Defending or debunking historical claims in Welsh politics

Apologies to my loyal reader for the lack of posts over the past couple of weeks. I’m working on an exciting new project which I hope to be able to reveal shortly, and which will encompass WPH.com’s mission and a lot more besides.

In the meantime, like me, you will doubtless be marking the anniversary today of the establishment of a new institution which significantly modernised government and led in time to to an even wider constitutional reappraisal.

I refer of course to Louis XIV’s relocation of his court and government offices to Versailles in 1682. What did you think I meant?

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The claim

An interesting debate has broken out over on the Plaid blog Welsh Ramblings about the socialism or otherwise of Wales’s two governing parties. As part of that the site’s author has claimed:

Of course, socialism is not the same as support for public ownership. The original clause IV did not call for public ownership, but ‘common ownership’. A distinction that allows for workers control for example, rather than public ownership, nationalisation or state capitalism. Labour only officially adopted ‘public ownership’ as an aim in 1944.

The evidence   

WR is correct that the “common ownership” stipulated by the original Clause IV and adopted by the Labour Party at its 1918 Conference need not mean state ownership. And s/he is right to point to syndicalist movements, including that which produced the 1912 Miners’ Next Step as examples where common ownership other than state ownership has been advocated.

By s/he is quite wrong to suggest that Labour only officially adopted a commitment to “public ownership” in 1944. In fact, an aspiration to state control is as old as the party, and this commitment appears in the party’s 1923 manifesto:

[Labour] will apply in a practical spirit the principle of Public Ownership and Control to the Mines, the Railway Service and the Electrical Power Stations, and the development of Municipal Services.¹

The conclusion: Debunked

Welsh Ramblings seems to have made the all too common mistake of relying on Wikipedia as his/her sole source, and indeed looks to have done something of a copy and paste job from this article.

***

1. 1923 manifesto [↩]

2 comments

The claim

Adam Price has published his speech to Plaid Cymru’s spring conference - and an interesting read it is, too. Crammed with international comparisons and a few juicy historical allusions, it is the latter to which we turn. In the middle of the speech Price implores his fellow members:

But let’s never confuse disagreement on policy with a conflict between personalities. This party needs its Eamonn de Valeras and it needs its Michael Collins. But let us not make their tragic error and create enmity between all of us who are joined in the common cause of freedom for our country.

Strictly speaking, this is an historical reference more than an historical claim. Nevertheless, it is worth exploring quite what the reference point is, and therefore what Price is suggesting of his party.

The evidence

The purpose of the passage is clearly a warning to Plaid activists not to place less significant disputes (presumably over tuition fees rather than of “personalities”) above the unity of the independence movement. It is safe to assume that Price is not suggesting any such inter-party disagreement could result in the sort of violence that scarred the Irish Free State during its civil war. Yet - in the case of Collins at the very least - violence is very much the quality of association. Here was a man who consistently brushed aside the doves of the Irish independence movement¹ and whose “Ministerial” duties during the first Dáil Éireann took strictly second place to the more onerous task of organising and training squads to kill policemen.²

Arguably, the cause of Irish independence demanded such a man. The Welsh independence movement has no such needs, nor does Price mean to suggest otherwise. Rather, his words seem to be a warning against splitting his movement, such as that which followed the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Collins, though killed during the ensuing civil war is claimed as the founding father of Fine Gael. Éamon de Valera, meanwhile, went on to form Fianna Fáil. Remarkably, this political division still defines Irish politics.³

Could such a split take place within the Welsh independence movement? It seems unlikely. Other groupings have sprung up briefly down the years, from the non-constitutional (Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru, Free Wales Army, and Meibion Glyndŵr) to the linguistic (Mudiad Adfer) and to the avowed rival (Cymru Goch and the Independent Wales Party). Other than in the largely folkloric burning of holiday homes, none has made any impact or threatened the position of Plaid as the repository for Welsh nationalism. Partly, this is due to the slow growth of the national movement in Wales, and partly it is due to to the historically low levels of support for independence. But Plaid has also succeeded where other nascent independence movements have not, avoiding the splintering into dozens of tiny groupings characterised more by mutual loathing than common cause. Moreover, it has achieved this despite the cleavage of the Welsh language and the supposed latter dichotomy of the party into rural, northern linguistic conservatives and urban, southern progressives. All of which makes Price’s portent all the more intriguing: why invoke the spectre of momentous division at a time when only apparently trivial disagreement about policy threatens Plaid’s progress, and when the only realistic future constitutional change is greater autonomy for Wales?

The conclusion: Defended

As indicated, this is a very tricky claim upon which to conclude. But inasmuch as de Valera and Collins achieved in the latter’s words, “freedom - not the ultimate freedom which all nations hope for and struggle for, but freedom to achieve that end”⁴ then their success, if not their method, is one for Welsh nationalists to follow. The more interesting part of the claim is that which seeks to warn against what happened next between the two men. A split of any magnitude in the Welsh independence movement seems highly unlikely - unless Adam Price knows something we do not.

