AS THE TORIES TRY TO PUSH AHEAD WITH BREXIT IN THE MIDST OF A PANDEMIC WITH THEIR INTERNAL; MARKET BILL, THEY HAVE LAUNCHED AN ASSAULT ON DEVOLUTION AS A MEANS OF GETTING WHAT THEY WANT FROM A FUTURE TRADE DEAL. HERE FOUR ACTIVISTS, WRITERS AND POLITICIANS FROM THE TRADE UNION, LEFT AND INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT GIVE THEIR TAKE ON WHAT THIS MEANS AND HOW WE SHOULD RESPOND.
THIS IS A REAL THREAT TO WORKERS IN WALES – SHAVANAH TAJ
The last six months have been disastrous for workers in Wales, and the UK Government’s Internal Market Bill is the latest bit of bad news. The illegal backtracking on the commitments made in the EU Withdrawal Agreement have significantly raised the chances of a no-deal Brexit – the worst possible outcome from these talks and the one that will put the greatest number of Welsh jobs at risk.
To be clear, at this stage there are only bad options on offer: a so-called ‘Canada-style deal’ means custom checks and is a threat to a Welsh manufacturing sector that is already reeling from a string of announcements including the closure of Ford in Bridgend, and significant job losses at the Airbus plant in Broughton and at GE in Nantgarw. And an ‘Australian-style deal’ is largely just a repackaged no-deal.
But to blow up negotiations now with the kind of wilfully provocative and jingoistic stunts that have been pulled this week simply creates more chaos and uncertainty for an economy that is already in one of the worst recessions in history.
The damage from the Bill doesn’t stop there. By allowing the UK Government to claw back control over public spending in devolved areas like economic development, infrastructure and training, the Bill will also undermine the Welsh Government’s Fair Work agenda. The Wales TUC and our affiliate unions have been fighting to ensure that funding is consistently linked to the provision of good quality, equitable, fair work jobs, increased collective bargaining coverage and union access. While the Welsh Government has committed to these aims, we can’t expect any such guarantees from a Conservative UK Government that has consistently sought to undermine workers’ rights.
This Bill – and Brexit itself – is coming at the worst possible time. The plan to withdraw the Job Retention Scheme next month means that mass unemployment on a scale not seen in living memory is a real possibility (we’ve set out our plan for how that can be avoided here). At the same time there is clear evidence in recent weeks that many bosses are failing to protect the health and safety of their employees, and we know that many employers have also sought to capitalise on the crisis by pressuring workers into accepting poorer terms and conditions. The practise of fire and rehire on worse terms and conditions cannot become the norm.
A responsible UK Government would have recognised that the Covid crisis demanded an extension of the Brexit transition period. But that’s not what we have – so we must do all we can to organise and oppose this reckless and destructive Bill.
Shavanah Taj is General Secretary of Wales Trade Union Congress
JOHNSON IS WEAK, WE NEED TO UNITE AGAINST HIM – TIM EVANS
Boris Johnson’s Internal Market Bill (IMB) will break international law and will have serious consequences for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It will transfer powers that had previously been devolved, back to Westminster. The Bill will also allow the Tories to lower standards on food, animal welfare and the environment. There are two basic questions: why is Johnson forcing through a measure which will have so many unintended consequences, and what can be done about it?
First off, the bill is clearly an attempt by Johnson/Cummings to move attention away from the unbelievable shambles they’ve made of the Covid crisis and back to the issue which won them the election – Brexit. Whether this is a good tactical move remains to be seen. The ‘let’s get Brexit done’ bombast of 2019 now looks lame. It’s one thing to leave the EU. It’s quite another thing to deal with the fallout of the aftermath.
Johnson hopes the bill will help secure a trade deal with the USA. A major part of this would involve selling off the NHS piecemeal to American companies. Since health is devolved, the dismantling of devolution would be essential. However, the IMB’s impact on the Northern Ireland protocol, and the destabilisation of the Good Friday agreement would be highly unpopular in the US, making a trade deal less likely. It would also create conditions which might precipitate a return to armed conflict.
Undermining devolution would also allow Johnson to spend huge amounts of money on projects that he thinks will rally support for his party, such as the M4 relief road around Newport, which has its supporters locally and in big business.
So what can be done in Wales? Despite outrage from members of the Senedd, as far as serious resistance from this quarter is concerned, I am not holding my breath. Johnson is weak. The number of U-turns he has been forced into – notably over A-levels –has become laughable. As the consequences of the bill become clearer, resistance could unite those who became politicised by the Corbyn era, supporters of Welsh independence, XR supporters, and others, whether they voted to leave or remain. If, on the other hand, the bill goes through, it will increase support for independence in both Scotland and Wales, and for a united Ireland. Johnson’s attempts to shore up his own position and roll back devolution could yet backfire spectacularly.
