CARN 1974 - Welsh Socialist Vanguard becomes Cymru Goch

 Welsh socialist vanguard was created out of the 1831 vanguard / Y blaen cad 1831 in the early 1970s by welsh republican and ex free Wales army member Gethin ap Gruffydd and anarchist Ian Bone The group had a monthly bulletin called Free Wales/Cymru rydd and set up a yearly commemoration of the Merthyr rising. In September 1973 along with a number of other smaller republican socialist groups they formed the first group calling its self Cymru Goch (red wales) following an ideology of Marxism and Welsh nationalism.

 

CYMRU GOCH 1974

At a conference held in Abertawe in September 1973 attended by members of the former Welsh Socialist Vanguard and other socialist liberation groups operating in Wales, a new political organisation was formed under the name of CYMRU GOCH (Red Wales), in an attempt to unite under the one banner revolutionary socialists and socialist separatists of various tendencies. It is hoped that this rapprochement of these with overlapping political objectives will help us to more effectively serve the needs of the Welsh people in their struggle against imperialism.

CYMRU GOCH is an autonomous revolutionary socialist movement whose aim is to awaken the class-consciousness of the Welsh people, in order that they may organise and prepare themselves to seize political and economic control of their own nation. The movement was formed: 1) in order to provide a coherent analysis of the neo-colonial position occupied by Wales within the “British” capitalist structure; and 2) on the basis of that analysis, to formulate a strategy with which to combat imperialism as it affects us.

The machinations and anomalies associated with recent elections reveal parliamentary “democracy” to be a sham; a toy; a set of shiny switches and levers whose wires lead nowhere, set up by the capitalist establishment to deceive the people into believing they have some kind of control over their socio-politico-economic situation. Cymru Goch sees no future therefore in any of the miracle cures offered by the various brands of hustlers based in Westminster; neither the mincing trendies of the so-called British left (for whom the further away and more exotic a cause is, the more worthy of support it is nor the pale pink capitalism with a cloth cap of the Labour Party; nor Plaid Cymru’s Nonconformist social-democrat devolutionism. This is not to deny that in all of the above movements, and most relevantly within the Plaid, there are known to exist good socialists who, for the want of a sound political analysis within the Welsh context, have relapsed into the comfortable mire of bourgeois parliamentary reformism.

It is not Cymru Goch’s aim to see the “British’’ bourgeoisie in Wales supplanted by a Welsh-speaking native bourgeoisie. The only solution to Welsh problems is that sought by the oppressed peoples of the entire world. The people themselves must seize power, to set up a democratic system of society based on workers’ councils, local community councils, agricultural and industrial cooperation — an entire network of working-class organisations. Democratised on all levels, freely federated nationally and internationally.

In working towards this end, Cymru Goch acts not as self-appointed leaders of the struggle, but as an organisation based on the various struggles facing the people. Our 16 members are active in the campaigns for the rights of industrial and agricultural workers, the unemployed, tenants, the aged, homosexuals, women, Welsh-speakers, students, immigrants and so on. It is important that each oppressed section of the community sees that it is the one struggle which faces us all; and to achieve this practical political action and political education must go hand in hand.

Most recently Cymru Goch has been active in a housing campaign, involving the occupation of empty properties with the intention of alleviating the growing problem of homelessness (gweler “Y Faner”, 14-86-74). Here again it is important that urban overcrowding, and the problems created by holiday homes in rural areas, are seen by activists to be part of one phenomenon, each the direct result of capitalism.

On the international level, Cymru Goch has recently participated in the publication of a “Declaration on the struggle against colonialism in Western Europe’, jointly signed by ourselves, UDB (Brittany), Union do Pobo Galego (Galicia), the Irish (Official) Republican Movement and H.A.S., the Basque Socialist Party (available 24p. post free from Cymru Goch, 18 Stryd Windsor, Uplands, Abertawe, Wales). In this way we demonstrate our solidarity with the liberation struggles of the other oppressed peoples of the world. Socialist freedom and national liberation are the two inseparable ingredients of a just, democratic society. That is the true basis of international brotherhood. In the words of the oppressed working class of Chile. “i El pueblo unido jamas sera vencidol’” — the people, united, will never be defeated.

(Carn is the magazine of the Celtic league)