The minute anyone mentions the term ‘the economy’, minds turn toward markets, money, profits, and terms such as GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and GVA (Gross Value Added). However, working within that framework is not the aim of this paper. As ecosocialists we are interested in trying to ensure that what is created and produced by our individual and cooperative labour is used to further the ‘needs of people, planet, peace and not profit’. What is important is that the creative abilities and skills of all are supported, enabled and recognised for the benefit of all. What this might mean in practice has been explored in our previous six workshops. More are to come. However, it seems about right to start to rethink what ‘economic’ activity might be about, and deal with, but also go beyond, questions of ‘can these aims be afforded’, toward taking steps now to make the radical transition to a society that is not based on exploitation, where the planet is not burning and the reasons for genocidal imperial wars are directly challenged.

Just how the power of profit and exploitation works in current capitalism come from this report in the Guardian newspaper where under pressure from a New York based hedge fund, the current chair of BP is being forced to resign as he previously supported some moves to green energy resources, the hedge fund want a return to oil and its speculative power is the tail wagging the company dog. 

In Cymru we are surrounded not just by the power of these new forms of finance capital but also by the markets and neoliberal philosophy that underpins them. The hedge fund above is powerful, as it is raising the question with shareholders about how best to sustain and maximise BPs profits. And it is that question, with profit rates under pressure globally, that is leading to increasingly vicious market rivalry as well as states, like the US, retreating into nationalism or what some of us call ‘state capitalism’. As ecosocialists our trick is to do our best to survive in this situation, whilst at the same time taking all the political steps we can that challenge and start to show to workers across the UK and internationally, that a people before profit is possible.

In terms of surviving now we should not do the existing productive capacity in Cymru down. Much is made of the apparent fiscal deficit that exists between the spending needs of our public services and how much we raise in taxation, thus we could afford to be independent, and certainly not socialist, as we depend on the generosity of other UK taxpayers. Recent analysis such as in the Doyle report convincingly demonstrates that this would not be the case with independence. Similarly the most recent figures on the general state of the economy show that Cymru has a wealth and income that is more than comparable with other independent states with a similar population size. They also show that although wealth exists it does not benefit all, and poverty and affluence exist side by side as we demonstrated in our discussion paper on poverty. Finally, even in terms of imports and exports – the balance of payment – Cymru international trade is a significant part of the economy and although imports are about 6% higher than exports in terms of physical trade, if the service sector was fully taken into account, there would be a surplus. 

The current Welsh Government has a whole range of policies aimed at trying to sustain the position of Cymru within the current market based status quo. Plaid and the Green Party also address many of these issues and have proposed ways of more effectively addressing social and climate change issues, without necessarily directly challenging production for profit. The failure of all the parties to take up the fight against austerity by voting against budget cuts that followed on the bail out of the banks in 2008, effectively wedded them politically to the status quo. I remember being at a union meeting with elected representatives of all parties in the Senedd around 2009, and one after another they said the banks had to be bailed out, not one suggested or even argued for their nationalisation. Compared to this political failure, the arguments about the Barnett formula, Crown Estates and rail infrastructure funding, whilst right, are largely about redistributing existing funding. Many of the other specific policies raised, such as the enhancing the role of Cymru higher education research in new products and services, most could only be effectively implemented if Cymru was an independent state and had the a government that was prepared to use its power, to bring production under collective and democratic public control to start to move toward production for the needs of people, planet, peace and not profit. One way of envisaging how this might happen is through the idea of the doughnut economy, but again, to even start to think about moving in this direction requires the collective power and political will to do so.

The key issue is to ask, what is the economy for, and not just to accept the market based profit making concepts growth. Even the word ‘economy’ can limit thinking. Hence an ecosocialist emphasis on production in a wider sense, meaning people working creatively together to produce use value – products and services that collectively benefit people and society- and not exchange value – which is about producing solely for a surplus that can become a private profit after being sold in the market. What we have suggested is that the use values produced and prioritised should be those that go toward achieving the demands and policies in previous workshop papers: net zero, homes, health, support and care, lifelong learning, an end to poverty, and others. In essence ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’. Success in achieving these aims would be the social and political indicators of our politics not gross value added. 

