Tag: Margaret Thatcher

The Betrayal Of The White Working Class

On By JacIn Globalism70 Comments

Don’t worry, I won’t be looking at every incident we’ve witnessed in recent weeks, or dwelling on the insane sentences handed down for poking your tongue out at cops, or being a couple of streets away from a riot.

This post is made up of assorted observations and musings about the situation in the UK and elsewhere, particularly the USA. And while the different sections may not at first sight appear to link, believe me, they do. Taken together they help explain why we are where we are.

Well, that’s certainly what I think. But you’re free to form and express your own opinion. Because that’s how democracy should work.

◊

INTRODUCTION

We are witnessing a co-ordinated assault on the white working class. And so we need to ask why, for the first time ever, this group finds itself under attack from all sides.

Because in times past workers and peasants were defended by radicals, thinkers, certain churches, even poets. More recently they had political parties. But today, the white working class is not simply abandoned, it is openly reviled.

I’m old enough to remember a time when the working class was the ‘vanguard of the revolution’, extolled by the comrades and lauded by intellectuals. Horny-handed sons of toil who would lead us to the Promised Land, or the Sunlit Uplands (depending on which ticket you’d bought).

But a major ‘problem’ with members of the white working class always was that despite voting for socialist parties most were not socialist, let alone revolutionary. Most just wanted something better for themselves and their children.

I can confirm this from my own background and upbringing.

And as was discovered in a famous blind survey done in 1929 in Germany, even those who voted for socialist parties could switch to the right because they were socially conservative, believing in law and order, the family structure, and the homeland.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Cracks appeared in the 1980s, with Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA, both of whom enjoyed working class support. Then came flirtations with UKIP and the Brexit Party; the fall in trade union membership; before finally, and fatally, voting for Brexit in 2016.

In the same year, many of their blue collar cousins voted for Donald Trump. Making 2016 the watershed year, the final rupture between lower orders and an elite now being worked into frenzies by contrived ‘crises’.

Those the left had once revered were now redundant, in more senses than one.

◊

‘MY SELFISH GRAN!‘

One of the most revealing pieces in the wake of Brexit came from the BBC. I assumed some executive sent a crew down to interview his kids and their friends at Glastonbury. The video produced was a hoot.

One boy interviewed blamed his gran, “who’s going to probably die in the next couple of years“. No thought from the arrogant little sod that his gran, and her generation, have contributed their lives to the country they live in, and that gives them a say in the future, however little of it they see.

Another report from the BBC said that ‘non-graduates’ were more likely to have voted Leave. In other words, the futures of Arabella and her chums at ‘Glasto’ had been blighted by a bunch of thick bastards. How could the oiks be so selfish!

The reporting after Brexit, and then the Trump victory in November, got a little febrile. For some of our betters it really was the end of civilisation as they’d imagined it – people were no longer listening to them!

And it reeked of caste arrogance.

But as I say, doubts had been growing for some time about the trustworthiness of the white working class; 2016 merely confirmed the worst fears of the metropolitan elite.

It would have to be replaced. (The white working class not the metropolitan elite.)

And so it came to pass that the hard left and the metro elite (often difficult to tell apart) fell in with the Globalist plan to replace the ‘useless eaters’ with migrants from countries that might appear to be shit-holes, but had been thriving and prosperous democracies before the arrival of the (now increasingly vilified) white man.

Or so we’re expected to believe.

And so, to replace the white working class the left adopted minorities and migrants. But to ensure success they would need more minorities, and more migrants. That’s why today we have 69 genders, DEI, open borders, and ‘‘the global majority‘.

The last in that list is the latest variant of, ‘Let’s all gang up on Whitey!‘ It seems to believe a Chinese nuclear physicist will identify with George Floyd.

Naked racism. But so ‘progressive’.

◊

A BRIEF NOTE ON GLOBALISM

I’ve explained Globalism enough times on this blog, but for those who missed it, or weren’t paying attention, I’ll give a quick recap.

By Globalists I mean unaccountable corporations like BlackRock and Vanguard; equally unaccountable supranational bodies such as the EU Commission, the UN (and its many agencies); and multi-billionaires who fund far left politicians and public officials, who breed and release mosquitoes, or who manipulate the weather.

All brought together by the World Economic Forum and other bodies. Also attending these gatherings are young politicians, to be flattered and groomed.

To the point where most national governments in the West are little more than the Globalists’ local management teams.

Those that reject Globalism will be isolated and attacked, traduced by the Globalist media. We’ve seen it with Trump, Farage, Milei, Le Pen, Meloni, Orban and many others, including Putin. The pattern is consistent and predictable.

◊

NOTHING NEW

Political leaders being just figureheads takes me back to the early ’60s, and a phrase that’s haunted me since then. It was something said by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas Police HQ.

To insistent reporters, he says, “I’m just a patsy“.

Let me make clear that I don’t dispute Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in the plot to assassinate John F Kennedy. But I believe that by the time that recording was made he’d twigged he was being sacrificed to draw attention away from others.

And so he was silenced, by a shady individual, originally from Chicago, and with strong Mafia ties, who just waltzed in off the street with a gun in his pocket.

I’m afraid that’s how the USA has been run for a long time. And deep state control worked fine under the uniparty system. Which is why Globalism could be viewed as the deep state’s uniparty model taken beyond the USA.

The deep state that has orchestrated regime changes, invasions, proxy wars, that have killed millions, and brought misery to many millions more.

Of course liberals and leftists oppose this behaviour.

Yet when the deep state / Globalists preach ‘diversity’ and ‘saving the planet’ the left can’t get their placards and paint out quick enough.

Are they really that stupid?

The Uniparty. (Though fitting that Jimmy Carter is slightly detached.) Click to open enlarged in separate tab

If Lee Harvey Oswald is ancient history to you, then remember Jeffrey Epstein, who could have destroyed many powerful people, perhaps the deep state itself . . . if he hadn’t conveniently suicided himself in 2019. Done in a high security facility that suddenly suffered malfunctioning CCTV cameras and absent guards.

Then, just last month, a strange young man was allowed to walk around a crowded field with a rifle, use a rangefinder to judge the distance to his target, put up a ladder, and crawl over a roof to fire shots at Donald Trump.

Everybody saw him – but nobody did anything until the shots had been fired. Then he too was killed before he could talk.

Shortly afterwards Joe Biden was told he’d resigned as figurehead president. (You didn’t think stumblin’, mumblin’ Joe was really in charge!)

So who do you think’s running the USA right now? I’ll tell you.

The same people who’ve been calling the shots for 60 years or more (apart from one recent interlude), and will continue to run the USA, and the West, if the votes can be rigged to get Harris elected.

Which neatly brings us up to the modern period.

◊

COVID, WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION, DONALD TRUMP

Trump in the White House did not build the wall he’d promised, but neither were the floodgates opened (as would happen under his successor). However the deep state couldn’t risk him having a second term.

So let’s recall how things worked out.

The presidential election was scheduled for November 3, 2020. Covid was first reported in China – at a US-funded lab – in late 2019. The first case outside of China was reported in Thailand January 13, 2020.

And on it went with, what in retrospect, may have been a very important development. One that helped seal Trump’s fate in the 2020 presidential election.

July 7, 2020 The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. surpasses 3 million.

The U.S. begins the process of withdrawing from WHO.

One of Joe Biden’s first acts after being inaugurated in January 2021 was to reverse Trump’s decision for the USA to leave the World Health Organisstion (WHO).

The WHO is a UN agency. One that has increasingly – and largely thanks to Covid – taken on itself a role that it was never set up to fulfil. To the extent of over-ruling elected governments to enforce lockdowns, travel restrictions, and censorship.

For the WHO complements the political and economic agendas of the WEF and other Globalist organisations.

Things came to a head earlier this year with the WHO’s plan for a global pandemic treaty, which was rejected by a number of countries. There were many reservations about handing so much power to a body of unelected bureaucrats.

