The Communist Party is calling on all Welsh comrades to
work to ensure the maximum mobilisation, from Wales,
for the Stop the War demonstration in London on the
27th September.
The Communist Party has welcomed the Stop the War
Coalition’s decision to maintain the broad alliance of
forces that opposed the invasion of Iraq and to continue
its activities under the slogan ‘End the Occupation’.
The Communist Party has reaffirmed our solidarity with
our sister party, the Iraqi Communist Party, who marched
openly in Bagdad on May Day, who are now producing
and distributing their newspaper and who are opening
party premises across Iraq to rebuild their organisation.
(A copy of the first issue of the Iraqi CP’s newspaper printed after the
fall of the regime, was presented
to the Communist Party in Wales at a public meeting in Pontypridd. This copy
will be displayed in the
CP’s premises in Cardiff)
Keep up the pressure on New Labour join the tens of
thousands in London on the 27th.
For information about buses from Cardiff contact Alric (tel: 07713972540). For
information on buses from the south Wales valleys, and all other areas, contact
Dominic
(tel: 07779140118)
Arrangements for Morning Star and CP literature sales on this day will be circulated
nearer the date.
The Communist Party had a high profile at this year’s Wales TUC Conference
being influential both on the floor of conference and at the fringe events.
The communist trade union delegates were well supported by comrades from the North Wales branch ensuring that there were plenty of Morning Star sellers and comrades distributing Party literature for the three days of conference. For the first time a Communist Party delegates’ pack was put together with a welcoming letter from the Welsh secretary, John Lent along with Communist literature. 200 of these packs were distributed free on the first day of conference.
The other highlights of the conference were:
• John Haylett (Morning Star Editor) being officially invited to the
Wales TUC General Council dinner, the first time this has ever happened. Accommodation
was kindly provided by Cymru Wales Unison brokered by Unison’s regional
convenor, Bill King.
• The debate on the EURO and the EU constitution which saw significant
contributions to the debate from Communist TU delegates, one of whom was mentioned
in the Western Mail (see press cutting). The main anti euro motions were defeated
but a weak PCS motion was passed; this motion watered down the existing Wales
TUC’s uncritical support for the single currency with its recognition
of the threat posed to public services and the need to renegotiate aspects of
the treaties that govern the euro. Small but significant progress.
• With Unison’s assistance, the Communist supported new anti fascist
group ‘Wales Friends of Searchlight’ was invited to address
• a major anti racism fringe meeting with Searchlight editor Steve Silver
speaking to a packed meeting of around 70 delegates. Later a Wales TUC General
Council statement was issued to conference that called on affiliated trade unions
to support and affiliate to ‘Wales Friends of Searchlight’.
• Up to 80 Morning Stars were sold daily and around £250.00 was
collected from delegates towards the Morning Star’s Fighting Fund.
This report was received by Communist Party’s Welsh Committee meeting
on 27th July, with the meeting welcoming the positive achievements, and the
hard work of Party comrades, at the Wales TUC conference but also recognising
the need to focus more attention on industrial work in Wales throughout the
year. The Welsh Committee therefore agreed to place industrial work as the main
agenda item for its next meeting to be held on Sunday 28th September.
A statement issued by the Welsh Communist Party and distributed at the John Marek convened Wrexham meeting that discussed the formation of a Welsh Socialist Party.
The proposal by John Marek AM and others to establish a new Welsh socialist
party is understandable - but it is the wrong kind of initiative, on the wrong
basis and at the wrong time.
The spring round of trade union conferences has sharpened the struggle to defeat
New Labour and reclaim the Labour Party for the labour movement.
This is either the beginning of the end of New Labour, which the Communist Party
characterised some years ago as a pro-big business, pro-imperialist and anti-labour
movement trend in the Labour Party. Or we are entering a period which will see
the end of the Labour Party as a potential force for peace, democracy and social
progress.
At conference after conference, the vast majority of delegates have opposed
Blair's policies of privatisation, privilege and war. They have demanded the
defence of public services and manufacturing industry, called for public ownership
of key industries and services, challenged racism and fascism and demanded the
extension of employment, trade union and democratic rights.
Most delegates also reaffirmed their union's affiliation to the Labour Party.
Indeed, they and their leaders went further and expressed a renewed determination
to fight many New Labour policies, utilising the union-Labour link to take on
the Blair clique with unprecedented vigour.