This is our ecosocialist transformation and to start to move in that direction requires collective control over the production of those use values away from profit. In Cymru the Tower Colliery workers cooperative was one way of achieving this and currently in local communities the cymunedoli movement is another. As suggested in this paper and in the policies and demands that follow, political initiatives need to embrace local initiatives like these as well as defending and extending the publicly owned services we already have such as the NHS. We can achieve much, although ecosocialism in one country is not possible, we could in Cymru by clearly moving toward our aim in practice to help inspire workers across the UK and international dynamic in this direction. The Cymru Wellbeing of Future Generation Act section relating to the economy is relevant: ‘ “The process of improving the economic, social, environmental and cultural well-being of Wales by taking action, in accordance with the sustainable development principle, aimed at achieving the well-being goals.” As  well as emphasising the need for economic decisions to be linked to the well-being of people, the Act also makes it clear that decisions regarding the economy should take into account not only the needs of current generations, but most importantly, ensure that they also take account of the needs of future generations. 

Cooperative economy – see also defending and extending our democracy workshop 

Collective ownership and democratic control is the key to ‘production for the needs of people, planet, peace and not profit’. The two have to go together as only through democratic control can people articulate and define needs. 

Collective ownership not only maximises the opportunity to decide the best use of any surplus value, say in terms of a ‘doughnut economy’,  but it also helps to ensure that value produced through the labour power in Cymru is ‘anchored’ and protected against exploitative takeovers.

Defending and extending what we currently collectively own and making it subject to democratic control.

1. Opposition to all austerity cuts budgets and defence of all existing benefits.
2. A needs based comprehensive spending review of all public service budgets to form the basis of defending services and sufficient funding from the UK state to repair the damage of austerity cuts since 2009. 
3. Defend and extend all public and cooperative sectors provision from Welsh Government and councils through to cooperative and mutuals.
4. End all privatisation, internal markets, and private investment.
5. Within current forms of collective ownership extend the democratic control of workers, consumers and electors. The key is that the main decision makers are subject to a regular direct vote of workers, consumers and remain accountable. 
6. Union recognition and collective bargaining are seen as an essential part of workplace democracy.
7. Roll back the market by extending the proportion of productive activity (goods and services) under collective ownership and democratic control and control any adverse international market attacks through exchange and other controls. Public control is not a fantasy.
8. Bring all universal basic services that have been privatised back under collective ownership and democratic control such as transport, water, education, housing, post, power generation and distribution, phone networks and end connections. 
9. Welfare not warfare, avoiding and opposing investment in arms manufacture and developing means of a just transition from existing forms of work in these industries along with the development of renewable energy. 

Extending

1. Systematically replace private finance, shares and bonds, with a Welsh Government state bank and support system and be empowered to support new and innovative ideas with R&D investment, particularly those that could have global niche high value. 
2. Create new collectively owned and democratically controlled areas of production that support the universal basic services, such as a Cymru construction and servicing.
3. Ensure that collectively higher education in Cymru covers all the research assessment exercise research areas, and any new products or services are owned as knowledge cooperatives with a third each, Welsh Government, academic staff and the university sharing ownership.  
4. Legally ensure that at start up or change of ownership such as at succession, sold or facing closure, that workers and/or consumers, have the first say in taking control, before other options are considered.
5. Support community collective ownership and control particularly in the production and provision of essential services such as power, food, mobility, and housing services. 
6. Provide support to enable everyone to apply their creativity, skills and interests to help fulfill their, the communities and the wider society needs: ‘from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs’. 
7. Radical progressive income tax; financial transaction and wealth tax; local taxes based on income.
8. Ending war and other wasteful and harmful state spending.

