Archive for 2009
7th October 2009
Western Mail Essay
It should be pretty clear by now to any objective observer that the Labour Party is a few months away from suffering the most humiliating electoral defeat since 1931. With support now hovering in the low 20s, Gordon Brown is set to go down in history as the most unpopular Labour leader ever by returning fewer Labour MPs than even Michael Foot. The broad left group Compass has even talked darkly of this being “The Last Labour Government” with Tory gerrymandering and Scottish independence tipping Labour into terminal decline.
Readers may imagine that the champagne corks are popping in Plaid’s Ty Gwynfor HQ. They would be mistaken. The sudden implosion of social democracy anywhere – whether in England or, as happened recently, in Germany – can hardly be a cause for celebration for progressives, though in both cases the damage was largely self-inflicted as what were, after all, historically movements for the political representation of the working classes wandered so far from their founding ideals that they ended up barely recognisable. And now the former workers’ parties wonder where all the party workers went.
There is an air of inevitability about the British Labour Party’s demise. It is not just the cruel and inexorable swing of the political pendulum – though the boredom threshold of the Great British Public should never be underestimated. It is the scale and the sheer brutality of the cataclysm that awaits Gordon Brown that suggest something deeper at work, something more akin to the iron law of history. Sometimes the tragi-comic tales that emanate from Labour’s bunker – the temper-tantrum trashing of mobile phones and the like – reminds me of what it must have been like in Vienna in the last days of the Habsburg empire, that sense of incredulity and incomprehension at the thought of absolute power slowly and quietly slipping away forever.
But it’s probably the last days of the Soviet Union that is the closer historical analogy to the death throes of this particular leviathan. New Labour – the party’s perestroika gambit- has failed, a hapless if well-meaning leader (granted, Brown is more Brezhnev than Gorby) is surrounded by cack-handed Generals wondering whether to launch a coup, and a bombastic, blond-haired right-winger called Boris is installed as Mayor in the Capital. Soon a right-wing government plunges the country into the new orthodoxy of economic austerity. At least the Baltic States had the option of reaching for the exit. And so, of course, in the long-run do we.
By my estimate it may take a decade for Labour in Wales to realise that there is no way back to power in London, but that social democracy in a country like ours can not just survive but thrive. With the right leader learning the right lessons, then red-green could be the greatest partnership since Barry John and Gareth Edwards. Who knows it could even be Labour, not Plaid, that one day leads us into independence. One Wales Two, anybody?
The response to that invitation will, no doubt, be deafening from Labour’s prospective First Ministers – tempted though Huw Lewis and Carwyn Jones’ consigliore Leighton Andrews might be to shower me with a bucket of metaphorical spit. In choosing its new leader though Labour surely cannot make the same mistake it made in electing Brown by holding a conversation solely with itself. The new Leader will, after all, lead not just a party but a country so we need to know now where they will stand not just on the referendum (and the imminent Convention report) but Labour’s entire political direction, which, for now at least will dictate the political direction of a nation. If they intend to drop the Grand Coalition at the earliest available opportunity in favour of hooking up with a yellow-tinged party of the centre, as Angela Merkel has just done, they need to let us know now – and I speak as much as tomorrow’s ordinary citizen as today’s party politician.
I hope to return from the US a bit more bipartisan than I am now, having successfully expunged some of Westminster’s worst sectarian habits from my political psyche. There are some hopeful red-green shoots – like the WalesHome website or the magazine Celyn – that suggest that Labour and Plaid activists are indeed learning to speak a common language, just as they had to in the 1980s. Sadly, Labour’s leaders in Wales peddle the same old poisonous rubbish, though I must admit when Peter Hain said in his Conference speech that “Plaid Cymru…are preparing to work with the Tories” I wondered for a second if he’d got us mixed up with Mandelson. Soon, in any case, the only Labour government left will be one that Plaid created. Come 2011, who knows, Peter (Hain, that is, not Mandelson) may even be working for us.
Dylai fod yn weddol amlwg erbyn hyn i unrhyw sylwedydd gwrthrychol fod y Blaid Lafur rai misoedd i ffwrdd o ddioddef ei chrasfa etholiadol waethaf ers 1931. Gyda chefnogaeth bellach yn hofran tua’r 20au, mae Gordon Brown fel petai’n anelu am ei le yn hanes fel yr arweinydd Llafur mwyaf amhoblogaidd erioed, gan ddychwelyd llai o ASau Llafur na Michael Foot, hyd yn oed. Mae’r grŵp chwith eang Compass hyd yn oed wedi crybwyll y gallai hon fod “y Llywodraeth Lafur Olaf” gyda threfnu ffiniau Toriaidd ac annibyniaeth i’r Alban yn gwthio Llafur dros y dibyn.
