Welsh nationalism and the miners' strike The following interview was given to Gerry Foley in London on December 10 by Dafydd Ellis Thomas, Plaid Cyrmu [Welsh nationalist] MP for the constituency based on the old west Wales county of Meirionydd. This is a mainly Welsh speaking and farming area. At present, Plaid Cymru holds two of the 36 Welsh seats in the British parliament.
At its highpoint in the 1980s, Plaid Cymru had three MPs. It suffered a relative decline, following the rejection of devolution in Wales in a referendum in 1979. Although the British Labour government in power at the time proposed devolution, Labour in Wales in reality opposed it. Basically only Plaid Cymru campaigned for it, and the "yes" vote was around the level of the nationalist vote, about 10%.
Since the initial "p" of "Plaid" becomes a "b" in Welsh after the apaid, then there is no arablehed usage to speak of "the Blaid," and strong connection historically between the slate miners and the coal miners.
Q. What is the role of the Wales Congress in the solidarity movement?
A. What we've been doing is setting up new support groups and providing a sort of federative action in support of the groups. In particular, we've been putting the argument about energy policy. That's very important because that is not being done in the media and so there is a danger of all the debate about the strike centering on the issue of direct action, the use of force and counterforce.
All the solidarity committees in Wales are connected in a loose way to the congress. It's very important as the dispute continues to have funding coming in on a regular basis, to have the arguments being put forward on a regular basis. The steering committee of the Wales Congress meets every week.
Q. Do you think a different strategy in the strike and in strike support work is needed in Wales, as against other parts of the British state?
A. There are some specific features in Wales. One is the greater extent of the solidarity. Another is the level of political awareness that has existed historically in south Wales. There is also certainly the awareness of the national question as part of the struggle. But fundamentally, I would not say that a different strategy is needed. Because of the low investment in the south Wales mines, we are very much dependent on the solidarity of other coal fields in the fight to reverse the government's policy.
Q. What about the aspect of farmers' support for the miners? That's specific to Wales, isn't it?
A. I think so. That developed because of the effects of the milk quotas. (1) These are seen as another attack on living standards by the Thatcher government. And we have some radical farmers who have been used to taking direct action themselves, since 1974. There is a history of direct action by the farmers that may make them more sympathetic to the case of the NUM. There is also a link in this country between the farmers and the mining communities. [In particular in the southeast of Wales, many farmers have worked in the mines or have members of their families who are miners.] There are two farmers on the steering committee of the Wales Congress, Bini Jones from north Wales, and John Howels, chairman of the Dyfod southeast Wales Farmers Action Group. 1. British dairy farmers have to sell to the Milk Board. The amounts they were allowed to sell was reduced in accordance with a an EEC decision. So, while they had milk above quotas, they delivered it free to striking miners. About 67% of farmers in Dyfod are dairy farmers.
International Viewpoint 14 January 1985
Question. Why is the British miners' strike so important for Plaid Cymru? What does it have to do with the goal of an independent Welsh Wales?
Answer. It's important first of all because of the number of people it involves in Wales. If you add up the twenty thousand miners and their families and the ancillary jobs in the industry, it's at least 100,000 people. [The total population of Wales is about 2.5 million].
Moreover, the communities involved are the key communities of the industrial valleys, including areas where we have made some political progress, both in the by-elections in the 1960s and in the local elections. For three years in the late 1970s we controlled the Merthyr Valley and Rhymny Valley district councils.
I think that what the strike represents is a working-class Welsh struggle, resistance to a war waged on Wales by the British government, a war in which it is using the nationalized industries as a means of reducing public spending and of destroying a democratic trade union. The response to that from Wales has been particularly strong. South Wales has been one of the most solid areas in the strike.
We in Plaid Cymru have seen this struggle as an opportunity for us to operate as a national movement, developing more effective and closer links with organized labor. Of course, this is no new struggle for us. We've always fought pit closures. But a major strike such as this gives us the chance to relate directly to the union, to the lodges and to the support groups.
Q. How precisely does this relate to winning Welsh independence?
A. It does because it's independent working-class action that's community based. Therefore, it's a process of asserting independence based on defense of 8 communities. That is what gives the content to any national struggle. There is a fight going on between the right-wing British government and an important part of Wales. In that sense, this conflict involves a very specific form of the national struggle.
