Nationalism in Two Hemispheres (1956)

From the December 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

It's a long way from Pontardulais to Pretoria: the latter, though way down in the Southern Hemisphere, is quite well known as the administrative centre of South Africa, while the former, though only within a few hours’ journey from any part of the British Isles, is relatively unknown to people outside South Wales, being a sombre little township on the western edge of the coalfield. Yet anyone living in South Wales who has followed events in South Africa during the last few years can appreciate certain trends taking place that are common to both.

It has always been the contention of Socialists that (1) Capitalism, wherever it operates, despite differences in climate, language and culture, produces the same set of conditions from which inevitably flow the same problems. This is not to say that conditions are everywhere identical under Capitalism; different areas are often undergoing different stages of Capitalist evolution, depending on historical background. However, when Industrialism comes, late or early, Capitalism comes with it: they are bound up in each other.

(2) Capitalism, desiring always a submissive working class, seeks everywhere to condition the people: through the Church, universities, schools, newspapers, radio and other media of disseminating thought and ideas.

(3) Despite the constant effort in this direction, there exists, invariably in Capitalist society, groupings that contradict and are in opposition to Capitalist society (where it hurts them) and towards one another.

If the above is a true description of Capitalist society everywhere, it is not surprising that similarities should exist in the framework of everyday life as it affects the workers in two places as different in other respects as South Wales and South Africa.

Taking No. 1 first: Industrialism in South Wales and South Africa are in different stages of historic development, whilst in Africa we witness the virtual imprisonment of native labour, divorced from their tribal way of life and packed into industrial compounds. South Wales has long since passed the coarseness and brutality practised in the early days of her industrial revolution.

(2) The educational movements which started in Wales as philanthropic ventures, inducing the workers to accept earthly woes in the hope of heavenly reward, have long since been replaced by government authority when it became realised that industrial Capitalism, for its own sake, must take a real interest in the education of its future wage slaves. In South Africa the missionary school is coming towards the end of its reign; here, too, the government is concerning itself more and more with education. The latest step in this direction—the infamous Bantu Education Act, though causing concern and minor unrest in Church circles and among other well-meaning people, is but a logical step in the “progress” of Capitalism in Africa—especially Capitalism with a strong Nationalist party in power; which brings us to:

(3) The increase in Nationalist power in South Africa, with its increasing pressure on the native population, has evoked strong protests from groupings of all kinds among the white section of the community. Women’s leagues are forming in battle array against Styrdom, intellectuals are speaking on behalf of the downtrod native, novelists like Alan Paton and parsons like Michael Scott and Trevor Huddleston, proclaim the indignities imposed on their “black-brethren.” Whilst many of these people are sincere in their endeavours, they cannot see that “colour bar” Apartheid disease and all the other injustices are not a Cause in themselves, but an Effect. The cause is the system of Capitalism.

Nationalism is quite popular these days in South Wales. It has not committed any atrocities here as yet for many reasons; first, it is not yet unified (there are two Nationalist groups), and secondly, and most important, not being in power it cannot legislate. Nevertheless, true to the conflicting picture that Capitalist society presents, it has its supporters and its influence. History is, of course, invoked and the injustices of the past imposed on Wales are cleverly used by the Welsh Nationalist press. Nationalist influence is capturing the minds of many who are disillusioned with the Labour Party. Local education policy is setting up more and more Welsh schools (a form of child segregation by language qualification); teaching posts are more and more subject to language qualifications; certain newspapers are playing up to the revival in Nationalism, and the Welsh League of Youth is spreading its membership into more and more schools and villages. On the surface much of this activity does not appear as Nationalism, some of it is really funny, like the situation mentioned in a South Wales town where women are driving non-Welsh speaking children away from their Welsh speaking playmates. (See Western Mail, 5/9/56).

No compounds yet; hardly as bad as South Africa, where a coloured person is not allowed on the streets without a pass after curfew, but still an unhappy state of affairs and pregnant with possibilities.
In South Africa, despite the segregation policy of the government (backed, in the main, by the Boer farmers), the Industrial Capitalists are not altogether happy. They know that a growing industrialism cannot afford segregation to the point required by the Nationalists. Capitalism does not care two hoots about national cultures, languages, or even pigmentation. It is interested in manpower (especially where human energy is cheap); we can, therefore, envisage better treatment for the native forced upon the government by the Industrialists—in the interest of Capitalism.

