REAL POWER FOR THE PEOPLE OF WALES

Wednesday 21. February 2007

This pamphlet presents the programme of the Welsh Communist Party as adopted in 2005 and amended at its Swansea Congress in November 2007. Since its foundation in 1920, the Communist Party has played an active and at times influential role in Welsh political, trade union and cultural life. This latest Welsh Congress policy is our response to the challenges and new opportunities facing the Welsh working class and people generally.

In line with past practice, a Welsh language edition of Real Power for the People of Wales is also available; copies of both editions can be obtained by sending a S.A.E. to Welsh Communist Party, PO BOX 69, Pontypridd, CF37 9AB.

Rick Newnham
Secretary, Welsh Communist Party
(Section of the Communist Party of Britain)

REAL POWER FOR THE PEOPLE OF WALES

The general political situation

British and international politics continue to be dominated by the illegal and barbaric occupations of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite the growing number of casualties there is nevertheless a continuing danger of military aggression in the near future against Iran, Syria, Lebanon and other independent states. The inhuman treatment of the Palestinian people by apartheid Israel has the overt support of the US and European governments, clearly demonstrating how little the West cares for either human rights or democracy.

It is imperative that we continue to mobilise against the predatory US-led occupation of Iraq, which is designed to meet the economic and military needs of US imperialism rather than the economic and social needs of the Iraqi people. The people of Wales have played a full part in the worldwide movement against the war though there is a need to extend cooperation and coordination of peace and anti-war forces on all-Wales level, and for the involvement of the Wales TUC and trade union organisations in such an initiative alongside the Stop the War Coalition, CND Cymru and local peace groups.

It also underlines the importance of the work done by the Cuba and Palestine solidarity campaigns in Wales—and of the need for organised solidarity with the peoples of Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia.

At the same time, the argument that closer British integration in the European Union provides a progressive alternative to the lickspittle alliance with US imperialism has to be resisted. As well as championing monetarist economics, privatisation and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in the interests of European transnational corporations, the EU is developing into an undemocratic, militarised and imperialist United States of Europe. Despite the decisive rejection of a neo-liberal Europe by the people of the Netherlands and France the constitutional treaty has been regurgitated for parliamentary approval. Neither the treaty nor the neo-liberal policies of the EU in general are in the interests of the people of Wales or of humanity in general, and highlight the role that Trades Unions Against the EU Constitution, the Wales TUC and the labour and progressive movements must play in alerting the people of Wales to these dangers, with clear reference to the devastating history of British and other European imperialisms.

Pressure must be stepped up to force the New Labour government to fulfil its pledge to hold a referendum on further constitutional change in the EU, which means that the EU Reform Treaty should be subject to such a referendum. In such an event, the Communist Party in Wales will seek to build the broadest possible campaign against the treaty, highlighting its anti-democratic, neo-liberal and anti-worker character.

New Labour's shameful involvement in the war crimes against Iraq has further discredited the New Labour government. Its pro-big business policies of capital export, privatisation, public spending restrictions and regressive taxation have eroded our manufacturing base, undermined our public services and the public sector generally, and widened the gap between rich and poor. Its social policies in the fields of housing, health, education, immigration and asylum will continue to deepen social divisions of every kind.

In connection with its reactionary foreign, immigration and asylum policies—and in response to vigorous campaigning against them—the government has mounted a sustained attack on civil liberties and democratic freedoms. This has included the creation of new criminal offences, sweeping new police powers of arrest and detention, further limits on rights to assemble and protest, and such repressive sanctions as house arrest and 28-day detention without charge (which the government later wanted to extend to 42 days). Like the proposal to introduce identity cards, these developments represent the creeping construction of a 'police state' and must be resisted by the widest coalition of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary campaigners.

In the light of New Labour's record, it is no surprise that many electors are turning in anger and despair to alternative parties including the fascists. Many, particularly the young, are choosing not to vote at all.

The fight to reclaim the Labour Party from within suffered a setback with the inability of the left to gain enough support from the PLP to produce a candidate to take on Gordon Brown. The relative ease with which New Labour adopts neo-liberal policies without significant trade union or parliamentary opposition is a major cause from concern. Within the Labour Party itself, the Labour Representation Committee has the potential to emerge as a significant pole of opposition to New Labour policies, along with the Socialist Campaign Group and many affiliated trades unions. The LRC is fighting for economic, social and foreign policies based on public ownership, environmental sustainability, the redistribution of wealth and power, peace, internationalism and opposition to all forms of oppression.

The vital need of the labour movement to have a mass electoral party which represents the interests of the working class is a crucial question for every section of the labour movement and the non-sectarian left to consider. Reclaiming the Labour Party or re-establishing a mass party of labour must become a burning strategic issue over the coming period.

New political conditions in Wales

The recent National Assembly elections show—despite significant electoral haemorrhages—that Labour retains a high level of support in Wales. Labour’s losses are attributable to the damaging consequences of the aggressive neo-liberal policies emanating from Westminster and to the appeal of Plaid Cymru's left of centre policies which acted as a progressive alternative. The resulting Labour-Plaid government coalition based on the One Wales programme is social democratic, rather than neo-liberal in outlook and is clearly widening the policy gap between the governments in Cardiff and London.