At the Unison conference, ultra-left attempts to fragment the union's political
affiliation were defeated by a margin of at least eight to one. In other big
unions such as the TGWU, GMB and Amicus-AEEU, there was not even the basis for
such attempts.
Since then, left trade union leaders and the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour
MPs have organised a large conference to map out a comprehensive challenge to
government policies.
The Communist Party has been fighting for years for just such a perspective
in the labour movement, working closely with our allies on the left. The Morning
Star daily paper has also played an indispensible role, giving daily voice to
the arguments and activities of what was once the left minority - and is now
becoming the left majority.
It has not been easy or popular to persuade trades unionists and socialists
to stay in the Labour Party in order to fight the New Labour clique. As the
Marxist party of the British labour movement, our own Communist ranks share
the anger and disgust that many working class people feel towards the privateers
and war criminals who have hijacked the leadership of the Labour Party.
But last year's Communist Party congress achieved near unanimity around the
position 'Defeat New Labour, unite the labour movement'. We were clear that
the battle against the Blair clique inside the Labour Party was too important
to be abandoned by the trade union movement - and instead should be intensified,
even though the erosion of Labour Party democracy makes the prospects of victory
uncertain.
Thus Britain's Communists have carried the arguments into the movement on a
substantial scale over the past 12 months, in union meetings and on the conference
floor, selling hundreds of Andrew Murray's pamphlet and distributing thousands
of copies of our Unity! bulletins.
Morning Star conference sales have reached their highest point in 25 years,
and the paper is seen by many as the spearhead of the anti-New Labour offensive
in the labour movement.
Objective developments have fertilised the battle-ground. State pensioner poverty
and the collapse of workers' pensions schemes, the export of jobs to labour
colonies overseas, clogged roads and a railway system bled white by pirates,
plans for foundation hospitals, top-up college fees and then the lying, predatory
assault on Iraq - these and other policies have turned people off the New Labour
government and the Labour Party in their millions.
This was the context in which the Socialist Workers Party recently approached
the Communist Party with proposals for building a broad 'peace and justice'
alliance to contest the Greater London Authority and European Parliament elections
in 2004.
Such an alliance could draw in people who have participated in the huge anti-war
movement, including progressive Muslims and youth who have been alienated by
establishment politics in general and by New Labour policies in particular.
A peace and justice alliance could provide an electoral focus for widespread
anti-New Labour sentiment.
But the CP executive came overwhelmingly to the view that such an alliance would
be likely to create confusion and disunity in the labour movement at a crucial
time, when the maximum clarity and unity are required. Why so?
Firstly, an anti-New Labour electoral alliance would inevitably come to be seen
as an anti-Labour Party alliance. Ironically, this impression would be all the
greater the broader the alliance and the more seats it contests.
Such a perception would be reinforced by the well-known and perfectly legitimate
aspiration of the SWP and its other partners in the Socialist Alliance to build
a mass alternative to the Labour Party. Because they regard the Scottish Socialist
Party as just such an alternative north of the border, the proposed alliance
would not contest seats in Scotland.
These perspectives are fundamentally different to those of the Communist Party.
We regard the fight against New Labour within the labour movement - and therefore
within the Labour Party also - as the primary political task in the current
period. Therefore Communists could not enter into electoral arrangements which
would imply that the Labour Party should be written off, that a mass alternative
can or should be constructed at the very time that unions and socialists are
striving to reclaim it.
Nor could we implicitly endorse the Scottish Socialist Party's current political
line. Its blanket electoral opposition to almost all Labour candidates is sectarian
and divisive, while its separatist stance would be disastrous for the unity
of the British labour movement should the people of Scotland ever embrace it.
Our objections to the SWP'a proposal apply even more strongly to the formation
of a Welsh socialist party. Firstly, what could be the political basis for a
separate Welsh party other than it supporting full Welsh independence from England
or Britain?
Yet there is little support in Wales for such a position. What there is largely
accrues to Plaid Cymru, which already takes a progressive or left-wing position
on many issues, from imperialist war to public ownership.
Previous attempts to set up left-wing separatist movements or parties have ended
in failure, most recently in the case of Cymru Goch - the Welsh Socialist Party.