Poverty, deprivation and the consequent social exclusion is not only destructive for those who experience it, it is corrosive of the collective and individual potential we all share. Removing poverty and multiple deprivation from our society is a fundamental aim as ecosocialists. It can be done, and immediate steps can be taken. Both demands and policies proposed in other discussion papers make a contribution to ending poverty and deprivation, this one focuses on wealth redistribution, equality of household income  and sustaining them over time.

The list of sources for this paper are linked above and for a more detailed understanding I would refer you to those, particularly the JRF and CPAG papers as well as the research overviews from the Senedd and House of Commons Library. 

Poverty in Cymru is deep and getting worse. What is happening to us, and why, is also reflected in what is happening to working class households across the UK. A demonstration of what we can do in Cymru would be an inspiration to action on a much wider basis. 

Poverty derives from low incomes and economic insecurity. In Cymru a quarter of the population, around 700,000 people, are in poverty. This is from the JRF and is based upon what is called relative poverty defined as below 60% of the median household income. However the JRF also proposes an absolute measure of poverty based upon the needs of people and households which they call the ‘minimum income standard’ (MIS). The latest MIS estimates that to meet this standard a single person would need to earn £28,000 per year and a couple £69,400 per year. It is difficult to find estimates of how many people would be in poverty applying these figures but it would be approaching half the population. It is clear that trying to keep your head above water is a real struggle for most households.

There are many ways of describing and giving examples of what this means, but for me just how close people are to the breadline is indicated by the level of savings and debt in UK households. Around a quarter of UK adults (11.5 million people) have less than £100 savings, with 1 in 6 having none at all. 30% of households own just 1% of total household wealth, the richest 1% hold more wealth than the bottom 80% combined. In October 2024, around 2.6 million of the poorest fifth of households (44%) were in arrears with their household bills or behind on scheduled lending repayments, 4.1 million households (69%) were going without essentials and 3.2 million households (54%) cut back on food or went hungry.  In Cymru 3 in 10 children live in poverty; 4 in 10 households in poverty contain a full time worker.

It doesn’t take much to tip people over and all the reports are clear that on the factors that do this: loss of work, precarious work, loss of real pay, loss of benefits, increased caring demands, illness and impairment, discrimination, increased living costs, particularly those that cannot be avoided, such as rent, food, power, transport. For most working class households it is not possible to ‘get on their bikes’ and find work – indeed why should we – there is little that can be done individually to avoid these challenges, hence poverty affects those most vulnerable to these changes. 

Not only are more workers facing the danger of being tipped over the bread line, the situation is getting worse, with very little prospect of change. Household real incomes have effectively stagnated since the financial crisis; the proportion of people living in absolute poverty has risen from 28% to 52%; young people find it hard to move from renting to owning a property; are faced with jobs that are precarious, many who have been to University have over £50,000 of debt. Young families struggle with mortgages, the cost of child care, rising prices and in work, the constant need to fight to sustain the real value of wages. 

It does not have to be like this and we can do something about it: politically.

Fighting poverty in Cymru – the record so far

The record so far is paved with good intentions that have not been fulfilled. An early commitment by the Labour Welsh Government to remove child poverty was quietly dropped in 2016. The Wellbeing legislation is fine in principle, but difficult to see the results in practice. The recent Welsh Government child poverty strategy that is currently out for consultation at the moment follows this trend with pulling together what could be done in Cymru but as the Bevan Foundation has pointed out, there is an absence of targets and we would add timings. As we experienced as People’s Assembly Wales, free school meals for primary schools is cited by the Welsh Government as a contribution to overcoming child poverty, but it only happened after a widely supported and effective campaign which was opposed by the then Welsh Labour Government. 

Of course the problem of effectively fighting poverty does not lie totally with the Welsh Government. Benefits and welfare are not devolved and are run from Westminster and we have experience in Cymru, like the rest of the UK, 15 years now of austerity cuts, with it seems, more in prospect from the Starmer government. This is not to let the Labour Party, or indeed Plaid, off the austerity hook, as they either implemented or allowed austerity to be implemented, when they could have said no and led a collective mobilisation across Cymru against austerity. That was their wrong political choice.

