Issue 223 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published October 1998 Copyright © Socialist Review
Richard Morse argues (Letters,
September SR) that, 'The change
in the fortunes of Plaid Cymru
from a small pressure group to a
major political force in some areas
of Wales can be linked clearly to
the activity of Cymdeithas yr laith
Gymraeg (the Welsh Language
Society) since it was formed in
1962.'
Richard's analysis totally
misunderstands why Plaid has
grown during certain periods and
why it is growing at the moment.
Certainly Plaid is based around a
core of people for whom Welsh self
government and the defence of the
Welsh language are absolutely
central issues. But Plaid has
pushed out from this narrow base
only when it has been able to pose
as a left wing alternative to a right
wing Labour government. It has
grown (and is growing now) by
talking the language of reform and
social democracy while Labour
cuddles up to the bosses.
There were important nationalist
issues which boosted
Plaid in the late 1950s and 1960s,
such as the drowning of the village of Tryweryn
to build a reservoir. But these
brought Plaid hardly any electoral
gains.
Gwynfor Evans's victory for
Plaid at the Carmarthen byelection
in 1966 was fuelled largely by pit
closures in the Gwendraeth and
Amman valleys in the east of the
constituency, the closure of rural
schools and other Labour economic
policies. In a by-election in
Rhondda West the next year the
swing of over 30 percent from
Labour to Plaid had almost nothing
to do with self government or the
language.
At Caerphilly in 1968 the swing
of 40 percent to Plaid followed a
campaign which centred almost
wholly on economic grievances,
unemployment and the closure of a
major pit at Bargoed. Plaid had
'cracked' the industrial areas, it
seemed--but it could not sustain
the challenge to Labour once a
Tory government returned. This
pattern was repeated in the 1970s
and is recurring again.
Richard cannot explain why the
Scottish National Party grew at the
same time as Plaid. Even the most
confident Cymdeithas member
could hardly claim that they had
stirred emotions in Hamilton or
Cumbernauld. Plaid's recent
success is not a sign of hard
nationalism, it is a sign of the
disillusion with Labour which
socialists should try to give a
focus.
Two other brief points. Firstly,
Plaid was actually very
suspicious of Cymdeithas and for
a long period tried to distance
itself entirely from it.
Secondly, we should not be quite
so starry eyed about Cymdeithas
as Richard is. As someone who
worked alongside Cymdeithas
members during the 1970s I
recognise the militancy,
determination and defiance which
its campaigns involved.
However the politics were
always very mixed. Most of us
who occupied post office buildings
and demanded leaflets in Welsh
called ourselves socialists. But
Cymdeithas's president was
Saunders Lewis, a Nazi
sympathiser in the 1930s and a
right winger to the end.
Charlie Kimber
Hackney
Last month one senior Labour
councillor left and joined Plaid
Cymru and in a by-election another
Labour councillor lost a seat to
Plaid. Where did this happen? In
South Wales, home of the first
Labour MP and an area where
Welsh is rarely the first language.
Since the general election in May
1997 there have been eight council
elections in Wales. Labour has lost
them all--six of them to Plaid, none
in Welsh speaking areas.
The reported response in
Blackwood gives a good indication
of the reasons for this vote.
'Perhaps it is time that we in Wales
consider what is best for ordinary
people in Wales and not worry
about Middle England, 'the
defecting councillor said. 'It's like
having the Tories back in power,'
said one voter.
Plaid can point to Labour's
failures and say that we need a
Welsh party to represent the
Welsh workers. Soft Welsh
nationalism meets bitterness with
New Labour and Plaid's vote
soars.
All of this points to a mistake in
the letter by Richard Morse
(September SR). It is nationalism
which is the driving force in Plaid
and this leads people to focus on
the language--it's not the language
that leads people to nationalism.
One of the ways to 'prove' your
Welshness in the south is to learn
Welsh. What unites the Welsh
speaking businessmen in the north
with young left wingers in the south
is again their nationalism first--one
looking for a way to protect their
business, the other for a way to
improve society. Plaid offers a
nationalist answer to the world
recession--to abandon inward
investment and instead build up
Welsh capital. Again this can
appeal to both the left and the
right.
