Leanne Wood wins Plaid leadership: victory for the left

By Darren Williams

Leanne Wood, the left candidate, founder member of the Celyn editorial team and occasional ‘Labour Briefing’ contributor, has won Plaid Cymru’s leadership election. The South Wales Central Assembly Member secured 55% of the vote over her main rival, Elin Jones, on the second ballot, after former leader, Lord Dafydd Elis Thomas had been eliminated.

Her victory is remarkable for a number of reasons. First of all, she came from behind: virtually no-one was predicting that she would win when the contest began in January. She overtook her rivals partly through the sheer energy and determination of her campaign, which saw her speaking at meetings all over Wales on a nightly basis, while also making extensive use of social networking and other online tools. But equally important has been the clarity and forcefulness of her ideas, and the passion with which she has communicated them. While Leanne’s campaign inspired young people in particular, and undoubtedly played a big part in the 23% increase in Plaid’s membership during the campaign, the original favourite, Elin Jones, was left looking staid and complacent.

Second, the result is significant because of who Leanne is. She the first woman to lead Plaid, the first leader from a working class background in the South Wales Valleys and the first not to have grown up speaking Welsh as her first language (although, as a long-time adult learner of Welsh, she had become sufficiently confident to take part in hustings conducted entirely in the language – which will have impressed many in her party).  By contrast, Elin Jones is a farmer’s daughter from rural West Wales, who has spoken Welsh all her life – far more the leader one might have expected Plaid to have chosen.

Third, Leanne is left-wing not just in Plaid terms but by comparison with virtually anyone involved in electoral politics in Britain today. She is a sincere and committed socialist, whose ideas have been profoundly influenced by those of Marxists like Raymond Williams and Gwyn Alf Williams, and who has looked to Cuba for inspiration. She is an outspoken republican, who has consistently boycotted the Queen’s visits to the Assembly, latterly opting to work with the homeless instead. And she is as passionate and serious-minded about green politics as any politician today: see her ‘Greenprint for the Valleys’, which sets out proposals for the sustainable economic regeneration, on a co-operative basis, of South Wales’ ravaged former industrial communities.

Of course, Leanne’s election does not mean that Plaid as a whole has embraced her socialist ideas in their entirety: the party remains a very broad coalition, stretching from Leanne herself to conservative cultural nationalists on the right. But her election shows that it is Leanne and her comrades on the Plaid left who will now be setting the party’s agenda. Part of her success can be attributed to her serious and unapologetic approach to the issue of Welsh independence, which has relied neither on romantic appeals to ‘blood and soil’ nationalism nor to a preoccupation with purely juridical sovereignty. Instead, she has talked about ‘real independence’: the social and economic substance behind any meaningful conception of self-government.

Leanne’s victory should be welcomed by all serious socialists. Sadly, it will be greeted with hostility or indifference by many within Welsh Labour. Some will deny that anything has fundamentally changed, claiming that Plaid has no consistent commitment to social justice or the interests of working people. Others will be preoccupied by electoral considerations, fearing that Plaid will now take votes from many who previously supported Labour.  Yet, if nothing else, Leanne’s election almost certainly rules out any future coalition between Plaid and the Tories, something that was a real possibility after the 2007 Assembly election and opposition to which Leanne has made a an important plank of her leadership campaign. More fundamentally, Leanne’s victory will shift Welsh politics to the left, keeping Welsh Labour under pressure to maintain and strengthen its ‘clear red water’ policy programme and to resist the influence of the small but highly-placed number of crypto-Blairites seeking to drag the party to the right.

The Welsh political landscape has changed significantly in the last few days. Socialists should celebrate – and set about engaging with the new realities.

A version of this article was written for Labour Briefing magazine.

See also A red current flows from the valleys of Wales

Welsh Labour circles the wagons

By Darren Williams 

Wales is the one part of Britain (beyond municipal level) where Labour remains in government and this achievement elicited due respect from Ed Miliband, Iain McNicol and Douglas Alexander when they visited Welsh Labour conference in Cardiff on the weekend.

