CP BACKS WELSH NATIONALISM

Members of the Communist Party are backing the setting up of a separate Welsh TUC. A special conference of delegates from trade unions and trade councils will be held at Llandrindod Wells a week today.

Prime movers of the plan are the Welsh sections of the National Union of Mineworkers and the Transport and General Workers' Union.

Communist Party Welsh executive member and Welsh NUM secretary Mr Dai Francis told me:

'I don't think we, as Welsh workers should be precluded from the same rights and privileges as Scottish and Irish I asked Mr Francis if anything specific had prompted the plan. He told me:

It was the struggle the miners had 12 months ago and the tremendous support we got from trade unions and trades councils.

'All Wilson and, what's that other fellow's name, Feather, could do was to suggest to our leaders that they meet the government for an eyeball-toeyeball confrontation. I think that means that they wanted a compromise' • This idea that the English TUC, and indeed the Labour Party, does not care about Welsh workers (and presumably workers generally since any 'compromise' would have applied equally to all miners) is central to the move to form a breakaway congress.

T&GWU. leader Mr Tom Jones--not, in fact, a CP member-made the point in relation to Welsh workers' other big current fight-against steel redundancies.

He admitted in his Cardiff office: 'The TUC steel committee has failed miserably. The feeling in Wales is that the English TUC has more or less said "yes" to the closures In the same ve in there are major criticisms of full-time officials who are for implementing British TUC policy.

Mr Francis told me that they had called on the Welsh Regional Council of Labour to back them during : the coal strike, but he claimed the council — comprised of trade union officials-refused to act.

Both men stress that it is rank-and-file action at the grass roots which alone gets results.

This leads us to another concept held out to workers as having the potential to guarantee they will not be sold short in their struggles with employers.

Tom Jones put it this way: "The transport workers and the miners want to set up a democratic TUC for the whole of Wales and it will be the rank and file who take part in its affairs instead of full-time With the closure of pits, railways and steelworks and almost no new industry coming into the Principality, Mr Jones claimed support for nationalist elements was growing.

He said Welsh workers would fare no better under a Labour government than under Heath. He told me: 'Labour, Conservative, it's all the same. It does not matter which. It is all state capitalism!' Plaid Cymru (Welsh nationalist party) general secretary Mr Dafydd Williams said they were delighted about the move to set up a Welsh TUC.

Political parties, as such, will not be participating in next Saturday's conference at Llandrindod, but their members will.

When the assembly finally meets at the Hotel Metropole, it will include communists, nationalists, Tories and Labourites.

British TUC general secretary Mr Victor Feather sent a circular to all affiliated Welsh organizations on January 24 advising them to boycott the conference.

The circular said that the 'sponsors' should be summoned to their respective union headquarters and asked to defer any action until the General Council had completed its examination of regional machinery.

There was 'no case', , it declared ominously, for 'unilateral action', , but went on to admit that in some circumstances there might be a case for an all-Wales trade union Mr Francis said there was no possibility of the conference in one of Wales' traditional towns being called off. He added: 'I don't think Vic Feather was within his rights to tell us to call it off.' It is no longer a surprise that virulent nationalist sentiments of this kind come from a Party which has shared platforms with the Scottish nationalists and has marched with the National Front on anti-Common Market demonstrations.

But the fact that they come from the Communist Party presents such a danger to the working class.

There is no doubt that a mood of doubt and cynicism about the performance of the next Labour government has been present for some time in industrial South Wales.

But instead of trying to carry this frustration and questioning forward into the discovery of revolutionary Marxist politics, the Stalinists are throwing their weight behind something that can only lead to demoralization.

By backing Welsh nationalist sentiments, they pander to most backward ideas of the Welsh middle class.

The setting up of a Welsh TUC can only split and weaken the British working class just at the moment when it needs to stand united against the attacks of the employers and the Tory government.

The prospect of Wales, or Ulster or Scotland faring any better in a UDI situation is a lethal fantasy.

These nations are inextricably caught up in the teeth of the world capitalist recession and the sole hopes of workers everywhere lies in their ability and determination to destroy that system.

There is not a shred of a suggestion that even if the separatist dream could be brought to life, all industry would be nationalized in a socialist economy under workers' control and without compensation.

On the contrary, their policies are tied mainly to halting the rundown of the Welsh economy and summoning all those who regard themselves as Welsh-workers and employers—to try to build it up again.

Capitalism and the closure of obsolete plant in the pursuit of profits is an international phenomenon.

The Communist Manifesto is clear: "The working man has no country' The way forward for Welsh, Scottish, Irish and English Scottish, lies in building the revolutionary Marxist • Party which alone will enable the working class to take power.

This is the only way to defeat the attacks of the Tories and the cowardice of the Labour and trade union reformists.

Communist Party attempts to throw a spanner into that development by channelling grass-roots militancy into futile nationalist demands must be fought and destroyed.

February