The Communist Party of Great Britain and the National Question in Wales, 1920-1991 by Douglas Jones

Author:Douglas Jones [Jones, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786831309
Google: v5jlnAAACAAJ
Goodreads: 34733869
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Published: 2017-01-15T07:32:49+00:00

CONCLUSION

The record of the party’s engagement with the national question between 1950 and 1969 was chequered. While the party had begun and finished the period giving some prominence to the issue, during the intervening years the party’s interest in the national question had been intermittent. The party had begun the 1950s by taking, for the first time, a proactive role in the national movement, voting to join the PWC in 1950, but the removal of Idris Cox and the South Wales Area NUM’s rejection of a Welsh parliament in 1954 had led to a loss of interest in the issue. While some effort had been made in the late 1950s to devise a policy programme for Wales and to re-engage with the national question, this had been abandoned due to the impact of 1956 on the Welsh party. The main characteristic of the party’s approach from 1954 onwards had been its focus on the immediate short-term goal of a Secretary of State, with the party, to a considerable degree, aping Labour Party policy, despite maintaining a commitment to a Welsh parliament in its party programme. The arrival of Bert Pearce saw a more concerted effort to develop a new Welsh policy programme, with the long-term goal of a Welsh parliament given greater prominence in the party’s policy on the national question, but it remained a side-issue until the resurgence of nationalism in the mid1960s. It was only following Carmarthen and Rhondda West that the party once again gave the national question prominence in its party programme, not only in Wales but also at the British level. In this, the party had once again acted reactively in relation to its engagement with the national question, in effect missing the opportunity, as a number of communist commentators noted, to harness national consciousness for the labour movement.

Despite missing this particular bus, the party had, during this period, taken some important steps in its approach to the national question. The most significant was its insistence from the mid-1960s onwards that a Welsh parliament was achievable under capitalism. The party’s previous assertion that a Welsh parliament would have to wait until the transition to socialism had been a key factor in dampening down the support for its establishment amongst party members, providing those opposed to the measure a convenient fallback position, making the national question seem an irrelevant issue in immediate terms and allowing the party to focus on short-term goals in the aftermath of the failure of the PWC. The abandonment of this position and the increasing insistence that the fight for a Welsh parliament and national rights was now a key factor in the immediate fight for socialism and against monopoly capital was key to returning the issue to prominence in the late 1960s. This return to prominence was also helped by the party’s increasing focus on the extension of democratic rights, precipitated by the publication of the new party programme in 1951. As the party further developed its programme in subsequent editions

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