But, while Alexander was keen to co-opt the Welsh example of successful devolution for his campaign against the SNP’s independence proposals, he was notably reticent about the content of the ‘distinctly Welsh social-democratic offer’. The latter might succinctly be summarised as its commitment to equality of outcome and rejection of the New Labour/Tory/Lib Dem approach to the ’reform’ of public services. This contrasts of course, with Scottish Labour’s failure to distance itself significantly from Westminster. Miliband heaped praise on First Minister, Carwyn Jones and Welsh Labour’s values of ‘community, solidarity and responsibility’ but again had relatively little to say about the policies – although he did at least acknowledge, approvingly, that Wales had a rejected the ‘free market free-for-all’ in the NHS.

Carwyn’s own conference speech was a powerful restatement of Welsh Labour’s commitment to ‘fairness and social justice’. On healthcare he was particularly emphatic, saying that Welsh Labour believed in ‘citizen-centred public services for all, not “choice” for the few’, publicly funded and delivered. He added that the ‘privatisation and marketisation of the NHS will stop at the border’ – although there are some concerns that the competition clauses in Lansley’s bill might affect Wales because only the UK as a whole is seen a relevant jurisdiction under EU competition law.

There was little controversy on the conference floor, with the motions tending to offer encouragement to the Welsh Government, rather than criticism or demands. Aslef welcomed plans for a ‘not-for-dividend’ Welsh rail franchise and Unite praised the launch of Future Jobs Wales, which will provide 4,000 16-to-24 year olds annually with six months of work or training at the national minimum wage. One of the few potentially contentious matters was a proposal from Cardiff North CLP that, in the face of the forthcoming reduction of Welsh MPs from 40 to 30, Welsh Labour should follow the recent Scottish example and retain, as the basis of constituency organisation, the Assembly boundaries (thus far, coterminous with those for Westminster) rather than change to reflect the parliamentary map. While eminently sensible, this idea offends Welsh MPs and their camp followers and the issue has been referred for consideration to an ad hoc working group by the Welsh Executive Committee, which secured remission of the motion.

The election results announced at conference represented modest gains for the centre-left. The three Welsh Labour Grassroots (WLG) members on the WEC were all re-elected and were joined by fellow-travellers, Newport councillor, Debbie Wilcox and former AM, Christine Gwyther (remarkably, nine of the ten CLP seats on the WEC are now held by women). The two Welsh ‘regional’ seats on the NPF chosen by conference were both elected unopposed, one incumbent being WLG member, Mark Whitcutt.

As ever, some of the most interesting discussions took place at the fringes – particularly the well-attended meeting held by Welsh Labour Grassroots. Cardiff Council candidate, Siobhan Corria, argued that Labour needed to engage with local communities if it to win back Welsh town halls and run progressive administrations after May 3rd. Assembly Member and Welsh Labour policy guru, Mark Drakeford, excoriated Europe’s disastrous austerity policies and observed that the Obama administration, in contrast, had promoted growth and jobs – although, in a grossly unequal society, the benefits were flowing predominantly to capital and the rich. He hoped that, in Wales, we could ‘get both the economics and the politics right’.

Unite and Labour NEC member, Martin Mayer, described his union’s strategy for building an activist base in the party, able to develop and fight for socialist policies and secure the election of union-friendly MPs. And Welsh Health minister, Lesley Griffiths, reiterated Carwyn’s message about the NHS in Wales, reaffirming that reconfiguration would be governed by the best way to deliver quality services, not by neoliberal dogma. These discussions provided the activists present with valuable ammunition for the battles ahead.

A version of this article appears in the March issue of Labour Briefing magazine.

Welsh Labour Conference: Beware the Ides of March.

By Gordon Gibson

A few weeks early for the Ides, the backstabbing began. Not the ‘disruption’ the left is accused of when debate breaks out; Labour’s post-Blair democracy leaves little room for that sort of thing. At Welsh Labour’s 500-strong ‘best attended, best ever’ conference, all resolutions were passed virtually unanimously, with the full support of the Welsh Executive. Change days indeed.

Opposition and manoeuvring these days is for the spinners. Appropriately in back rooms, huddles and corridors of the conference’s cricket ground venue in Cardiff, they were much in evidence last weekend.