This can and has to stop if we are to challenge poverty in Cymru. Being able to do so, as a start, requires the devolution of control over the benefits system. But even more so, it does require a challenge to austerity and the ability at the very least to use the tax system to raise the finance needed for a serious policy of redistribution of wealth and to oppose spending it on arms.

Possible policy and demands.

1. All elected representatives commit to voting against austerity cuts budgets and be prepared to develop and support collective mobilisation in Cymru to support their stand. 
2. As in the other sections, support a needs based comprehensive spending review of all Cymru public services as an alternative to cuts. 
3. Devolve all benefits provision to the Senedd and as part of this move, support a new needs based formula for the allocation of public spending to the UK nations. 
4. All Senedd anti poverty policies to be expressed as targets to be achieved by a date such as  in the WG child poverty strategy
5. Support the case for a radical progressive national and local tax system including a wealth tax on individual asset ownership above £Xm,  for investment in people and income redistribution.
6. Support all the policies proposed in the other papers that reduce poverty, such as trade union rights, collective bargaining, rent freeze and control and universal free at the point of need publicly owned services in education, school meals, transport and health.
7. Establish a legal right to work for all who are able, with the state being the employer of last resort.
8. Establish the legal right to food and housing
9. No person and no household to fall below the minimum income standard
10. At the very minimum no one to be paid less than the real living wage
11. All wages to be legally protected against inflation 
12. Restore child benefit for all, end the bedroom tax and all other benefit cuts made since 2009
13. All benefits to be covered by triple lock
14. Welsh Government to support ‘citizen’ advocates ensuring everyone has a free representative to help them access their rights.
15. Support all actions to defend jobs pay and conditions and all campaigns to defend the benefits.

Capitalism as a global system is about the exploitation of the planet and its people for the profit of the few. The 20%, and increasingly the 1%, whose wealth derives from the ownership of the means of production. The rest of us, the 80% who have to sell their labour power to these capitalists are mere commodities, to be used and disposed of, when it suits profit maximisation. 

This is of course not a new observation and derives from the analysis of Marx and Engels in the late 19th century. Their insights are even more relevant today as we see capitalist exploitation, raw in tooth and claw, through the neo-liberal period of globalisation from the late 1970s, and now with the re-emergence of rival world imperial blocs since the financial crisis, leading to genocidal wars of death and destruction. The re-election of Trump has revealed the barbarism and potential re-emergence of fascism, inherent within the power and control of capital. As in the 1930’s Germany and Italy, profit comes first as one after another corporations, financial organisations and states, fall into line and kowtow and make donations to Trump and like the oil companies, abandon any pretence of green strategies.

These developments have blown away any pretence that the state is somehow independent or autonomous of the exploitative interest of capital: it remains their executive arm. The state bailed out the banks and propped up capitalism after the financial crisis. Those few that were nationalised have been or are in the process of being handed back to private control. Paying for the consequent state debt was visited upon us as workers through austerity: we are still paying for it in collapsing social services and falling or stagnant real wages. 

Opposition to austerity has been brutally suppressed and in the UK and the People’s Assembly Wales identified over 20 changes in the law that amount to a strategic move toward an authoritarian state with human rights and freedoms being stripped away. Austerity and these legal changes have also undermined what devolved independence has come to Cymru. The Starmer government is no different and the tyranny continues. 

Resistance and taking control – the potential of transitional demands and actions

Looked at from our current perspective there seems to be a huge gap between where we need to be as a planet and people, and where we currently are. There is a real danger of ‘hegemonic pessimism’ by just pointing this out. 

Our task as a radical left, as ecosocialists, is to help find a way of making a connection between resistance and the needed transformative change to production for the ‘needs of the planet, people and peace’.

Gramsci in a number of references referred to this problem as the relationship between the ‘war of position and the war of manoeuvre’. Perhaps a more activist way of expressing it was Rosa Luxemburg when she contrasted the social democratic route with a revolutionary one as ‘not through a majority to revolutionary tactics, but through revolutionary tactics to a majority’.