Hawdd y gall darllenwyr ddychmygu’r cyrc siampên yn popian ym mhencadlys y Blaid yn Nhŷ Gwynfor. Camgymeriad fyddai hyn. Prin y gall dymchweliad democratiaeth gymdeithasol yn unman – boed yn Lloegr neu, fel y digwyddodd yn ddiweddar, yr yr Almaen – fod yn achos dathlu i bobl flaengar, er, yn y naill achos a’r llall, hunan-niweidio a wnaeth mudiadau a oedd, wedi’r cyfan, yn fudiadau hanesyddol i gynrychioli’r dosbarth gweithiol yn wleidyddol, ond eu bod wedi crwydro mor bell oddi wrth y delfrydau a’u sylfaenodd fel mai prin y mae modd eu hadnabod bellach. A dyma gyn-bleidiau’r gweithwyr yn awr yn meddwl tybed i ble’r aeth holl weithwyr y pleidiau?
Mae rhyw naws anorfod am dranc Plaid Lafur Prydain. Nid yn unig gogwydd creulon ac anorfod y pendil gwleidyddol yw hyn er na ddylech fyth anwybyddu trothwy diflastod y Dyn ar y Stryd ym Mhrydain. Graddfa a naws gignoeth y chwalfa sy’n wynebu Gordon Brown sy’n awgrymu bod rhywbeth dyfnach ar waith, rhywbeth tebycach i ddeddf haearnaidd hanes. Weithiau, mae’r hanesion chwerw-ddoniol ddaw allan o fyncer Llafur – ffitiau o dymer, chwalu ffonau symudol ac ati – yn rhoi syniad i mi o sut yr oedd pethau yn Vienna yn nyddiau olaf ymerodraeth yr Habsbwrgiaid, yr ymdeimlad hwnnw o anghredinedd ac anallu i amgyffred y ffaith fod grym absoliwt yn llithro’n dawel bach allan o’u gafael am byth.
Ond mae’n debyg mai dyddiau olaf yr Undeb Sofietaidd yw’r gymhariaeth hanesyddol orau i’w chrybwyll wrth edrych ar y lefiathan arbennig hwn yn gwingo ym mhoenau ei dranc. Mae Llafur Newydd – syniad perestroika’r blaid- wedi methu, ac y mae arweinydd didoreth os da ei fwriadau (a derbyn fod Brown yn fwy o Brezhnev na Gorby) wedi ei amgylchynu â Chadfridogion di-glem yn gogordroi ynghylch y syniad o lansio coup neu beidio, ac y mae gwleidydd aden-chwith bostfawr, goleubryd o’r enw Boris yn Faer y Brifddinas. Ar fyrder, bydd llywodraeth aden-dde yn arwain y wlad i uniongrededd newydd llymder economaidd. O leiaf roedd gan Wladwriaethau’r Baltig y dewis o anelu am y drws a ffoi.
Mae’r dewis hwnnw gennym ninnau, wrth gwrs, yn y tymor hir. Yn ôl f’amcangyfrif i, fe gymer tua degawd i Lafur yng Nghymru sylweddoli nad oes ffordd yn ôl i rym yn Llundain, ond y gall democratiaeth gymdeithasol mewn gwlad fel ein hun ni nid yn unig oroesi ond ffynnu. Gyda’r arweinydd iawn yn dysgu’r gwersi iawn, yna gallai coch-gwyrdd fod y bartneriaeth fwyaf ers Barry John a Gareth Edwards. Pwy a ŵyr, efallai hyd yn oed mai Llafur, nid Plaid, fydd un dydd yn ein harwain i annibyniaeth. Cymru’n Un Dau, unrhyw un? Diau y bydd yr yr ymateb i’r gwahoddiad hwnnw yn fyddarol o du darpar- Brif Weinidogion Llafur – er cymaint y temtir Huw Lewis a consigliore Carwyn Jones, Leighton Andrews,i daflu bwced o boer metafforaidd ar fy mhen. Wrth ddewis eu harweinydd newydd, er hynny, does bosib y bydd Llafur yn gwneud yr un camgymeriad ag a wnaeth wrth ethol Brown trwy gynnal sgwrs un unig â’i hun?