Q. Has Plaid been able to mobilize support for the strike in both historic sections of Wales, the largely rural, Welshspeaking north and west, as well as the industrialized English-speaking south and east? A. Yes. In the valleys we are invol ved in support groups, and we have organized them in other communities. The form of political activity that has resulted from the dispute has been a nonsectarian one that has involved Plaid, the Labour Party, the Communist Party, the churches, the Farmers Action Groups and so on.
Thus you have the Wales Congress in support of the miners that was set up in September. We have on its steering committee representatives of all the progressive democratic forces active in the life of Wales. In terms of our own personnel, our national field organizer, Gerald Howells, has spent most of his time on this issue.
Q. What about the north and west specifically?
A. Plaid members in those areas are involved in fund raising and other solidarity work. For example, today I was talking to the constituency organizer who does half-time work for me, and he's just been on another trip this week to the anthracite coal field with a van load of stuff. I would remind you also that there are also mining communities in north and west Wales, although they are built around slate mines. Some of these slate quarries have been closed. Some are still working. And there has always been a
Tri Aelod Seneddol
Plaid Cymru, 1974.
Plaid
Elymru
Q. What sort of program does Plaid have for the unions and where does the miners' strike fit into that?
A. Our program has two aspects. The first part of it is to support unions as democratic organizations of the Welsh working class. We've seen such a strong attack on trade-union rights in all sorts of ways by the government that it's necessary for us to join in the broader political support for trade unions as organizations within a pluralist democracy. The second aspect is to reintroduce political analysis into the unions.
Q. How do you propose to reintroduce politics?
A. We're doing that, in that we are involved in the unions and the local trades councils in taking initiatives. There are also a number of union members, particularly in the public service unions, who are active members of Plaid. You will very often find an alliance between left Labour people, Eurocommunists and Plaid people in broad democratic alliances.
Q. Do you favor separate Welsh organizations for the unions?
A. Most of the unions do have a Wales section or a regional section that is affiliated to the Welsh Trades Union Congress. I think that is the way forward. I don't believe in separatist unions. I favor increasing the autonomy of Welsh sections of the present trade unions, International Viewpoint 14 January 1985
Three Plaid Cymru MPs in 1974 (DR) while maintaining the links across the border and not just in Britain but also broadening international links, because multinational capital makes necessary solidarity among workers beyond the boundaries of the nation states.
Q. In Ireland, the development of a separate TUC was a watershed in the growth of the movement for indepen dence. I don't get the impression that the Wales TUC plays anything like that role.
A. No. It doesn't. That is because of the way it was established and the context it is operating in. What has happened is that the Wales TUC tends to be an agency of social control rather than one for substantial change. But there again, I think that may alter to the extent that the strike and other issues radicalize people and get them to make a more autonomous outlook in the unions.
Q. Do you see a danger of Plaid becoming subordinated to a British union through its work in this strike?
A. The NUM is not an all-British union. It is a federation of area organizations. That is part of its tradition. It's why the NUM was one of the founding unions of the Wales TUC. It's why the NUM has always supported notions of Welsh autonomy, the demand for a Welsh assembly.
The NUM has been involved actively in the Labour Party in promoting policies of devolution. It is fundamentally the south Wales NUM we work with. But obviously we also support the initiatives of the NUM throughout Britain, because we think that this is important as a tactic to defeat the British state. To this end, it is important to be involved in an allBritish dispute at this stage.
Q. Historically, the Blaid has been for full national independence for Wales, although for most of the history of the party this was formulated as "Commonwealth status. " Do you still see this as a realizable goal?
A. The Blaid program was changed at the 1981 conference. We adopted the objective of a democratic socialist state, emphasizing decentralized socialism. I think that this idea of decentralization has been key to the whole tradition of socialism in Wales from Robert Owen on. It is at the core of the syndicalist tradition in the south Wales valleys.
The adoption of the objective of a democratic socialist state to supercede the formula of "self-government" was a very important step because it committed us to two things: It committed us to a socialist position; it also committed us to a definition of the state and the kind of state we want to establish. In this way, the demand for self-government ceased being a utopian affirmation and became a specific political program. And that has changed the way the Blaid is seen in Welsh politics.
