PLAID CYMRU: BORN- AGAIN NATIONALISTS WSRM 1982

 From Welsh Republic No.5 1982

The Welsh phoenix-Plaid Cymru-rose again at its annual conference last October. But, like its avian counterpart, Plaid has learnt nothing to prevent another burn-up sometime in the future. Quite a number of delegates in the packed St. Peter's Hall in Carmarthen were euphoric that the party adopted a "Welsh Socialist State" as one of its constitutional objectives. Yet while this is a step forward for socialist ideas, and a milestone for the party's National Left faction, it should not be allowed to obscure some less encouraging factors. Firstly, the National Left does not contain many new faces: most of its activists have been battle away, in committees and conference, for many years, while others have only recently got off their backsides to argue for socialist politics. Their resolutionary success is not founded upon an influx of socialists into Plaid Cymru.

Secondly, there has not been a basic shift in the beliefs or motivations of the mass of party activists: most of them remain steeped in petty-bourgeois Nationalism, but with the majority on the left and now proud to say so. Thus, they like to dress up the old-hat (but worthy) Nationalist Campaign on Welsh Water in anew guise -as part of an Unemployment Campaign! Thirdly, although the National Left's organising ability must claim some credit for the constitutional change, there is also a large element of opportunism on the part of Nationalists who believe that a "socialist image" will help Plaid eat into the all-important Labour vote in South Wales. The enemies of Marxism who now pose as socialists include such people as Director of Organisation, Syd Morgan, and former parliamentary can didate Dafydd Huws. Fourthly, Plaid has not broken from its fetish for elections and constitutionalism. The party stays committed to the parliamentary road to oblivion. One whiff of a Borough Council by-election and most Plaid activists come over all giddy, ploughing in more time, energy and money than has ever been devoted to a strike, a factory closure or a working-class commemoration. Just how wasteful this approach is for Welsh socialists was shown - for the thousandth time in five years-at the recent borough council by-election in New bridge, Gwent. Scores of Plaid canvassers and a very able candidate could not save the seat for Plaid Cymru, against a 'handful of S.O.P. nonentities. The result;


S.D.P. 1,150

Labour 849 

Plaid Cymru 688
 

The fact is that the working-class is not clamouring at the poll-gates to vote for socialism - whether on offer from Plaid or Labour. Under capitalism, the bourgeois electoral system is a fraud on the working people-with the bourgeois parties only concocting a "false consciousness". For the Welsh people, the British parliamentary system is a negation of Their national consciousness. The long struggle which all socialists must .be engaged in is the ideological one - for the workers by hand and brain to become class-conscious socialists. They will only do that in conflict, and with an understanding of their history, their present condition and their potential. In all this, the electoral charade under capitalism is a dangerous diversion or at best - in favourable circumstances - a tactic. For Plaid, however, these elections are still the central obsession. 

Yet the ideas of revolutionary Welsh Socialist Republicanism clearly gained ground at the Plaid conference. Many of the younger delegates identify with the Welsh Socialist Republican Movement, and W.S.R.M. members or supporters played a prominent part in deleting the petty-bourgeois pacifism from a motion on Ireland. A fifth barrier for the National Left to overcome in its drive to tum Plaid into a socialist party is the leadership. To put it bluntly, with Dafydd Wigley as its president, leuan Wyn Jones as its chairman and Dafydd Williams as its general secretary, Plaid Cymru must be the only avowed "socialist party" in the world whose key officers are non-socialist and anti-Marxist. Will the National Left strive to replace them - or will it fall under the spell of "Nationalist unity"? Clearly, changes are afoot inside Plaid Cymru. How deep they run is of importance to the working-class and the Welsh people generally. Of course, Welsh Republic will welcome every move towards a revolutionary socialist and Welsh Republican perspective. But the National Left, with its Bennite economic strategy, has a long way to go and Plaid Cymru as a whole much, much further