A RESPONSE TO PLAID CYMRU COUNCILLOR SEIMON GLYN

Glyn Davies, Communist Party Parliamentary Candidate for the Alun & Deeside constituency replies to Cllr Seimon Glyn's much publicised comments on English incomers to Wales

Councillor Glyn is unlikely to acheive a Welsh utopian paradise by buildings walls of disunity and simply attacking incomers into Wales. This misguided kind of political ignorance only plays into the hands of those who seek to divide and rule working people.

Lenin ponted out that uneven economic development is a law of capitalist development which operates in countries as well as globally.

The fundamental division in our society is not between Wales and England or between Flintshire and south Glamorgan. Inequality arises from the class nature of capitalist society by the exploitation of the working class by the owners of industry and commerce, whatever people's nationality or place of residence.

It must be stressed that, in fact, the fundamental problem for Wales lies in the lack of good, well paid jobs that puts us behind other parts of Britain - solve that and other things follow, especially if we can build on the limited amount of democracy that has been achieved through a Welsh Assembly.

While having sympathy about the spread of holiday homes and luxury developments, the essence of the housing problem lies in the free market in housing and land, which has created a situation of crisis proportions, especially as housing is a fundamental human need that underpins health and welfare.

Many working people cannot pay the full cost of their housing out of their wages and, so, the only means of ensuring that they are properly housed is through public provision of affordable housing, a comprehensive programme of council house building for rent and extra help for first-time local home-buyers.

Housing conditions provide a clear insight of social inequality and deprivation. Wales has an older housing stock, with around one in five homes still lacking basic amenities and a higher proportion of empty second homes than any other nation or region of Britain.

Poverty and poor housing go hand in hand with the higher incidence of sickness and disease in Wales.

The nationalists' narrow defence of our 'culture' only serves to mask the class antagonisms between the exploiters and the exploited within every nation, disuniting the workers and all democratic forces, while attempting the spiritual enslavement of the Welsh workers by the ruling class.

The Welsh language is having to fight in Wales to survive against the economic, social and political forces over which the people in Wales still have minimal control, but it survives.

Nationalists try to preserve the language by shielding it from opposition. They should speak up for it, pointing to this unique creation by the Welsh nation - our contribution to the world's rich variety of culture.

It is a living link with our past - Welsh having been the language of the working class for much of its history - and Welsh-speaking movements and institutions are today an important part of the radical and democratic Welsh life.

The key to advancing the economic, social and cultural interests of the people of Wales is the achievement of a more powerful elected parliament with full economic, law making and revenue-raising powers.

This demand is for democracy in its full sense - that it has manifest economic and social content.

Welsh institutions must be national in a democratic sense, enabling the people of Wales to decide, for the first time, in terms of a new balance of class forces, a progressive and democratic content for their true national culture and identity.