Y Faner Goch (late 90s, early 2000s) NEWSPAPER OF Cymru Goch

 This is a small collection of articles from Cymru Goch's newspaper Y Faner Goch (late 90s, early 2000s). Cymru Goch (Red Wales) is not to be confused with the first group who used the name that was active in the mid 1970s that came out of Welsh Socialist Vanguard. Cymru Goch (2) grew out of the demise of the Welsh socialist republican movement, being formally established in 1987 Cymru Goch (2) Like Welsh socialist vanguard, Cymru Goch (1) and the Welsh socialist republican movement were Marxists and welsh republicans carrying on the torch welsh socialist republicanism seeing correctly Wales as a colony of England and the British state.

"Ultimately the only answer to the problem of wales is socialism and true socialism requires the transformation of social relations by the establishment of a state through which the workers own and control the economy.that means a welsh socialist state and only such a state could liberate our working class from the ravages of capitalism.only the national liberation of the welsh working class in a socialist state can free us any petty senate or parliament achived by the welsh nationalists would not advance our working class at all."

Cymru Goch - Get off our backs wlaes a colony  

 

Who are the Welsh Socialists?

Cymru Goch was formed in 1987 and fights for a Free Socialist Wales. Only the workers of Wales can free themselves from this joke called British democracy.

A Welsh workers' republic would replace rotten Brit royal rule.

Our socialist democracy means communities having the power to run themselves and workers controlling their own lives.

Swapping one elite for another - whether in Brussels, London or Cardiff - is no choice. Workers control is essential because the free-market system is failing us so badly.

The total rejection of the Tory party in Wales has not freed us from Tory rule. London-backed Quango rule and corrupt councils will continue to flourish under the Labour's pink Toryism.

Our language and culture are treated with contempt - a few crumbs of grant-bribes are tossed to tame middle-class politicians and pressure groups while the working-class communities that sustain the language are ripped apart by unemployment, low pay, ill health, poor housing and drugs.

We want a socialist alternative for Wales and the world - our vision is local and global.

A Welsh Socialist Republic will end the injustices tearing our country apart: to abolish poverty, we must get rid of the rich.

The politicians want your vote so they can line their pockets. Rather than trusting politicians, we believe people can change their lives through community resistance.

This grassroots socialism gives Welsh workers control over our future, rather than passing power from one set of bosses to another. If we're going to be free, we'll have to do it ourselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Can we reform

Y Faner Goch Issue No.112 Mai/May1999

WELSH workers are more likely to be members of a trade union than any other part of the UK - 44% as against just 29% in the south-east of England. This is a legacy of our traditional militancy and also the preponderance of public-sector jobs, where the unions still have a foothold in terms of negotiating terms and conditions. The Thatcher anti-union laws effectively shut out trade unions from the private sector, and Blair has no intention of redressing the balance. So, how do we as socialists look at the unions? A recent anti-low pay leaflet produced by the Welsh Socialist Alliance encouraged recruitment agency workers to join a trade union as one way of getting some protection. But the experience of countless workers who do fight back, for example the Pall Mall strikers who were sold out by Unison, is that union officials are more concerned with protecting their own assets than their members.

Left-wingers have organised within unions in the past, but the Broad Lefts have been little more than bureaucratic electoral machines. The SWP once organised Rank and File groups within trade unions with varying degrees of success. These produced militant papers that related to specific workers' struggles and grievances in a way that general socialist papers rarely do. Given the absence of independent trade unions, this remains an obvious way to bring together the more militant workers in one industry or union. The other alternative, which is common to the rest of Europe, is a political trade union. The traditional links between Labour and the trade union movement in the UK are weakening rapidly.

Blair's Labour Party no longer needs the trade unions to bankroll its election campaigns because it has so many friends in big business. For their part, trade unionists are increasingly dissatisfied with the diminishing returns from Labour. Some sections, notably the RMT railway workers' union, have considered disaffiliation from Labour. This is no surprise given the strong SLP presence on that union's national executive, but it does suggest that the left can win bureaucratic control over some unions. A more ambitious, and obviously more difficult, approach is to develop a completely independent union. The International Workers' of the World, the Wobblies, have tried this and have a tiny presence.