The coalition is, however, a pragmatic rather than an ideological fusion and is therefore vulnerable to attack from opportunist and neo-liberal forces, most clearly evident among backward Welsh Labour MPs and some of the less progressive Labour AMs.
Nevertheless, the progressive clauses in the One Wales document found support among the trade unions and constituency sections of the Labour Party and it is this feature of the coalition that provides the left with some key opportunities.

The Communist Party therefore proposes:

Firstly, that pressure must be stepped up on Labour and Plaid AMs and the administration in Cardiff to support progressive and left policies.

Secondly, that the left in the trade union movement, the Labour Party and in Plaid Cymru coordinate campaigns for progressive policies in Wales. One avenue through which this objective could be discussed and developed is the all-Wales Morning Star Campaign Committee.

Thirdly, Labour Party members and other socialists, progressives and trades unionists can help to strengthen Grassroots Labour and the Labour Representation Committee in Wales.

While recognising the different strategic orientation—and the electoral rivalry—which currently exists between Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru, sectarian attempts from within and outside those parties to deepen divisions on the left should be rejected by all socialists.

At the same time, it has to be acknowledged that neither party is currently fighting for policies that will fundamentally challenge the huge inequalities and injustices which persist in Wales, and which are rooted in a society based on exploitation and oppression.

In particular, the Wales Labour Party fails to take advantage of new political conditions created by the establishment of the National Assembly to develop bold policies and to campaig for the devolved powers with which to carry them out.

Plaid Cymru, on the other hand, pursues the myth of an 'independent Wales' in what is set to become a centralised, military, imperialist United States of Europe dominated by the transnational corporations, an unaccountable European Commission and an unaccountable European Central Bank.

Yet all socialists want to see a Wales in which there is social justice and greater equality. For the Communist Party, this can only be achieved as the result of a direct, planned intervention in the economy which forms the basis of our society.

What kind of Welsh economy and environment?

Working people as a whole will only prosper when we have a modern economy which utilises the most advanced environmentally-sustainable technology, providing full employment for a high-skilled, high-waged workforce. It must be the key objective of the Welsh labour movement to secure such an economy in every sector.

Private enterprise has no such overall objective, and there is no reason to believe that today's transnational corporations are more likely to produce such an outcome than were the iron and coal monopolies of the past. All the great initiatives to diversify and modernise the Welsh economy and to overcome mass unemployment have come about as the result of public sector planning, intervention and investment.

The section of the One Wales document dealing with the economy recognises the need for a strategic, sustainable and high-employment approach. By reintroducing the concept of economic planning and government intervention in the economy, the document is regaining ground lost under recent Tory and New Labour regimes in Britain. But the measures being proposed in the strategy are flawed. The key economic factor which has caused the greatest economic difficulties in Wales is ignored, namely the reliance upon the private business sector.
Because the private sector is stimulated by maximising profits, it cannot necessarily commit itself to long-term investment, environmentally sustainable working practices, investment in a community’s strategic requirements or even in the needs of its own workforce. Indeed, large sections of the business community want a skilled but passive and cheap workforce which can be hired and fired without consequence. The measures in One Wales perpetuate the idea that a strong economy can be achieved by uncritically supporting big business.

In particular, the idea that investment in education and skills training leads to a corresponding economic advantage is dangerously simplistic. For as long as the transnational corporations are free to switch work and capital to wherever cheap or unemployed labour is available, even the most trained and 'flexible' labour in developed countries will find it difficult to retain jobs and decent terms and conditions.

Furthermore, the idea that large sections of the economy are best left in the hands of private enterprise flies in the face of the evidence that this breeds greater inequality and relative poverty, as demonstrated by the UNESCO report on child welfare in 2007.

The National Assembly and Welsh Development Agency have spent hundreds of millions of pounds of public money bribing foreign transnational corporations to come to Wales—the low-pay metropolis of western Europe—and partly fill the 'investment gap' left by the massive export of capital from Wales and Britain by British transnationals. Yet even today, after all the bribes paid to incoming transnationals, they account for just 6 per cent of all the jobs in Wales.

The LG fiasco in Newport demonstrates the bankruptcy of this approach, although only the Communist Party publicly challenged the cost of the LG scheme at the time. Other transnational corporations such as Burberry, Meritor, Sony and NEG have simply shut down whole factories in Wales and—regardless of the public assistance they have received—exported production to eastern Europe and the Far East, where pay is even lower and labour even more flexible.

Nor does the proposed Military Training Academy at St. Athan represent the kind of initiative where public money should be used to promote economic development and development. Billions of pounds would be invested in a project managed by a consortium of British and US banking, construction and armaments companies which have a long record of rampant profiteering, corruption and support for reactionary wars and repressive regimes. This privatised militarisation and distortion of the Welsh economy and education system will tie Wales closer to British and US imperialism's war machine and spread reactionary and imperialist values among the people, especially our younger generations. Many of the promised jobs are unlikely to materialise, while most of the skilled posts will be filled by workers transferred from England and Scotland. Planning and training for war is neither a stable nor a moral basis on which to build a balanced, modern and progressive economy in Wales.

