The contradictions of the British Left in Wales.

In the Welsh Socialist Alliance, the Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party are agreed on one thing - that they want the same powers for Wales that Plaid Cymru wants.

As British nationalists themselves, they find themselves tail ending the Welsh nationalists in their demands - they cannot conceive of any demands in a Welsh context which are not bourgeois nationalist.

This is illustrated by Clause 1.3 of the WSA constitution where it states that " In Wales, we campaign for a Welsh parliament with primary law making and revenue raising powers to decide its relationship with the UK, Europe and the rest of the world."

Yet this is not a socialist position as it ignores the fact that we need to establish a socialist state that owns and controls the means of production to achieve socialism. Its just the Brit left are not veryb clear where this should be. Now that the socialist movement in Scotland
has taken the road towards a Scottish Socialist republic, the British Left in England and Wales have been forced to abandon the British road to socialism but have no idea what to put it in its place.

The British Left has a problem recognising that different nations have different trajectories of class struggle - a revolutionary period for one may not be for another. And their anglocentricity ensures that it's the English working class which is the only one they consider. How would a true
internationalist view the differing states of the working class in different nations? Not in the way that the Brit left do.

As a result, in place of a principled position on the national question in Wales, the SP and SWP prefer to fudge the issue by arguing that they will wait and see what the working class wants. In the WSA constitution this position was agreed by them at the WSA conference last January and it is to let a future Welsh parliament "decide its relationship with the UK, Europe and the rest of the world."

This of course places self-determination in a political and social vacuum - and means that the Brit left can always argue against independence. The dimension in the Brit left analysis is that Welsh people are oppressed - it's the old problem of Marxism (identified many years ago) that the imperialist left are very good on the relations of production and how workers are exploited, but very bad on the conditions of production and how certain sections of the workers are oppressed.

This position suggests that they would happily sit back and accept a possible Tory victory in the next elections and say "that's what the working class wants" Now this is farcical. Why are they so hesitant? Is it because they don't want to take a position? Why stop at waiting for the working class to decide on the national question? If its because the working class don't appear to be overwhelmingly in favour of independence, then perhaps it is worth pointing out that the working class don't appear to be
overwhelmingly in favour of socialism, either, but it doesn't seem likely that they will take the same grovelling line on socialism.

The problem that they have is that much as they would like to portray Members of Cymru Goch as less socialist and more nationalist than themselves we in Cymru Goch can point out what an honourable epithet it is to be called a
"nationalist" by the imperialist left. What good company we're in - James Connolly, John MacLean, Ber Borochov, Viktor Mazlakh, Jose Carlos Mariategui, Mikola Skrypnik, to name but a few.

Cymru Goch itself has a long and honourable record on fighting racism and for internationalism, albeit from a different perspective. When we have supported national liberation struggles, it has truly been in solidarity. We have seen the world differently because we recognise that
we are fighting a national liberation struggle, too. Whereas the British left's view of the world has largely been a mirror image of the British ruling class's view of the world, we have consistently supported socialist liberation movements that they have ignored, from Eritrea to
Euzkadi, whether they impinge on Britain or not.

At least Cymru Goch has been consistent on this. We have always arguedthat Wales is a colony of England incorporated into the British state. For us, the class struggle has an added dimension in Wales, a position recognised by the majority of workers in the valleys of South Wales when
they delivered the crucial Yes vote for a Welsh Assembly.

And that is our strength - we have an integrated view which addresses the questions of both exploitation and oppression (and which by so doing can enlighten and enrich our position on other forms of oppression, not just
the national variant). We have an awareness of our history and how things came to be the way they are and how things in Wales differ from those in England.

The British left in Wales is split not on an ideological position on the national question, (they haven't got one), but on old organisational loyalties to London with both the SP and SWP in Wales tied to a democratic centralist structure dominated by their, largely English, leadership. Cymru Goch has benefited from this as their local members
have become increasingly disillusioned by being taken for granted by organisers who take their orders (or get parachuted in from) London. Ironically, the SP and SWP leadership might have just about got their heads round devolution, but they haven't realised that it might be applied to their own parties.

The democratic centralist model forbids this of course - the party line must prevail, no matter how democratic an internal regime the party has. So the greatest weight rests at the centre, among the political leadership. And if
the centre is located in the metropole, then views which are informed by a different cultural milieu will be automatically ruled out.

Cymru Goch will be denounced as splitters if we fail to win the WSA over to a principled line in favour of an independent Welsh Socialist Republic and leave the WSA. But there will be a great irony here, as the SP and SWP's line will not have been decided democratically amongst
their members in Wales. It will have been decided in London and transmitted down to their members in Wales.
Finally, the great contradiction at the heart of the debate will loom large if they reject our position. In simple terms, if Cymru Goch leaves the WSA, they might as well dissolve it and become a region of the English Network of Socialist Alliances.

Perhaps it will do the "Brit" left then a bit of good to be an English-only organisation. Members of Cymru Goch wait withsincere anticipation for the English to come to an appreciation of their own place in the world and their contribution to its liberation rather than one filtered through the lens of the Brit Empire.

The Welsh name for Wales is Cymru, which perhaps ironically means "The land of Comrades" so then in place of the WSA, maybe the Brit Left could re-organise the
WSA under the name West Anglia Network (Cymru), or just WANC, for short…

Cymru Goch.