Labour defends Wales from ConLibs? Don't make me Laugh.

An interesting response to the Budget in the Western Mail  yesterday from Pontypridd Labour MP Owen Smith  which you can read here.

It was a reasonable attack on the ConLib budget and at times you could easily replace Plaid for Labour in the text.But his call for a plan B when his own party doesn’t have any plans for the UK in the economic crisis let alone Wales beggars belief

.As he says,

"And what about Wales? 

We barely merited a mention in the speech – the words Wales or Welsh don’t feature at all among the 51,379 words that make up the Chancellor’s 126-page plan for growth".

How many times in the Labour Budgets 1997 -2010 was Wales mentioned, how many specific projects were proposed with a Welsh Flavour were there? Of course devolution means that much have been passed to the Welsh Assembly ,but Wales has always been ignored in Westminster Budgets with very few proposals targeted to the plight of the Welsh in any economic crisis..

It seems that in opposition Labour Welsh MPs have decided to wave the Draig Goch .relying on the idea of “Clear Red Water” separating Wales from Westminster and the cuts or at least giving the impression that under Labour things would be done differently.

Own Smith is a new MP so he can't be held responsible for the fact that the majority of Labours Welsh MPs in the last government did nothing on the excesses s of the Banks, did nothing to reverse the Thatcher attack on the Unions and failed to rebuild the manufacturing base in Wales decimated by the Thatcher government in its effort to woo Middle England.

Smith writes.

"Mrs Gillan should recall from her time in Wales that we’re a shrewd lot and recognise a swindle when we see one".

Unfortunately we can't We swallowed the Tony Blair swindle and we will probably swallow Labour new “Welsh Identify”.

This will be in evidence in the Assembly throughout the ConLib government and there will be the occasional outburst from Westminster MPs whilst making sure to keep in Ed Millibands good books and be prepared to slapped down by Peter Hain if they go to far. But such independence will disappear like morning dew once they get their bottoms on the government benches again and any possible rebel will be riding in a ministerial car.

Mind you if Welsh Labour were prepared to accept Carwyn Jones as the leader of Welsh Labour and make Hain (or his successor) somehow subordinate to him it would be a start.

Labour claims a Welsh Idenity (For now)

Pontypridd Labour MP Owen Smith has been posting on Left Foot Forward on  the forthcoming year in Wales electorally.

Since he is new MP  he doesn't completely carry the baggage of the failure of the past Labour in premoting the Welsh Idenity and values  he now claims for his Party in wales. but he surely   cannot expect to make such statements as.

 

Thirteen years after we first voted to create a National Assembly – years in which the relationship between Labour in Wales and London has significantly evolved, and in which the ambitions of a confident and distinctly Welsh Labour movement have forcefully (re)emerged – Labour is now clearly understood to be the natural home for supporters of a radical, progressive and Welsh agenda. 

When Welsh Labour cannot  produce a bilingual website and it is not separately registered with the Electoral Commission under the terms of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act, nor is it part of a federal organisation (such as the relationship between the Welsh Liberal Democrats and the Liberal Democrats, for example). As such it does not have an office of Leader (Unlike I understand the situation in Scotland) .although Carwyn Jones is de facto leader because of his position in the Assembly. This is because of the existence of the Assembly and not because of Labour's constitution in Wales if it has one. I believe that they used to be registered as a "Welsh Labour Party" but ceased to do so, perhaps because their finances are to tied to Labour London HQ.

 But it does seem that in opposition Welsh Labour has discovered it's Welsh Identityn, as their counterparts in Scotland found theirs in the Thatcher era. Clearly Owen Smith thinks this will run well in Wales he writes

While Plaid voters, once sceptical that the Wales Labour party could stand up to the London leadership, are now increasingly comfortable with the strong Welsh flavour of our policies and of our politicians. For many ex-Plaid voters, especially in the south and south west, whose ambitions stop short of independence, Labour now appeals as the most effective and robust means of having a Welsh ‘writ’ run at home and Welsh lilt heard in Westminster.

He may well be right but I have not really seen much of a Welsh flavour in Labours policies recently Unless they really think simply not being a bunch of right-wing ideologues like the current Lib-Dem coalition is? This ideology they seem to have ignored under the leadership of Tony Blair : But if it is more than this I predict that any New Welsh Identity will fade after next May's assembly elections maybe to resurface time and time again to reassure us: But if I suspect many pf those Plaid Voters Own Smith mentions will still be sceptical that if Labour were ever to attempt  promote a  a true Welsh identity to then Ed Milliband and the rest of the British Labour leadership would silence them swiftly particularly  if this didn't go down well with the London Media and if he was to reach the position of Prime Minister then Welsh Labour will revert towards what it as always been.Just a name on a masthead.