At present, the National Assembly is powerless in the face of transnational corporations and the monopoly-dominated 'market forces' which their system inflicts on workers and their communities. The alternative to the failed low-pay, semi-skilled, labour-flexible, foreign-capital, market-forces model of economic development in Wales is a strategy to build a high-pay, highly-skilled, home-grown, planned model which provides job security. We need such a medium- and long-term strategy now.

More precisely, we need an Economic Plan for Wales implemented within the framework of a Welsh parliament with primary law-making, economic and financial powers, including the power to outlaw mass redundancies in viable enterprises, to take failing companies into public ownership, to direct economic development, to co-ordinate the different industries in the energy and transport sectors and to raise capital funds. Such an economic plan should include a programme of nationalisation to take back into public ownership the energy (including coal, water and electricity), transport (including rail and bus) and steel industries as well as slate. This would broaden the scope for cooperation between workers at the heart of British and transnational capitalism.

The whole domestically and foreign owned manufacturing sector accounts for 16 per cent of employment in Wales (compared with 12 per cent in Britain), with our industrial base as a whole accounting for 22 per cent (19 per cent in Britain). The public sector employs about 32 per cent of workers in Wales, compared with 26 per cent across Britain. Dependence upon agriculture and self-employment is about the same in Wales as in Britain as a whole, while business-related services in finance and property play less of a role in the Welsh economy.

This shows the extent to which industry, manufacturing and public services should be the focus of any strategy for economic development and full employment in Wales. Such priorities are the opposite of those promoted by the City of London's financial institutions and which exercise enormous influence on central government policy. No wonder that since New Labour took office in 1997, industrial production in Wales has fallen by 10 per cent with a net loss of 28,000 manufacturing jobs.

A National Assembly or parliament with extensive economic and financial powers would enable our strategic focus to shift away from bribing foreign TNCs to come to Wales and bending our education, training, planning and transport resources to their short-term needs. Instead, we could move towards encouraging and supporting indigenous enterprise of every kind: public, private, social and co-operative. Moreover, this should be done within the context of an Economic Plan for Wales which identifies and nurtures services and industries matched to local needs, resources and potentials while achieving balanced economic development across Wales a whole. Central to the plan should be the protection and extension of our industrial and manufacturing base.

This could include the redevelopment of a deep-mined coal industry which is environmentally sustainable. Coal should be part of an integrated energy policy, a condition of which needs to be investment in 'clean coal' technology to deal with the CO2 emissions that contribute to global warming.

Such a perspective should not be confused with current plans to expand opencast coal operations by private mining companies which seek to maximise profits at the expense of local communities and the environment. The recent go-ahead given to the application from the Miller Argent conglomerate near Merthyr Tydfil will undoubtedly lead to other applications along the northern rim of the south Wales coalfield. Opencast methods of extraction inflict great physical damage to the topography as well as noise and dust pollution from blasting. Many potential sites are not linked to the railway network and so any expansion of opencast methods is likely to generate increased road traffic with adverse affects on safety and the environment.

In this case as in others, campaigns to make workplaces, roads and communities safe from accidents, injuries and deaths should be supported and extended.

A rapid and massive explosion of opencast mining will lock our people and communities into a new dependency on coal again. It will deter as much investment locally as it will attract. Whether deep-mined or opencast, coal needs to be just one element in an economic strategy designed to re-establish a thriving and diverse manufacturing base.

The energy needs of Wales would be met more effectively and sustainably by utilising offshore wind turbines and investigating the potential for a Severn Barrage to harness tidal power (but with maximum environmental and ecological safeguards and with the status of the National Assembly and government fully reflected in administrative arrangements).

The Assembly must have the power to conclude planning agreements with companies to make public assistance conditional upon them locating or expanding their R&D facilities here, as well as creating jobs, utilising new technology, providing high-quality training, guaranteeing pensions, recognising trades unions and paying a defined living wage for Wales.

The economic plan should also give a prominent role to support for co-operatives of every type—worker co-ops, community and market co-ops, credit unions—thereby reviving one of the aims set out in the original 1975 Welsh Development Agency Act.

The case for establishing a Welsh Centre of Technology needs to be examined afresh as one of the means by which technological development and R&D can be promoted.

An effective Economic Plan for Wales can only be drawn up on the basis of the widest consultation between the National Assembly, public bodies and services, local communities, private enterprise and the trades unions. There also has to be the right kind of executive and dynamic leadership to put the plan into practice; leadership which is open and transparent rather than a Welsh government committee or a civil service unit. That is why the Communist Party opposed the abolition of the Welsh Development Agency and the absorption of its functions into the Assembly apparatus, and called instead for the transformation of the WDA into a National Economic Development Authority for Wales which is fully accountable to the National Assembly.

The labour movement, notably the Wales TUC and the Labour Party, must take the lead in campaigning for an Economic Plan for Wales based on the principles of public intervention and democratic control, and for the powers and resources of the National Assembly to be increased in order to implement it. This is the only approach which could secure the secure economic base for a socially-just society in Wales.