This isn't to deny that the
Welsh language plays a role. but
it alone can't explain the ebbs
and flows of support for Plaid.
Pete Jackson
Cardiff
Once upon a time, the Labour
politician George Brown rolled
beerily into Caernarfon to support
their candidate. 'Never mind the
bloody language,' cried he, 'what
about the price of beef?' People,
perceiving that he and his party
were a bunch of philistine cruds,
voted Plaid Cymru in. Richard
Morse (September SR) is getting
dangerously near to sinking into
the same old bog. Tories and
social democrats can afford
sometimes to be philistine cruds---
socialists can't.
'Nationalism' is a useless term.
it can stand for insane notions
about race, religion, institutions,
language--or anything you like. You
can use the same label for Hitler
and Connolly, for support for
Thatcher's Falklands War and for
Basques fighting Franco.
'Nationalist' politics can range from
fascist to centrist. The specific is
everything here.
'It would take more than a letter
to analyse why members of
Cymdeithas [the Welsh Language
Society] have been so willing to
sacrifice personal freedom and
often careers for the cause of the
language' writes Richard. Let's
have a go anyway.
There have been several
independent Welsh states,
culminating in that established by
the national rising of 1400-15. One
by one they were smashed by
colonialist armies. There was a
Welsh legal system, a 'folk law
rather than state law... its
emphasis... upon ensuring
reconciliation between kinship
groups rather than keeping order
through punishment.' (John
Davies, A History of Wales). That
was abolished by the Act of Union
of 1536, and I can't see this is
any great reason for socialists to
dance in the streets.
After 1536 the Welsh boss class--and
anyone who wanted to 'get on'--adopted
the English language and
culture, leaving Welsh culture (and
especially literature) to small
farmers, the petty bourgeoisie and
industrial workers such as those
who rose in arms at
Merthyr in 1831. That culture
feels to be 'ours' in a way that
English culture can't feel to
belong to English workers. Young
Welsh speaking people care about
it. Do you blame them?
What's more, people don't like
being bullied for being themselves,
don't like being prevented from
speaking their own language in their
own country, don't like having the
houses they have lived in being
bought up by rich foreigners and
don't care much for being
patronised and marginalised, even
by Cwmbran socialists. I can't
understand how a language spoken
by half a million people (and that
number is rising) can be said to be
'more or less alive', but I can hear
the lip smacking quislingism
inherent in the phrase, and I don't
like it.
Hitler's 'nationalism' was based
on sick science and aimed at
destroying the organisations of the
working class--its relation to lived
reality was just a big lie. It had to
be stopped, and we stopped it.
Welsh 'nationalism', however, is
about something real in everyday
experience--the right to use your
own language and the right to
preserve it. What politicians make
of that is another matter, but so
far, the Plaid Cymru MPs seem to
be well meaning petty bourgeois
who would, born elsewhere, be in
the Labour Party, the Greens or
even the SWP, and in my
experience Plaid Cymru and the
SWP attract a very similar
membership. There's a bourgeoisie
in Wales, of course, but no way is
it 'nationai', and it doesn't support
Plaid Cymru either: the Tories-and
Blair--suit it very well. The greatest
danger Welsh nationalism poses, in
my opinion, is that some potential
SWP members might join Plaid
Cymru first. Well, there's a
shocking thing, now, isn't it?
Tony Rees
Matlock
Bernard McBreen (September SR)
claims that Tony Cliff`s theory on
the nature of the Soviet state
should be revised so that Russia
should be defined as state
capitalist already in 1918 since the
working class then did not fully
have power.
I would argue that this is a
wrong conclusion resulting from a
too mechanical way of thinking.
We have to be clear on two things:
Firstly, what is a capitalist state
and secondly, what is a workers'
state?
Bernard correctly defined the
second by claiming that 'A
workers' state is one in which the
working class is the ruling class.
'A capitalist state, on the other
hand, is a state in which a group
of people, the ruling class, as a
result of specific historical
circumstances, has acquired a
position in society which allows it
to control wealth and therefore
exploit the majority of society.