What I mean by independence is a process of achieving independence from the present structures of the British state and mresent atmictures of tha Ruitich stato and of multinational capital as it dominates the life of Wales. It means building up a commitment to independence and to the practice of independence among working-class people themselves in their communities.
That's why I regard the strike as a very important process in building up this notion of independence. For us, the idea of independence is not some sort of thirdworld neocolonial secession from the mother country. To pursue the Freudian metaphor, we're not talking about loosening the ties with the mother country; we're talking about killing the father, that is, the British state, because it after all includes Wales as an integral part of it.
Thus, the campaign to transform the relations within the British state, between the constituent nations and classes, is a campaign that is much more far reaching than gaining independence from direct imperialist control. I would say that independece for Wales requires independence for England. It requires regionalism in England. It requires self-government in Scotland. It requires British withdrawal from the north of Ireland. The sort of changes that we are working for in Wales imply very important changes in the nature of the British state itself.
Therefore, we need allies in other parts of the state itself. This in fact is nothing new, the leader of our great rebellion in the fifteenth century, Owain Glyndwr, had alliances in England.
Q. There seem to be two aspects to that. One is how you can achieve the sort of independent Wales you want, through a combination of national and social struggles. But the other is what relation would it have to any other government in these islands. Do you still seek sovereignty for Wales?
A. We don't know. We don't use the term independence or sovereignty in our program. I think that the idea of sovereignty is a complicating one. National sovereignty is so cireumscribed anyway, by treaties, by membership of the EC, the role of international capital, and indeed by the military occupation of Britain by the United States army. What is sovereignty in this context?
Q. Does that mean that you still want a Welsh government for all of Wales?
A. Oh yes, very much so.
Q. A Welsh parliament?
A. Yes. But I'm not sure we would use the Anglo-French expression "parliament." It would be a representative assembly that would democratize the existing state in Wales, the Welsh Office, and all that. But it would also be responsible for overall planning and for international links. But it would be established not through some process of secession from England but through a process that would transform the internal politics of Wales itself through community action, through independent socialist initiative within the community. And it would be linked to changes in Scotland, changes in Ireland, and in England itself.
Q. But in practice it might all come together, and then again it might not, isn't that true?
A. Of course. But I think that the objective conditions for killing the British state are going to open up between now and the year 2000. The drift to the right will continue. The forces of the left are going to see that the only alternative is autonomous action based on regions and communities and nationalities rather than another Fabian taking of parliamentary power, which is still the Labour program and still the Kinnock program.
Q What alliances specifically do you have in mind?
For example, in the discussions I've had with Ken Livingstone and the Greater London Council (GLC), I know that he recognizes that he can't be in favor of the withdrawal of the British state from the north of Ireland and not be in favor of self-determination for the Welsh people. And this is a position that is increasingly being taken on the left. The Labour Party in Wales with its grip on power is different. But I think that the Labour Party and other forces in Britain recognize that the national movement in Wales is a legitimate and necessary part of the struggle against the growth of the right in Britain. OL 10
Q. In the past, the Labour left has been anything but sympathetic to the demands for self-government for the smaller historic nations of the British Isles. Do you find today that the Livingstone and Benn forces in the Labour Party no longer consider Welsh nationalism as divisive, an obstacle to a united working-class struggle, a diversion?
A. Yes, although that's less true of Benn. There are two reasons for the change. First of all, Plaid is quite clearly not putting forward a nationalist ideology but rather a socialist program, which is a position that combines class analysis and the national question. Moreover, many of the intellectual opponents of devolution - and there were not many of them - such as Eric Heffer, who opposed devolution in the name of a united British working class, now recognize that they were wrong.
They now recognize that there is an argument for autonomous democratic action arising from a national base. That to me is very exciting because it meeans that it will be very difficult for any emerging Labour Party, when all these shits are deselected (4), not to recognize the validity of what we're saying. Whatever may be said out of Transport House-Cardiff by the Welsh Labor Party, which is continuing its Fabian subservience to centralism, the center itself will have changed its view.
Q. Of course, the bottom line to all this is that the Labour Party runs candidates in Wales and you do too, and therefore you run against each other. Won't they say, "All right, if you're left too, why don't you get into the Labour Party along with all the rest of the left?" How can you justify your separate existence?