The fight for social justice and equality

Public and social services continue to make a substantial contribution to the quality of life—such as it is—of many people in Wales, as well as being a major employer.

But the current funding arrangements of a Whitehall block grant via the National Assembly together with regressive council tax do not provide a secure basis upon which those services can be maintained and enhanced. This is especially so in housing, where the recent revaluation of council tax in Wales has resulted in large increases for more than one-third of householders, and where local authorities are trying to offload their responsibilities through council housing stock transfer. In further and higher education, the current funding shambles restricts access for working class students despite the welcome initiative by the Welsh Assembly to reintroduce student grants.

Amending the Barnett block grant formula to fully recognise the needs of deprived working class communities would produce a fairer distribution of central government funds. But it is not the fundamental solution. This would have to include the replacement of council tax by a local income tax, freedom for local authorities and the National Assembly to raise investment funds in capital markets and powers for the Assembly to retain a share of PAYE revenues in Wales, to supplement income tax rates—including at the top rate—and to introduce its own taxes and levies, for example on wealth (as can the provinces of Spain), development land and 'prestige' projects.

Such developments would make a real difference to the quality of people's lives in Wales, unlike the seemingly endless structural and systemic reforms which afflict our public and voluntary sectors. The perpetual cycle of local government restructuring and the adoption of inappropriate private-sector management systems create little except petty empires for top bureaucrats and permanent insecurity for the many low-paid employees.

In particular, the increasing use of voluntary and private sector organisations to run public sector services, while many of the funding agencies lack accountability, undermines both collective bargaining and previously-achieved standards of employment. The Welsh Assembly should ensure that public funding goes only to organisations that are unionised and have nationally agreed pay and conditions. The employer-dominated sector skills councils exert growing influence on the education and training provisions for public sector workers, further undermining the public sector ethos and practice and democratic accountability. The imposition of NVQs and competence-based training is a consequence of pressure from the CBI, the European Round Table of Industrialists and the European Commission. This needs to be exposed as an employers' agenda which bypasses local, accountable and democratic influence.

Low pay is a major cause of poverty both in working life and in old age. The average wage in Wales is more than 20 per cent below the British average, with full-time women workers in Wales receiving only 80 per cent of the Welsh male full-time wage. Women also constitute four-fifths of all part-time workers, a section of the workforce which experiences lower pay and greater job insecurity than any other. Compulsory equal pay audits are required to expose and eliminate those pay systems that are discriminatory.

But the single biggest blow which could be struck for the working poor is to raise the national minimum wage (NMW) for all workers so that it equals half the median male wage—about £7 an hour in early 2008—in line with the TUC formula, rising to two-thirds over time. This policy should include 16-18 year and 18-21 year olds who are currently on lower, discriminatory rates.

Here is a top campaigning opportunity for the Wales TUC, uniting the interests of hundreds of thousands of workers including young, women and black workers. It would attract non-unionised employees to union membership, especially in the notorious low-pay and anti-union services sector—in hotels, catering and retailing—which play a major part in the local and Welsh economies, where many employees are seasonal, work long hours and receive little or no training.

Linked to this campaign could be the demand for the Welsh Assembly to have the power to increase the NMW, just as individual states in the US can do, which can be taken up by the whole labour and progressive movement in Wales. In this connection, too, the concept of a Living Wage for Wales—based on the Family Budget Unit's assessment of the wages needed to be able to live with dignity—would be invaluable. Such a policy, adopted by the National Assembly and recommended to other public bodies and to private companies contracted to do public works, would provide a powerful Welsh focus to the campaign to increase the national minimum wage.

Low pay is also coupled with a high incidence of people on state benefits of one sort or another: 10 per cent of the Welsh population are on income support while large numbers are on incapacity benefit due to the high incidence of ill health in Wales. These facts combine to leave many people in poverty. Yet neither the Westminster nor Welsh Assembly governments do anything concrete to alleviate this. The New Labour government's only response is to launch concerted drives to force people into dead-end training or low-paid work instead of looking to address the root causes of the underlying medical conditions.

Another major factor which makes Wales one of the poorest nations and regions of western Europe is our higher degree of dependence in old age on a miserly state pension. A stronger campaigning alliance between the National Pensioners Convention, local groups and the Welsh labour movement would help ensure that the aim of a substantial, index-linked, non-means tested state pension for all remains high on the political agenda. A non-means tested state pension should cover all benefits currently met through this process. The low rate of national state pensions remains a scandal. Since the link with earnings was broken, pensions have been reduced in value by 30 per cent in real terms.

The Turner Commission report highlights the need to fight for a second state-run pension for everyone at work, with adequate and compulsory contributions from employers and the state as well as workers.

The power of united action can be seen quite clearly from the campaign undertaken by all public sector unions to thwart the government's attempt—egged on by right-wing industrialists and CBI leaders—to restrict access to occupational state pensions until the age of 65. Then, the rights of millions of workers—many of them low-paid—were protected. Public sector unions in Wales not only sent delegates to lobby in London, but worked hard together to exert pressure on Welsh MPs and AMs. The decision by the TUC to coordinate a national demonstration in support of public sector pay is to be welcomed though the continuing barrage against public sector workers all too often leaves working people vulnerable and isolated. Workers in the civil service, higher education, the Royal Mail and local government have all been involved in disputes to maintain conditions.