***

1. Kee, R, The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism, (1972), Weidennfeld and Nicholson [↩]
2. Hattersley, R, Borrowed Time, (2007), Little Brown [↩]
3. even if the pro and anti Treaty stance of each does not [↩]
4. Collins, M, The Path to Freedom, (1922), Fisher Unwin [↩]

2 comments

The claim

The first article on this site was an examination of the claim that Plaid once had fascist leanings. Despite debunking it, I was at the time rebuked for recycling a claim that “could have been lifted from the Welsh Mirror circa 2001″.

Today’s debate, sparked by an email exchange between Leighton Andrews and Helen Mary Jones demonstrates that it is a claim that still surfaces in Welsh political debate. Part of that discussion has been reproduced on Peter Black’s blog,with a rather more spicy row taking place on the Aneurin Glyndwr spoof site, Owain Bevan. It is from an anonymous contributor to that thread that today’s claim comes. S/he says:

Well actually only Saunders Lewis supported Franco. Other Plaid leaders didn’t.

The evidence

In the first instance it is not at all clear that Saunders Lewis supported Franco, as opposed to the subtly different offence of giving his regime succour. As I argued last month, the contributors to Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru’s journal Y Ddraig Goch, from which much of the evidence is drawn, were motivated by a desire to contest the legitimacy of England’s imperialist ambitions, as they saw it, and Welsh involvement in that project. Lewis directly addressed this in 1938 when, responding to growing internal disquiet about Plaid’s stance he wrote “our accusers claim that we favour the success of Franco and Mussolini…the truth is that we seek to obstruct the creation of enthusiasm in Wales for an English war in Spain”.¹

Realpolitik, rather than ideological support, was therefore the reason behind Lewis’s early stance. Contrary to the assertion’s made further on in the Owain Bevan discussion it also explains why there is little equivalence between these statements and those of Churchill, Moseley and Lloyd George, all of whom (with others) made supportive statements towards various of Europe’s dictators. These British leaders reversed their positions soon enough, particularly as the outbreak of hostilities with Germany became more likely. Lewis, by contrast, persisted with his supportive statements for far longer, and never really recanted.

What then of other leading PGC figures? Again, it is not enough to simply record support or opposition to Franco. J E Daniel, for example perceived the civil war as symbolic of the clash between “Communism and the European tradition”². Daniel regarded the spread of communism as such a threat that he was prepared to countenance and even commend a fascist victory.

But the party did not formally support either side³, perhaps because (as alluded to elsewhere in the Owain Bevan thread) of the position of the Basques and Catalans. By supporting the Republicans these territories had won a measure of home rule which they stood to lose it under a Franco government - as indeed proved to be the case. That this was not a deal-sealer for PGC in favour of the Republicans says much about the ongoing antipathy towards communism from the leadership, and well as its determination not to join in with what it saw as the English media’s jingoistic drum beat.

The conclusion: Debunked

It is not true to suggest that Saunders Lewis stood alone in finding Franco a favourable figure: in that he was also joined by J E Daniel, and quite possibly Ambrose Bebb. But it is also wrong to characterise the leadership as being in support of the Spanish fascist leader. The motives that drove Plaid’s early leaders to make their now infamous supportive statements were rooted in more complex considerations. The fear of communism was one such factor. Much more compelling, however, was a trenchant opposition to their perceptions of English imperialism and warmongering.

***

See also

#1: Plaid had fascist leanings

1. Y Ddraig Goch, April 1938 [↩]
2. The Welsh Nationalist, Oct 1935. See also Davies, D H, The Welsh Nationalist Party 1925-1945 (1983), St Martin’s Press [↩]
3. Davies, D H, op cit [↩]

0 comments

The claim

There is almost no need to introduce the above claim, such is the attention given to it by the media and blogosphere over the last few days. Nevertheless, and for completeness, it comes from Neath MP Peter Hain, who used it on the Labourlist website to describe the new Labour-leaning Aneurin Glyndwr website. When questioned about the claim on Dragon’s Eye, he went onto suggest that:

“what Barack Obama did in his campaign was transform the nature of political campaigning and reach new generations of people who operate on the internet”

It is a claim that has attracted derision from political opponents and Labour supporters alike. But are they deriding it for the right reasons?

The evidence

Implicit in nearly all the criticism is the view that the comparison is absurdly flattering to Welsh Labour. Certainly, the notion that a single off-the-peg blog-style website, with allied Twitter, Facebook and YouTube pages should be compared to the Obama campaign’s vast online fundraising and social networking presence seems more than a little ridiculous. More intriguing, however, is the claim is that Obama’s campaign has transformed the nature of political campaigning, and that Welsh Labour should attempt to emulate that.

The notion that Obama’s victory depended on the internet has gained much credence, as evidenced by this BBC story from the Primaries. This analysis identifies two areas in which the internet proved important to Obama’s campaign: fundraising and mobilisation. On the former, the amount raised by Obama was undoubtedly impressive, enabling him to be able to outspend his rival, first in the Primary campaign, and then even more decisively in the General Election campaign. Nor is it disputed that Obama raised much more money via the internet than any previous candidate.¹ But as this study has shown, the proportion of cash raised via small donors was virtually identical to that of George W Bush in 2004. This is important, because it points to a mobilisation campaign of a less revolutionary nature than is supposed.² And that matters here, because mobilisation is what Peter Hain is talking about in relation to Aneurin Glyndwr.