Highlight speech was from Ed Miliband, setting out policies that ordinary people want to hear. And he tentatively apologised for the Blair years, calling for Labour to ‘win back the trust’ of voters. To do that, he voiced some hitherto unmentionables: “tax bankers’ bonuses; create 100,000 jobs for young people; too many jobs low wage, low skill; good jobs, good wages; irresponsible capitalism; reform the banks”. For government contracts, “every company must provide apprenticeships for the next generation”. Banking is to be teased apart with a new British Investment Bank to ‘properly serve business’. Here, he’s weakest, not least with ‘an employee on every remuneration committee so that top executives have to look an ordinary member of staff in the eye before they award themselves that pay rise”. As if they care.

Note: not a word about taxes.

And how did the media cover this? They spotted Ed Balls’ seemingly mischievous press release calling for a reduction in income tax. They picked up disgraced expenses fiddler, LibDem banker David Laws, currently being rehabilitated by his millionaire friends in government, joining the media tax fetish. And poor old John Prescott (‘poor old’ only in this context) gets flayed for his rather brave and poignant reference to his inability to hug his beloved sons. Ed Miliband? Labour fightback? What’s that?

Douglas Alexander, Shadow Foreign Secretary and Scot, was first up at conference, drawing lessons on Labour’s ‘historic defeat’ last May, when 1999’s “only true National Party of Scotland, found itself supported by only one in eight Scottish voters”. He appears to have learned little. Despite wondering that we may have got it right ‘Standing Up For Wales’, and holding on to power, Alexander spent much of his delivery berating the SNP and defending the Union. He rightly flags the SNP’s support for Tory votes in London; their claim that the Scots ‘didn’t mind’ Thatcher’s economic policies; their advocacy of corporation tax cuts for bankers; SNP capital investment cuts and public sector job losses greater that those of the Tories in Westminster. The problem is, Scottish voters associate these policies and many more with New Labour negativity. Because of that, Labour is facing devastation in Scotland.

So it fell to Carwyn to spell it out. Standing up for jobs, services, and the development of the Welsh economy is what wins votes, not carping about other parties, pandering to bankers, or overstating ‘the Union’. Of course he played to his audience with the obligatory lambasting of the other parties. Least appropriate was his line on ‘placard waving megaphone’ Plaid, an attack on the wing of Plaid that Labour should most identify with in the fight against the Tories. Of more political sharpness, exemplary in fact, was his positive approach, claiming Labour as the party of the language and of Wales – bringing in the first ever Welsh Language Commissioner, launching a new Welsh Language Strategy and placing the language at the centre of Welsh life and culture – ‘Llafur Cymru yw eich plaid’. Enacting policy is what Welsh (and Scottish) people want to see and feel in these hard times and Jones focused on jobs, employment and training for young people, services, the NHS, children, communities – ‘accessible, high quality, citizen-centred services for all’. ‘The forces of marketisation and privatisation of the NHS will stop at the border.’

Conference speeches get loaded with niceties and (often) false flattery. Peter Hain delivered the heaviest load. Praised as ‘friend’ by Ed, Douglas and Carwyn, Hain, as is the way with Oscar winners, saw fit to heap thanks on everyone under the sun, or under Welsh Labour’s red flag, naming, one by one, Union leaders, MPs, Assembly Members, councillors, party workers, his old auntie in Merthyr. (I lied about that last one.) One gets more than a trifle cynical. Peter Hain counts his political friends in Wales carefully. In recent years, the Labour machine in Wales, contrary to its much-lauded Hardie/ Bevan legacies, has set aside much of the radicalism it may have had. Hain names names to maintain support for his own project, interestingly revealed in his platform appearance at the Liam Byrne, Purple Book ‘Progress’ fringe meeting on Sunday.

There’s the danger. Having led Labour to election disaster in Westminster and Scotland, alienating the party from its core support in the process, the Blairites, still dominant in Westminster and the party apparatus, remain obsessed with the middle ground – a cover for deep conservatism. In Wales, and perhaps with Ed Miliband in London (the jury is still out but we spotted a difference!), there is a glimmer of hope, some ‘clear red water’, what Carwyn chooses to call ‘the dividing line, stopping at the border’. Supportive policies and campaigning will win voters; best if they are clearly against the Tories and their banker-feeding austerity offensive. But there are dark forces at work within Labour too. And the media loves them.