Despite the fact that the people of Wales suffer some of the worst levels of ill health in Europe, the National Assembly government has still not managed to reduce waiting lists for NHS treatment. Instead, more and more people are opting to pay for private treatment they can ill afford. Improving industrial, economic and environmental conditions—and not least reducing poverty—will alleviate this situation in the longer term.

What is required immediately, however, is more investment in front-line health and medical services, including in wages and training for NHS staff. To its credit the Labour-Plaid coalition has given a clear undertaking to stop the spread of the profiteering private sector in the NHS, although many services are already outsourced.

The National Assembly should abolish all private health provision which competes with the NHS and so draws off staff, resources and public funds for private profit. The Assembly should draw up a programme to defend and extend access to NHS GPs and dental services across Wales and to raise the resources to increase access to health services, taking the legislative and financial powers necessary to implement such a plan.

Wales is in the throes of a housing crisis. Homelessness here has doubled since 1997, although the official figures record only the people registered as homeless and not those living in hostels or on the streets. House prices have risen to the point where first-time buyers can no longer even get onto the house-buying ladder. Instead they are forced into private rented accommodation at extortionate prices.

Yet the central government's response has been to push local authorities into transferring their council housing stock. Instead of restoring the power of local authorities to build housing for those who want or need to rent, the government has transferred responsibility to housing associations while at the same time cutting their building grants.

The result has been that almost no new council houses or flats have been built in Wales since 1997, while housing associations have reduced their building programmes by four-fifths. In the absence of new social housing, waiting times have rocketed in some areas to exceed life expectancy.

Wales desperately needs more housing, particularly public and social sector housing with security of tenure for the homeless, the unemployed (discriminated against by many private landlords), workers on low pay and the elderly. The urgent priority, therefore, is to defeat all further attempts by local councils to transfer their remaining housing stock to third-party landlords. In any transfer ballots, tenants should have the 'fourth option' to remain council tenants with their local authority carrying out the necessary repairs which they are legally obliged to do. The Labour-Plaid coalition has committed itself to reviving public sector house building—including council housing—and management in Wales. Extra funds could be secured for repairs and new building through a campaign, led by the Welsh Assembly, to break central government's ring-fencing of the proceeds from council house sales. Ultimately, all legislative powers in relation to housing policy should be transferred from Westminster to the National Assembly.

The proposals to close between 140 and 200 local post offices in Wales would create enormous hardship for many local communities, and for the elderly and others who lack the mobility to travel to the remaining outlets. This closure programme is part of the drive by the New Labour government, the European Union and the World Trade Organisation to privatise all postal services. The goal is to hand over the most profitable mail services to giant US and European monopolies—including a privatised Royal Mail—and more and more counter services to the high street and supermarket chains. Our universal pricing and delivery system would be destroyed in the process. Neither the Toires nor the Lib Dems oppose the neo-liberal agenda behind the closure plans. Only united campaigning by community and pensioners organisations, political parties and the trade unions can protect our universal post office and mail services by resisting all measures to cut or privatise them.

The health, transport and other public services highlight the priceless contribution made to our country's economy—as well as its social and cultural life—by many people who have settled in Wales over recent decades. Yet parts of Wales have also seen some of the biggest increases in racist attacks in Britain.

This shameful situation is primarily the result of prejudice and bigotry whipped up by the monopoly mass media and the New Labour government and its policies, putting forward 'scapegoats' to blame for the intrinsic problems of capitalist society. High levels of deprivation in so many of our local communities provide fertile ground for organised racists and fascists to peddle false solutions to real problems.

Racism and fascism have to be opposed on at least three fronts. Firstly, it is important to take a public stand against the New Labour and mass media attacks on asylum seekers, as the National Assembly did so splendidly over the treatment of asylum seekers in Cardiff gaol. Secondly, the activities and real beliefs of the BNP (British Nazi Party) and others have to be countered on the basis of the widest possible unity—a strategy being promoted by Searchlight Cymru together with the Wales TUC. And thirdly, people in their communities and workplaces must be mobilised to fight for policies to solve the deep-rooted problems which afflict many parts of Wales.

Young people have joined immigrants and trades unionists as New Labour and mass media 'scapegoats'. Divisive measures which seek to demonise young people and consequently marginalise them from the labour and progressive movements should be resisted. The use of curfews, anti-social behaviour orders and the superficial gibberish about respect and citizenship needs to be abolished.

The National Assembly could present a positive agenda to encourage and support our younger generations, not least by opposing higher student fees, discouraging the use of curfews in localities and significantly increasing the involvement and representation of young people in the young people's partnerships. It should establish a Youth Equality Council to monitor discrimination against young people in Wales with a view to establishing codes of conduct and guidance and recommending appropriate legislation to assist young people in such fields as employment and wages, civil rights, media coverage, housing, welfare entitlement and political representation.