In terms of the basic statistics, Obama’s online mobilisation efforts were impressive (see here) as was his use of myBarackObama.com, possibly the first genuinely mass-market political social networking site. For Aneurin Glyndwr to get anywhere near to the success of that project, it would need to attract some 15,000 registered supporters,³ a figure that probably exceeds the membership of the Labour Party in Wales. That does not mean it is impossible, particularly as one of the avowed aims is to reach out to new potential supporters, but it does underline the scale of the ambition.

A focus on emulating the mobilisation efforts of Obama may also obsure what was truly significant about his campaign. Obama used the web to make fundraising more straightforward - but then spent the largest chunk of the money on gaining impact via linear television. As this breakdown demonstrates, of a total reported expenditure of $760m, 41% went on “broadcast media”, i.e TV advertising. That is not to say the internet was not important - more was spent on this form of media than on print for example - but it shows that Obama relied overwhelmingly on good old fashioned telly to get people to vote for him. Since TV advertising is not permitted for political parties or candidates in the UK, this is a lesson that is non-transferable.

The conclusion: Debunked

Is Aneurin Glyndwr a significant foray into online political engagement in Wales? It is probably too soon to say, although the early efforts suggest not; at present it resembles many other political blogs in tone, content and use of other online tools, and as such seems destined to become merely one of many. Comparing it to the Obama campaign’s online presence appears to be a statement aimed more squarely at gaining attention than in reflecting the ambition of the site and as such should be taken with a rather large pinch of salt.

But on the deeper claim that Obama achieved something revolutionary that Welsh Labour is even capable of emulating, the claim is most firmly debunked. What was different about Obama’s campaign was its ability to raise money online, a facility that does not exist via AG, and spend it on TV advertising, an option not available in Wales. The comparison is not only grandiose, it is also rooted in the myth of the Obama campaign rather than its reality.

1. A reported $500 million via 6.5 million donations from 3 million online donors source [↩]
2. Although it should be noted that repeat donors made up a greater share of the Obama pot [↩]
3. myBarackObama.com had a reported user account base of between 1.5 and 2 million. Obama had some 2.3 million Facebook supporters by the end of the General Election campaign. The latter statistic included non-US citizens, however, so as a proportion of the population a mass mobilisation Welsh political website would need a user account base of 15,000 to be deemed as successful as myBarackObama.com [↩]

5 comments

The claim

The publication of the All Wales Convention’s social research report has furnished a greater depth and range of information about the Welsh public’s attitudes towards devolution than any other contemporary source.  In the discussion thread of an earlier article I suggested that it would be good to learn about the intensity - rather than just the level - of support for greater powers. In polling parlance what was missing was an indication of how “hard” or “soft” the numbers are. The All Wales Convention’s report doesn’t quite supply that measure, but it nonetheless elaborates on what is a complex picture. Sadly, a WAG official told me this week they that they have no plans to publish the full dataset, and will only upload it to the UK Data Archive at some yet-to-be-determined date. Given that public money has funded this research, a greater commitment to transparency would have been welcome.

Many of the findings have not been discussed, and attention has understandably focused on the gap in referendum voting intentions. Politics Cymru, a site that has rapidly grown beyond blogging into a media outlet in its own right interviewed Nick Bourne, Rachel Banner (of True Wales) and Bethan Jenkins and it is from the latter that today’s claim comes. Jenkins says of the findings that:

The result shows there is stark contrast between who want more powers than those who don’t, and there are still a lot of people who are undecided…

This seemingly innocuous statement is actually is a crucial assertion in the ongoing debate about whether the time is right to launch a “yes” campaign with a view to holding a referendum. Put simply, if it is shown that the proportion of undecided voters can still tip the result against the proposition, the decision to hold a vote is more likely to be put off. So, how does it stand up?

The evidence

Since the Government of Wales Act 2006 we have had four published polls seeking to measure voting intentions in a future referendum:¹

Fieldwork Poll Yes No DK

Jun ‘07         BBC Wales/ICM 47%           44%            9%

Feb ‘08         BBC Wales/ICM 49%           42%           9%

Dec ‘08         AWC/GfkNOP      48%           35%          13%

Feb ‘09          BBC Wales/ICM 52%          39%           9%

By comparison, there were eight published opinion polls between the end of 1996 and referendum day in September 1997:²

Oct ‘96           n/a                          39%          32%           28%

Mar ‘97          n/a                          41%           33%           27%

Apr ‘97           n/a                          34%          27%           30%

Jul ‘97            n/a                          39%          27%            34%

July ‘97          n/a                         43%          29%            28%

Aug ‘97          Beaufort                 42%         22%            36%

Sept’ 97         HTV                        37%          36%            26%

Sept’ 97         n/a                           37%         29%            34%

Some care needs to be taken compared these sets of polls. Five of the 1997 polls, for example, were conducted after the decision to go ahead with a referendum had been taken, something that is likely to have conditioned voters’ views. Nevertheless, on the basis of this evidence it would appear that comparatively few voters are undecided, and indeed the trend would seem to suggest that the don’t knows may not be able to influence the outcome.