A. First, there is the nature of the Welsh Labour Party. It has been a conservative force in Welsh life, and it rejects the Welsh road to socialism that I have been talking about.
Moreover, in a speech I made recently, I did say that the Labour Party should consider its position about certain seats. We made it quite clear that in the case of constituencies where we come in second or third after the Tories, it should consider its position. They have not yet indicated their willingness to negotiate. But if they did, obviously we would follow suit. We've done this before. We stood down for Labour in 1951 in Meirionydd in the interests of collaborating with forces in the Labour Party in the campaign that was going on at the time for a Welsh parliament.
Now, I think that it's important to get some cooperation to break the existing Tory presence in Wales. This would be an opportunity for them, if they wanted to cooperate. But they don't.
Q. But what if the character of the Labour Party in Wales changed, what if the left gained control? Would you then have to consider your position about remaining a separate party?
A. Yes. If the Welsh Labour Party were to transform itself into an autonomous socialist party, then, of course, we would all be part of that one big movement. But that is a long way from where we are.
Q. What do you think about Solidarnosc as a movement that combines the struggle for national and social liberation?
A. We have not had any links with Solidarnosc. Over the years, perhaps, we have not had enough direct contact with the movements of nationalities and groups within Eastern Europe, and we need to develop this. Notions of self-determination, control at the plant level, and so on are something that we regard as inherent to any socialist transformation, whether this involves overcoming the blockage in "actually existing socialism" in Eastern Europe, or whether it's the transformation from state capitalism in Western Europe.
Q. That leaves the question, however, since you are for both socialism and national liberation, of how you explain the fact that in the so-called socialist states of Eastern Europe national oppression still exists, as evidenced by the rise of Solidarnosc, and how you expect this to be overcome.
A. Well, this problem has to do with the nature of the bloc system. It also involves the articulation of the national question, the gender question, minority linguistic questions within Marxism. What you see in Eastern Europe is the expression of an ideological problem within Marxism, the downplaying of national and minority differentiation within state systems. Of course, it also reflects the particular form the state has taken in "actually existing socialism."
We are for a state form that goes beyond Labourism or Fabianism, state capitalism, and the bureaucratic models of most of the socialist countries. At the same time, we do not want to leave the way open for market socialism, which would expose us to multinational capitalism ravaging the economy even more. We will be trying to work a system of economic management that will answer the problems of the nationalities incorporated in Western Europe. That may be applicable to the problems of the nationalities in Eastern Europe. But that depends to a large extent on breaking down the bloc system.
Q. From what you say, it seems that you think that there is room for argument with other forces that identify with socialism on the national question. Have you been engaging in such arguments?
A. Oh yes, always. Because of our own political experience, this is something that we have to contribute to an 2. The left at the last Labour Party conference won the right for constituency committees to "deselect" MPs whose performance in parliament they do not like.
International Viewpoint 14 January 1985
understanding of the relationship between the nationality or minority cultures and the form of the state that socialism requires.
Q. Have you discussed the Miskito question with the Sandinistas, for example?
A. I've discussed this with the Nicaraguan ambassador here, and emissaries of ours have been to Nicaragua. understand the problem from the point of view of the Nicaraguan liberation forces. We also understand how the contras have made use of separatism. Some of our people who have been to Nicaragua have realized that mistakes were made there on the minority issue. This is not unusual in the history of rapid social changes, where the vanguard party of the larger nationality within a state has taken shorteuts in making cultural changes among minorities. But I certainly would not be critical of the overall program of the Nicaraguan government. And I know they recognize that there were problems and that their program for the minorities has deeply changed.
Q. How do you see the continuity between the left in Plaid today and the historic party?
A. I think there is a continuity in the commitment to community socialism. A lot of the early people in the Blaid came from the Independent Labour Party, people like my own father. And their background was the cooperative socialism of D. J. Davis. The National Left has carried the previous attempts of the Blaid to come up with a program of economic democracy to a more sophisticated level.