Secondly, the electoral space for Marek's initiative is far narrower in Wales
than in Scotland or even England. Welsh Labour has successfully positioned itself
to the left of New Labour in England, while Plaid still provides a viable and
progressive alternative to Labour.
For all these reasons, the Communist Party in Wales will continue along its
present and increasingly influential trajectory in the labour, peace, anti-fascist
and anti-euro movements. We will also continue to contest Welsh local and parliamentary
elections, as we have done as a party since 1921, to project our programme which
urges the labour movement to fight for an alternative economic and political
strategy.
We also understand that there will be no fundamental changes in the political
situation in Britain, including in the Labour Party, without higher levels of
mass activity on the anti-war, industrial and other fronts. On these and many
other issues, the Communist Party will continue to work closely and in a non-sectarian
way with other socialist and progressive organisations, including any new Welsh
socialist party.
The Communist Party will be arranging a series of public meetings, in October
and November, all around Britain to promote its policy of ‘Uniting the
labour movement to defeat New Labour’. Watch out for details of meetings
in Wales and ensure that we all work for a maximum attendance.
Unison delegate, Dominic MacAskill’s speech delivered at this years Wales TUC conference. Unfortunately the Merthyr Trades Council motion, that Unison was seconding, was not carried but a weaker PCS motion was carried, which resulted in the watering down of the Wales TUC’s uncritical support for the EURO.
This is the most clear and unequivocal of the three Euro motions up for debate
today, as it not only outlines the dangers of the UK entering the single currency
but it also sets out a clear action agenda for the Wales TUC.
The two previous motions have clearly demonstrated that there is an awakening
amongst trade unionists to the dangers of the Single Currency.
But the PCS motion calling on the government ‘to seek appropriate reform
of the EMU regulations in advance of a UK referendum’ does not go far
enough, as it does not say what we would do if the Government didn’t agree
to seek these amendments or if the Euro zone rejected any changes.
This motion is important because it deals with the clear reality of the Single
Currency as it is now and what needs to be done today to oppose the euro threat
to public services.
The mover of motion 2* has already given clear and eloquent testimony to the
realities of the single currency for those countries in the euro zone and exposed
the dangers should the UK join.
So I will concentrate on why we are being led down this destructive path.
The Single European Market programme and now the single currency has been designed
to increase the power of multinational capital and financial markets and has
shifted the balance away from governments, in favour of private capital.
The single currency is part of a political process that prevents governments,
whether at national or EU level, from pursing policies to promote economic and
social welfare. Instead, economic policy is in the hands of unaccountable European
central bankers.
The single currency increases the leverage of the international markets to behave
exactly as they wish, and prevents elected governments from pursuing the policies
they were elected on, unless of course these happen to coincide with the interests
of those financial markets.
So, for the vast majority of people, signing up to the single currency makes
no economic sense. It would not solve the problems of sterling’s current
overvaluation; on the contrary, it would leave Britain powerless to ever tackle
the problems that an overvalued currency creates – of prices being uncompetitive
in world markets.
We would no longer be able to adjust our currency as we would no longer have
a currency to adjust.
Despite the evidence, the political elite in Britain seem determined to abolish
our currency and the freedom to use it as a tool of economic management; to
hand interest rates to a European Central Bank which has no brief for growth
and jobs; and to allow the European Commission ultimate control over our tax
and spending decisions.
This move should be seen for what it is – a deliberate move to take economic
policy from the democratic process in order to suit Europe’s political
elite and multinational corporations.
The euro is an inappropriate design of economic policy for Europe. The outcome
of British membership would be poorer economic performance, lower living standards,
with higher levels of unemployment and ever increasing downward pressure on
public spending.
There is no reason for the British electorate, and in particular our trade union
members, to accept such a state of affairs.
Conference today we need to deal with the realities of hear and now.
We need to overwhelmingly pass this motion to start the campaign:
To maintain democratic control over our economy
To protect our public services
To win a no vote in any referendum campaign
Please support.
*a Pontypridd Trades Council anti EMU motion
The Communist Party’s Cardiff branch is putting on two evening education
classes on EMU, on the 25th September and 2nd October, covering the economic
and political arguments and the campaign against the Euro. Contact Fran Rawlings
for further information.
Communist Party National Appeal
This year the CPB’s annual financial appeal has been scaled down to £10,000
and will be
concluded at the September EC meeting. The Welsh target is £1000.00 and
every member
should have already received a request to donate. All waged comrades are urged
to consider
giving the equivalent of a days pay to the appeal or if you are unable to do
this then organise a
fund-raising event.