So does this mean that there is no good reason to hold off launching a “yes’ campaign and proceeding to a referendum? Not necessarily. The qualitative component of the AWC research found a clear “softness” in the level of support, with most people occupying what it termed as the “cautious optimist” position, characterised by being “broadly in favour of increased powers…but [with] key concerns and questions about its implications.” Moreover, the research found as a result of a detailed debate “those who were ’strongly’ in favour began to question the details of increased powers and tended to move towards being ‘cautious optimists’”. On the basis of this, there may be a significant chunk of “yes” supporters whose mind is far from made up.

There are other areas that should also give some pause to proponents of an early referendum. Fully one in four respondents believe that the term “full law making powers” means that “Wales will be independent from the UK”. Given the recent focus on independence by Plaid Cymru, coupled with the fact that the research finds an very low level of support for this constitutional outcome, this is a conflation that could also act as a drag on support. Those who want primary powers for Wales might be advised to foreswear a campaign for independence at this time, if for no other reason than to avoid confusing the electorate still further.

The conclusion: Debunked

It is not right to say that a lot of people are undecided. Indeed, by comparison with the last referendum, very few are. However, a more detailed look at the All Wales Convention’s findings shows that the high levels of support are not necessarily reflected in the intensity of support. Moreover, it seems that the specific question of what law making powers entails needs to be be clearly addressed before the electorate will feel confident casting its vote.

1. The BBC Wales question was “If there were to be a referendum on turning the National Assembly into a full law making Welsh Parliament, how would you vote…”. AWC asked “If there were to be a referendum tomorrow on giving the National Assembly for Wales full law making powers in these areas, how would you vote?” [↩]
2. See McCrone, D and Lewis, B “The Scottish and Welsh referendum campaigns” in Scotland and Wales: Nations Again? (Ed. Taylor, B and Thomson, K), (1999), University of Wales Press [↩]

0 comments

The claim

If you haven’t done so, I’d urge you to read Adam Price’s trenchant and provocative blog post of Thursday. In it, he compares Labour’s proposed part-privatisation of Royal Mail with the Conservatives’ approach to the Miners’ Strike of 1984-5.

I could dwell upon the claim that that the Conservative government of the early 1980s set out to “annihilate the Trade Unions”, a subject about which a great deal has been written of late. So instead, I want to examine the allegation that:

To me, the end [of the Labour Party] came back in 1984 when Labour’s leadership chose to please Rupert Murdoch’s papers rather than support the miners who were fighting for the future of their communities.

The evidence

Price’s is an intensely Welsh perspective. In Wales (south Wales to be more precise) support for the strike of 84-85 was immensely strong from early in the action, and remained so throughout.¹ In the south Wales coalfield - as well as in others - support for the miners meant support for the miners’ decision to strike. The two were very largely indivisible.

But this was not the case in other parts of Britain, most notably in Nottinghamshire. A great deal of attention has focused on the steps taken by the Conservative government to ensure success when the confrontation occurred. These included stockpiling,² reform of trade union legislation such that secondary picketing could be stopped and union funds sequestrated, and greatly enhancing the co-ordination of police force deployments. Equally as important, arguably, were the increasingly different circumstances, including wage and investment levels, in the different coalfield areas, all of which served to undermine the unity and effectiveness of GB-wide action.

Very quickly, therefore, we have arrived at the fulcrum of the dispute; NUM leader Arthur Scargill’s decision not to ballot his membership on strike action. It was a decision that handed the initiative to the government by denuding the NUM of the funds (and more controversially, the legitimacy) it needed to fight the closure programme (and thus encouraging Scargill’s catastrophic decision to approach Colonel Gaddafi for support). The decision also split the Labour Party from top to bottom³ and put its relatively new Leader Neil Kinnock in an almost unwinnable position. Although he issued a coded call for a ballot, Kinnock has since said he wished he had gone further (echoing pleas he made directly to Scargill from the early days of the strike⁴), describing his failure to be explicit as “the greatest regret of of my whole life”.⁵ Put simply, Kinnock believes that a strike without a ballot undermined the miners’ unity, prevented support from the wider trade union movement and stalled public support.

Kinnock’s actions at that time were motivated by a desire not to split the Labour movement any more than it already was by the ballot issue.⁶ The notion that he wished to curry favour with the Murdoch press overlooks the desperate position the strike placed Labour in, and ignores the ongoing and implacable hostility demonstrated towards the party in general and Kinnock in person by News International’s titles for several more years to come. What Kinnock wanted to do was call openly for a ballot. Had he done that it would have pleased the Murdoch press (although in probability it would have provoked accusations of weakness). That he did not demonstrates that the constraints he faced were not those of media pressure.

The conclusion: Debunked

Even for a political opponent in search of the most cutting possible criticism, the suggestion that Labour’s leadership acted as they did to cravenly win support of the right-wing press is extraordinarily one-eyed. There is a healthy and vigourous debate that continues to this day about the wisdom of Kinnock’s stance - Scargill for one maintains that full-throated support from the Labour leadership would have brought down the Thatcher government.⁷ In this, Kinnock is accused of betraying the miners for electoral reasons. But to suggest that this was part of Labour’s courtship of Murdoch pre-dates that initiative by several years and at least one Leader.