Now look at Russia in 1918-19.
Bernard is correct that it isn't
completely a workers' state, but
does Russia fit the definition of a
capitalist society? No it doesn't. In
1918 there was no group which
completely controlled the means of
production and distribution. It is
true that the workers' councils no
longer had control over the
economy, but it is wrong to claim
that Lenin and the Bolsheviks
alone fully controlled all wealth in
Russia.
Between 1918 and up to the first
Five Year Plan both trade unions
and what was left of the workers'
councils were important parts of
the state and power was balanced
between the state bureaucracy and
these working class organs.
The more isolated Russia
became, the more the decision
making fell in favour of the
bureaucracy. Finally, in 1928, the
workers' power was completely
destroyed, the role of the unions
annihilated and any critique of the
party from inside or outside
completely banned.
From that moment on, a
small bureaucratic group decided
everything about production,
distribution and consumption.
This marks the transition of the
bureaucracy into a ruling class.
Russia in the period of
transition from one to the other
should be characterised as a
'degenerated workers' state' or,
as Lenin wrote in 1921 'a workers'
state with bureaucratic distortions'.
Robin Ringer
Poland
Lindsey German's review
(September SR) of Anna Clark's
attempt to 'add' gender to the
history of the making of the
English working class is correct to
underline that the book has a lot of
poor history in it. We all have
theories about why things happen
as they do, but for historians if
these do not accord with a careful
study of the evidence then the
theory needs to be rethought, not
just asserted as fact.
In fact Clark's core thesis, that
men of all classes entered into a
sort of conspiracy after 1848 to
force women back into the home,
is part of a wider theory about what
happened to radical politics in the
1850s and 1860s.
Postmodernist historians like
James Vernon have suggested
that there was a closure of working
class politics after the demise of
Chartism and a retreat into smoke
filled rooms, entry to which was
restricted to skilled male labour
aristocrats.
Of course it was true that there
was a working class defeat in 1848
and retreat after that. But if
history is seen as a process then
we need to look not just at what
forms are disappearing, but at
what new ones are developing.
The 1860s saw the birth of the
First International and the TUC and,
in May 1867, a huge and illegal
demonstration in Hyde Park which
won the Second Reform Act (to
extend the electoral franchise).
Modern socialists might well have a
lot to say about the sexual politics
of many of the demonstrators of
May 1867, but this was the labour
movement that within 20 years
would find itself headed not just by
Tom Mann, but by Eleanor Marx
and Annie Besant as well.
Keith Flett
Tottenham
Huw Pudner (September SR) is
absolutely correct when he states
that Dylan Thomas was 'one of
this century's finest lyrical
poets', but he was also much
more. Dylan Thomas was born in
Swansea in 1914. His first
published poem, 'And Death Shall
have no Dominion', which was
originally for a school magazine,
is full of images of the First
World War.
His most political poems were
written during the height of the
London Blitz. 'Ceremony After a
Fire Raid', 'Holy Spring' and
'Among those killed in the Dawn
Raid was a Man Aged a Hundred'
powerfully spell out the horrors of
the war, without ever being anti-
German.
During the 1930s Dylan
considered joining the Communist
Party, but he was repelled by the
party's 'embrace of the middle
class' during the Popular Front
period. In 1951, two years before
his death, Dylan said, 'I am a
socialist, though I know of no
socialist party which I can join'. At
the time of his death he was
working on a verse drama, 'In
Country Heaven', about an atomic
war.
Postmodernist critics would
have us study an artist's work
without any concern for the
political beliefs of the writer, or
the effect of the outside world on
their work. To do this with a poet
like Dylan Thomas not only robs
the work of its meaning, but also
its passion.
There are a number of editions
of Dylan's 'selected' or 'collected'
poems, but all the erudite notes
that have been bolted on to them
by editors show not only a poverty
of scholarship but also a deep
antipathy towards a young man
who saw the world heading into an
abyss of darkness but who would'
not go gently into that good night'.
We must all, rage against the dying
of the light'.
Phil Knight
Neath
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