It may also have failed because it was rushed through. And if it was rushed through, then it could have been the prospect of Trump winning in November that explains the haste.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Here’s the article from which the above panel comes (with working links).

The events of 2016 proved that the white working class in the anglosphere was losing faith in its elites and the systems that sustained those elites.

Though in the UK, the political establishment tried to carry on very much as if Brexit had never happened. While still managing to blame (non-graduate) Brexit voters for just about anything that went wrong.

In the USA, the priority became stopping Donald Trump being re-elected in 2020. Which was successful, thanks to the ‘relaxations’ on the security of the voting process – justified by Covid!

Four years on the priority is again stopping Donald Trump.

◊

ELON MUSK TO THE RESCUE

Since the tragedy in Southport we’ve seen riots, ‘counter-protests’ (when there was no protest to counter), and the police and judiciary acting with unprecedented celerity and firmness.

Counter-protests in which everybody seemed to be carrying Socialist Workers Party placards. (An organisation many suspect is controlled by MI5.)

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

With a few exceptions, those brought before the courts and sent to prison have been white and working class. Usually from communities in northern England suffering economic decline, that may also have known ‘grooming’ gangs.

A process defended by a media that long ago prostituted itself to the Globalist elite.

A media that tells you the countryside is ‘racist’, controlled by white men all of whose ancestors kept and brutalised slaves, and where cows are destroying the planet. It’s a fascist hell behind that hedgerow!

When minds are fucked up with crap like that it’s only a short step to marching with placards declaring, ‘Gays for Hamas’.

Which may explain why fewer and fewer of us bother with the established media. We get our news from the internet, and the most popular social media platform is Elon Musk”s X. Which is why it’s being targeted by the Globalists and their puppets.

Not just just because Musk allows free speech, but also because he plans to put tens of millions into the Trump campaign coffers. Additionally – though few seem to know – because he’s planning to launch a rival search engine to Google.

For Google is very much under Globalist control. Manifest in some truly bizarre ways. Such as hindering searches for the Trump assassination attempt!

And Google has run into other problems.

◊

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

I’m a big fan of The Simpsons, recording episodes from Channel 4. I must have hundreds saved. Last Thursday, feet up on pouffe, I watched Series 26 Episode 21.

In which Bart gets bullied at the school dance. So mom Marge calls a town hall meeting that votes to outlaw bullying. And do you know what happens? People start accusing those they don’t like – of bullying. And the accused get arrested.

Every trivial little thing becomes ‘bullying’. For example, Homer accuses Apu at the Kwik-E-Mart of bullying because he put too much ice in Homer’s soda.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Later, Homer sits on the couch with children Lisa and Bart watching more arrests on TV. Lisa sagely concludes, “The police are arresting basically anyone they want to.” Homer replies, “Lisa, you’ve got to learn to trust your government“.

Then he picks up a table lamp from alongside the couch and says into the lampshade – in an obvious attempt to convince whoever might be listening – “Which is what I do”.

Inevitably, Homer too is arrested, when the Flanders boys next door complain about him bullying their father. As he’s being ‘cuffed, Homer says, “Oh, I never dreamed that a law I had abused could be applied to me“.

Homer eventually has to crawl, literally, to beg Ned Flanders’ forgiveness, which is slow in coming. For the real punishment is publicly humiliating and neutering a ‘bully’.

There is a political message in this episode on a par with anything that used a more serious format to warn us of totalitarianism.

But if you still don’t get it . . . substitute for bullying ‘hate speech’, ‘disinformation’, ‘racism’, ‘misinformation’, ‘Islamophobia’.

And check your lampshades!

◊

CONCLUSION

I’ve referred throughout to the white working class, but what’s really at stake is the survival of the countries built by white people. What were once prosperous and stable democracies, now under attack from all sides.

On the one hand we have the Globalists, but we don’t see them, for they operate through their captured politicians. And at street and societal level, they work through pressure groups, NGOs, uncontrolled immigration, climate hysteria, and just about anything that can make the West ‘wobble’.

And of course the Globalists still have traditional media. Because when you control the narrative you can lie to your heart’s content, and call anyone who challenges you with the truth a ‘conspiracy theorist’, or a pusher of ‘misinformation’.

As we saw a few weeks ago.

When a misidentification of the Southport killer as a Muslim immigrant was quickly capitalised on to become Starmer’s Reichstag Fire moment.

1/ A silly mistake became ‘misinformation’, and was used to bring in a crackdown on social media that was surely already planned.

2/ The UK government and the media introduced ‘Islamophobia’ into the mix in order to further justify the crackdown. (And maybe future legislation.)

3/ Attributing the riots to the initial misidentification of the killer allowed the government to avoid the real cause of the riots – uncontrolled immigration.

Leaving us in a sort of stand-off.

For the time being, a disgruntled white working class has been cowed, but the cause of the anger cannot even be whispered, let alone addressed. Yet we know that when people are backed into a corner, frustrated and angry, they often lash out.

The onus is therefore on the UK government to defuse the situation by reaching out to its own people, to assure them they are not victims of a ‘two-tier’ system, and to at least listen to their concerns.

What they must not do is punch down harder on the white working class, or anyone else expressing dissent. Only dictatorships do that.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

The Left: Lost, Found, Re-purposed, Finished

On By JacIn Climate, Environmentalism, Far Left, Globalism, Middle East, Ukraine, World Economic Forum42 Comments

Let me start by explaining that the title does not refer to the sad buggers in forgotten communities who vote Labour out of force of habit, nor the careerists they vote for.

I’m dealing with those who bring city streets to a standstill waving terrorist flags and shouting anti-Semitic slogans. Antifa, BLM, and all the other representatives of grievance politics.

And the Quixotic beings forever battling ‘fascists’ and ‘transphobes’, ‘climate deniers’ and ‘Islamophobes’. Those who think the white man is genetically evil.

◊

IN THE BEGINNING

I’d considered writing something along these lines for a while, but the trigger for what you’re about to read was something that happened a week ago.

I put out a post on X that linked to Google maps to show the heat island around the Senedd, with nary a blade of grass to be seen near the building whose denizens want to plant trees everywhere . . . preferably on what today are working farms. It struck me as mildly hypocritical.

Among the responses was one from someone called Ben Wildsmith.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

He seemed to suggest that vegetation does not grow near the sea. Making the marram grass of my childhood summers in Port Eynon a false memory. The palms lining tropical beaches, and trees running down to more northern shorelines, must be equally imaginary.

So I got to wondering about Ben Wildsmith.

Let’s give some background for what’s coming. At the Trump assassination attempt one man died after shielding his wife and daughter from the shooter, His name was Corey Comperatore, aged 50, and he was a firefighter.

In one of those theatrical gestures that Americans seem to like, Donald Trump, at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, kissed the fire helmet of the dead man.

Which prompted Ben Wildsmith to put out this post on X. The message reads: ‘Yer Da kisses dead men’s helmets’.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

‘Yer Da’ is Scouse for ‘your father’, and the rest is a crude reference to a human penis. However you think about it, it’s distasteful. I mean, is it addressed to Trump’s children? Or is it something really, really clever that’ll be understood by leftist necrophiliacs?

That helmet belonged to a man who put his life on the line in the job he did, and then gave that life to save his wife and daughter. Doesn’t he deserve better?

Well, no – because he was a Trump supporter. That means he can be ‘othered’, and vilified. Because that’s how too many in the modern left think. Including the brainwashed young man who tried to kill Trump. And this nutter.

Reminding us that those who urge ‘tolerance’ are often the most dangerously intolerant.

They suffer a kind of tunnel vision; which is never a good thing, unless perhaps you’re in a tunnel. But as long as sufferers stick together, they see no problem.

Take the July 4 general election. There were people in Wales celebrating a Tory-free Wales as if that was going to make everything better. Of course it won’t; but these people are so fixated on the Conservatives being the source of all evil that they’re incapable of seeing the truth.