1. Although this has to be qualified somewhat; the antecedent ballot on industrial action in Wales in 1983 gained only 68% approval and - in keeping with the way the strike was triggered - there was a great deal of initial confusion about the applicability of the existing mandate, or whether either a new area ballot or a national one would be required. Some 18 of south Wales’s 28 pits initially voted against action. Once reversed, however, support for the strike remained solid. See Francis, H, History on our side, (2009), Iconau [↩]
2. Though the role of this can be exaggerated; in March 1984 power-station coal stocks stood at 23 million tonnes, enough with additional oil-firing to maintain an uninterrupted supply of electricity for about three months without additional production [↩]
3. Beckett, F and Hencke, D, Marching to the Fault Line, (2009), Constable [↩]
4. ibid [↩]
5. Stuart, M, John Smith: A Life, (2005), Politico’s. See also The Guardian, 16 March 2009 [↩]
6. Westlake, M, Kinnock, (2001), Little Brown [↩]
7. The Times, 13 March 2009 [↩]

0 comments

The claim

Belatedly (and due to the time afforded by being stuck at home with a nasty cold) I want to pick up on a claim made by Plaid AM Helen Mary Jones last week:

Since working people in Wales first had the vote in the 1870s they had never elected a majority of Conservative MPs. Yet for more than half of that time we have had Tory governments, chosen by the people of England. It was clear to me that the parties supported by Welsh voters were those that most closely reflected the commitment to fairness, sharing and protecting the weak – socialist values, values I share. It seemed obvious to me that Wales had, and has, a distinct political culture from England. Even before the dark days of Thatcherism

Of the many claims that swirl around Welsh political debate, this is one of the most common, as well as one of the most commonly used to support the notion of a distinctive Welsh polity of some sort. So how does it stack up?

The evidence

The 1868 election, the first fought under the extended franchise and famously eulogised by Lloyd George as “shatter[ing] the power of the landlords”¹ saw 23 Liberals and 10 Tories elected. Established Tory families (and landlords) were voted out in all parts of Wales, including those in rural areas where the expansion of the electoral roll was relatively modest.² That they were by and large replaced by landlords of of a Whig persuasion³ does not alter the party political significance of the result. Not since this point have Conservatives held more Welsh seats than any other party.

But 1868 was no schism from English politics, where Liberals also gained seats from Tories. By 1885, however, the Liberal age in Britain had become a Liberal hegemony in Wales; enough to claim 30 of 34 seats (counting that of Mabon’s in the Rhondda). Yet here emerged a pattern that has also become familiar enough down the years; between them Conservative candidates collected nearly 40% of all the votes but gained only just over 10% of the seats. If any party in Wales has had a reason to promote electoral reform it must surely by the Conservatives.

But there was also distinctiveness to Welsh political debate, fought over disestablishment and - less prominently - home rule, and thus conducted exclusively within the porous confines of Liberalism. Even though Liberal fortunes to a degree ebbed and flowed along UK lines it was always from a position of near-dominance. And, unlike in the rest of the realm, the split within Liberalism following publication of the 1886 Irish Home Rule Bill was resolved quickly enough; Liberal Unionists were all but removed from the scene at the first opportunity.⁴

By 1900 - the famous “khaki election” - the distinctiveness was measured also by the political cycle itself. In Britain as a whole Liberals lost more ground, in Wales they regained it.⁵

Yet at the same time the game was also very largely up for the notion of a discrete Welsh Party (something discussed on this site recently). Henceforth people chose those who opted to try and meet the needs of Wales through British political groupings.

The 1910 elections emphasised this peculiar phenomenon of elections fought on British issues but with distinctive Welsh outcomes. While support for the Liberals evaporated in Britain as a whole, it held firm in Wales, buttressed no doubt by personal support for Lloyd George. But the Labour takeover, while delayed, could not be denied. Once established (in 1922, the 1918 “coupon” election was largely aberrant) there was greater alignment with British politics, and even greater emphasis on British issues. In fact, with the assent of the delayed disestablishment Act, it is difficult to find any distinctively Welsh issues impinging on Welsh elections until perhaps 1970, despite the somewhat shaky creation of Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru.⁶

Welsh politics then reverted to its familiar monolithic feel. By the 1950s, some counter-cyclical activity even reappeared, with Conservatives advancing in Britain while Labour advanced in Wales. But is it right to regard this as a distinctively Welsh political culture, given the absence of distinctively Welsh issues? In some ways, no. Bevan’s famous comparison of Westmoreland and Welsh sheep⁷ spoke volumes, as did the fact of similarly impregnable Labour majorities in English coalfield areas. But to regard this as mere class politics would also be to ignore the growth of Labour beyond its heartland, into rural Wales and along her coastal strips. At the zenith of Labour’s hegemony in 1966 it commanded an eerily similar share of the vote and proportion of the seats as has the Liberals of 1885.⁸ The people of Wales seemed entirely comfortable investing their political aspirations in one vehicle.

At this point - to everyone’s great surprise - the national question returned. Something else took place; the gradual descent of Labour, and with it hegemonic politics. The party was pushed gradually back into its heartland as Plaid, Liberal and Conservative candidates each took seats. Labour’s Welsh bonus - the additional share it gained over the UK average - also began to shrink as the vote was distributed more evenly, including as Welsh Liberalism awoke from its stupor. It is ironic that it took the re-emergence of the national question to loosen a distinctive Welsh electoral pattern.