 

Diane Abbot finds Welsh Map. But its years out of date.

In article in yesterday's Western Mail David Williams reports Labour leadership contender Diane Abbott as describing how she takes inspiration from Welsh Labour and why she believes women in Wales will lose out in the coming cuts

I’ve always felt a great affinity with Wales. It has always been a place I’ve looked to as a home of the true “left” of the Labour Party. She is reported as saying.

Err Is this the same Diane Abbot who in August said,

“I have not spent a week and a half in Wales. I genuinely think the Scottish Labour party has always had a very fundamental role in British Labour politics. In a way the Scottish Labour movement is the keeper of the flame when it comes to socialism. I think whoever wins (in Scotland) deserves to win overall.”

Apparently according a online questionnaire . Diane Abbot is clearly the closest of the Labour Leadership contenders to my own viewpoint. However its a bit late I think for Diane to whoo Welsh Labour voters, but if she was honest it is not the Labour Party in Wales who are the inheritors of the “True Left” but a large number of Plaid Cymru members and supporters.

Not all of course, but even those within Plaid who bulk at the term socialism, I found often agreed with Party Policies which Dianne would argue was that of the true left.

But the Labour Party in Wales even before the advent of New Labour was hardly a progressive left wing party (and I think progressive is an important term here) and often only used socialist langage but always avoided put it in to practice.

I always found it it amusing that whilst a student at Coleg Harlech and later Abeystwyth University. Labour party members from England, often found themselves more in tune with Plaid students (as I was at the time) than Welsh Labour Students on many social policies

And this was often apparent in other political fields such as Anti-Apartheid and CND.

I still meet Labour members whose attitude to progressive ideals for example Women Rights, The Peace Movement, and Green Issues are close to “Old Toryism” and not even New Labour.

But it is the New Labour project that I believe is the problem here, Dianne record on opposing Blair's right wing vision was not great (Better than the other Candidates though) and I think Labours major problem is that there no true left winger of the stature of Tony Benn to rally to.

I don't think Diane is capable of that but if wishes to take up the mantle she will not find the answers in the ranks of Welsh Labour.

(Irish) Labour shames (Welsh) Labour.

I was looking at the Webpage of the Irish Labour Party this morning and discovered t they provided a translation service for other Languages (through Google translate) including Welsh.

I don’t know how good this translation is (perhaps Welsh Language Bloggers can help here). But it is a noble effort.

It’s not lost on me that Welsh Labour doesn’t have a button to Welsh Language version of they website.

Surely their Irish counterparts shame them on their Internationalism (and Plaid should also look at the way their  translation access button, works for other languages ) but it is really amazing that I can easily see a Welsh Language version on the Irish Labour Website whilst Welsh Labour ignores it.

Update
I have found the toolbar for the webpage translation at http://translate.google.com/translate_tools it seems to work. So my page can in theory be read in more than one language.

"Welsh" Party websites.

I have been looking at the main Party websites and to found some interesting issues. Use the link to form your own opinion.

Plaid Cymru:
Completely bilingual as you would expect up to date (last release 11th August). Should have a list of assembly candidates up by now though. 8/10

"Welsh” Labour:
Doesn’t seem to be Bilingual there is a site Llafur Cymru which allows you to relocate to the English version but not Vice-versa. The Welsh Language site seems to have not been updated since the General election and the English Language one has no recent news, also they seem to have dropped Welsh Labour from their masthead . Very Poor. 3/10

“Welsh” Conservatives:
Seems to be purely in English only. If there is a Cymraeg button. I couldn’t find it. Up to date and does concentrates on Welsh issues. 4/10

"Welsh" Liberal Democrats:
At first glance Bilingual but on hitting the Welsh Language Button  a Draig Goch  the English language one is the Union flag (I kid you not)  you find mostly the same information in English only with the words “No Translation available”. Seems to be pure tokenism. Up to date but there seem to be more press releases put out 0n Subordinate Central(Why?) 5/10.

The main disappointment with the sites are the lack of (except Plaid’s) easy access to Welsh Language facilities. It is 2010 for god sake every Party must have access to someone who could translate their information and it would be a simple task for their webmaster to paste



How can these Parties argue for a new Welsh language act when their own Website and as I pointed out during the last election their election literature are not fully bilingual.

Perhaps a new Welsh Language Act should enclose a clause compelling political Parties campaigning in Wales to implement a bilingual policy.