Wedi’r cyfan, bydd yr Arweinydd newydd yn arwain nid yn unig plaid ond gwlad, felly rhaid i ni wybod yn awr lle byddant yn sefyll nid yn unig ar y refferendwm (ac adroddiad y Confensiwn sydd ar fin ymddangos) ond ar holl gyfeiriad gwleidyddol Llafur a fydd, am y tro beth bynnag, yn dweud beth yw cyfeiriad gwleidyddol cenedl. Os bwriadant roi’r gorau i’r Glymblaid Fawr cyn gynted ag y bo modd, o blaid cael eu bachau ar blaid y canol gyda rhyw wawr felen, fel mae Angela Merkel newydd wneud, fe ddylent roi gwybod i ni – ac yn hyn o beth rwy’n siarad yn gymaint fel dinesydd cyffredin yfory ag fel gwleidydd plaid heddiw.
Rwy’n gobeithio dychwelyd o UDA fymryn yn fwy dwyblaid nac yr ydwyf ar hyn o bryd, wedi carthu rhai o arferion sectyddol gwaethaf San Steffan o’m psyche gwleidyddol. Y mae rhywfaint o egin coch-gwyrdd – fel gwefan WalesHome neu’r cylchgrawn Celyn – yn awgrymu fod ymgyrchwyr Llafur a’r Blaid yn wir yn dysgu siarad iaith gyffredin, yn union fel y bu’n rhaid iddynt wneud yn y 1980au. Ysywaeth, mae arweinyddion Llafur yng Nghymru yn dal i bedlera’r un hen rwtsh gwenwynllyd, er, mae’n rhaid i mi gyfaddef, pan ddywedodd Peter Hain yn ei araith yn y Gynhadledd fod “Plaid Cymru…yn paratoi i weithio gyda’r Toriaid” i mi feddwl am funud tybed a oedd wedi drysu rhyngom ni a Mandelson. Yn fuan iawn, beth bynnag, yr unig lywodraeth Lafur fydd ar ôl fydd un a grewyd gan y Blaid. A phan ddaw 2011, pwy a ŵyr, fe all Peter (Hain, hynnynyw,nid Mandelson) fod yn gweithio i ni hyd yn oed. -
21st September 2009
Plaid Cymru gain, Plaid Cymru hold
Kirsty Williams has read the “Riot Act” to the party’s London Headquarters on not consulting her over scrapping the huge ‘vote of confidence’ in Wales that was the Defence Training Academy in St. Athan. Presumably she was consulted on the proposal to scrap the Wales Office – I don’t remember much Lib Dem support when I floated this in 2007,but Lembit says he has been calling for this since 2004. Since he was Leader at the time, does that mean they are simply reannouncing an old policy?
More interesting is the question whether she has been consulted over the U-turn on tuition fees. Following Nick Clegg’s speech on Thursday, the Lib Dems are now occupying exactly the same ground as Plaid: against tuition fees in principle, but in favour of them in practice; pledged to abolish one day, but not in the current financial climate. I expect fulsome apologies to the Plaid leadership now from the likes of Peter Black over all those charges of hypocrisy. One immediate effect of the U-turn is that thousands of Lib Dem leaflets in Ceredigion will now have to be pulped. It’s now more certain than ever that Mark Williams will be joining the ranks of the ex-MP, along with me. The fact that this announcement is timed to perfection to coincide with the Freshers Fair must be particularly galling for him. The leadership have certainly done the Welsh section (branch?) of the Party no favours this week, between St. Athan’s, fees and an already under-confidenced Welsh leader’s conference snub.
Speaking of the General Election, in a few minutes I am about to address a meeting of the party faithful in Penybanc Rugby Club where I will formally tender my resignation as the candidate for the Westminster Election. I had hoped that this would be where the majority would hear this news first – but Twitter and Vaughan Roderick sadly intervened first. I am glad nevertheless that my first interview on the issue was with the South Wales Guardian. My plan had always been to announce the news through local media. It’s local people that have put their trust in me over the last nine years and it was to them I wanted to explain my reasons for standing down at the next election.
Now the focus is already and quite properly turning to the question of who will represent this great constituency for the next decade – if we as a party can continue to earn the support of the electorate. I will remain scrupulously neutral throughout the process for obvious reasons, but from the names I have already heard that intend to stand I am sure that we will have an excellent candidate in place within the next six to eight weeks – and I am sure more will put their hat in the ring over the next few weeks. If the local party accepts my resignation, then tomorrow an application will be made to the party’s Chief Executive to open nominations. Candidates must apply within twenty eight days and must already be members of the party and members of the party’s Approved Candidates List or register an application to join by noon tomorrow. So if you’re interested, get your skates on.
Update: the constituency party have very wisely decided to extend the process and open nominations on Monday 28th September. So this means people who want to be candidates have this week now to make an application to be on the Candidates List. People who want to vote also need to make sure they are fully paid-up members by Monday. Five candidates have so far expressed an interest but more are expected during the coming week.