Threats of punitive action to compel young people to stay in school or training until the age of 18 should be dropped. Rather, educational provision should be developed to meet the requirements of all the people of Wales without resorting to the reductionist agenda of the CBI and big business. It is their failure to invest in workers, communities and in society generally—depriving young people of real jobs and apprenticeships—which has caused any ‘skills shortage’ in the first place. Nor is it the job of publicly funded education to compensate for the market’s inadequacies by rewarding it with further handouts. As with other training schemes designed to massage youth unemployment figures, it is unlikely that sufficient funding will be made available to deliver adequate education and training for young people under the proposed arrangements to extend the school leaving age.

The mass media in Wales

The people of Wales are badly served by large sections of the mass media, reflecting as they do the interests of monopoly capital and British state power.

In particular, most print and broadcasting media at British level largely ignore those political and cultural affairs which reflect the distinctive national identity of Wales, devoting what small Welsh coverage they provide to trivial or sports issues. At the same time, Wales lacks a national press of its own where Welsh-based newspapers would have an all-Wales circulation and could develop distinctively Welsh perspectives on British and international matters. As a daily national newspaper owned by its readers and the labour movement, the Morning Star provides valuable coverage of current affairs in Wales, not least through its reporting of Wales TUC and CND Cymru events and of political, industrial and environmental struggles. But more could be done to supply the paper with news and features from Wales.

Within Wales itself, the broadcasting coverage given to news and current affairs— especially by BBC Wales in the English language—is often parochial and treats Wales as a region rather than a nation. Any coverage at all of British or international matters is usually a scaled-down reflection of the approach taken by the broadcasting establishment in London, rather than an attempt to reflect a Welsh-based view of important questions.

The National Assembly should therefore work with media organisations, the trade unions and other interested bodies to develop policies which address Welsh needs. These include a bigger and more varied press in Wales at local and national levels, in both languages as appropriate, with publicly-funded support where necessary in the advertising, circulation, technological, training spheres, especially for viable community and co-operative ventures.

More support should be forthcoming for the proposed Welsh-language daily newspaper Y Byd (The World) by all who favour the growth of a Welsh and internationalist press.

Furthermore, BBC Wales should be given greater autonomy and resources, with a mandate to produce more Welsh-originated programming which reflects Welsh rather than British perspectives on news and current affairs. More coverage is also required for Welsh history, cultural and sports programmes in both languages, with television programme-making also helping to provide a springboard for the development of Welsh cinema.

BBC Wales should also be enabled to opt out of programmes which reflect the BBC's obsession with English national sports teams, share-dealing, property speculation and US television imports. The Welsh share of such costs should be invested instead in producing or purchasing Welsh-originated and overseas programmes and films.

Consideration could also be given to utilising S4C2 as a pilot channel for a Welsh and internationalist broadcasting system, with a Welsh Broadcasting Corporation established under National Assembly legislation and bringing together staff and resources from the state and private sectors. The ultimate aim should be to expand the competence of a Welsh Broadcasting Corporation to govern all the current BBC, HTV and S4C channels in Wales, drawing funds from licence fees, advertising, sponsorship, commercial activities and the Welsh and British governments.

A People's Parliament for Wales

Welsh Communists welcomed the Richard Commission report as a generally progressive contribution to tackling the powerlessness of the people of Wales.

Although the Communist Party has been at the forefront of the fight for a Parliament for Wales since the launch of the campaign of 1950, it has always called for a parliament of a new type which actively involves people through consultation, petitioning rights, an extended franchise and a representative voting system.

We believe that the National Assembly should be given the powers and resources to control and develop the economy, to create the best framework for the provision of vital services, to protect the environment and to strengthen cultural identity.

Additional powers and resources are also needed to increase investment in public services, to stop PFI and the privatisation of our health service and local government, and to provide investment for our run-down council housing sector without requiring the sale of council houses and housing stock transfer. To these ends economic, law-making and revenue-raising powers are inter-connected. Unfortunately, the Richard Commission refused to recognise that revenue-raising powers are essential to make the Assembly a real force for progressive change.

Nevertheless, the commission did a great service in identifying the need for the National Assembly to have law-making powers, and in proposing that it should reflect the true will of the people through the use of the Single Transferable Vote electoral system.

The Wales Labour Party, however, has failed to grasp this historic opportunity to fundamentally shift the balance of political power towards working people in Wales. The party's failure to adopt a bold and united stance on constitutional reform allowed the New Labour government in London and its outpost in the Welsh Office to ignore or dilute the Richard Commission's key proposals.

The Government of Wales Act 2006 represents an unstable half-way house between executive and legislative devolution.

Henceforth, the process of drafting and amending Welsh Bills for the Westminster parliament can take place at the National Assembly in Cardiff. But should the directly elected representatives of the Welsh people wish to proceed with their own measure, they must first seek the permission of the Secretary of State for Wales.

This office holder does not even have to be elected to Westminster from a constituency in Wales. He or she does not have to reflect the political will of the Welsh electorate, whether expressed in a National Assembly or a British general election. Indeed, we saw how—when the Tories were in office between 1970 and 1974 and for 18 years from 1979—the Secretary of State for Wales rarely sat for a Welsh constituency and, in one notorious case, appeared to have only the most tenuous connection with planet Earth.