The success of such a political union, especially one wedded to the idea of crossing industrial and craft boundaries, is linked to its ability to win majority support in key sectors. Unions at present don't tend to bother with casual, part-time and low-paid workers. But this is the very group that's increased most during the past 20 years, and the people who need solidarity more than anyone. Perhaps one way forward for any independent Welsh workers' union would be to organise these workers - the people the unions forgot. For any such union to succeed, it has to break with the cowering reformism of the official trade union movement and go back to basic principles. One of those would be that full-timers should be on an average workers' wage to reduce the dangers of bureaucracy. 

MIKE DAVIES

Socialism

Y Faner Goch Issue No.119 Ionawr/January2000

Socialism is a way of understanding and changing the world. It is a simple ideology which explains the way in which wealth and power is created and therefore gives working people the means to fight back.
Socialism explains how Capitalism creates wealth for the few by exploiting the mass of people.

The key to understanding Capitalism is by looking at how it produces things, the means of production. Let us take a simple example - a wooden chair is a commodity that you can buy in a shop but which can be made by anyone who sufficient skills, (even me!). 

A wooden chair starts as a number of pieces of wood. If I use some carpentry tools I can make the
pieces fit and when I glue them together I will have a chair that I can sell. Since it is all my own work, I can pocket the whole price that I get. What I have done is to use my labour to transform wood into a
marketable commodity. The chair is wood made more valuable by my labour-this is called surplus value.

However, these days most chairs are made by workers making the chair for a company - this is called Capitalism, and it works like this. The company buys the wood and employs workers to make the chairs in return for a wage. Machinery will be used in an assembly line with workers still doing all the work but, as the company owns the chair and sells it, the capitalist pockets the surplus value and that is called profit.

It is the search for greater profit that drives Capitalism to move from country to country, looking for workers who will ask for fewer wages and therefore make greater profits. An example of this is the closure of factories in Wales in recent years, when the capitalists have decided to move their factories to Eastern Europe. It is the search for greater profit that drives Capitalism into mining coal through open-cast mines, which are cheaper than deep mines. It is the search for greater profit that lies behind government policies in the United States, Europe, the World, and which is the driving force of globalisation, driving down workers wages and the wrecking of our environment.

Those who do not understand this basic economic truth are doomed to failing to understand the world, but as Karl Marx said, it may be all right to understand the world, the point is to change it. This is what
socialism is about - changing the economic system so that it is the workers who own the means of production and the surplus value. That requires that the political system controls the economic system, and that will be explained in the next issue.

No Assembly road to socialism

Y Faner Goch Issue No.110 Chwefror/February1999

There is no parliamentary road to socialism. It's not something you can legislate into existence - socialism is about scrapping the system, not giving it an overhaul.

We want workers' control, not politicians' control, whether they're based in Westminster or Cardiff Bay.

Workers' control means taking running workplaces and communities for our benefit rather than the bosses' profit or the bureaucratic interests of the state.

The purpose of socialists is to mobilise a majority for change, rather than get a handful of representatives elected to a toothless Assembly. Too much emphasis on electoral politics would see us aiming to make deals with larger parties in the Assembly to win concessions here and there.

After all that, some may ask why we're standing in the Assembly elections at all.

Cymru Goch's strategy for the Assembly - as part of a broader socialist platform - is clear. We stand to put a socialist alternative to Labour and Plaid Cymru. The election is a chance to talk politics with people in the street, in public meetings and in election literature distributed to every home.

It's a chance to take our message for the first time to many people, to recruit members and challenge the establishment parties' view of the world.

If we do get elected, we will enter the Assembly to fight for workers' rights within the system and to abolish that system. Contrary to Blair's vision of a classless society, there's no third way when it comes to socialism.

Whatever we achieve in the election, it comes second to what we do in our extra-parliamentary campaigning. Whether it's low pay or environmental campaigns such as anti-opencast, our activities go on after May 6.