Wales has had 25 years of socialist rule from Corruption Bay and it’s been disastrous. But everything’s gonna be fine now – because we’ve got no Tory MPs!

‘Cleansing rain’! Wow! Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Ben Wildsmith was one of those rejoicing, in his Nation.Cymru column. Yes, Ben writes for that site funded by the ‘Welsh Government’. Ben also likes to think of himself as a poet and a musician.

◊

LOST

I believe the left in the Anglosphere started losing its way in the late 1970s. The answer to human misery was certainly losing ground in the UK then (partly due to over-reach), and this culminated in the Winter of Discontent.

Which helped Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives get elected in May 1979. Her position was then strengthened by an unlikely combination of an Argentine military junta invading some islands nobody’d heard of, and the antics of the extreme left.

In the USA, Democrat Jimmy Carter won the presidency in 1976, but was not re-elected due to his administrations’s perceived weakness over the US hostages taken in Tehran. Republican Ronald Regan won the presidency in 1980, and was re-elected in 1984.

To cap it all, after years of obvious decline, but also thanks to a collapsing economy, and a costly and unpopular military intervention in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union started falling apart in 1988/89.

This was crucial, so it’s worth considering how the end of Soviet Communism affected politics in the West. Or certainly, this is how I see it.

On the one hand, the US military-industrial complex had grown rich and powerful by holding up the Soviet bloc as an existential threat.

But in his farewell address in January 1961, less than three years before his successor, John F Kennedy, was assassinated, outgoing president Dwight D Eisenhower, warned:

. . . guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . by the military-industrial complex

With the Soviet empire gone, those Ike warned against were left almost without a raison d’etre.

But with China not yet powerful enough to be a credible replacement there was little alternative but to stick with Russia. The regime had changed, but post-Communist Russia still had all those nuclear warheads. And a space programme.

Which posed a problem for the left, because since 1917 many socialists in the West had looked to Russia for inspiration, even orders.

Remarkably, the left, traditionally critical of US foreign policy in Latin America, Vietnam and elsewhere, eventually fell in with military-industrial complex thinking.

This was achieved because many leftists began to regard the new Russia under Yeltsin, and then Putin, as a betrayal. And when Putin came all out for nation, church, family, tradition, the left turned on him.

When he banned gay marriage the comrades became apoplectic.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Putin’s position on these matters also made him a target for the Globalists, who ridicule religion (but only Christianity), and seek to undermine the family unit, erase national differences, and destroy Western traditions.

This led to a fear among both Globalists and the military-industrial complex that the new Russia might serve as a dangerous example to the West. This became another reason to treat Russia as the enemy, and to villainise Putin.

And so it was full speed ahead to NATO encirclement of Russia, EU enlargement, the 2014 Kiev coup, provoke war in Ukraine and . . . I wonder what comes next?

Something else that must be understood about the collapse of the Soviet Union is that it killed off any lingering belief in the Communist economic model. It just didn’t work. Few saw that more clearly than the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The lesson for ‘our’ socialists was that their war against the corrupt and evil West would need to take a different form. Which meant cultural Marxism; initially the relatively benign ‘political correctness’, with this softening-up process leading to the mind-numbing idiocies of Wokeism that followed.

Yet Russia in the early 1990s, with its vodka-loving president, and gangsters fighting over state assets, was a bit of a shambles. In the public mind it was not perceived as the same threat as its superpower predecessor.

Other ‘threats’ were needed as a supporting cast.

◊

FOUND

In the UK, the initial cleansing under leader Neil Kinnock wasn’t enough to win Labour the general elections of 1987 and 1992. A complete re-brand was needed, and it came with Tony Blair and New Labour which, after victory in 1997, stayed in power until 2010.

New Labour was a kind of Margaret Thatcher tribute band.

In the USA, the left seemed to be largely incorporated into the Democratic Party, and to some extent de-fanged.

The collapse and disintegration of the Soviet empire, and with it the removal of a unifying focus for Western concerns, was also a problem for supranational bodies that like to influence public perceptions and political decisions.

The answer they came up with was ‘global warming’, or ‘climate change’. This racket fulfils an almost identical role to the Cold War; because as well as focusing minds and frightening people, it’s used to dictate human behaviour, curb individual freedoms, and satisfy corporate greed.

And when it came to more immediate military ‘threats’, well there was a theatre company of sociopaths out there with dodgy moustaches . . . and oil. To raise the curtain, and stress the importance of oil, Saddam Hussein conveniently invaded Kuwait in August 1990. Less than a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

And as we soon learned from US and UK spokesmen, Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). People who knew that to be a lie were helped to commit ‘suicide’.

Perhaps Saddam felt encouraged to invade after the US had funded and armed his bloody war with Iran from 1980 to 1988. Done, not because the Americans had any liking for him, but because the Ayatollahs had deposed their Shah in 1979. And of course, as payback for the hostage crisis that so embarrassed the USA and brought down the peanut farmer from Georgia.

(Though rumours persist that certain US agencies dragged their feet over the hostages in order to make Carter look bad, and help former CIA boss George H W Bush get elected. What a thought!)

These forays into the lands of oil initially wrong-footed the left. Normally, the comrades would oppose Western powers invading countries over natural resources. But Saddam Hussein Al-Tikriti was a difficult bloke to defend.

So by 2010 the left is onside with the thinking of the military-industrial complex agenda, has bought into the Globalists’ climate scam, and is open to adopting any lunacy that can be deployed to challenge Western values and institutions.

With a Conservative government returned in 2010 the left felt it was time to flex its muscles again.

◊

RE-PURPOSED

In the USA, blue collar workers and southern whites had been switching to the Republicans for some time. And this continued under Obama.

While in the UK, many lower-paid workers had lost their fear of voting Tory with Margaret Thatcher, some moving to even more ‘exotic’ destinations on the right.

Which meant that Labour and Democrats needed to replace these lost voters. In the USA there was a push to register more voters from minority groups. But that took a dangerous turn when the left started arguing that to ask voters for ID was ‘racist’.

Now, in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, we’ve seen Democrats demand that undocumented, illegal migrants be allowed to vote.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The thinking behind this is pretty obvious.

The military-industrial complex may have taken shape to further US imperial ambitions and enrich US corporations, but it soon spread its influence to UK politics, and NATO.

For as Tom Paxton put it in Daily News:

Ban the bombers are afraid of a fightPeace hurts business and that ain’t right

At its simplest . . . corporate America gains from making the weapons for the military. The quicker the products are used, and replaced, then the bigger the profits.

But the military-industrial complex also profits from ‘rebuilding’ the countries wrecked by the weapons it’s produced.

This report from 2005 explains how Halliburton did it in Iraq. And with the fighting still taking its bloody toll along the Dnieper BlackRock and JPMorgan have been quick off the mark to set up a Ukraine Reconstruction Bank.

Globalist corporations profiting from a war the USA engineered in order to support the most corrupt regime in Europe. What’s more, Ukraine’s been corrupt for a long time.

As I’ve reported before, the head of JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon, wants “governments, businesses and non-governmental organizations” to have the power of compulsory purchase over farms and other private property.

Should that happen, then WWW, or Radnorshire Wildlife Trust, or even Bute Energy, could throw you off your land, or out of your home – to save the planet.

When they’re not supporting the US military-industrial complex and the most corrupt country in Europe, the comrades are promoting the Globalist land grab agenda of Jamie Dimon and his buddies.

As I’ve said before, 2016 saw the process ratcheted up because, through Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, the lower orders had proven themselves to be both stupid and racist. The gloves were off.

Which is why we are where we are. And seeing the West so weak, socialists may think their time has finally come. But I believe their time has come, and gone.

The entitled, attention-seeking clowns, with their half-baked ideas, have become an embarrassment. Certainly Ed Miliband thinks so. The days of performance socialism may be coming to an end. People have had enough.

◊

FINISHED

Miliband is close to those hoping to benefit from net zero, carbon capture, and all the other elements of the climate scam. So he may not just be speaking for himself.