Co-ops star in Wrecsam

The 'Seven Stars' pub. 'Ordinary people doing extra-ordinary things'.

by Marc Jones

In the past year, local people in Wrecsam have made a huge effort to turn the tide against closures and decline.

Wrecsam has always been a proudly Welsh town despite being only 10 miles from the border. The Football Association of Wales was founded there and football, together with the town’s iconic brewing industry, have been central to the market town’s image. Wrexham Lager was the first lager brewery in the UK, having been founded by German immigrants in the 1880s.

Both have taken a battering in recent years with brewing multinationals closing down the Wrexham Lager brewery and a series of property developers trying to asset strip Wrexham Football Club out of existence.

Last year, the football club was finally bought by a cooperative formed by 2000 members of the Wrexham Supporters’ Trust. The club, among the oldest in Wales, has been safeguarded for the community and the team is currently pushing for promotion on a tide of goodwill and pride among supporters and the wider community.

Second, a local family enterprise has re-launched Wrexham Lager. That has created a huge buzz in the town and the lager is already on sale in 45 pubs across the area, despite the best efforts of the multinationals to hamper that expansion.

The re-opening of the former Seven Stars pub is a community effort to celebrate our town’s heritage, our Welshness and to symbolise the growth in the Welsh language locally. It’s a cooperative whose idea is far more ambitious than just reviving a pub.

The Seven Stars has been reborn as Saith Seren, the town’s new Welsh Centre. Initially, the cooperative – Canolfan Gymraeg Wrecsam – will operate the downstairs part of the building. The bar and kitchen are up and running and the pub’s tradition of live music is maintained. It was standing room only for Gwibdaith Hen Frân on Friday and Irish band The Wee Bag Band from Denbigh on Saturday.  Once Phase Two is open, this will be a real social centre.

The initial phase was achieved just six months after going public with a share offer, in which people were invited to become members of the cooperative. The money raised has enabled the cooperative to put in a brand new kitchen, decorate, buy stock and appoint six workers to run the centre seven days a week. Crucially, it allowed the coop to pay for a project manager with formidable experience in setting up co-ops. Amanda Brewer also had the contacts to get the best prices for a number of contracts and this, coupled with the expertise of centre manager Amanda Hughes, explains the lightning speed of opening the centre.

Re-opening a pub as a cooperative is something usually confined to villages abandoned by the market (specifically the rapacious pubcos that dominate the licensed trade). That’s been the case with the Raven in Llanarmon yn Iâl, Denbighshire, and the Pengwern in Llan Ffestiniog, Gwynedd, in recent years.

The re-opening of Saith Seren in Wrecsam town centre is a very different project. Phase two will see the upstairs renovated. The living accommodation will be adapted to community meeting rooms, offices for rent and classrooms for learners’ classes. The aim is to be a focus for Wrecsam’s growing army of Welsh learners and provide a hub for the many organisations involved in promoting Welsh language and culture.

It is, however, also a centre that is welcoming and open to all Wrecsam’s people, whatever language they speak. Many of the bands being put on will be Welsh-language acts but the stage is also being used by local bands and promoters.

Equally significantly, all these ventures have progressed with their own money, rather than relying on grants or government finance. All the money Saith Seren has raised is ours – all through the efforts of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

The left in Wales can learn a lot from this DIY people power. We know we can’t, and perhaps don’t want to, rely on state grants that are often conditional on compromising your original intentions. The current economic climate means there are lots of empty buildings going for a song that could be bought by local coops as social centres or other innovative uses.

Anyone wishing to invest in phase two of Saith Seren can go to www.saithseren.com or contact me on 7seren@gmail.com

Marc Jones is Chair of Canolfan Gymraeg Wrecsam and Plaid Cymru Councillor for the Whitegate Ward of Wrecsam

Wales and the Brussels Summit

by Nick Davies

As is widely acknowledged, criticisms of Cameron’s negotiating skills at the Brussels summit in December rather missed the point. His priorities were to protect the interests of the City of London and the unity of the Tory party. He knew exactly what he was doing.

