WELSH COMMUNISTS' NEW EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE SETS PRIORITIES FOR 2010

Tuesday 19. January 2010

The new Executive Committee of the Welsh Communist Party, meeting over the weekend, agreed its work plan for 2010 and elected its officers and co-ordinators to develop and action this plan (Details of leading positions and list of co-ordinators below).

The Executive also determined its General Election electoral intervention (see earlier article) and issued statements to the press on the Haiti crisis and on the decision of BOSCH to throw hundreds of Welsh workers onto the scrapheap (statements in full below).

Elections

Wales secretary – Rick Newnham
Chairperson – John Lent
Vice chairperson – Lorette Picand
Co-ordinators were also elected to cover the following areas:
Membership and Organisation
Peoples Charter
Industrial
Peace
Political Education
Morning Star & Party Literature
Cymdaithas Niclas & Eisteddfod

Statements

BOSCH

Welsh Communists today condemned the decision by Bosch to close their Miskin plant in favour of moving production to where they can get cheaper labour.

The executive committee, meeting in Pontypridd, urged unions and community groups to demand that the government starts making multinational companies accountable for their actions.

‘This closure is due to the greed of big business shareholders and has nothing to do with the recession. It shows how pathetic current government economic strategy is when big business can ride roughshod over its victims without recompense.

We are already paying for government irresponsibility in allowing the bankers a free reign’ declared Welsh Secretary Rick Newnham.

Haiti

The Welsh Communist Party expresses its solidarity with the Haitian people following the devastating earthquake that has wrecked havoc on an already impoverished nation.

The Welsh Communist Party recognises that the Haitian people need massive amounts of disaster relief in the short term, and supports the work of the Disaster Emergency Committee here in Britain, but in the long term the Haitian people need the USA and its international agencies to stop imposing policies that make them more vulnerable to natural disasters.

Trade and aid policies that force rural Haitians into cities where there is no safe housing for them and political policies that undermine or overthrow democratically elected governments that do try to provide safe housing and services in rural areas.

It is important to note that, while US politicians were making speeches about sending an aircraft carrier and thousands of marines to Haiti; a neighbouring developing country, Cuba, had its medical personnel already on the ground in Haiti converting their own accommodation facilities into two makeshift hospitals to take care of the sick and wounded. Cuba also wasted no time in sending further medical teams and supplies to its neighbour.

Haiti certainly needs overseas aid, but, above all, it needs its independence its own freely chosen political leader and an end to US-sponsored military coups.

For further details on the business cover in the Executive Committee meeting please e-mail office@welshcommunists.org