But anyway, it’s not just Miliband, there are other signs that something is changing. Just look around. Can’t you smell it!

There are governments in Europe hanging on for dear life, dreading the next election. The UK has a government with no real mandate. France seems to be falling apart. The West is being flooded with ‘refugees’ who are nothing of the sort. Following an assassination attempt on the man likely to be the next US president, there was a palace coup to remove the incumbent!

All because people are waking up to the truths. They know they’ve been lied to in so many ways, and for too long. Those who’ve lied to us are getting worried.

Change is inevitable. Possibly major change.

Finally following Ike’s advice and reining in the military-industrial complex, curbing the power of the Globalists, and dealing with the clowns who serve their agendas without realising it, is the best hope for a just, peaceful, and prosperous world.

But if it’s too late and the worst happens; then when you see that mushroom cloud, you can at least console yourself by knowing there are no Tory MPs in Wales.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Wales, the unmourned death of devolution

On By JacIn Devolution, Englandandwales, Plaid Cymru, Welsh Government, Welsh Independence, Welsh Labour, Welsh Nationalism71 Comments

PLEASE APPRECIATE THAT I GET SENT MORE INFORMATION AND LEADS THAN I CAN USE. I TRY TO RESPOND TO EVERYONE WHO CONTACTS ME BUT I CANNOT POSSIBLY USE EVERY BIT OF INFORMATION I’M SENT. DIOLCH YN FAWR

♦

In this post I’m going to look at the latest YouGov for ITV/Cardiff University poll. There’s a clue to where we’re going in the title of this piece.

Obviously I’ll focus on devolution, so it makes sense to remind ourselves why we have devolution. Younger readers especially should stick with it because they might learn something.

Then I shall move on to consider what we do now that devolution has come to the end of the line.

◊

INNOVATION DESIGNED TO MAINTAIN THE STATUS QUO

Devolution did not come about following a period of political upheaval or unrest, there was no ‘Nation on the March’. Devolution was thrust upon Wales because it served the interests of the Labour Party. Later, even the Conservatives could see benefits in maintaining a management team in Cardiff docks.

To understand the genesis of devolution we need to go back to the Conservative and Unionist Party led by Margaret Thatcher coming to power in May 1979. Under her leadership the party was re-elected in 1983 and again in 1987. Even after she was deposed in November 1990 the party went on to win the 1992 general election led by John Major.

Major’s victory was a surprise to most people, including many Conservatives. But none were as shocked as the Labour Party – who can forget Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s triumphalism at the now famous Sheffield rally.

Mr and Mrs Kinnock were compensated for this and other embarrassments, first by being shunted off to Brussels (where he served as Commissioner and she as MEP), and more recently to the House of Lords. But they remain committed to the struggle against privilege and inequality.

The old socialist tactic of ‘fighting the system from within’. ‘Well, all right!’ Click to enlarge

Each year of Tory rule made devolution more attractive to the Labour Party’s hierarchy . . . based of course on the assumption that a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly would always have Labour majorities.

The thinking was that devolution would give Labour two redoubts when not in power at Westminster. With many also believing that devolution would defeat the nationalists in both countries. George Robertson, Labour’s Defence Secretary and NATO General Secretary, believed back then that devolution, ‘will kill nationalism stone dead‘.

How wrong he was, certainly about his native Scotland.

The point to remember here is that devolution was introduced by the Labour Party to serve the interests of the Labour Party. What might be best for Scotland and Wales did not enter into Labour’s thinking.

When the Tories came back to power in Westminster in 2010 they were faced with two very different situations in Scotland and Wales.

The SNP had been in government in Scotland since 2007 and any attempt to remove powers from Holyrood, or do away with devolution entirely, could have made a mildly annoying situation a lot more difficult. Whereas in Wales there was a coalition between Labour and Plaid Cymru, which meant that Wales was ‘secure’, she could be ignored.

◊

THE POLL

The results that were released a week or so ago covered a wide range of questions. Most attention has focused on two findings; the percentage wanting independence and the percentage wanting to do away with devolution altogether. Here are the full findings.

The figures quoted tend to vary so I’ll go with this WalesOnline piece by Ruth Molaski. And that’s where the figures below come from.

Click to enlarge

Though the figure in favour of independence is claimed to reach 27% when don’t knows are omitted and other adjustments made. Applying the same refinements it’s claimed that 33% would vote to abolish the Assembly were they given the chance in a referendum.

As Wrecsam Plaid Cymru councillor Carrie Harper says in this Nation.Cymru piece these figures point to “a polarisation of views amongst Welsh voters”. Which I suppose it does, at first sight. But looking at them from another angle what appear to be polar opposites do in fact agree – they reject devolution.

Due to many factors, including Brexit.

I’ve argued – from the time I voted for Brexit – that a difficult and damaging Brexit, resulting in Scotland leaving the UK and Ireland reuniting, will force on Wales the choice between being trapped in Englandandwales and considering independence.

In fact, that was one of the reasons that I voted for Brexit.

Given the impact events in Scotland could have on Wales I was surprised by the way the question below was framed in the poll.

Click to enlarge

Surely, it should have tried to establish whether Scotland becoming independent would make Welsh people more likely to support the independence option? So why the obtuse question about positive or negative – are we talking about batteries?

As it’s worded, I would obviously answer ‘very positive’. Whereas a BritNat would answer ‘very negative’. But we would be saying the same thing in that we agree Scottish independence will increase the chances of Welsh independence. But the findings, as they’re displayed, don’t show that.

Why wasn’t the question better worded?

◊

A SYSTEM NOT DESIGNED TO DELIVER NOT DELIVERING

In her article Carrie Harper says that there is a feeling in the north east that ‘Cardiff doesn’t care’. I can tell her that this sentiment is not restricted to her home patch – it’s the same in Swansea, the Valleys, Gwynedd, Pembrokeshire, Powys.

In economic terms devolution has failed every part of Wales but Cardiff.

And yet, we keep electing Assembly Members to represent us who promise the earth, then they go down to Cardiff . . . and perpetuate this Cardiff-centric system. They betray us every time, no matter where we live and no matter which party we vote for.

One reason Cardiff’s done well out of devolution is because it’s used as a ‘showcase’. Visiting dignitaries, politicians, entertainers, rugby and football fans, etc, go no further than Cardiff. They see the investment, the cranes on the skyline and think, ‘Oh! devolution must be working for Wales’.

Click to enlarge

Using Cardiff as a showcase city, to give a false impression of prosperity and progress, is symptomatic of a more general problem with the ‘Welsh Government’, that of show over substance. At it’s worst, it’s virtue signalling. But it’s not confined to the Labour Party.

Looking at the self-styled ‘progressive’ parties – Labour, Plaid Cymru, Lib Dems – I see parties playing to a gallery made up of a tiny minority within Wales and a much bigger audience outside of Wales with which that minority identifies.

What I mean is, giving a vote to the toe-rag doing time for robbing your Nan might get favourable column inches in the Guardian but Dai Public doesn’t support it and it does sod all to improve his life.

The ‘Welsh Government’ has declared a climate emergency. Of course it won’t make any difference on a global scale, not when Japan is planning to build 22 coal-burning power stations, and China many more. It’s not even as if the ‘Welsh Government’ takes its own declaration seriously, because if it did it would organise a functioning system of public transport, and it wouldn’t be funding Aston Martin to come here to make cars with gas-guzzling V12 engines.

But Aston Martin is more likely to go bust than it is to set up in Wales. It will join a long, long list of failed investments, money wasted, by politicians who know nothing about business and are terrified of Wales having a successful indigenous economy because it would lose them votes and give the natives the wrong ideas.

So we are served up empty rhetoric and futile gestures.

Not only do the ‘progressive’ parties ignore the interests of Welsh people but very often they introduce ‘Ooh look at us – aren’t we virtuous’ legislation that actually works against the interests of Wales.