Further update: some commentators have suggested that Rhodri and myself are backing a particular candidate. I have to reiterate, after speaking to Rhodri, that we are not supporting any one in particular and will play no part at all in the process – indeed we will not even vote. Two of the potential candidates mentioned in many of the blog posts used to work for me, and one was my election agent at the last election – so it’s hard to see how I could show any favouritism. I have personally encouraged as many people as possible to put their names in the ring as I think the local party should have the widest possible field to choose from. So there is no ‘Crown Prince’ in Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, and this will certainly be no coronation. I can certainly attest to the unpredictable nature of selection conferences here as I came from nowhere to win the nomination last time, beating the then ‘front-runner’, and Chair of the party at the time, Marc Philips, as well as a strong field of other local candidates.
17th September 2009
Quote Hain, get baloney…
Despite it being probably the least successful election slogan in history, vote Plaid get Tory is yet again being wheeled out this morning by Peter Hain in a letter in the Guardian. This was Labour’s ace in the hole in 2007 and Peter even tried to give it added strength by ruling out a Labour-Plaid coalition without even squaring it first with Rhodri. When a senior Labour source (which judging by the silence from his campaign manager, it’s now pretty safe to assume was leadership favourite Carwyn Jones) revealed Labour was actively considering a post-election pact with Plaid after all, the game was up.
This time Peter is accusing me of a secret plan to join a Tory minority administration. Next he”ll say I’m planning to come round and measure up the curtains in Gwydir House. So let me set the record straight, for the avoidance of doubt. There are no circumstances ever where I would join an administration led by the Conservative and Unionist Party. Print this out and keep.
Perhaps Peter could return the favour and say if Labour would veto nationalists round the Cabinet table – even if that would be the only way to keep the Tories out.
Probably what is really riling Peter is that Plaid with just three MPs is doing a better job at holding the Tory Government-in-waiting to account than Labour in Wales is doing with almost ten times as much.
16th September 2009
A lot of fizzle, all of it fake
My recent Conference speech has inspired some interesting responses. One of the best has been from Jeff Jones the former Labour leader from Bridgend who argues in the comments sections on other politicians’ web-sites (has Jeff got his own blog – he certainly should get one) that both my account of Conservative political history and contemporary Welsh society are over-simplifications. As is typical of Jeff – whois no mean historian himself – the points are thoughtful and well-made. I would say in my defence that the Conservatives did oppose the First Reform Act and a majority continued to oppose universal and women’s suffrage for most of the time and certainly long after they had been adopted as policy by the Labour Party. As to the charge that I tend to see the Welsh political landscape in distinctively Welsh tones (and with a left-ish tinge) and ignore the influence of wider British political trends I understand the point but I suppose it’s hardly surprising that I as a Plaid member would want to highlight the points of difference and keep the flame of Welsh radicalism burning brightly. In empirical terms all the values surveys do still consistently show that centre of gravity of the Welsh electorate as centre-left while England is centre-right. This is not surprising given Wales’ socio-economic make-up.
A less considered response comes from the present Assembly Member for Bridgend and leadership contender, Carwyn Jones who accuses me, rather curiously, of being “a lot of sizzle, but no steak”. Carwyn’s great achilles’ heel, of course, is his reputation within Welsh Labour as something of a crypto-nat. He never tires of pointing out to people that he was never actually a member of Plaid – he merely went along to one of our meetings in Pantycelyn once, heard Phil Williams speak and decided there and then that he wasn’t a Welsh nationalist after all. Even this is not enough to placate the suspicion of many of the more tribalist of his comrades who were suckled on nat-bashing at birth. Why did he go to the meeting in the first place, they ask, muttering darkly…
So it’s not surprising that Carwyn should choose any and every opportunity to have a go at Plaid…we can expect a lot of this from him over the next few months as Carwyn tries to ‘decontaminate’ his personal brand and show that he does hate Plaid as much as the next Labour member after all. By the same token, and in the opposite direction, Huw Saunders Lewis will discover a new-found fondness for the work of Gwyn Alf and Raymond Williams. Confused? You will be…
Where I take issue with Carwyn’s ‘analysis’ of my speech is his charge of inconsistency. Apparently my speech is a “u-turn” as a year ago in an interview with GMTV I had said that there was no veto on talking to the Conservatives. It’s always a shame to spike a political attack but this is what I’ve always said and what I would say now: As a party of the Left, in situations where there is no overall majority – in Westminster or the Bay – Plaid’s natural inclination is to form a coalition with other parties of the Left. We cannot, of course, reject the possibility of agreements with other parties, including the Conservatives, where the negotiated outcome is in the interests of Wales. In 2007 I was made the party’s chief negotiator for the Rainbow Alliance - though my clearly expressed preference was for a deal with Labour. When the Rainbow Alliance collapsed, and after an unstable minority Labour administration had been formed, I was the first politician in Wales to float the prospect of a red-green coalition – on this blog. I think my record on these matters is pretty clear. I was saying the same thing – with almost the same title - four years earlier.