Tim Mitchell Top-table Blues

Brazenly dishonest, of course, was his claim to be acting in the ‘national interest’, when the interests of most of England, let alone the other nations of the UK, were notably absent from his concerns.

For Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones, whatever Cameron’s priority, disengagement from the EU is not in the national interest of Wales: ‘I am seriously concerned about whether the interests of Wales can be advanced effectively by the UK government’.

In one sense, none of this is new. Wales has always been, at best, peripheral to the neo-liberal project. The last thirty years have put into sharp relief the divergence between the interests of the South East of England-based financial sector, and everything, and everywhere else.  The Tory party identification of itself with the ‘national interest’ is as old as the party itself and Euro-sceptic Tories from the south of England tend not to lose much sleep over the problems faced by Wales. By the same token, the EU has generally been more popular in Wales than in England, not least because of the strategic role played by European structural funding in compensating for the malign neglect of the Thatcher-Major years.

What has given this situation a new dynamic is the depth of the UK’s economic crisis, the total failure of Cameron and Osborne’s economic policies to alleviate it, the crisis in the Euro-zone and, last but not least, the continuing devolution process which sees an increasingly self-confident Welsh government refusing to be seen by the rest of Europe as merely a ‘region’ of the UK.

With some of the poorest communities in Western Europe and with over 26% of its working people employed in the public sector,Wales has already had to pay dearly and disproportionately for the greed of those 150 miles up the M4.  Wales has lost 13,000   public sector jobs  in the fifteen months since the coalition took office and the fear is that Wales’ manufacturing sector will lose out as a result of the UK’s semi-detachment from the EU, the destination of  about half of Wales’ exports. The collapse of the Euro zone into low, or no-growth austerity (and the consequent increase in the value of sterling as against the euro) will make a bad situation much worse, threatening the 54,000 private sector jobs with EU based companies in Wales.

The Welsh government’s response to the Cameron ‘veto’ has  been a declared intention to seek stronger ties with the EU and, for the first time, Welsh government ministers are  attending meetings of the EU’s General Affairs Council.

However, the EU in its present form is no safe haven for Wales. The ‘fiscal compact’ that Cameron refused  to sign up to, albeit for his own reasons, modifies the Lisbon treaty with a requirement that Euro-zone states’ budgets be balanced or in surplus and that this provision be incorporated into the various states’ legal systems. Thus deficit budgeting,  the  traditional Keynesian response to a recession, is virtually outlawed. Conversely, the austerity that is already taking  the Euro zone into a downward-spiral is set in stone, threatening jobs, public services and, if the bankers’ take-overs in Italy and Greece are any indication, democracy itself.

Since the 1970s many in the Welsh labour movement have abandoned the traditional hostility to the EU as a ‘bosses market’ and, notwithstanding its inherently free market nature, seen in ‘social Europe’, if not a more enlightened alternative to  the jungle of Anglo-Saxon capitalism, at least a place of safety from it. However bad the government might be in Westminster, European money would develop the economy of much of Wales, and the social chapter would act as a safeguard against super-exploitation.

After the Brussels summit that option seems no longer credible. More austerity is the last thing that Wales needs. However, a ‘left’ anti-EU stance, simply reverting to the ‘Get Britain Out’  position of the 1970s, risks getting caught in the slipstream of the  raucous, well-funded and totally reactionary Euro-scepticism of UKIP, the Tory right and the Daily Express, which sees the ‘repatriation’ of powers as a means of racking up the level of exploitation in the workplace.

Welsh Labour, instead of  simply seeking refuge in the EU must, along with other socialist, green and progressive nationalist movements across Europe, act as an agent of radical change and aim to transform the European Union so that it operates no longer for the benefit of the bankers, speculators and profiteers but is instead based on social justice, equality, democracy, international solidarity and the protection of our environment.

Nick Davies, writing personally, is Chair of Welsh Labour Grassroots and is a local council candidate for Labour in Swansea.

This article also appears in the February issue of Labour Briefing

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Clear red water over public sector pay cap

by Ed Jacobs

The Welsh first minister, Carwyn Jones has distanced himself from Ed Miliband’s public support for a pay cap in the public sector, concluding that it is unfair to expect public sector workers to face the pain of such cuts in the midst of an economic slump caused by the banks.