For example, people entering care homes in Wales can keep £50,000 before they have to start paying for their care. The figure for England is £22,500. This is one reason that Wales sees an influx of retirees and elderly people from England adding to the burden on our NHS. Our ‘progressives’ would like to do away entirely with care home charges.

Money to fund this generosity must come from other budgets; which helps explain why our infrastructure is so poor, why our kids don’t get the education they deserve.

But now the ‘Welsh Government’ wants to punish us even more by introducing a tax to help fund care for the elderly and disabled . . . many of whom have been attracted to Wales by the £50,000 limit, free prescriptions and other gestures.

Click to enlarge

Abolishing care home fees will result in an epidemic of granny dumping, they’ll be queuing at the border. It will be a disaster because the ‘progressives’ will not introduce a residency qualification to stop the system being abused. That would be ‘discriminatory’. (Truth is, they’re terrified of headlines in the Sun and the Daily Mail reading ‘Welsh bastards discriminate against our brave grannies . . . Dunkirk . . . Vera Lynn . . . )

And to expose how damaging devolution is, the Conservatives and the Brexit Party would support this economic insanity because they rely on the Invasion of the Wrinklies (PG) to provide much of their support.

You have to conclude that any administration planning to introduce a tax on a poor people to subsidise richer people moving to their country must hold the electorate of that poor country in utter contempt.

Another reason Wales is poor and badly run is because of the power of the third sector. Here in Wales – uniquely – the third sector has a role in government. The Wales Council for Voluntary Action, which serves as the umbrella body for the third sector, and operates almost as a department of the ‘Welsh Government’, is quite open about its role.

Click to enlarge

This is why Wales has the biggest third sector on Earth, filled with leeching luvvies pulling down huge salaries to ‘combat’ problems they’ll never solve because it would put them out of a job; and to ensure they have enough ‘clients’ they import many of them from England.

The third sector coupled with Wales’ colonial relationship with England explains why the towns of the north coast have the biggest drugs rehabilitation industry in the known world.

Thanks to organisations such as Cais Ltd, based in Llandudno, which owns a number of properties, and is funded to the tune of £2.9m a year by the Wales European Funding Office . . . then there’s £1.6m from the NHS, £1.7m from local authorities, and a few million from other sources.

The Cais entry on the Charity Commission website says under the Documents tab that this company operates in ‘Wales And The Marches’. But the map found under the Operations tab tells the truth.

Click to enlarge

Money given to Wales by the EU to raise standards is being used to further lower standards by importing drug addicts, alcoholics, criminals and God knows what else from north west England.

The driving principle of devolution seems to be using Wales for the benefit of just about everybody but the Welsh.

That’s why we have wind turbines that don’t turn, and hydro schemes that locals aren’t allowed to know anything about – ‘Saving the planet, innit’.

‘Rural initiatives’ mean tasteless and culturally damaging tourism developments, zip wires and the like. Or else it’s turfing Welsh farmers off their ancestral land at the behest of George Monbiot and his cohorts with the Summit to Sea scam aka ‘Lebensraum for Guardian readers’.

The ‘Welsh Government’ pushes through housing developments that Wales doesn’t need, funds housing associations many of which prefer not to have Welsh tenants, and does nothing while Welsh communities die when every property that comes up for sale is bought as a holiday or retirement home.

Wales is being turned into a retirement and recreation area for England, a dumping ground for England’s problems, and the pot of gold at rainbow’s end for every crook and shyster looking to make easy money.

But nothing is ever done for the Welsh.

Our politicians are insulated from the system they oversee by hiding away in Cardiff Bay, a world unto itself, hermetically sealed from reality. Where truth is whatever the third sector or the lobbyists decide best serves their interests.

An ugly place where reputations can be destroyed. And men. A cess-pit of corruption and treachery Wales can no longer afford.

◊

AT THE CROSSROADS

There is nothing to be said in favour of devolution. After twenty years it should be obvious to all that it has failed the Welsh nation on every conceivable level. Yes, I talk of a nation; because without it there is no Wales.

Of course the Labour Party is largely to blame, but things would be no better with Plaid Cymru in control. If anything, things would be worse; for not only is Plaid Cymru further to the left than Labour, it has also been infiltrated by ‘woke’ lunatics.

Wales needs new political parties, fresh faces, and a whole new approach to running this country. No more virtue signalling, no more niche politics, no more identity politics, no more pretending that caving in to hedge funds is ‘saving the planet’, and no more ‘influence’ from the third sector.

What I’ve always said about devolution is now the accepted view of a majority of Welsh people, as the poll showed. The only question is which course we take from here. There are only two real options.

As I’ve already said, after Scottish independence and Irish reunification we can either submit to Englandandwales or else we go for independence. Devolution is dead. Nobody killed it, nobody needed to kill it, it destroyed itself.

Few will mourn its passing.

Time to get our people thinking about independence, and to do that we must have political parties grounded in the real world, in Welsh communities, determined to serve those communities and this nation of communities. These new parties must be ready to contest the 2021 Assembly elections.

And the more the merrier. Because with four or five Unionist parties run from London, and Plaid Cymru having such a narrow appeal, independence was impossible to achieve. Let’s broaden the appeal and shift the focus of debate away from London and the UK so that independence becomes the issue in Wales as it is in Scotland.

From now on Welsh politics must be about Wales, and the Welsh people. Let’s offer our people a real choice. No more, ‘What Unionist party should I vote for?’ but instead, ‘Which of the independence parties shall I choose?’

Spread the word! Devolution is dead! It’s time to move on!

♦ end ♦

 

Time to Show Appreciation of International Relationships

On By JacIn British Nationalism, Colonialism, History, Patagonia, Welsh Language207 Comments

BY A GUEST WRITER

There are a few countries around the world with which Wales has long-standing and profound cultural, political and social ties.  The other Celtic countries, of course.  The United States, where, famously, 16 of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were of Welsh descent — with particularly strong Welsh connections with Pennsylvania (aka “New Wales”) and Ohio.  However, one of the most celebrated and enduring international relationships is with Argentina.

♦

Welsh Settlement in Argentina

When Michael D. Jones sought to establish a settlement for Welsh people free from the cultural repression and bigotry of the British state, it was the Argentine government that he approached for permission to locate Y Wladfa in Patagonia as a new country, a “little Wales beyond Wales”, where Welsh would be the language of religion, government, trade and education.  And so it was that 153 Welsh settlers arrived in Patagonia aboard the Mimosa, a converted tea-clipper, in a bay which they named “Porth Madryn”.

The context to this remarkable venture was the hostility of the British state to the language and culture of the Welsh people which had reached new heights in the mid-Victorian era.  The official denigration and suppression of the Welsh language was legitimized and fuelled by the reports issued by the three English commissioners appointed by the Westminster parliament to head an “Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales”.  Their Reports infamously declaimed:-

“The Welsh language is a vast drawback to Wales, and a manifold barrier to the moral progress and commercial prosperity of the people.  It is not easy to over-estimate its evil effects …” (Read more.)

eisteddfod_y_wladfa_1942
Eisteddfod y Wladfa 1942 (click to enlarge)

In Argentina, however, the Welsh settlers were welcomed, and the Welsh-Argentine community continues to this day centred on the towns of Gaiman, Trelew and Trevelin, where there are today at least 5000 Welsh speakers.

♦

“Every Bloody Cause”

The long association between Wales and Argentina experienced tragedy in 1982 during the conflict in the South Atlantic.

Many Welsh-Argentines from Patagonia were conscripted into the Argentine forces occupying and defending the Falklands/Malvinas.  One such Welshman, Milton Rhys, was sent as a young conscript as part of the Argentinian garrison to be a radio operator on the Falklands-Malvinas.  Señor Rhys has given a poignant account of his experiences during the period of Argentine rule and the subsequent British invasion.  Milton Rhys is the great-grandson of William Casnodyn Rhys, a Baptist pastor and Welsh patriot who emigrated to Patagonia from Port Talbot in the 1870s.

milton-rhys-flying-the-flag-in-patagonia
Milton Rhys flying the flag in Patagonia

Of course, Welshmen fought on both sides of the conflict in the South Atlantic.  Thirty-two Welsh soldiers of the British army’s “Welsh Guards” regiment were killed or severely wounded at Bluff Cove, with many suffering terrible burns, after they were left on board the ill-fated Sir Galahad logistics vessel for many hours awaiting orders to disembark – in a display of gross incompetence by the British military high command.

