from the Guardian online: 19th April 2010. See below for link.
“Wales’s unreported revolution [in england maybe: H]
In the latest of a series of articles by Guardian writers on issues they care passionately about, George Monbiot asks how, when English politics is trapped in a neoliberal consensus, is green socialism able to flourish in Wales?
The lowland meadows are greening up, but the high pastures – the wet deserts of Snowdonia – are still yellow and bleak. A few streaks of snow cling to the mountains; but on the first hot day of the year you can almost hear the relief shuddering from the ground. Buds unclench. Everyone is out of doors. In the rain-sodden lands of west Wales, no one wastes a day like this. Business almost grinds to a halt as mysterious illnesses strike the working population down. Hardy pilgrims dip themselves in the healing waters of Cardigan Bay. The elderly lean on their front doors, eyes closed, faces to the sun.
To Elfyn Llwyd it feels like one big village. Though the reshaped constituency he’s contesting for Plaid Cymru is strung from Bardsey island to the Dyfi Valley, from the post-industrial dystopia of Blaenau Ffestiniog to the deep peace of the Rhinog mountains, and though it can take three hours by car to cross from end to end, almost everyone either knows him or knows his face. With the possible exception of my own MP – the ubiquitous and surprisingly effective Lembit Opik – I have never met a backbencher who is so widely recognised in his constituency.
He scarcely needs to campaign for this seat. On some accounts Dwyfor Meirionedd is the safest in Wales. Llwyd took 51% of the vote at the last election, and support for his party is even stronger in the region which has been tacked onto his constituency. But it looks like unpromising territory for politics like his. There is no large town, no deep mining, no steel plant: most people are employed by farms or small businesses. While radical rural politics are familiar in parts of France, Mexico and Brazil, those of us brought up in England associate the countryside with conservatism. Here in the remotest parts of Wales there’s overwhelming support for policies well to the left of Labour’s.
This is the mystery I have come to solve. Why, when the three main parties in Westminster appear to be trapped in a neoliberal consensus, is a green socialist party sharing power in Cardiff? How, even in the first-past-the-post system of Westminster elections, can Plaid return three MPs with comfortable majorities, with a fair shot at electing a further four? What has Wales got that England hasn’t?
For the past few years a quiet but momentous revolution has been taking place. That this has passed largely unnoticed in England reflects the media’s lack of interest in Wales. English progressives know more about the political transformation in Bolivia than the similar shift happening over the border. Perhaps this is just as well. The Welsh have been left to get on with it, and nobody in England cares enough to try to stop them.
It was Plaid Cymru that led the attempt to impeach Tony Blair over the invasion of Iraq. It opposed the conflict in Afghanistan from the outset. It wants to scrap Trident and cancel the aircraft carrier and Eurofighter contracts. It would break up the banks, ban short selling, tax foreign exchange transactions, raise capital gains tax, raise income tax for the rich while reducing it for the poor. It would set a maximum wage and give workers seats on corporate boards.
It seeks to renationalise the railways and curb the power of the supermarkets. It wants a living pension for everyone over 80, to raise benefits in line with average earnings and to scrap tuition fees. It would abandon ID cards, stop detaining asylum seekers and shift sentencing away from prison and towards restorative justice.
…
I wouldn’t describe him as an intellectual: I sense that he’s more comfortable cracking jokes with his constituents than arguing about ideas. But his job is surprisingly straightforward. Plaid must be the only leftwing party in Europe that, for the past 20 years, has not been split by doctrinal disputes. There is no war between the Welsh People’s Liberation Front and the People’s Liberation Front of Wales. When I asked him why this was he seemed at a loss to explain it.
“I’m not sure really. I suppose we’ve learnt from other people’s mistakes. We don’t have a tight system of party discipline. I think you could say we’re driven by an ideology.”
…
Its small size makes this easier, so does the sense of solidarity in Wales: a gradual emergence from colonisation has bolstered a national identity that’s lacking in England. That said, I have found no evidence to support the Guardian’s claim that Plaid veers “very close to hatred of the English”. Even its Welsh language policy looks pretty modest: it seeks not primacy but equal status with English. This is good politics: there are, if it can reach them, plenty of votes to be gathered among the goodlifers who have drifted over the border.
When I asked why a radical party could succeed in Wales, Llwyd replied instantly, as if the answer were obvious. Proportional representation had created space for a politics inhibited by Middle England. “Not the actual people of Middle England but the idea of it. First-past-the-post politics means that you are always chasing those swing votes in marginal constituencies.”
…
But there’s no question that, as Llwyd claims, devolution and electoral reform have been decisive factors. They have created a culture of political responsiveness that’s mostly lacking in England. Politics in Wales is closer to the people; politicians are forced to listen. Perhaps in England too there is a peaceful revolution waiting to be unleashed, but with a parliament in which Welsh, Scottish and Irish MPs can be drilled through the lobbies to vote on purely English matters, where grassroots politics are continually thwarted by dodgy voting systems, ruthless party machines and antediluvian powers, the box in which it lurks remains firmly nailed down.
The English like to think of themselves as a modern and sophisticated nation, and sometimes ignorantly view the Welsh as backward and uncouth. But as far as democracy is concerned, the English are light years behind.”
[on the Welsh! H]