So the Secretary of State of Wales will have the power of 'first refusal' over any draft legislative measure from the National Assembly. Then, should the Secretary of State deign to approve the idea, the proposal has next to go both Houses of the Westminster parliament. There, a majority of voting MPs must express their approval in a chamber where 94 per cent of them represent English, Scottish and Northern Irish constituencies. Moreover, the proposal also has to receive the agreement of a majority in the House of Lords, who represent no constituencies at all because they are not even elected.

The procedure would have to be repeated each time Welsh AMs wish to initiate legislation in the policy areas 'devolved' to Wales (there will not, of course, be any home-grown initiatives permitted in non-devolved areas such as macro-economic planning, fiscal and financial policy, social security, employment law or foreign and military affairs).

No other elected regional, provincial or devolved body anywhere in Europe has to jump through a single hoop of these sorts, let alone jumping through three of them.

Neither the Scottish nor Northern Ireland parliaments have to beg the appointed, the unrepresentative and the unelected for permission to initiate their own legislation. The Isle of Man and Channel Island legislatures face no such obstacles. The states of Germany and the USA and the provinces of Spain have full legislative powers within spheres of jurisdiction which go far beyond those granted to Wales or even Scotland.

Nevertheless, there is a dynamic at work. Either devolution will peter out in a ditch of provincial jobbery, careerism and corruption, or it will develop to the point where the National Assembly seeks to make inroads into the prerogatives of big business and British state power. The Government of Wales Act is a rotten compromise in which the predominant centralist forces wish to encourage the former and deter the latter.

Hence the severe restrictions on its new legislative functions. Hence, too, the impediments in the Act to the achievement of primary law-making powers equivalent to those in Scotland. Firstly, there must be a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly in favour of putting the proposal to a referendum in Wales. Secondly, the Houses of Parliament must both endorse the referendum proposal. Thirdly, the referendum must then be won.

Hence, too, the absence in the new Act of any provisions enabling the National Assembly to raise its own funds. The total dependence of the National Assembly on a block grant from Westminster and Whitehall severely limits the ability of its executive to tackle social and economic problems.

The Act contains a provision which gives an intriguing insight into the fearful mind of the British ruling class. Section 152 empowers the Secretary of State to overrule the National Assembly in matters relating to the quantity and quality of water supplied to England, perpetuating the disgrace whereby a Tory government in 1973 leased the extensive water infrastructure of mid-Wales to the Severn Trent Water Authority in Birmingham for 999 years for the sum of 5 pence.

The reality is that Wales is a net supplier not only of water but of electricity and refined oil to the rest of Britain. Our low population density in a country with bountiful natural resources including oil and gas reserves off the western coast of Wales means that we have the potential within Britain to become net exporters of vital raw materials.

The Government of Wales Act places every possible barrier in the way of greater Welsh autonomy in such matters, hoping to ensure that progress towards genuine self-government is slow where it cannot be stopped altogether. Nothing will do more to sap the self-confidence of the Welsh people and undermine the case for self-government than the weakness and failures of a powerless, supplicant National Assembly in Cardiff. This makes it all the more essential that. in keeping with the One Wales agreement, the Labour Party and Plaid Cymru maintain a joint approach to trigger a referendum on primary law-making powers by 2010 and then construct a broad-based progressive campaign to win a massive Yes vote.

Another reform in the Act will likewise increase the distance between the Welsh electorate and people on the one side and their National Assembly and its executive on the other. This is the change in constitutional status of the executive or 'Welsh Assembly Government'.

Previously, AMs had no special status as a consequence of being in the executive. They remained 'delegates' of the National Assembly. Nor did the executive have any separate constitutional status in relation to the National Assembly itself.

Now, the Act decrees that the National Assembly will no longer decide simply by resolution who shall form its executive committee as the 'first among equals'. Rather, the First Minister and other ministers will henceforth be appointed by Her or His Majesty on the nomination of the Assembly. A separate constitutional status is thereby conferred upon the executive, setting it aside from—and by clear implication above—the body of the National Assembly as such. It also introduces another point of pressure—the monarch—through which central government interference can be brought to bear in the most fundamentally important matter, namely the composition of the Welsh government.

This brings National Assembly governance much closer to the Westminster model, where Her Majesty's Government takes it upon itself to act in secrecy, accumulating unaccountable power and exercising 'collective cabinet responsibility' to bypass, ignore or misinform the rest of the parliament.

Recent scandals and abuses of power have confirmed the gross inadequacies of this model, contributing to the contempt in which is now held by wide sections of the population. The National Assembly could still provide the opportunity to develop a distinctive Welsh model of parliamentary democracy, drawing upon best practice from around the world to strengthen the involvement of the people and their democratic organisations in the governance of their country. But to do so, it will have to acquire the power to arrange its own procedures and affairs as it sees fit.

We need processes of policy formation and implementation which are open, inclusive and consultative, not Westminster and Whitehall-style government by cabal and diktat.