The experience of Thatcherism as an alien political creed was commonplace among young radicals such as Helen Mary Jones. But this was not necessarily shared by the electorate at large, who gave her party its biggest endorsement since the depression, repeating the compliment four years later and only slightly less so in 1987, despite the loss of 6 seats.⁹ Labour, of course, remained a more popular party, and in that Wales remained distinctive. But to suggest that Thatcherism represented the apogee of Welsh and English political divergence is to misunderstand the popular appeal of her brand of Conservatism.

Labour’s return to power in 1997 generated the illusion of a return to hegemony, before the glide path was resumed. The subsequent introduction of devolved elections inevitably produced a Welsh focus lacking (save for a brief interlude) since the turn of the century) but produced election results arguably less distinctively Welsh than ever. With Labour’s share lower than at any national election for a generation, and the runner-up spoils divided between Conservatives and Plaid, the prospect of a fully-competitive multi-party polity is now more realistic than ever.

The conclusion: Defended

Welsh politics has adhered to different rules, eschewing the greater pluralism of England and content to support first one dominant party, and then another. The Liberals and Labour both bore the torch for a more radical and interventionist political creed. The Conservatives, while gaining the support of between a quarter and a third of voters have never broken out of their gilded cage.

In this sense, Helen Mary Jones’s claim is true. But the distinctive culture to which she makes reference is not necessarily one of discourse or issue. In fact, upon the demise of the first period of Welsh national enquiry, Wales’s political debate appeared much like that of England’s. After that, it appeared as if the Welsh tradition of hegemonic parties and the Welshness of the debate have had trouble co-existing. Today the latter seems to have won. What that may mean is an end also to the notion - not always borne out by the popular vote shares - of a population wedded only to progressive left politics. A truly distinctive Welsh polity may indeed be one in which all shades of political opinion compete on roughly equal terms for support.

See also

#8: The Welsh Parliamentary Party “could be re-exhumed to approve the Elcos”

***

1. Speech, 23 March 1910 [↩]
2. Morgan, K O, (1963). [↩]
3. Davies, J, (1990). [↩]
4. Only 2 of 8 Liberal Unionist candidates were returned in the 1886 election - one of them unopposed (see Morgan, K, O “The Liberal Unionists in Wales” in Modern Wales, University of Wales, (1995). [↩]
5. The reasons why are disputed. One common argument is that Welsh sentiment was more pro-Boer and anti-war. This has been challenged of late, with the argument given that the preceding election of 1895 presented a perfect storm for Welsh Liberalism, including a depression, divisions over home rule and a loss of party organisation, and anger at the failure of the early disestablishment bill (see Morgan, K O “Wales and the Boer War” in Modern Wales, University of Wales, (1995). [↩]
6. Even the tremors from Tryweryn did not manifest themselves at the ballot box [↩]
7. Hansard, 17 Oct 1944 [↩]
8. 60% of the vote and 88% of the seats each [↩]
9. The Conservatives got 32%, 31% and 29% respectively in 1979, 1983 and 1987 [↩]

1 comment

The claim

Adam Price is one of the more historically aware Welsh politicians active today, as demonstrated by his elegiac pieces (here and here) on the life and times of Rhys ap Gruffydd. He also supplies today’s claim, voiced on this week’s Dragon’s Eye. He said:

the Welsh economy has been in relative decline compared to England since 1924. Is that because we are predetermined to poverty? I don’t think it is. It’s because we haven’t had the tools in Wales to control our own future.

A two-part claim to explore, then. Has the Welsh economy declined and, if so, is it attributable to the factors he describes?

The evidence

Data from Price’s pinpointing of 1924 are hard to come by, at least for this author, as are comparisons with England as opposed to the UK. The nearest interval I have found is 1911,¹ at which point Welsh per capita GDP stood at 90.1% of the UK average compared to today’s 75% (GVA).² A solid decline, then - but two caveats are worth noting. The first is that the trend is not continuous. By the mid 1950s the figure had fallen to 82%, but by 1971 it had rallied to 87.5%. Only from here does it begins a more-or-less constant, if gradual decline into the early 80s, before dipping further into the present mid 70s from 1999 onwards.³

The second caveat is that the really long term picture is slightly different. In 1871 (the first year that relevant census data were collected) Welsh GDP was 88% of the UK average - almost identical to a century later. Moreover, since the trend at that time was upwards (in 1881 the figure was 90.6%, by 1891 it reached an all-time high of 96%) in line with the intensifying industrialisation of Wales, it is plausible to suppose that this figure was lower prior to 1871. Rather than a steady decline, we could then just as easily talk of a negligible or even positive net change in relative Welsh per capita GDP merely by choosing a longer run.⁴

But in the long run we’re all dead, and this is not an argument against Price’s second clause. At no time for which records exist does Welsh GDP reach the UK average, so if the Welsh have been relatively poor for at least a century and a half (including during and after the industrial era) does it not show more conclusively that the malaise is attributable to the system of government, at least in part? Let’s look at that element of the claim now.