More to the point, I have always said what I have to say on these matters on the record – which is more than I can say for some Welsh politicians. Rolling out that tired slogan – Vote Plaid, Get Tory – as Carwyn does, reminds me that this was the cornerstone of Labour’s Assembly election campaign until it was comprehensively derailed by a Senior Labour source who confirmed to the media – as Richard Wyn Jones had earlier revealed in an article in Barn – that, despite protestations to the contrary, the Labour Party were considering a ‘ confused dalliance’ – to use Carwyn’s phrase - with their sworn enemies, Plaid (hands up, who remembers the New Zealand model?). The other leadership contender Huw Lewis, at the time, felt the briefing had betrayed Labour activists. Reading between the lines, he seemed to be suggesting the ’senior Labour source’ was none other than Carwyn Jones.
Whether that’s true or not I think the moral of the story is this: stop the Plaid-bashing, Carwyn. We know you love us really.
Update: Carwyn Jones’ campaign manager Leighton Andrews has responded with another attack on me this time accusing me of “extreme narcissism”. Presumably this is because I can prove I’ve been consistent where Leighton ‘flipped and flopped’ – to use Carwyn’s choice words – from being the Liberal Party’s arch-critic of Labourism to its arch-defender in the Rhondda when a Valleys’ Assembly seat came on offer. He is also curiously silent on the ‘central charge’ now being made that Carwyn scuppered Labour’s 2007 election campaign. Rather than pouring oil on the flames by launching personal attacks on me I would advise him to use his considerable PR skills to make this story go away. Otherwise Carwyn’s campaign could be over before it’s begun.
14th September 2009
Conference Speech
Conference, as we face a new decade in politics my mind turns to how, for me, this decade began. On a clear June morning in 2001 when a trusty band of foot-soldiers had gathered to accompany the new MP for Carmarthen East and Dynevor to London for the very first time. Like Gwynfor all those years ago, though we were going by bus not by train, and they didn’t name it after me. Some of them are in the hall today, others are watching at home, and I would like to say a personal thank you to Cynlais Evans, unable to be with us today because of illness, but who with his wife Sian has given decades of tireless work for the party. Diolch yn fawr.
We met at dawn in the village of Ferryside. A fitting choice, looking back, the home of Hugh Williams. That good country solicitor and chartist, some even say the instigator of what came to be known as the Rebecca Riots, but we know as the Rebecca Rising. In 1839, the year of that other rising in Newport , he published a volume of National songs which included these sterling words by the Tycroes poet Thomas Jenkins: “Sons of Cambria, come arise, and no longer be serfs and slaves. Burst your shackles and be free, sons of Cambria follow me”. The ‘me’ in the text is Liberty, the one thing this nation has lacked longest and needed most , the noblest of all human aspirations: the desire to be free. Free with yourselves, free to speak your language, to celebrate our culture. Free from poverty and disease. Free to live in peace. Free to shape our own future, to make our own mistakes and claim our own successes. Free from the shadow of Westminster, that was awaiting us that fine June day.
In the first few days I was in the House Of Commons, before I even gave my maiden speech, I remember Tom McAvoy , a gruff but affable Glaswegian, beckoning me over in the members lobby and taking me up to the booth in the Palace Of Westminster. And as he pointed, full of reverence to St Pauls and Lambeth Palace and the Treasury Building with Big Ben towering over us he said “This, Adam, is why I am a Unionist, proud to be British”. Now I’m sure all this was intended as an act of kindness to a new member, but for a moment I had flashbacks : half digested Sunday-school tales of the devil tempting Christ mixed in with the murder scene at the end of House Of Cards. I made my excuses and left. That the Labour Party should try and recruit me is a complement of sorts I suppose. They thought I was a prodigal son. Now I think they would be a little less charitable and probably question my legitimacy . Baroness Gale of Blaenrhondda, a name to conjure with if there ever was, has often over the years asked me in a voice a seductive as the sexy temptress Gossamer Beynon in Under Milk Wood, “when are you coming home to Labour?”. In my case I think she was mis-cast, mis-informed, and miss-downright-impertinent.