The labour movement and the Communist Party

The organised labour movement has played a substantial role in Welsh industrial, social, cultural and political life for more than a century. But its greatest challenges and opportunities still lie ahead.

The National Assembly offers the potential for an alliance between the Labour Party, the Wales TUC and other progressive parties and forces to change the lives of the Welsh people at work and in their communities fundamentally for the better. Within its very limited powers, the Assembly has already implemented progressive policies in education, health, the Welsh language, culture and other fields. Successive Wales TUC congresses have adopted many advanced policies across a wide range of issues, not least on the issue of defending and integrating migrant workers into the trade unions and local communities of Wales.

What is required now is a synthesis. The Assembly needs to be transformed into a powerful parliament which involves and mobilises—and not only represents—the people of Wales. The Wales TUC, Labour Party and other progressive movements need to develop and integrate their policies into an alternative economic and political strategy for Wales—and to fight for such a strategy to be taken up by the Welsh parliament.

Strengthening the Wales TUC will be a vital part of this process. As a first step, it must have more power to decide strategy and policy devolved to it from the British TUC, along with sufficient finances to conduct its democratic, strategic and campaigning business. In pursuit of this approach, the Communist Party will fight to retain and develop the annual congress of the Wales TUC as the annual parliament of working people in Wales.

Across the spectrum of social justice and equality, trades unions in general and the Wales TUC in particular should play a central and leading role in fighting for the interests of the people of Wales. Public and social services are often best defended by alliances between trades unions, progressive councillors and local people in their communities. Here, local trades union councils can make an invaluable contribution. These are the bodies which can unite trades unionists, organise solidarity and take campaigning initiatives within local communities. They can forge mutually benefical links with local communities and other progressive organisations. But their effectiveness is conditional upon trade unions ensuring that their branches play an active part in strengthening and, where necessary, rebuilding trades union councils.

For unions to become more effective in the workplace and the wider community, the anti-trade union laws have to be abolished. The Friction Dynamex dispute and the courageous, principled stand taken by the Caernarfon workforce have exposed the injustice of laws which allow rogue employers to sack workers after the statutory number of weeks, import strike-breakers and then defy an employment tribunal by shutting the factory and selling off the assets. Similarly, the scandal at Allied Steel and Wire in Cardiff demonstrates how easy it is for companies to sack a workforce, threaten to devastate a local community and then reveal that they have also stolen workers' pension funds. It is imperative, therefore, that the Wales TUC co-ordinates and leads the campaign for a Trade Union Freedom Bill at Westminster which would replace at least some of the anti-union laws by positive rights.

In the longer term, our National Assembly of Wales should take the necessary powers to prevent and penalise gross abuses of working people's rights, and so make the Assembly more relevant to the real needs of working people and their families.

Across the political left in Wales, Morning Star Readers and Supporters Groups can act as a forum for political discussion, as a force for left unity and as vehicles for promoting Morning Star sales and fund-raising initiatives such as collections at trade union meetings. The new Welsh Morning Star Campaign Committee, based on the labour movement, could play a valuable role in organising broad-based conferences on key issues.

The Communist Party and its members will also continue to make a distinctive contribution on many fronts to political, trade union and cultural life in Wales. As the Marxist party of the labour movement, it formulates and projects a strategy for progress in Wales and for socialist revolution. This strategy is based on the following principles:

• The people of Wales should fight to maximise the powers and resources devolved to the National Assembly and transform it into a genuine people's parliament.

• The Welsh labour movement must seek and win the leading role in this process, with a stronger Wales TUC at its core and acting as a force for unity across labour, left and progressive parties and movements.

• The left and the labour movement must formulate and project an integrated economic and political strategy for Wales which challenges exploitation and all forms of oppression, rebuilds our industrial base, enhances public services, enriches our culture and expands democracy.

• In order to promote and project these principles more effectively, the Communist Party—with the continued support of friends and allies—will build on the success of the 2006 Communist University of Wales and continue to develop it as a biennial event.

Towards its aim of uniting and mobilising the left, the Communist Party produced its draft Left-Wing Programme in 2005. The programme provides the people of this country with a coherent alternative to the policies of New Labour, with policies to rebuild industry and revitalise our public services.

The Communist Party will continue to act as a force for unity and mobilisation across a wide range of popular and democratic movements in Wales. At the same time we will utilise the opportunity provided by elections to project our distinctive principles and strategy among the mass of the people. Wherever possible, elections will be fought in areas where we have engaged in local work and campaigning beforehand, which means planning in advance our non-electoral and electoral activities in an integrated way. The Communist Party’s involvement in Welsh, General and European elections will include the possibility of forming alliances with left and progressive forces which broadly share our strategic outlook. We also work to elect progressive Labour candidates.

The Communist Party recognises the need to win a new generation to the labour movement and to provide leadership in the everyday campaigns of young people eg. against tuition fees, against low pay, for trade union rights. The Communist Party will, therefore, continue to support the building of the Young Communist League in Wales and the establishment of Communist Student Societies.
As Communists, we remain steadfast in our view that communism is the hope of Wales and the world. That's why we say:

UNITE THE PEOPLE OF WALES FOR
POWER, SOCIAL JUSTICE AND PEACE!