What the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the DUP, and Greens are promising the NHS

Welsh Politics after the EU Referendum

Scottish Affairs ◽

10.3366/scot.2017.0179 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 26 (2) ◽

pp. 212-228 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

John Osmond

Keyword(s):

Effective Leadership ◽

Strong Sense ◽

Speaking Up ◽

Common Cause ◽

National Assembly ◽

Working Together ◽

Eu Referendum ◽

Welsh Politics ◽

Plaid Cymru ◽

The Eu

This paper examines the electoral and ideological contest that has taken place between Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru in the five National Assembly elections that have been held between 1999 and 2016. Both parties have found success when they have managed to combine effective leadership with a coherent programme and a strong sense of Welsh identity. However, the Welsh vote to leave the EU in the June 2016 referendum has dealt both parties a poor hand in speaking up for Welsh interests. Can they find a common cause in working together and also with Scotland to take Wales forward in a progressive constitutional direction?

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A miner cause?

Waiting for the Revolution ◽

10.7228/manchester/9781526113658.003.0011 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Daryl Leeworthy

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Great Britain ◽

Communist Party ◽

Significant Proportion ◽

Alternative Form ◽

Postwar Period ◽

National Liberation ◽

Entire Life ◽

British State ◽

Plaid Cymru

If twentieth century politics in Wales has largely been defined by class, and therefore along the typical cleavage of Labour versus Conservative; it is nevertheless true that for a significant proportion of Welsh activists and voters, the cleavage is between nation and union (identifiable with the British state). Closely identified with Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, a political manifestation of the Welsh nation was a direct inheritance from nineteenth-century liberalism and its persistence for much of the postwar period was a result of the persistence of that form of politics. But there was an alternative form of left nationalism that emerged through the Communist Party of Great Britain, which this chapter focuses its attention on. Beginning in the 1930s, and spanning almost the entire life of the party thereafter, communists engaged with and developed ideas about nationalism, nationhood and national liberation. This chapter considers the development of these ideas and argues that rather than Plaid Cymru, it was the Communist Party of Great Britain that enabled the persistence of left-nationalist thought and action after 1945 and that it was, to a large extent, communist activists who were the most consistently nationalist in that period.

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