In Wales, strive as they may, deplore as some may, the passing away of native culture and perhaps the language too, is inevitable if Capitalism is to remain. Industry demands it. If the Welsh really want to preserve their language and culture (and it is well worth preserving), they must get rid of Capitalism. Socialists in Wales, who at no time conceal their Celtic tongue (often using it to explain Socialism), fight for one world, rich with its infinite variety of culture, utilised and enjoyed by alL Until such time our message to both the Welsh wage slaves and the Bantu herded in the compounds on the Rand, is: “You have more in common with each other than you have with your respective masters, be they Nationalists or Nationalizers or just plain Private Enterprize Capitalists.”

W. Brain

A Vivid Imagined Nation (1997)

TV Review from the September 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is always fascinating to attend an event later portrayed on television if only to make the obvious "compare and contrast" analysis afterwards. So it was on Sunday 10 August with BBC2's The National Eisteddfod of Wales, which comprised commentary, clips and observations of an event I had attended in the cause of wage slave duty on three occasions the previous week.

Given the strong links between the Welsh establishment and the media it was unlikely to be a highly critical piece—more so with BBC political correspondent Huw Edwards doing the commentary, a man whose father was a Bard. Focusing on the traditional portrayal of Wales as the land of harmonies and the harp, of poetry and prose, it successfully documented an event in many ways well worth attending, even by non-Welsh speakers. The impression given was that of a generally convivial atmosphere in the north Wales hills, sunshine beating down and fine music of most varieties all around. With much of this being true it might seem churlish to complain.

And yet in other respects it does well to cast a more cynical eye at events than the BBC is in the habit of doing. For instance, it is not necessarily a good idea to go to the Eisteddfod if you are poor. Entrance fees notwithstanding, food and drink prices on the site—dominated seemingly by a cartel of some sorts—were extortionate to a degree rarely found outside of Central London in peak season. And with the Eisteddfod site itself still being alcohol-free, a trip to the pubs in Bala which had also formed a cartel just for the week, was not an entirely sensible alternative.

You can of course go to Alton Towers or London Zoo and complain about the prices after they have got you in their ring-fenced compound, but in virtually all other respects the Eisteddfod has a clear edge. To illustrate this, it was a pity that the BBC didn't have its cameras at the ready for the hardly untypical scene when a Jordanian academic, who had spent over a decade learning fluent English, conversed with a Welsh boy while showing him how to use the internet. Whenever he spoke to the child, the boy's mother shouted at her son in Welsh not to answer him . . . and the naive among you thought language was all about effective communication. So did the pop band Gorky's Zygotic Munci, who were banned from playing their traditionally bilingual set in the Rock Tent because the language-fascists thought their occasional English singing would have corrupted the young and innocent. (Bands singing sexist or totally vacuous shit was fine so long as they did it all in Welsh.)

Narrow-minded nationalists
The prevalence of this type of stultifying, narrow-minded behaviour is a tragedy for a land which otherwise has so much to offer. But then again. Wales has been blighted by nationalism and bigotry for as long as anyone can remember. And the ultimate irony is that while all nations are imagined communities, few illustrate this better than the Land of My Fathers.

Wales and the type of traditions currently celebrated at the Eisteddfod are largely a product of the rise of a Welsh non-conformist commerce-based class in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This was a class initially desperate to throw off English domination and in some instances, at least, keen to pursue the same course eventually adopted by the southern Irish. The legacy of this mindset still persists today and pervades most Welsh culture and institutions.Wales has a fascinating culture and Welsh is a fine language but both have been devalued by the actions of capitalism's class of predators who would have been quite content to let Welsh culture in whatever its forms die if it had not served their interests to cynically mould it and debase it.

None of this is really a matter of dispute even among bourgeois historians, with Kenneth O. Morgan once famously stating that it was this economically-inspired cultural process, with the refoundation of the long-dead Eisteddfod, which led to the “rebirth of a nation", though admittedly the phrase "rebirth” was overstepping the mark a bit. In Wales: The Imagined Nation edited by Tony Curtis, another argues that the rise of the Welsh trading and capitalist class helped create "what was really a new national identity at a time when Wales was drawn inexorably into the maelstrom of British social, political and industrial life, and when many of the peculiarities of Welsh nationhood had either disappeared or become moribund".

The Welsh capitalist class—today more fully developed than hitherto and perhaps even more entwined in the workings of the state machine than its English counterpart—still trades on the nationalist myth and distortion it was largely responsible for in the first place, binding its wage slaves to a totally fake commonality of interests encouraged by a suspicion of outsiders.