Frontier of control

Capitalism is able to continue its profit seeking exploitation of the planet and people as a consequence of having control over the main levers of power, supported by the state, law, economic and financial domination over employment and wages, means of communication, and just the ongoing difficulty of envisaging an alternative. 

However, using this power of control to maximise profits results in constant change. A level of consent needs to be managed and secured from those implementing or living with them if the changes are to work: there is a ‘frontier of control’ where the battle has temporarily stopped. This results in a potential of constant social resistance, a battle of ideas over the legitimacy of the changes. So the frontier of control is not only one of control over the exercise of power, but also over its legitimacy.

There is in effect an alternative space of resistance, of countervailing power, our collective ‘frontier of control’, where we can organise and develop ideas, outside of the supervision of capitalist control. To be collective in fact, the space should aim to be ‘prefigurative’ open, democratic and horizontal, starting to represent how ecosocialism could work – a bit like the CRLD!  Trade union organisation is one example, consumer and worker cooperatives potentially another. 

Single issue campaigns when mobilised are countervailing but they also leave a lasting historical trace of our collective frontier of control, such as the Iraq demonstration, the miners strike, Cable street, the general strike, currently Sutr and Parc. They serve as beacons of collective potential, in terms of the battle of ideas of legitimacy. In many senses too, the services provided by the state and councils, such as the NHS, education, museums, are part of a collective alternative behind our frontier of control, that should be protected by our elected representatives.

As ecosocialists our trajectory is one toward production for the needs of people, planet, peace – not profit, to end the systemic causes of exploitation. It is not just to say no and defend, but to constantly seek to shift collective defence into collective offence, to move from position to manoeuvre. Our battle is over the direction of change, collectively and constantly pushing our frontier of control toward our ecosocialist aim: rolling back capitalist ownership, control and the market, just as they try to roll back the state.

How can we do that – the role of transitional demands and actions

Collectively developed transitional demands and actions form a bridge, a link, between our frontier of control and the issues that concern people now, and our aim of an ecosocialist alternative. They build upon and take campaigning beyond saying ‘no’, to proposing alternatives that raise the needs of the planet and people and thus challenge the power and controlling strategies of capital and the legitimacy of their arguments. In this way transitional demands and actions start to raise the potential of wider collective mobilisation, by reaching out to workers and communities facing similar issues.

So for example in the campaign to save the A&E at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital, the campaign was placed within the context of fighting austerity, challenging state action directly and forming solidarity with all who wished to oppose austerity, instead of creating division by pointing a finger at another hospital and suggest closing them instead of us. Another example are the demands that we have started to put together in our CRLD workshops, some of which are transitional and relate to resistance in the current situation, and then these are linked to programmatic policies that would start to shift production toward the needs of people and the planet.  

Questions like these need to be asked to help initiate the process of developing transitional demands and action: 

What demands do people care about and how can they be worded so they appeal beyond the campaign and directly challenge the power and strategies of capital? 

Then in terms of transitional actions the question needs to be asked: how best can we use the power and resources currently available to us to create an alternative and radical space that similarly challenges the power and strategies of capital and at the same time inspires others to do the same? 

Moving from position to manoeuvre.

The process argued for so far requires at the very least, a coordinating political network to help take it forward, such as through analysis, learning from experience and helping to sustain our frontier of control and initiate the development of demands that relate to the constant changing demands of capital. 

However, the war of position is limited to defending, putting demands on others to implement or creating alternative spaces that remain vulnerable to state repression or private take over. If we are serious about achieving ‘production for the needs of the planet, people and peace – not profit,’ how we can collectively and legitimately take state power to start to implement the ecosocialist programme we are proposing, needs to be considered. 

For us in Cymru this means immediately the Senedd elections in 2026,  and both then and in the slightly longer term arguing for independence as a step to ensure the power of the British state as the executive arm of capital, is not used to stop us going forward. 