Tim Evans is a socialist and historian from Swansea
DESTROYING DEVOLUTION WILL SUPERCHARGE THE INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT – CARRIE HARPER
Even by the Tory’s standards, this is quite an outrageous move and is being described as the beginning of the end for the UK, even by unionists.
The UK Government will be able to bypass devolution in a number in areas such as food standards, the environment and animal welfare because of the Brexit process. This is clearly a huge concern given the Tories enthusiasm for a future Trump trade deal. If the price of such a deal included lowering environmental or animal welfare standards, importing chlorinated chicken or opening up the NHS to privatisation, the UK Government could cut a deal without any input from the devolved administrations. Our communities would be left defenceless.
The proposed power grab would allow the UK Government to ignore devolution as they impose their own pet projects in areas previously devolved such as economic development, education, culture and sport.
It’s been described by the Welsh Labour Government – which has been a poodle in withstanding Tory attempts to undermine Wales in the past – as an ‘attack on democracy’. Strong words that now need to be matched by strong actions if we’re to take them seriously.
Successive polling shows that the people of Wales favour more power, not less. We cannot allow an out-of-control Tory regime to ride roughshod over two democratic referendums that have conferred those powers on our Parliament.
Today’s Bill also astoundingly seeks to break International Law by undermining the Withdrawal Agreement and specifically the Northern Ireland protocol. This is symbolic of a wider attitude prevalent in the Tory party, namely, that the rules simply don’t apply to them. This idea of doing what you want without regard for the consequences displays a level of arrogance and entitlement that will ultimately be their undoing and will only fuel demand for Welsh Independence.
If the rules don’t apply for the Tories, why on earth should they apply for anyone else? Putting yourself above the law is a road map to chaos, ignoring the democratic mandate of other countries puts you on a collision course and to do all of that in the middle of a global pandemic is simply insane. The Tories look set to take England off the cliff edge but we must ensure that they don’t drag us off in the process.
We have too much to lose, our health care system is on the line, the quality of our food is up for negotiation and basic standards and values we currently take for granted could go out of the window within months. Our future is in the hands of people who would sell their granny to the highest bidder.
It is only ultimately through Independence that we can secure a better quality of life, be free to choose the values that underpin our nation and protect our hard won democracy.
Carrie Harper is a Plaid Cymru Councillor for Queensway ward, Wrecsam
THIS IS PART OF THE TORY’S GAME PLAN FOR POWER – GARETH LEAMAN
The Internal Market Bill – or, rather, the discourse it will catalyse – will force an existential crisis upon the very notion of an autonomous Welsh democracy. Every aspect of the Tory project in the past half-decade – from Brexit to the authoritarian-enabling Coronavirus response – has been defined by a merciless drive to recentralise the British state, consolidate power, and irreversibly weave the barbaric cultural logic of austerity into British society. Anything resembling an alternative will be easily and ruthlessly swept aside, Welsh devolution included.
This, rightly, will be resisted wholeheartedly by all who desire freedom from the horrors of an eternal Tory government. Yet the hope that this will inherently invigorate what many believe to be the only viable means of escape – independent Welsh statehood – may be misplaced. If this is indeed a crisis of democracy, delivering real enfranchisement will take much more than a mere alternative parliament in Cardiff Bay, especially if it could easily be portrayed as the true anti-democratic institution by the hegemons of the British state.
One can observe this dynamic at play in the most prominent wedge issue for the erosion of Welsh resistance to right-wing British power: the building of an environmentally destructive motorway through Newport and the surrounding countryside. The Tories, sensing a reasonably high level of local support for the project, are exploiting it as a means of turning the people of south-east Wales against the entire concept of a Welsh government, while independence supporters are seeking to portray this Johnsonian posturing as a metaphor for their generic anxieties regarding the erasure of a Welsh polity. Caught between these two warring factions, the interests of the people immediately affected – the residents and workers of Gwent – are rendered immaterial.
If defenders of Welsh democracy want to ward off this Westminster power grab, they must engage meaningfully with the specific material needs of the people it would impact most acutely. While any desire for this infrastructure may be politically expedient for the Tories, fundamentally it is driven by crises of working conditions, of housing, of public health. Opposition to this motorway – and by extension its function as a proxy for deepening Tory rule – must engage on these terms, rather than patronisingly speaking on people’s behalf and diverting the conversation towards an abstract debate about state sovereignty.
These hyperlocal, often idiosyncratic concerns actually have meaning and material consequences in people’s everyday lives. They may form part of a patchworked national politics, but that cannot be the main focus of a popular movement that seeks to ferment mass democratic participation. It is about time political desire in Wales was empowered to rise from below, driven by the collective voices of the people, rather than imposed from above by unsubtle opportunists, before it becomes too late.
Gareth Leaman is a writer from Newport
Cover image: Health workers protest in August , SC Cook. An earlier title for this article was changed