The Labour Party, much in evidence at Bala '97 all the way from the Secretary of State downwards, panders to it all like they pander to their paymasters whoever they may be, from the City one day to the Farmers' Union of Wales and the "Taffia" the next. Meanwhile, the culture of the dispossessed class reflects the competing claims of the propertied, a global class forever encouraging the parochial touch for its subordinates, not out of a cultural celebration so much as an extension of the principles of divide and rule and each against all. To this end, in the grim terraced mining valleys, metropolitan Cardiff and the massive sink council housing estates of Wrexham and Newport the working class go about their daily business listening to Oasis, eating at McDonald's and occasionally taking night-classes in beginners’ Welsh. A cynical thought perhaps, but with more than a grain of truth attached to it and one unlikely to be given expression on the BBC.

Dave Perrin

Sosialaeth: Y Byd Yn Un (1969)

From the July 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Erthygl Areiniol

Mewn byd sosialaeth fe fydd pawb a'u boced yn wag, fe fydd diweithdra drychynllyd a fydd phob masnach ar ben.

Dyna pam r’ym yn credu bydd yn syniad da, ond efallai bydd yn well i ni fanylu tipyn,

Ni fydd dim arian mewn byd sosialaeth. Yn wir fe fydd dim prynu a gwerthu ogwbwl. Bydd pobol yn rhydd i fyned i’r siopau a’r marchnadoeth a cymeryd beth y fynnent heb dalu ac heb ddogni. 

Gall byd gael ei gynal fel hyn oherwydd fod gennym yn barod y ffordd tegnegol i gynyrchu fwy nag sydd eisiau ar ddynion. Ar hyn o bryd arian sydd yn gweithredu fel math o ddogni. Os nad ydych yn gallu fforddio rhwybeth, mae rhaid mynd hebddo. Dyna pam mae pobol yn newynu a teuluoedd yn cael eu gorfodi i fyw mewn sylms a dyna paham mae dynion, bynywod a phlant drwy’r byd yn cael eu amddifadu au bywyd yn ddistryw. Nid effaith prynder yw’r system arianol ond y system arianol yw achos prynder. Mae yn eglur nad yw bwyd yn cael eu gynyrchu mewn digonedd i boblogaeth y byd, nid o achos fod gan ddyn dim ddigon o adnoddau i wneud hyn ond am y reswm nas gall dim elw i’w wneud allan o bobol newynog.

Mae sosialaeth yn golygu newid mawr yn ffordd y byd ac ei ddodi mewn arfeddiad pan fynn ffatrioedd, gweithiau glo, trafnidiaeth a siopau yn cael ei perchen au ddefnyddio er lies i boblogaeth yr holl fyd. Dyna pam yr ydym yn dweud fydd di-weithdra dychrynllyd mewn byd sosialaeth. Mae dosbarth o ddynion yn y gorllwin ac yn y gwledydd comiwnydd, yn yr holl math o weithredoedd yn prnu ein cryfder gan arian ac yn ein gorfodi i weithio iddynt eu hunain, yn cael ei newid i gydweithio yn foddlonol i bob gradd o gymdeithasau. Un o’r pethau cyntaf iw gwneud mewn byd sosialaedd fydd cael darfod ar waeth diflas, sydd heddyw yn gwneud bywyd mor galed, a’u newid i waith mwy pleserus a deniadol.

Bydd rhaid cael byd sosialaeth heb derfyniadau. Nid oes modd ei sefydlu mewn un gwlad nac mewn un man o’r byd. Mae hyn yn golygu dim prynu a gwerthu rhwng unigolion a dim marchnad gwhaniaeth wledydd. Bydd y byd eang mewn sosialaeth yn ymdrechu i gynyrchu beth fydd eisiau, a bydd pob math a bobol yn cael rhyddid i gymeryd beth bydd yn cael ei gynyrchu.

Dichon fod un neu ddau o’r cynnygion gwreiddiol i’r system wedi dyfod i’ch meddwl. Efalli eich bod yn meddwl fod dyn yn rhy ddioglyd ac ynrhy drachwantus i wneud sosialaeth i weithio, ac efallai eich bod yn meddwl fod popeth yr ydym yn awgrymu yn ddi-rhan i naturoliaeth. Mae sosalwyr yn wastad yn barod i resymu ac mae’n ymchwiliadau mor bell wedi ein arwain o’r diwedd i’t tyb fod sosialaeth nid ddim ond yn beth o da, ond y mae ei eisiau yn druenus, i esbonio y problemau sydd nawr yn ein poeni.