The story of the Welsh economy from 1924 has already been discussed on this site. A part of Britain more dependent on primary extraction than any other,⁵ Welsh industry - and in particular coal mining - was allowed to become relatively unproductive by dint of the sheer volume and quality of its produce,⁶ while at the same time there was little diversification into manufacturing or other sectors that would allow other parts of Britain to recover more quickly. Wales was thus uniquely dependent on the international trade eviscerated by the depression. As if that were not bad enough, the decision to return to the pre-war gold standard - a decision endorsed by the Labour Party - make exports even less competitive.⁷

Only with the benefit of hindsight is it possible to say that the skids were under the Welsh coal and other extractive industries - at least on anything like the scale they existed - from the early 1930s.⁸ In addition to a global contraction and London’s fiscal hobbling, oil was supplanting coal as the fuel of choice in shipping. In tinplate and steel production the technological shifts were less pronounced, but the pattern of demand was just as unmistakably downwards. This structural transformation surely appeared more cyclical to politicians and governments of the time, who concocted a variety of abortive and half-hearted schemes to revive industry and, in some cases, diversify the economy. The overall lack of direction was evoked most famously by Edward VIII’s plaintive injunction at Dowlais in 1936.

Following the war more concerted, co-ordinated and successful attempts were made to restructure the economy, resulting - or at least assisting - in the temporary reversal of fortunes observed above. Nationalisation and the creation of the welfare state are the obvious totems. But so too was the conversion of wartime ordnance plants into novel - and massive - industrial estates. In the week that the Hoover plant in Merthyr closed, it is worth noting that it only opened as a result of a government grant designed to induce large manufacturers into coalfield areas.

So does the fact that these were not successful in the longer run⁹ matter for the purposes of this discussion? Surely what this period evidences is that Adam Price’s “tools” - the levers of power - matter. A succession of governments dedicated to something approaching a coherent industrial policy for Wales (or at least for the parts of Britain with characteristics like Wales) did make a difference in relative wealth levels. The extension, one assumes, is that the more the tools, the greater and more beneficial the effect.

At this point we enter the realms of the counterfactual: would or could have Wales prospered more and suffered less had she enjoyed self government during this era? There is almost no way to answer that question. Though the comparison - until last autumn, at least - was with the Celtic Tiger of Ireland, hers was no example until the late 1980s. Nor is it right to look at the Irish economy in any sort of historical perspective and expect it to yield answers about how an independent Wales may have fared. In place of a natural comparator, the emphasis has been on the success of so-called small countries to establish the case, although Plaid Cymru’s recent inclusion in this list of the Netherlands, a country whose 16 million population is very close to the EU27 average, is perplexing.¹⁰

Besides, there are other factors about which even the tools of government can do little. A recent study showed that Wales, along with “declining” English regions, became effectively more peripheral parts of the British Isles during the period, due mainly to the modal shift in goods transportation from rail and sea to road, and the increased costs involved as a result.¹¹ This affected their access to the populous markets of London and the South East, as well as mainland Europe and beyond. It also affected the investment and location choices of organisations. An independent Wales, or one with some devolved powers would presumably have been able to affect this trend at the margins, in a similar way the present WAG is attempting to encourage head office and R&D jobs to be located in Wales. But one also assumes that the fundamentals of a Wales becoming essentially more peripheral to the major markets upon which she depends would have remained.

The conclusion: Defended

With a couple of minor modifications, Adam Price’s narrow claim is correct: the Welsh economy has declined compared to the UK since approximately 1924. One of these modifications is important, for the process of decline has not been continuous, and was reversed for a period following the Second World War. That this reversal was achieved or assisted through concerted government action also gives impetus to Price’s wider argument, that a Wales in greater control of her own macroeconomic and other policies would have been better placed to increase her relative wealth (although a counter argument could also be made that central government action is capable of doing the job).

Earlier, I asked whether it mattered that the polices of successive postwar British governments had failed. The fact is that it does, and not necessarily because it shows that central government cannot do the job. It matters because it shows power may be necessary but not sufficient to take on this task. Regardless of her constitutional position, Wales would have struggled against the forces that eroded her economic foundations and made her more peripheral. The question of whether Wales would have done better over the past 80 years had she been independent or devolved is unanswerable. It is difficult to believe that things would have not worked out at least a little better, but naive to assume it would have been the complete or even major solution.

See also

#7: Gordon Brown and Rhodri Morgan’s leadership is “why Wales is the poorest part of the UK”

***

1. Crafts, N., “Regional GDP in Britain, 1871-1911: Some Estimates”, Scottish Journal of Political Economy (2005), 52. It is worth noting that the figures used in this analysis are based upon the Geary-Stark proxy measure of calculating GDP, based on census data on employment and wages, income tax assessments, and estimates of UK output for each industrial sector. No official estimates of Welsh GDP exist prior to 1971 [↩]
2. See Regional, sub-regional and local gross value added 2008, ONS [↩]
3. See “The Welsh economy”, Digest of Welsh Historical Statistics 1974 - 1996, Welsh Office (1998) for the official and slightly different official calculations [↩]
4. Though it is also worth pointing out that eminent historians such as John Williams question the very existence of a cohesive or distinctive Welsh economy in the 19th century. See Williams, J “The climeratic of the 1890s” in Modern South Wales, (Ed. Baber, C and Williams, J), (1986), University of Wales Press [↩]
5. In 1911, approximately 1 in 3 of the labour force were employed in mining, a higher proportion than in any other part of the UK [↩]
6. A government white paper of 1921 estimated the net cost of a ton of coal in south Wales to be 60s, 9d, compared to a UK average of 38s, 11d. See Morgan, K O (1980). [↩]
7. ibid. [↩]
8. Though rearmament from 1936 onwards produces a mini-revival in the heavy industries, from which south Wales in particular benefited (ibid). [↩]
9. Even the nationalisation of the coal industry did nothing to slow the decline in employment, falling by over 75,000 by 1974, including the closure of 150 pits (ibid). [↩]
10. See www.Walescan.com. The inclusion of the Netherlands and Belguim are at odds with an earlier classification by Adam Price identifying these countries as, respectively, large and midpoint. (See Price, A, Wales after Objective One, speech to the west Wales branch of the IWA, Oct 2005). [↩]
11. Crafts, N., Market potential in British regions, 1871-1931, (2004) LSE [↩]