The next two articles talk about the Welsh socialist alliance, originally a coalition between Cymru Goch and the Socialist party that was eventually derailed by the useual backstabbing tactics of the Socialist workers party. This period in its history saw Cymru Goch entrench itself in reformism , previously being an organisation dedicated to grassroots organising and mass work in various campaigns such as "cant pay,dont pay" and the poll tax struggle while also being active in the miners strike of 1984-1985 by the late 1990's Cymru Goch had lowerd itself to participating in electoral politics .

 Cymru Goch backs WELSH SOCIALIST ALLIANCE FOR ACTION

Y Faner Goch Issue No.119 Ionawr/January2000

CYMRU Goch has actively supported the Welsh Socialist Alliance from the start, with a leading Cymru Goch member, Alun Roberts, as Secretary in the crucial first year.

It was Cymru Goch that actually produced the Assembly election broadcast for the United Socialists, and we produced the first bilingual newsletter last Autumn. Cymru Goch led the way in setting up the two
most active WSA branches in Merthyr Tydfil and Wrecsam and the most coverage of the Welsh Socialist Alliance has been in this newspaper, Y Faner Goch. The Welsh Socialist Alliance is unique on the left as it is made up of members of Cymru Goch, the Socialist Party and, most importantly, non-aligned socialists and some members of other groups.

But, Cymru Goch members have started to question whether the Socialist Party has the same commitment to making the WSA work as ourselves. We acknowledge that quite a few SP members have made a genuine effort to make the WSA work, setting up branches in Cardiff and Swansea, and taking an active role in WSA campaigns and meetings. We also note that while the Socialist Party will, no doubt, turn up at the January 29th WSA Conference in large numbers, that could well be the last we will see of many of them when it comes to campaigning and the day-to-day organisation of the Alliance.

We, in Cymru Goch, believe that the WSA is the way to build socialist unity in Wales against the mainstream parties who are all committed to the capitalist economic system. But, in the final analysis, the WSA has to move forward and build a strong campaigning body taking socialist action and theory to the working class in Wales. There can be no treading water, waiting for it to happen - it will not happen without the active support of all WSA members, be they Cymru Goch, Socialist Party or non-aligned socialists. That will be the big test from the January 29th conference onwards. Let us hope that the year 2000 will see the WSA get back on course and make progress - so come along to the conference and let's start building the WSA into a formidable political force to challenge the capitalist parties in the Welsh Assembly.

 WSA Conference resolutions 

WE STAND AND FIGHT

Y Faner Goch Issue No. 108,Rhagfyr/December1998

For Socialism -

By taking social ownership of the commanding heights of the Welsh economy and, particularly, the asset of transnational corporations in Wales. All firms brought into social ownership should be under worker's control and management and the WSA would be campaigning for a Welsh Assembly that would have the power to establish socialism, combined with a campaign of working class action.

For a minimum wage of £6 an hour -

By scrapping the All Work Test, Benefit Integrity Project, the Child Support Act and to restore Single Parent Benefit and the right to benefits for 16 and 17-year-olds. The motion was amended to state that £6 an hour should be the new minimum wage and calling on the WSA to campaign for 30,000 signatures to back the campaign.

For a decent Health Service -

By returning all NHS Trusts and Quangos to democratic control, the reversal of cuts and an immediate injection of cash to build more hospitals. Pharmaceutical firms should be brought into public ownership and prescription charges abolished.

For an education service for all -

by abolition of all forms of private education, return of Further Education to democratic control and to campaign for grants, not fees, for Higher education. The motion called for the WSA to support all campaigns against tuition fees, "in particular the Save Free Education campaign, with an amendment to delete the latter being narrowly defeated by Socialist Party members voting en bloc.

For the future -

Amongst other motions passed were opposition to Council Cuts, a decision to establish an Internet site for the WSA, to campaign for the Trade Union political funds to be distributed outside the New Labour Party and for a Wealth Tax. In addition, it was agreed to initiate a united campaign against fascists, particularly the BNP, and to seek electoral unity with others on the left, to work with anti-capitalist environmentalists and to build the policymaking process of the WSA in time for the Welsh Assembly elections.

Cymru Goch would meet its end in 2003 the organisation would become foward wales which was a social democratic and pro devolution party .

A far cry from the revolutionary socialist republican party it originally was.