In these experiences on both sides of that senseless conflict, Alun Rees’s lines come to mind . . .

“Now Taffy is a fighter
when he hears the bugle call.
Name any war since Agincourt:
Taffy’s seen them all.

He’s fought the wide world over,
he’s given blood and bone.
He’s fought for every bloody cause
except his bloody own.”

♦

Competing Legal Claims to the Falklands-Malvinas

The conflict in the South Atlantic arose out of a long-standing dispute over sovereignty of the Falklands/Malvinas Islands between the British and Argentine states.  Here is a brief synopsis of the competing claims.

Argentine Claims

It is accepted by both Argentina and Britain that first country with a good legal claim to the Falklands/Malvinas was in fact France, which established the first colony there in 1764 and gave the islands their original name after the port of St. Malo – Les Îles Malouines (subsequently rendered into Spanish as the Islas Malvinas).

The French subsequently agreed to transfer her claims to the Falklands/Malvinas to the Spanish. The Argentine claim that they acquired those rights from Spain in 1810 according to a principle of international law known as uti possidetis juris (basically, principle of international law which provides that newly formed sovereign states should have the same borders that their preceding dependent area had before their independence).

The Argentine claims were not effectively challenged by Britain until a British naval squadron arrived in 1833 and caused the submission of the resident Argentine garrison under threat of force.

On repeated occasions since the British invasion of the Falklands-Malvinas in 1833, the Argentine government has restated its claims.

In due course, the status of the Falklands/Malvinas was recognized as a territory to be decolonized under United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1514 of 14 December 1960, titled “Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples”.

Furthermore, earlier this year, the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), sided with Argentina accepting their maritime claims and fixing the limit of their territory at 200 to 350 miles from their coast – so awarding the seas surrounding the Falklands/Malvinas to Argentina.

south-american-archipelago

Although widely denigrated or misrepresented by the British government and much of the British media, the Argentine claims to the Falklands/Malvinas have considerable substance in law.

British Claims

In a nutshell, the validity of the British claims to the Falklands/Malvinas rests on two questions:-

  1. Was a plaque left by the British when they abandoned a brief settlement on the Islands in 1774 sufficient to entitle the British to re-assert a claim 60 years later (in 1833) and eject the existing Argentine settlement by threat of force?
  2. Had France’s claims, which pre-dated any of the British claims, which France had transferred to Spain, and which Argentina had assumed on its independence, been extinguished by 1833?

To any objective observer, the basis of the British legal claims to the Falklands/Malvinas is decidedly shaky.  When this was realised, the British government decided to switch the basis of their argument to one based on “self-determination”.

The self-determination argument has more than a touch of the Ealing Comedy “Passport to Pimlico” about it.  How can a community of less than 3000 – smaller than Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen – and utterly reliant for all practical purposes on the umbilical cord with Britain, the colonial power, some 8700 miles away, assert a sovereign right of self-determination for its inhabitants?  The Islanders are, of course, a transplanted population of British character and nationality.  To attribute sovereign rights of self-determination to this tiny group of people is as ludicrous as astronauts claiming sovereignty over the moon.

Just as the British government and media persistently downplay and distort the basis of the Argentine claims to the Falklands/Malvinas, so too do they brush under the carpet the fundamental weaknesses in the basis of the claims of the British state to the islands.

♦

Pragmatism and Self-Interest

Ultimately, the Falklands/Malvinas sovereignty issue is not going to find its resolution in legal arguments over fine points of international law, since the arguments of both Argentina and Britain have been amply aired and found to be riddled with weaknesses.  The time has therefore surely come for both states to consider rationally and pragmatically what the right result should be.  For example:

  • Which country is best placed to administer these islands?  Britain at a distance of 8700 miles or Argentina some 300 miles away.
  • Could the British state put the vast sums spent defending and artificially sustaining the tiny settler population to better use?
  • At a time of increased international tensions and security threats, should the British state be distorting its strategic defence priorities to defend the Falklands/Malvinas colony?
  • Can the British state continue to rely in the 21st century, and post-Brexit, on political and military support from the US, EU and any countries in South America to maintain its occupation of the Falklands/Malvinas colony?
  • Following the Brexit vote, and the pressing priority for the British state to establish and upgrade trading relationships beyond the EU, should the British government be perpetuating trivial colonial conflicts at the expense of valuable trading relationships with the emerging economies of South America?

♦

The Future Role of Welsh Politicians

Given our unique, long-standing and treasured relationships with the Argentine government and people, isn’t it time that we in Wales stood up to the British state and voiced our opposition to the intransigent and counter-productive stance of successive governments on this issue?

Four years ago, the Argentine government reached out to senior members of Plaid Cymru to enlist their support for moves to resolve this dispute.  These approaches were apparently rebuffed by Plaid at that time.

Isn’t it now time for a rethink on this – especially following the election of the pragmatic President Mauricio Macri in Argentina?

END

Jac says . . . Not long after the conflict in the South Atlantic I got to meet a few of the surviving guardsmen. One of them, from my part of Swansea, was here to marry a local girl. And of course his mates turned up for the wedding.

People still talk about the first time these survivors of the Sir Galahad heard the low-flying RAF jets come down our valley. Regulars in a Welsh village pub saw Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder at first hand.

sir-galahad-at-bluff-cove
The Sir Galahad was moored in Bluff Cove, with Welsh Guards aboard, inviting the attack from Argentine aircraft that inevitably came.

I’m not sure how many of them are still alive. The bridegroom from Manselton died in 1995, and this sad entry tells us that in 2010 his grave still had no headstone.

That’s the personal, the human, aspect of this tragedy. The wider picture can only be appreciated if we by-pass the British media, for the truth is that England stands almost completely isolated, virtually no one supports her claim to the Malvinas.

The claim is founded upon imperialist aggression and sustained by a combination of lies and yet more aggression, with contempt for international law and UN Resolutions thrown in. The excuse used is self-determination, ‘the people of the islands wish to remain British’.

You might as well ask the denizens of the Shankill Road if they support a united Ireland. Or go to a meeting of the Abbasock Holiday Home Owners Association with a petition demanding that Gwynedd doubles council tax on second homes.

Finally, let us not forget that throughout that conflict in defence of democracy and freedom – so memorably dismissed by the great Jorge Luis Borges as ‘two bald men fighting over a comb’ – Britain relied heavily on intelligence and other support from Chile. A country then controlled by Margaret Thatcher’s great friend General Pinochet, a man with firm views on democracy.

~ ♦ ~

Why I Detest The ‘Welsh’ Labour Party

On By JacIn Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Corruption, Devolution, History, Ireland, Welsh Labour48 Comments

1/ FOR DENYING US OUR HISTORY

In the nineteenth century, whether or not they had the vote, the overwhelming majority of Welsh people supported the Liberal Party. This loyalty went with them as they migrated from the rural areas to the new industrial communities of the south and the north east. Support for the Liberals might even be seen as one of the ‘pillars’ of Welsh identity, along with the Welsh language and the nonconformist chapels.

But of course our industrial areas also attracted workers from outside of Wales, especially towards the end of the nineteenth century when, as historian Gwyn Alf Williams memorably put it, the ‘human reservoir’ of rural Wales began to run dry of surplus manpower. These immigrants either found the established Welsh identity uninviting (especially if they were Catholic), or else they rejected it, for with their homeland then approaching its imperial zenith many English would have dismissed Welsh identity as inferior or ‘backward’.