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The claim

Yesterday, Plaid launched its highly impressive new website WalesCan.com setting out the case for Welsh independence. In the Busting the Myths section the party takes on the accusation that “Wales would be kicked out of the European Union”. As part of the rebuttal, it is argued:

under the principles of the Vienna Convention on the Law of International Treaties, Wales would remain a part of the European Union, as would the other countries of the UK. The Convention states that an international agreement still applies to newly independent countries when a signatory state is broken-up.

Seems pretty clear. So, is it a fair reading of this historic Convention?

The evidence

WalesCan.com is careful to lay claim to the principles of the Convention. That may be because the Convention itself confers no automatic rights on successor states.

Instead, Plaid seem to have the later Vienna Convention on Succession of States in respect of Treaties in mind. In this, the party appears to be closely following an existing legal argument set out by the SNP in 1999.¹ This was premised on Scotland achieving independence via revocation of the 1707 Treaty of Union. Since this route does not apply to Wales, we will assume she gains independence by seceding from the UK. Although Plaid stipulate that the UK would break-up under these circumstances, the reasoning is not clear. Indeed it could be possible for the UK to continue as a state (although it may or may not formally be the continuing state, as defined in international law).

This issue - secession or dissolution - has a major bearing on the treaty obligations an independent Wales would be expected or could hope to assume under the Convention. Its provisions are somewhat controversial, as it differentiates between the “newly independent state”, i.e former colonies² and “successor states” (all other types of newly created states)³ and confers quite different entitlements on each type. As Wales is categorically not the former, and may not be the latter it is questionable which provisions might apply.⁴ This is critical as newly independent states are presumed to be free of all treaty obligations, while successor states are presumed to assume all such obligations. Clearly, Wales.can frames the issue such that the second set of circumstances apply. But there has to remain a healthy degree of doubt about this, given we are talking about events which have not yet come to pass.

But even this serious complication pales next to the specific considerations of EU membership. That is because it is very doubtful that EU treaties would apply as a result of adherence to the Convention. The EU has its own regime for admittance and qualification (under the Treaty of Rome), and the Convention is quite explicit that any such regime cannot be overridden by it.⁵

The conclusion - Debunked

In and of itself the Vienna Convention on Succession of States in respect of Treaties provides little or no assurance that an independent Wales would gain entry to the EU. The first reason is that the manner of Welsh independence would have a major bearing on application of the Convention’s provisions. The second - and far more substantive - objection is that Wales does not have a right under the Convention to succeed to the UK’s specific EU rights and obligations. In short, the EU’s own admission regime trumps any provisions contained in the Convention.⁶

This does not mean that an independent Wales would not become a member state of the EU. She would clearly have a most compelling case, meeting the EU’s entry criteria with ease.⁷ Much would depend on the manner of Wales’s exit from the UK, but if we assume it to be a well-ordered process there is every reason to suppose that membership negotiations would be well underway prior to formal independence and could even be concluded - in which case a near-seamless transfer of obligations is plausible.

But none of this is automatic as Plaid imply; entry would have to be negotiated. Wales may be a small country, but her separation from the UK would a a very big event in international law, and would be watched extremely closely by other states containing territories with distinctive historic, cultural or linguistic claims. These states (Spain and Canada would be two such) might be keen to avoid the setting of precedent and, as such, may seek to make life difficult for Wales in her international treaty negotiations. It is doubtful that this could stop her becoming a member of the EU, but it could delay such membership, and perhaps even lead to a period in which Wales would be outside of the EU.

Postscript

There is a good discussion about this claim going on here.

***

1. Scottish National Party, Independence in Europe, 1999 [↩]
2. Defined as “a successor State the territory of which immediately before the date of the succession of States was a dependent territory for the international relations of which the predecessor State was responsible” [↩]
3. Defined as “the replacement of one State by another in the responsibility for the international relations of territory”. In the event of Wales seceding, and the remainder of the UK continuing Wales could not be deemed to be the replacement state. [↩]
4. Indeed, an additional category of “quasi-independent states” was proposed during negotiation of the Convention for precisely this reason. See Kamminga, M T, “State succession in respect of human rights Treaties” in European Journal of Human Rights (1996). [↩]
5. See Article 4 of the Convention [↩]
6. Nor is it clear why Plaid’s other evidence, the verdict of Professor Emile Noel, constitutes “official” confirmation as opposed to the view of a highly credible expert. [↩]
7. The so-called Copenhagen criteria, i.e “democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for, and protection of, minorities, the existence of a functioning market democracy, as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the European Union”. [↩]

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