Miliband last week faced widespread union anger over his decision to endorse the government’s policy of a one per cent pay cap, a moment dubbed by the FT as the Labour leader’s “Clause IV” moment.

However, it is now apparent that it is not just the unions that are unhappy at the stance being taken on pay.

Speaking to journalists at the first in a regular series of monthly press conferences, Carwyn Jones was clear in his attempts to establish clear red water between him and London, concluding:

“I think it’s absolutely crucial that people see that those who are paid the most in financial services, those who the public believe were responsible for our current economic difficulties, pay their fair share as well.

“I don’t believe that this is being done and as a result I think it’s very difficult to say to those who work in the public sector, who didn’t cause the economic difficulties, that we have to bear the brunt of pay cuts when it isn’t happening in those sectors which are more appropriate.”

Meanwhile, as Alex Salmond is today expected to argue in the annual Hugo Young Lecture in London that England would benefit from Scotland gaining independence, his Welsh counterpart went on during his press conference to call for a much bigger, less Scotland centred debate about the future of the Union.

Against a backdrop of yesterday’s IPPR  report pointing to an English “backlash” against the devolved nations and the establishment last week of the UK government’s commission on the West Lothian question, Jones argued:

“It’s attractive to say ‘English votes for English laws’, but where does it leave us, for example, in terms of the EU where at the moment an English agriculture minister casts a vote on behalf of the whole UK on agricultural policy?

“So there are wider questions that need to be considered and that is the way in which the UK government wishes to go.

“It’s not in the UK’s interests to see the debate on devolution taking place mainly in the context of Scotland but also in quite in an incoherent way, in a way that’s not particularly joined up. I think there needs to be a more consistent approach for the good of the UK.”

Pressed about whether he was advocating a federal UK, Jones continued:

“The UK is quasi-federal now, and if the West Lothian commission decides on ‘English votes for English laws’ then that’s where we will be, in a situation of federalism.

“Now what we need to is to look at how we can make the UK into an entity where there is stability, of course, but also to make sure in a post-devolution world the UK functions as a state where responsibilities of different governments are clearer.”

This article first appeared on the blog Left Foot Forward and is reproduced with permission.

Leanne Wood – an independent leadership

It was standing room only at the Pick and Shovel Club in Ammanford for the formal launch of Leanne Wood’s campaign for the leadership of Plaid Cymru. The former miners’ club provided a solid Welsh working class reference point for Wood’s own political background, and she recalled formative impressions, made 20 years before, in the same club, at a commemoration of  International Brigade members and the fight against Franco’s fascists.

The venue was also appropriate as Plaid Cymru has been actively rejuvenating community pubs and clubs, formerly the province of Labour and the unions, all round Wales.

So the launch message, in this first week of the year, was of education, self-advancement, community and culture – a politically literate people, building from the grassroots to reground the Welsh values of ‘collectivism’ and ‘communityism’.

That history, and these values encourage her to take on the challenges of life in Wales today – people without food and heating, more and more without safe and secure homes, while the 1% live on in luxury.

On these foundations she brought in the ‘I’ word: independence. Both she and her first sponsor, MP Jonathan Edwards of Carmarthen, leaned heavily on the SNP’s electoral successes in Scotland, where Labour has provided a much easier Blairite target for populist policies. The SNP has stood to the left of Scottish Labour on many issues and has been rewarded by the electorate.

In Wales, Plaid is self-critical for its dalliance in coalition with a Labour Party that, under Rhodri Morgan, retained a modicum of ‘clear red water’ against Westminster and just held on to Assembly power, despite the British electoral disaster. Plaid was seriously damaged, losing both seats and leading campaigners.

Wood avoided the rightist anti-Labour rhetoric that currently dominates Plaid’s media work – and also satisfies Plaid’s Labour-alienated left. In the week when Labour’s Liam Byrne launched his ‘Welfare Reform’, barely distinguishable from the Tories; when Twigg set about education in a similar vein, and when Dianne Abbott’s loose but innocuous tweet was met by Labour with cringing apologies instead of forthright anti-racist defence, Leanne could have made more of the opportunity to put Plaid firmly at the forefront of the growing numbers that want to see politicians stand up to all this Tory tosh, lead the fight for jobs and against the cuts. She has already prepared the ground with her vigorous campaigning and her ‘Greenprint for the Valleys’, a serious attempt to move towards a ‘green economy’ in Wales.