I do want to come home. I’m tired of beating my head and my hands against the dumb cold walls of Westminster. I will never feel that I belong in that Parliament, thought I have to breathe its dust-laden air. I want a Parliament that belongs to me and to us, a Parliament that we have built, in whose stones our horizons sing. The Palace Of Westminster is undeniably an imposing and impressive building. It’s an architectural metaphor for the British political system. Its symbol, after all, is a portcullis, the gate of a fortress designed to keep the people out and power in. And just the cathedral buildings of the middle-ages sought to make us feel small in the presence of Almighty God, Westminster’s subliminal message is that we as citizens are of no consequence when compared against the power and majesty of the state. As Aneurin Bevan once wrote, the House of Commons is like a church, the vaulted roofs and stained-glass windows, the rows of statues of great statesmen of the past, the echoing walls, the soft-footed attendants and the whispered conversations. He, the newly elected MP (and it usually is a he) is expected to worship, and in the most conservative of all religions, ancestor worship. Except they’re not even our ancestors. Who came blame the Welsh MP, from a working-class constituency, who feels a bit like a floundering fish out of water in Westminster. Cloisters for us in Wales are a rare Sunday afternoon treat on a coach trip to St Davids. To members of the British establishment they are a familiar architecture that has punctuated their very life-history: from prep-school, to Eton, to Oxbridge, the Inns Of Court, the Commons and finally the Lords. Before you know it you’ve changed your accent, your dress, and your values to fit in. JH Thomas, the former Union leader from Newport turned Labour MP tried so hard he took to wearing evening dress even at 11 in the morning. They made him Colonial Secretary not once, but twice. Nobody does imperialism quite as well as a self-denying member of a conquered people. And even though there are Welsh Labour MPs walking around in the corridors of power with a peculiar smile on their face of the permanently self-satisfied, unable to believe their luck in well, just being there. Kitted out in matching silk ties, silk hankies, and for all I know silk underwear as well. They are so effortlessly smooth, you wouldn’t know the conflict the lies just under the surface from constantly flipping their loyalty back and fore from Wales to London, like flipping a coin or flipping a home on expenses. Home is, after all, where the heart is.
Like many of the people in it, the building itself is a grand deception, designed to look centuries older than it is in order to confer upon it the gravitas of accumulated power. Everything about that building, everything it represents (and for sure the one thing is doesn’t represent is the ordinary Welsh voter) is a fraud from crenulated top to bottom. It is corrupt and corrupting. No building where an army of flunkies opens doors for the privileged few can be healthy. The sooner we get out of it the better it will be for all of us.
And while we are there, we must have people we can count on to fight our corner. In Elfyn Llwyd, we have a magnificent general, as strong as an oak and as wise as an owl. In Howell and myself he has two loyal lieutenants, but what he really needs is an army to defend Wales from injustice: to field our best questions, to marshal our best arguments. Not drive home our advantage, but to secure victory on the political battlefield for Wales. Of course battlefield is what the Welsh political landscape will become over the next few years and we will need every ounce of self belief to sustain us. After a decade of lost opportunity, we are now at the cusp of a new decade, of conflict, of cuts, and conservatism. In once sense a change of the guard at Westminster makes little difference to us. Wales has suffered under Labour and we’ve suffered under the Tories. The only way to stop suffering is to get out from under them, and believe me we will come 2011.
I suppose there is some subtle difference: while Labour governments never fail to disappoint you, Conservative governments confirm your worst nightmares. If Cameron wins, this will be the 67th Conservative government in history. Which considering they’ve never, in living memory, had a majority of Welsh MPs is a little bit troubling from the perspective of Welsh democracy. Tory governments in Wales have never come highly commended. If you go back long enough, they were a coalition of low-brow publicans and high-church Anglicans, the original unholy alliance. The Conservative and Unionist party in Wales has never really recovered from those rather inauspicious beginnings. They’ve been on the wrong side of every important argument in the last 300 years: the reform act, the welfare state, the NHS, apartheid, and now the NHS again. Name virtually any issue, any cause, that has taxed the minds and frequently the bodies too of the people of this country for the last three centuries and the Tories have always managed somehow to place themselves squarely on the side of privilege and prejudice and on the opposite side to the majority of the downtrodden Welsh. When Rebecca rode out in Carmarthenshire… and Peter Mandelson please note political cross-dressers are progressives in our tradition – I once called Dafydd Ellis Thomas the Pantomime Dame of Welsh politics and he thanked me for the complement. When Rebecca burned the hated toll-booths, where were the Tories? Not on the side of the farmers struggling to survive, but on the side of the men of property, the turnpike owners, the PFI merchants of their day, turning a quick profit at other people’s expense. The Tories are democracy’s late developers, opposed to the extension of the franchise at every juncture, if it had been up to them women and the working-classes would never have had the vote, which goes a long way to explain the attitude of Leanne Wood towards the Tories. Thank God for women with attitude! The Tories opposed the secret ballot and saw to it that those who didn’t vote the right way were evicted. They opposed the repeal of the Corn Laws at a time when the people were starving, not just in Ireland but also in Wales. They supported religious discrimination against non-conformists, but still demanded that they paid church taxes and attend Anglican schools but not Anglican universities from which they were banned. They opposed the disestablishment of the Church in Wales despite it being the clear settled will of the majority in our country at the time.