There was, of course, a break from the historic ideology of liberal nationalism in the decision of the 1981 conference. That was a change. But it reconnected with a left that had always existed in the party. And in a broader sense, it was the national movement reconnecting with the Labour and trade-union movement in Wales. The reality was that you had a Labour Party that was de facto the national party of Wales but it did not do anything about the national question. You had Plaid, a national party, but its social commitment was not identifiably socialist. Now all that's changed. We have a national movement that connects with labour, the trade-union movement, the women's movement, the peace movement. Unilateral disarmament, for instance, has always been part of the program of the party.
Q. Of course, as the Labour Party moved rightward, it abandoned both its social radicalism and its original commitment to self-government for Wales, although at a different rhythm.
A. Well, both things were dropped.
I think for similar reasons. Given the
Fabian commitment to holding power within the status quo, Wales was needed to deliver dumb Labour MPs to prop up the whole in London. Labour ala nou the whole in London. Labour did noth-
International Viewpoint 14 January 1985 ing to change the conditions of working people in south Wales. It used its base there to deliver support for Fabian tinkering with the levers of the British state.
Q. Nonethless, the left winning a majority in Plaid is something that happened only recently. Why do you think it happened only now?
A. It came about because of the failure of devolution. It was recognized that the devolution program did not include changing the political and social relations in the country and therefore would not change anything. We had to make the national movement the movement of working-class people. That was realized because of the failure of the devolution campaign.
Another factor was the drift to the right of the British state. If there were people within the Blaid who felt uncomfortable about being labelled "left," once you had the Thatcher government, everything even mildly progressive was left.
Q. What position did the Blaid take on the Malvinas war?
A. We were completely opposed to the whole exercise. I don't think we came out against it quickly enough. But certainly after the task force sailed and we realized what was going to happen, we took a very strong position.
Q. Have the struggle in Ireland and the socialist revolutions in Latin America had an influence on the growth of the left in Plaid?
A. I think we were more influenced by factors in Western Europe. One was the new thinking on the left on the national question. Another was the breaking down of many of the old structures of Labourism and the democratization of the Labour Party.
Q. What are you referring to specifically by new thinking on the national question?
A. Well, on the theoretical level, there is the rediscovery of the Gramsci position, the position of the AustroMarxists, and more recently the positions that have been developed within and around the Eurocommunist sections of the British Communist Party. At the level of practice, you have the creation of the Wales TUC, the failure of the assemb-
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INTERNATIONAL VIEWPOINT ly campaign, the question of membership of the EEC, the peace movement and its internationalization through END. All those things forced us to look for a theoretical approach that would enable us to understand better the relationship beween the state, nationality, the economy, the culture, the minority language, the gender question and the international implications of all. All these problems came up in the wake of the collapse of one set of our national strategies after the failure of devolution.
And the new thinking going on at the time in the broader British and European left came into the mainstream of our political thinking. It's always helped to find other people saying what you are saying. One of the most fascinating things here has been watching the campaign for democracy in London, to see the GLC and the Labour Party using the same tools of analysis and the same sort of slogans we've been using.
Q. That ended your isolation from the left in the broad sense?
A. There is no isolation. No one in Plaid today thinks of us as a beleagured nationality with our backs to the Irish sea. If anyone is beleagured today, it is the British state.
Q. You talk about a new openness of the Labour left to the national question. But one important section of the Labour left is the Militant, which is not exactly reconstructed on this question.
A. Yes. There are sections of the Labour left that recognize the relevance of the argument forautonomy. The Militant doesn't. I think the key thing is whether the left forces are economistic or not. If they are, then they will want to boil everything down to such issues. But it's more difficult now to do that after the great impact of feminism. The people who have become sensitized on feminism in particular have become forced to reconsider their whole simplistic approach to class analysis.
The last time I did an interview with Plaid leaders, five years ago, the idea was still strong that the best way to save Welsh Wales was through Welsh speakers becoming better at running small businesses. It seems that this idea has faded.
A. Yes. The miners' strike has done a lot to replace utopianism with a practical approach. It makes a big difference when you actually see people in struggle.
Q. In fact, a Lancashire miner touring the continent told me that it was his impression that the strike had united
Wales as a nation for the first time. Of course, that reminded me of the 1913 general strike in Ireland, which brought together the revolutionary wing of the workers' movement and the revolutionary wing of the national movement.
A. Whatever happens, I do not think that the politics of Wales will ever be the same again, because of what we have gone through in this strike.
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