If independence is the answer, then that is how it will be built. Nationalism won’t win; policies for Wales will. That is why the Welsh powers’ referendum was such a success and why Plaid’s turn away from these co-operative successes with the better side of Labour, and towards nationalism, has reaped a poor harvest. Despite their legitimate enthusiasm for the SNP, Plaid has missed the fact that in Scotland, the SNP’s success has been built on left-populism (too frightening for Scottish Labour) and putting ‘independence’ on the back burner.

There is a great debate to have about the nature of independence, beyond devolution, but one thing is for sure. People in Scotland and Wales have made clear to their parties that last thing they want is Tories. Politicians that start to come to terms with the substance of that, will be the ones that deserve to lead our political parties, and Leanne Wood is well versed on that ground.

Gordon Gibson

Nominations for Plaid Cymru leadership are now open and voting will take place in March. There are three others standing: another woman, Elin Jones AM, (Lord) Dafydd Elis Thomas AM, and Simon Thomas AM.

Voting left for Labour’s Welsh Executive

For those so inclined, Celyn supports Welsh Labour Grassroots’ call for votes in the Welsh Labour Election….

“Ballot-papers for the election to Labour’s Welsh Executive Committee (WEC) – the party’s ruling body in Wales – are out, after a delay of several weeks. There are ten seats representing Welsh CLPs on the WEC, two for each of the five Assembly regions, of which at least one in each region must be a woman. The term of office is two years and the deadline for voting is 27th January.

It is clearly important that the left and centre-left should secure as many of these seats as possible.

The following Welsh Labour Grassroots members are standing in the election:

• North Wales: Donna Hutton
• South Wales Central: Annabelle Harle & Darren Williams
• South Wales East: Mark Whitcutt
• South Wales West: Nick Davies & Fran Griffiths.

Donna, Annabelle & Fran are incumbents.

We would also recommend a vote for Christine Gwyther & Marc Tierney in Mid & West Wales and for Debbie Wilcox in South Wales East.”

Spike! – Welsh Labour Grassroots supports Occupy Cardiff

The Occupy Cardiff campaign receives support from Welsh left socialists’ steering committee.

Welsh Labour Grassroots (WLG), the network of left and centre-left activists in the Welsh Labour party, pledges our full support to ‘Occupy Cardiff’. The international ‘Occupy’ movement has been a huge inspiration to millions around the world seeking equality, social justice and democratic control over the economy. It has struck a chord with the ‘99%’ who are excluded from real power and has forced the global elite onto the defensive.

We therefore welcome the initiative to establish ‘Occupy Cardiff’ and deplore the eviction by the police, with wholly unnecessary force, of the initial encampment from the grounds of Cardiff Castle. We support your decision to reassemble at Transport House – the organisational hub of the labour movement in Wales – and we commend you for the links you have made between the occupations and industrial struggles and for your solidarity with trade unions taking strike action on 30th November.

Like you, we believe that direct action and industrial action are both important elements – alongside other campaigning methods – of the struggle for an alternative to the present unjust and irrational world order. Your efforts help to make the case for such an alternative and demonstrate that ordinary people can challenge the irresponsible and unaccountable ‘1%’.

We offer you our solidarity and pledge to raise awareness of, and support for, your actions through our activities in the Labour party, the trade unions and other areas of political activity.

Spike! – Occupy Cardiff, eye-witness

… One member of the public who was passing by struck up a conversation with me, saying how great it was that this is happening here now, and that he supports it 100%. Cars were honking their horns as they went past as well, which was good to hear, but the police presence was steadily growing in numbers which was a little irritating. They were getting more involved than was necessary for the situation.

It seemed very odd because a similar protest camp had been set up on the same grounds earlier this year without any initial police interest whatsoever. All the other Occupy camps across the UK have been relatively free from police interference, yet we even had police horses on the ground and the FIT filming us.

Read the full account at Occupy Cardiff: What happened.