For them, opposing Welsh Democracy is written into the DNA of the Conservative Tradition. They’ve opposed every Welsh Devolution bill in history, a record with which not even the Labour party can compete. They opposed the redoubtable E.T Johns Government Of Wales bill on the brink of the First World War. They opposed mighty S.O. Davies’ bill in the 1950s. They opposed the Wales Act in 1978 and took great delight in removing it from the statue book as soon as they were elected. The made opposition to devolution the cornerstone of their 1997 election campaign in Wales and were wiped out as a consequence. And yet they still sought to frustrate the wishes of the Welsh people by voting against a bill in the new Parliament. And who can forget, Nicholas Vaughn beaming before Carmarthenshire’s votes were counted, thinking that Wales had collectively voted itself out of existence for the second time in our history and chosen the life of a vassal not a victor. I never want to see a smile like that again. No man who betrayed his country so enthusiastically could ever earn the right to lead it.
I suppose, to be fair, he was only reflecting the prevailing wisdom of a party that has always defined itself as being against the development of our Welsh democracy every step of our own Welsh way. The Conservative party’s campaign guide, for every general election between 1892 and 1914 contained the following words: “the laws, institutions of Wales are the laws, institutions and customs of England. The flag of Wales is the flag of England”. But worse was to come – for the next three decades their campaign guide didn’t even mention Wales at all. Switch to 2009, and the Tories now claim to be Wales’ new best friend. But isn’t this a little difficult to take when for so long they have been our own worst enemy. They fought the Welsh miners seeking to grind them, like the coal of the slagheaps, into dust: in ‘26, in ‘73 and ‘84. They privatised our steelworks, not once but twice, and threw thousands on the dole.
And then there was Tryweryn, a scar on the conscience of the Tories as deep and as powerful in its own way as Aberfan is for Labour: both of them symbols of human suffering at the hands of a distant an uncaring government. And above all remember that when the Liverpool Corporation Bill had its second reading, the Conservative so-called Minister For Welsh Affairs stubbornly sided with Liverpool over Wales, despite the fact that every Welsh MP bar one opposed it. So when the political epitaph of the Conservative Party in Wales comes to be written, oh speed the day, let it never be forgotten that they were responsible for the greatest act of colonial vandalism in our history, the only party ever to impose a three-line whip on the destruction of a living Welsh community. And if they want our forgiveness, let David Cameron apologise to the Welsh people for their mistake. He apologised, didn’t he, about apartheid? He apologised to the Gay community over Section 28, or at least to a £50 a-ticket invitation only Conservative –Supporting section of the gay community in London’s highest members club. I’d like to see you try say sorry to a room full of Valleys Drag queens – you know who you are. If Cameron is in the habit of apologising he can try apologising to the people of Capel Celyn, Meirionnydd and Wales for a village drowned and a democracy disregarded. And then promise to give us, like the Scottish, the English, the Irish and any other nation control over our own water in our own land. Or are we still to be treated as England’s first and final precious piece of Empire? That colonial attitude is alive and sickeningly well in a party the majority of whose Secretaries Of State, in theory at least, for Wales haven’t even represented Welsh constituencies. In John Redwood’s case the Conservatives made the most bizarre political appointment since Caligula made his horse a senator.
Of course, it is possible and a small-c conservative. What is cultural nationalism but an attempt to conserve and preserve for future generations the best in our own traditions? The problems with conservatism as a political philosophy is that it is defined by what it is against: change. And when you live in a country like ours calling out for change, who would want to slow change down, to be a break on progress? In three hundred years the Tories in Wales have only ever been anti-establishment once, when Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn harboured a certain affection for Bonny Prince Charlie but not so much as to much as to risk a martyr’s death at Culloden. Personally I am more jackobin (?) than Jacobite. But there is room in our party for the creative intelligence of a David Melding , one of nature’s conservatives, a man who once told Jocelyn Davies that he hadn’t got over the shock of the Reformation. Join us, the water’s warm. You’re living proof that it is possible to be Welsh and a small-c conservative, though it must be at times mentally exhausting.