Communist Party Welsh Congress Sunday 23rd November 2003
Its been 3 years since our last ‘bi-annual’ Congress due to changes
forced on us by the shifting of
the All Britain Congress, so this meeting is long over due.
The Congress will be held in the Cardiff Centre for Trade Union Studies in Splott,
Cardiff and this
year it is intended to restrict the Congress to one day so business will be
tight.
A Welsh Committee resolution will be circulated to branches in September for
discussion and
amendments, branches will also be able to submit their own resolutions and will
be required to
elect delegates (one delegate for every three members in the branch) to the
Congress and to
nominate members for the new Welsh Committee to be elected at Congress.
There will be a social event on the Saturday night before Congress, so comrades
will be urged to
travel down on Saturday (accommodation will be provided). Comrades may wish
to consider
coming down early on the Saturday to attend the Wales Friends of Searchlight
AGM, details
below.
Wales Friends of Searchlight
This recently launched Welsh anti fascism organisation will hold its first Annual
General Meeting
on Saturday 22nd November. The Welsh Committee is asking all branches, that
haven’t already,
to affiliate to the organisation and to build for a good attendance at the AGM.
Rebecca Books
Volunteers are urgently needed to help staff the book shop on Saturdays between
11am and 4pm,
anyone who can help should contact Clive Eliassen. The Pontypridd branch has
committed itself
to staff the shop one weekend in every month, so Pontypridd comrades get in
touch with Dominic.
Morning Star
This years Cardiff sponsored walk had a disappointing turnout but still managed
to raise around
£220.00.
More needs to be done in Wales to raise funds for the hard pressed Fighting
Fund.
Bring your ideas to the Welsh Congress.
Bill King, Cymru Wales Unison convenor, was elected onto the management committee
of the
Peoples Press Printing Society. Well done Bill!
The Cynon Valley Morning Star Supporters Group held a successful first meeting
in Aberdare a
success that can be built on.
The Pontypridd supporters group will be holding a Morning Star anti imperialism
social in Clwb y
Bont on Friday 7th November.
Communist Party membership
There are still too many comrades who have not complete their registration forms
for this year
which means that they will not have received 2003 party cards and are not formally
registered as
Party members. You will know if you have not registered by the inclusion of
a registration form
with this newsletter - please complete it and return urgently to: WCCPB, c/o
CCTUS 182
Habershon Street, Splott, Cardiff, CF24 2LE
Although the recarding process has been sluggish the good news is that income
is well up on last
year and the process will be far simpler next year.
Branch Development
Branch life has seen its ups and downs this year in Wales. The North Wales branch
has the
fastest growing membership but has one of the biggest organisational problem,
the Cynon Valley
branch is the newest and smallest branch but with probably the greatest potential,
the Gwent
branch went into melt down but is now re-establishing itself with the help of
DB & RG, the
Pontypridd branch remains active and is now recruiting again, the Cardiff branch
continues to
shoulder the burden of running the book shop whilst retaining a healthy branch
life, the Swansea
branch unfortunately remains inactive.
The Party in Wales is receiving many enquiries but is not converting enough
into members, the
issue of branch development will be an important discussion at the Welsh Congress,
bring along
your ideas.
M-L Education
The Cardiff branch recently held a successful series of Marxism-Leninism education
classes
which has now been developed into an education programme for the party as a
whole. This
Introduction to Marxism course has been produced in a booklet form and is available
from
Rebecca Books. All branches should be aiming to run this course as a matter
of necessity.
National Assembly Communist Party vote
The Communist Party did no more than hold its share of the vote at this years
National Assembly elections.
This was perhaps unsurprising as the election campaign was very low key due
to
the war on Iraq and comrades involvement in the anti war movement.
However around 120,000 election addresses were delivered to homes in north
Wales and South Wales central and the Communist party’s election manifesto
was published on our website www.welshcommunist.co.uk
We also received around 10 enquiries about membership of the Communist
party.
Results
North Wales region
Candidates: G Davies, M Green & D Morgan
Votes: 522
South Wales Central region
Candidates: R Griffiths, F Rawlings, G Griffiths & D MacAskill
Votes: 577
Over a thousand votes for Communism!