Labour
Party have continued to decay in Wales since 1979 and any visit to a
Ward Labour Party will reveal a generally aging collection of
individuals not particularly marked out as being in any way exceptional,
a most depressing experience. Candidates for local office are the self
regarding philistines that only congregate wherever there is opportunity
to boost their egos of for graft. As is the case in all advanced
capitalist countries politics at the local level is denuded of the
activists which alone can guarantee properly functioning democratic
politics, even in the most banal bourgeois sense. In many way this
process of democratic decay has reached American proportions and but for
the reluctance of business a conversion of the Labour Party into a
single party in which various elements and factions vie for favours, as
is the model with the Liberal Democrats in Japan or was the case with
the Christian Democrats in Italy, is an easily achievable goal for the
boss class.
Wales then today is among the more retarded regions of the emerging
European polity and set to very gradually fall to the economic level of
regions such as Slovenia or even Slovakia. This is a long term tendency
however and I hasten to point out the concern of the British ruling
class to preserve all sections of their domain at a minimum level which
is above that of the most stricken regions of eastern and southern
Europe. If for no other reason than that they fear that should poverty
increase to the levels which afflict much of the east social clashes
would threaten the stability of their rule. The example of parts of the
former German Democratic Republic should act as a stark warning here and
make no mistake the British state does not have even the limited ability
to pick up particular regions which the German bourgeoisie has
exhibited. In general then the prospects for Wales as a whole are fairly
dismal with much of the country becoming permanently marginalised while
an area in the south acts as an oasis of relative wealth and it should
be noted that it is only relative to the valleys and the west that
Cardiff seems prosperous. The reality is that much of the working class
in the most fortunate city in Wales is as marginal as in any other part
of the country. Without skills there is now a potentially massive
reserve army of labour in existence which lacks saleable skills.
This situation does mean that the working class is potentially very
volatile should a social crisis erupt and that the unions and Labour
party have far less ability than has ever been the case to hold them
back. On the downside there are very few bodies in which working class
consciousness is embodied and sudden eruptions might as easily fade back
to nothing as quickly as they burst into life. The potential for a
revolutionary alternative is then not great in the short term given the
lack of sectional struggles toward which propaganda can be directed and
despite much bluster and empty talk the Anti Capitalist movement in
Wales has in practice very few echos outside the colleges which are
themselves not noted for being particularly militant.
The far left in Wales too is very weak and at best the various groups
are mere shadows of their comrades in England. Despite having some
dedicated and able people neither the Socialist Party or the Socialist
Workers Party have even marginal influence in any part of the working
class. Amusingly there has been a Socialist Alliance in Wales that is
perhaps the most dismal failure of all that have sprung up in the last
few years. Formed initially by Cymru Goch and the Socialist Party, after
its exit from Labour, it was always a contradictory body consisting of
one group which has left nationalist politics and another which was in
fact simply the Welsh branches of the SP and therefore opposed to a
Welsh state. It now consists of the SWP and a handful of independents
and is only to be seen at election times when its performance has been
nothing better than a bad joke.
To close I would like to outline my opinion as to how the revolutionary
left should proceed in Wales. First of all the various groups should
resist schemes which seem to promise much but deliver very little such
as the left reformist electoralism of the Welsh Socialist Alliance,
standing in elections before one has a base is a recipe for sectarian
isolation and is not a route to the class as can be seen from Adelaide
to Anglesey to Aberdeen. Attempting to compromise on live issues such as
nationalism is possible in the short term but must mean that
revolutionaries either drift into tailing the nationalism of the petite
bourgeoisie or that an unnecessary fight is obligated at a later stage.
Better to openly struggle against nationalist elements whenever
possible. Most importantly would be revolutionaries need to politically
orientate on the working class in a consistent fashion. Without the
class all else is a lie.
=====
For Communism
Mike Pearn
--
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