Rejection of Welsh identity became a cornerstone to the growth in Wales of the Labour Party. From the outset, Labour in Wales was a non-Welsh party, in direct competition with the party most Welsh people supported. The report accessed by this link and the passage I hGower 1908ave extracted from it (below, click to enlarge) gives a good indication of the Welsh / non-Welsh split in the Swansea area in 1908. It is written by Kenneth O. Morgan the Labour historian and propagandist.

Politics was not the only area of division. Despite now being the beneficiaries of an English education system more Welsh children in 1914 knew of Glyndŵr and Twm Siôn Cati than know of them today. That’s because these and others were the heroes and legends of their people, part of a cultural inheritance that was still being orally transmitted. Because this was alien to the non-Welsh something new was needed; and so, not for the first time, or the last, we find socialists re-writing history.

In this new version, Wales before the Industrial Revolution was nothing more than a region of primitive pastoralists and exploitive landowners with, in still earlier times, warlords and feudalists making a nuisance of themselves. Depriving a nation of its history is of course an old imperialist ploy; not surprising then that few wish to remember how the Labour Party in Wales adopted the same tactic. One that was still being employed until quite recently.

With pre-industrial Wales now dismissed it only remained to re-interpret more recent history. Episodes and movements such the Scotch Cattle, Chartists, the Merthyr Rising, all needed to be integrated into the new schema. We were asked to view these as forerunners of the Labour Party of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Glossing over the fact that hanged Dic Penderyn spoke no English and that the Gwent Chartists who marched to their deaths in Newport called for a ‘Silurian Republic’! (This reference to the ancient Silures being a perfect example of the knowledge of history I mentioned.)

With the writing on the wall many more Welsh eventually went over to Labour. A party formed in opposition to Welshness and all its expressions now justified rejection of Welsh identity as being for our own good because, for example, speaking Welsh was ‘holding us back’. (From what, exactly, was never satisfactorily explained.)

2/ FOR DENYING WALES AN INDIGENOUS ECONOMY

Well into the twentieth century there was a political grouping called ‘Liberal-Labour’; the most famous representative of which in Wales was probably William Abraham, better known by his bardic name of ‘Mabon’, Liberal MP for the Rhondda from 1885 to 1910, the year he joined the Labour Party (four years after its founding). Despite the name, this was no combination of Liberalism and the new Labour Party; it was Liberal politicians supported by trade unions, labour not Labour.

During this era the industrial south developed its own trade unions often dealing with Welsh companies and major Welsh capitalists such as David Davies, David Thomas (Viscount Rhondda), the Dillwyn Llewellyns and others. Many of these employers and most union representatives would have been Liberals, nonconformists, and Welsh David Daviesspeakers. Making it possible to argue that by the second half of the nineteenth century Wales had developed a largely indigenous economy. Yes, it depended on England and the empire to a great extent for its markets, but it was still more identifiably and distinctively Welsh than anything we have seen since. Labour was to change all that.

Labour, with its centralising tendencies and its hostility to Welsh particularisms had little truck with anything that wasn’t big and ‘national’. Welsh companies and Welsh unions were all swept away in pursuit of size and ‘unity’. (Always an important slogan for Labour, ‘unity’.) Predictable that a new party hoping one day to become the government of the UK should want its affiliated unions to be UK-wide, but in the process Welsh workers became no more than cannon fodder in a bigger struggle, used and abused by people who didn’t give a toss about them or their country.

Having encouraged the demise or the takeover of so many Welsh enterprises it was important to ensure that no new ones sprang up to replace them. So ‘Welsh’ Labour kept a tight rein on its flock and its wider patch, discouraging entrepreneurial spirit by defaming those who displayed such errant behaviour as ‘enemies of the people’. All of which served to make Wales an undefended target for English business, a captive market for English-produced goods. The perfect colony; achieved not through military conquest ordered by a bunch of toffs in a far-off land, but by local socialists who viewed native initiative as a betrayal of socialist principles. All done in defence of the centralist, English-dominated State.  

Had it not been for Labour Wales would have developed a healthy local economy along the lines of Catalunya or Scotland, looking after her own interests rather than being shackled with what we have today – an economy almost totally integrated with that of England, and in which Welsh interests are always subordinated to those of England.

3/ FOR MAINTAINING ENGLISH COLONIALISM IN WALES

Subordinating Welsh interests to those of England was justified by arguing that organising on a ‘national’ level with UK-wide trade unions, gave workers ‘more clout’. This made sense, up to a point, especially in the post-war period when so many major industries were nationalised; coal mining in 1947, road transport (British Road Services) in 1948, with other industries in the years following, including of course steel and tinplate, which saw the Steel Company of Wales (a very dangerous example) subsumed into British Steel. Few in the Labour Party considered that Welsh interests might be better served by some less centralised system. But as Bob Dylan put it, the times they were a-changing.

Labour reluctantly organised a devolution referendum in 1979 in response to the rise of various forms of Welsh consciousness over the previous twenty years. Due in no small part to most ‘Welsh’ Labour members and supporters opposing devolution the referendum was lost. It finally took more than a decade of Margaret Thatcher to make Labour realise the benefits of devolution . . . for Labour, that is, not for Wales. Control of a Welsh parliament being seen as a consolation prize for losing power in Westminster. What was best for Wales didn’t come into Labour’s thinking. And so – despite another Labour rearguard action led by those champions of the people, Lords Kinnock and Tonypandy – the devolution referendum of 1997 was won, just.

But devolution is a sham. Wales today is run by faceless civil servants answering to London and Labour’s cronies in the Third Sector, financed with misappropriated EU funding; ‘(Wales)’ is inserted in the title of English laws and passed off as legislation originating in the Notional Assembly; Welsh students are paid to leave the country, their places taken by English students; but perhaps worse, is ‘Welsh’ Labour’s consistent refusal to legislate for the benefit of Wales and then defending this by arguing that to promote Welsh interests would be a concession to ‘narrow-minded nationalism’. (By which argument, every independent country on earth pursues ‘narrow-minded nationalism’, including of course the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.) Here are a couple of examples.South Shropshire

The first concerns the current First Minister, Carwyn Jones. Ten years ago he was Planning and Countryside Minister, and was asked by local authorities to consider introducing planning rules to favour local people then being excluded by the booming housing market; in fact, the example he was asked to copy was working just over the border in South Shropshire. He refused, saying that it would pose “legal problems”. So we were asked to believe that legislation already working in England could not be implemented in Wales! Obviously the interests of English holiday home owners and colonists had to take precedence, for helping the less wealthy get a home would bWatere making concessions to ‘narrow-minded nationalism’.

The second example concerns one of our greatest natural resources, water. During the premiership of Tony Blair, the Government of Wales Act (2006) was passed. Section 114 (1) (see panel, click to enlarge) makes it absolutely clear that should a Welsh Government make any moves to get a fair return for the water England takes from Wales then the UK government will intervene. This law was passed by a Labour government in London, agreed to by a Labour government in Cardiff, and the Secretary of State for Wales at the time was Peter Hain, MP for Neath. This is how ‘Welsh’ Labour serves Welsh interests – Welsh consumers paying more than English consumers for water from the same Welsh sources.

4/ FOR BEING WHAT THEY ARE

Looking at it from the other side, as it were, the Labour Party in the UK always did a great job of defusing discontent and preserving the existing order. In many respects the UK Labour Party was the best friend the capitalist and imperialist system ever had. It ensured that Britain was always spared the upheavals seen on the continent and elsewhere. Which makes Tony Blair not so much an aberration, or a betrayal of what had gone before, more the inevitable outcome.

From the perspective of the English Establishment it never really mattered whether the dominant political force in Wales was the Liberal Party, the Labour Party, the Conservative Party or the Aberdare Anarchist Collective. All that ever mattered was that that dominant political force maintained the colonial relationship between Wales and England and allowed no change in that relationship other than the most cosmetic.