One thing is for certain, trying to be both in capital letters of equal measure is as impossible as serving two masters. For the Tories real masters in London, time and time we’ve heard Wales will never be the priority. They’ve already said they will cancel the electrification, recently announced, of the Great Western mainline to West Wales, happy to acquiesce in the shameful fact that Wales is almost alone in the Western world in lacking a single mile of electrified railtrack. Though the City of London, I notice, will still get its coveted Crossrail. The Tories announced with a fanfare that they will deliver a high-speed rail line connecting London and the Continent with Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds, but Cardiff and Swansea must wait. Wales, under the Tories, will always have to wait.
And there will be no high-speed return for the embattled Welsh forces in Helmand, when those Welsh sons and daughters are placed again in harm’s way. The party that has supported every war in history, from the concentration camps of Pretoria, to the lies of Suez and Iraq will continue with the war in Afghanistan. And instead of a war on poverty, the Tories will declare war on the poor. They will cut the money Wales gets from the Lottery, scrapping the only Lottery fund that gives Wales money according to a needs-based formula, and give the money to those who don’t. They will cut public spending, hitting Wales hard, and continue to justify the unjust Barnett Formula. And they proudly promise they will slash the benefits of hundreds of thousands of Welsh claimants in the middle of the greatest economic crash since the 30s. Let’s repeat that. The party that gave us the means-test, plan to cull one and a half million people from Incapacity Benefit in 12 months, more than 10 times even New Labour has achieved. The long-term unemployed, single parents and the clinically depressed will be dragooned into community service like criminals or lose benefits and starve. Conference, this is the modern equivalent of the Workhouse, and the abolition of Outdoor Relief. It will hit us hard, and it will hit the hurt, the young and the very old hardest of all. The man the Tories have charged with implementing this policy of economic ‘Shock and Awe’ Lord Freud, up until February was an advisor on Welfare reform to New Labour – so obviously a man of principle – has the qualification of being one of the very same investment bankers that trashed our economy and slung so many people on the scrapheap. By his own admission, thousands of investors lost money in Eurotunnel because naively they believed what this silver-tongued ex-journalist (dubbed ‘Fraud-squad’ by his colleagues) had told them. And who was it that promised an end to the politics of spin and the economics of the casino?
So maybe it’s time to dust down one of Bevan’s other great works, written under the suitably patriotic pseudonym Celticus, “Why not to trust the Tories”. And if anyone doubts the contemporary relevance of a pamphlet written in 1944, then read the section where Bevan talks about the Tories tendency to smooth away the edge of a policy in the hope of making it more attractive to doubtful supporters. It’s almost as if he had read every Conservative policy commission over the last two years. David Cameron, by his own admission, is the heir to Blair. He represents, not change, but more of the same and worse. Except where Blair appointed a former Mirror Editor as his foul-mouthed mouthpiece, Cameron has appointed a disgraced former editor of the News Of The World.
This Labour government is a failed and dying government. Its sins are too many for it to die an honourable death, so let it die. The same is true of a so-called Mother of Parliament that failed to stop them. The only thing that can wash away its sins is new blood. Not the real blood of those brave souls in Afghanistan and Iraq that have paid dearly for politician’s errors, but the new blood of a new politics. There will be new MPs aplenty at this Parliament, so many that the maiden speeches will probably last for months. Will the politics change along with the personnel? For England’s sake I hope it is a new start, a maiden Parliament. Though somehow I doubt it, as powers’ old habits die hard. But for us in Wales, it must neither me maiden nor mother, but midwife to a Parliament of our own. There have been a thousand Welsh MPs from the Act Of Union onwards, and from a strictly Welsh perspective most of them have been practically useless. In that sense, the present crop are no better or worse than previous generations, although I cannot imagine Emlyn Hooson moonlighting for the Daily Sport.
The difference lies within Wales itself. A nation within the old order is dying, and the new struggling to be born. For that new birth we need a new breed of Welsh men and women in that temporary Parliament along the banks of the Thames, who will never go native in exile, and never play by other people’s rules. Members like the one true original member for Wales, who broke the conventions of the house. Who in his first act of defiance sat down in protest at the Treasury bench until the original language of these Islands was given due recognition in the only legislature that we then had. Who committed the cardinal sin of injecting a bit of passion and politics into his first address to the house. And maybe one or two like this one, who got slung out of Parliament for calling a liar a liar.
As Plaid MPs, we don’t go to London to scale the escalator of ambition. For every Welsh MP, a Parliament in a far away capital should seem like a prison, though they try and paint our chains in gold. Penri, Dylan, Myfanwy, Phil, here is the only reason you want to be there, which is the reason we hold dear: to bring democracy home where it belongs, in the hands of our people, in our Parliament, in our capital, in our country. In our dreams for now, but also in our destiny