Which explains why, after a century of Labour dominance, Wales (and especially those areas where Labour has been most dominant) is today the poorest country in Western Europe, possibly the whole of Europe. While Ukip may fear an influx of Roumans and Bulgars many Welsh would be better off heading in the opposite direction . . . if they had any skills to offer. Few do. Because our education system is now on a par with that of Burkina-Faso and our health service is the envy of . . . well, no one, actually. Though I’m sure the horse-drawn ambulances will soon become a tourist attraction.

Our rural areas are nothing more than retirement and recreation areas for the English. In many parts of Wales the Welsh are now in a minority. Every attempt is made to kill off the Welsh language and destroy all vestiges of Welsh identity other than the most frivolous or touristy. Few of our people can afford to buy the homes being built in our countryside and are then denied social housing in favour of English people who have never set foot in Wales. Soon  the term ‘Wales’ will have lost all meaning, and then the assimilation into England will be complete. Welcome to Tibet, UK!

Today, stripped of ideology and purpose, plus the industries and trade unions that sustained it, the principled and visionary movement that scrambled to dominance over the fallen bodies of Liberalism and nonconformism is just a freak show of dilettantes and chancers; people for whom the party is a stage, or else a means to promote their real interest, whatever that might be. While its diminishing band of followers vote Labour much as people support a very poor football team – with blind, unquestioning loyalty but no enthusiasm. While the Labour machine just goes through the motions of politics for no better reason than stopping somebody else occupying county hall, winning Cwmscwt North, or ‘running’ the Assembly.

Labour rose to pre-eminence in a country with a burgeoning economy and a prosperous and confident people; now, after a century of Labour hegemony, we are a broken and impoverished nation on the point of ceasing to exist. This is Labour’s legacy to Wales. ‘Welsh’ Labour has failed on every conceivable level. No-one should question why I detest this gang of back-stabbing, bipedal vermin.

UPDATE 27.03.2016: Here’s an interesting essay that throws further light on the emergence of the English & Irish Labour Party in Wales.

Margaret Thatcher: A Personal View

On By JacIn Labour Party25 Comments

Before settling down to write this piece – in what was probably a futile attempt to whet appetites – I tweeted that, “Thatcher and the Left needed each other like two drunks”, by which I meant that each used the other for support, even justification. Maybe exhausted heavyweight boxers would have been a better analogy; and if I’d used that, then it would allow me to say that socialism is down and out while Thatcherism is still standing, triumphant.

Let us cast our minds back to pre-Thatcher times. Those on the Left too young to remember seem to view this period as when the Left was powerful and we lived in a more ‘caring’ society. Bollocks! The UK was alternately ‘governed’ (I use the term very loosely) by a Conservative Party that had lost its way and an equally enervated Labour Party in hock to trade unions. The trade unions of the ‘closed shop‘ and the political levy whose power Mrs Thatcher curbed . . . and for which most people – including trade union members – were grateful. I was a union member myself, I attended meetings, and more than once I saw how ‘a dedicated few’ could take control. Resulting in trade unions pursuing political agendas subversive of democracy rather than serving the interests of their members. With trade union bosses being celebrities in their own right and big-time political players. To the stage where I used to get really pissed off with hearing some little git with a Napoleon complex mouthing off on TV and threatening to bring down a democratically elected government.

So Mrs Thatcher helped free the Labour Party and the population at large from the trade unions, but the rest of her legacy is rather more mixed in lasting value. Because if New Labour was a thoroughbred foal then its parentage would be ‘By Bilderberg out of Maggie’. For Mrs Thatcher is undoubtedly responsible for New Labour; the worst bunch of sociopaths and emotionally crippled control freaks I have known in my lifetime. That anyone could ever have believed in and trusted Blair, Mandelson and the other con men remains one of the great mysteries of modern politics. Just remind yourself of those excruciating soirees at No 10, where Tony and Cherie would try to play JFK and Jackie to assorted luvvies and ‘celebs’ . . . remember them? Just writing about it still causes me to shudder.

For her own party Mrs Thatcher was also a mixed blessing. She may have rescued the Conservatives from Ted Heath, she may have given them eighteen years of government, but she also took the party away from the grandees to make it more welcoming to the ‘aspirational’; with a less charitable interpretation being that the Conservative Party became more materialistic, abandoning the one-nation Toryism of the past and repopulating the party with the spivs and the swivel-eyed who helped gain it the soubriquet of ‘the nasty party’.

Since her death I have read so much myopic condemnation, much of it from stand-ups and spads (whose opinions I value so highly). One criticism is that many of the council properties sold to their tenants under the Right to Buy scheme are now owned by major property companies. Which may be true, but overlooks the fact that Labour had thirteen years in power to do something about that. It did nothing. Perhaps the greatest proof of her influence over New Labour is that she is still being attacked from the Left for policies and legislation that New Labour in power never thought of reversing. Or maybe it tells us that the terms ‘Labour’ and ‘the Left’ are now forever divorced. If true, then that is some achievement for the grocer’s daughter.

Other criticisms may be more justified. While I could not oppose privatising utilities on ideological grounds, replacing a State-owned monopoly with an unregulated cartel of private companies, diverting profits to major shareholders, rather than using them to improve infrastructure and reduce consumers’ bills, is no improvement at all; certainly not for the consumer, in whose name the privatisation was carried through. Furthermore, once Mrs Thatcher got the taste for privatisation it went too far. The break-up of the railway network was a disaster in more ways than one. Not only did it give us a confusing system of competing companies and separate infrastructure, it also made a mockery of privatisation by having to be regularly baled out with taxpayers’ money.

Even so, she was a towering political figure because she broke with the past and she shaped the future. Britain in 1990 was as different to Britain in 1980 as Britain in 1980 was to Britain in 1930. Britain in 2013 is still Thatcher’s creation. And in the absence of total economic meltdown leading to a collapse of social order, everyone knows there’s no going back. Of course she had help along the way; because when you can count among your opponents Callaghan, Foot, Galtieri, Kinnock, Scargill and others, then you know you were born under a lucky star. I suspect there were times when even she couldn’t believe her luck, looking at the incompetent and inadequate men she had ranged against her. With enemies like these, who needs friends?

Seeing as this is a Welsh nationalist blog I suppose I am expected to ask what Margaret Thatcher did to, or for, Wales? The answer is, not a lot. Wales may have suffered as a result of her policies, but I don’t think she was in any way anti-Welsh. I don’t think she singled us out, in the way she did the Irish and the Scots, for special treatment. If you want to find the anti-Welsh, the quislings and the traitors, it’s best to look in the Labour Party.

Yet Welsh Leftists, faux socialists and others, still use Margaret Thatcher to frighten Welsh electors – or at least, the more gullible, who vote for what they believe are socialist parties – into believing that the only defence against Thatcherism is to vote Labour, or Plaid Cymru, even Liberal Democrat. But even if Welsh Labour was a socialist party determined to roll back ‘Thatcherism’, it would be futile for Welsh people to vote Labour in Wales because the UK Labour Party is Thatcherite. Consequently, the only way Wales can truly defend itself from ‘Thatcherism’ is through independence, which of course ‘Welsh’ Labour opposes.

Margaret Thatcher’s influence on Wales may have been substantial but it was tangential and unintentional. By comparison, Labour’s damaging influence is direct and deliberate, year in year out. Who undermined the devolution referendum in 1979 – Margaret Thatcher or Neil Kinnock, George Thomas and the rest of the Labour gang? Who has been responsible for squandering the EU and other funding that has come to Wales since 2000 – Margaret Thatcher or the Labour Party and its cronies in the Third Sector? Who fought against holding the 2011 referendum on greater powers for the Assembly – Margaret Thatcher or Peter Hain and others in ‘Welsh’ Labour? For a century, the real enemy of Wales, and the biggest threat to Welsh nationhood, has been the Labour Party, which is always looking for somebody else to blame. Don’t you be deflected or distracted from the truth. Because until enough of us grasp that truth there is no hope for Wales.