As has been suggested in this paper, winning support for an ecosocialist programme for Cymru has to start with collectively linking campaigns through transitional demands and action so they not only strengthen our frontier of control but also provide a political trajectory toward winning support for the programme with direct action as well as voting in elections. Consequently, we see a way to transform state power so that democracy is realised based upon substantive equality, embedded in a constitution that is committed to saving the planet and delivering for the needs of the people.

Democratic constitutional demands should be an integral part of our transitional ecosocialist programme. They could draw from the traditions of Republican Socialism and would include demands for Cymru to become a republic based on the sovereignty of the people, with a set of guaranteed democratic rights enshrined in a written constitution formed by a Constituent Assembly elected by the most progressive form of proportional representation.  Obviously this would require an independent Cymru and the break up of the United Kingdom. Our programme should therefore support independence not on the basis of cultural or ethnic exceptionalism; nor on the basis that Cymru capitalism would be better managed; but on the basis that it would provide opportunities to extend democratic control from below by the people of Cymru over ever more extensive areas of economic, political and social aspects of their lives. Opportunities that would be impossible to achieve on a permanent basis within the current Westminster system. 

The breakup of the quasi-democratic British state would immediately undermine the UK’s role as a pillar of western imperialism. This in turn could help inspire radical ecosocialist struggles in the rest of the UK. And internationally  could provide opportunities to extend working class solidarity across borders through common struggles, built around transitional ecosocialist demands and actions, including the extension of democracy from below. Spreading the ecosocialist revolution would become a key international priority.

Now this may all seem like speculative pie in the sky. But steps in this direction were taken in the Irish revolution 1916 -1922, within a constitutional framework that was recognisably like ours, that then became the beginning of the end of the British Empire. For our discussion here the example is republican supporting Sinn Fein winning an Irish majority in the 1918 general election in the context of nearly two years of campaign against conscription and the British delay in implementing home rule law. Sinn Fein did not take up their seats at Westminster, instead acted immediately and set up the Irish Parliament, the Dail Eireann and declaring a republic. The initial success in Ireland inspired independence movements in British colonies to see that rebellion would work. 

It is useful to understand the context and key strategies of this struggle both to inspire us but also to identify dangers to avoid. A consideration of the Irish revolution also indicates how a radical fight for independence in Cymru and Scotland could help to lead a fight against the current bourgeois state in England and then wider. For a detailed account of the events of the 1918 Irish revolution that we consider are relevant to us in Cymru today, see Notes on the 1918 Irish revolution. 

Proposed demands and policies

Political and organisational process and guidance

1. Consistently making the links between campaigning demands and the need to challenge the power and strategies of capital.

2. Helping to join up the threads of these separate campaigns to generalise support and make the campaigns more effective.

3. Constantly monitoring and analysing from an eco-socialist perspective global capital and the changing tactics and strategies of neo-liberal politics and suggesting priorities for action.

4. Drawing upon the experience of working-class organisations and actions from history to help provide a guide to actions now.

5. Making links across the working class to ensure that all who wish to fight for an eco-socialist future can do so.

6. Politically making use of all opportunities to gain power and take forward our ‘frontier of control’ at any level and to implement radical eco-socialist policies through direct action and elections in a way that continues to take forward a transformation agenda at work, in the community, locally, nationally, and internationally.

7. Oppose sectarianism to work in unity with other socialist parties and organisations that share this political approach.

8. Then of course tackling the question of moving from ‘the war of position to the war of manoeuvre’ to paraphrase Gramsci, bringing the red threads of resistance together in collective act from below to take power on an eco-socialist agenda. Whether through direct action or electorally, or a mixture of both, a party with this aim, working with organised and active workers will be critical to a general uprising against capitalism.

Defend democracy demands

The Welsh government to refuse to implement all repressive legislation so as to restore the right to protest, assembly and to strike and take other industrial action.

1. The Welsh Government and local councils to take up this constitutional challenge and take all steps possible to continue to protect human rights and democracy on behalf of the people of Wales and demand that justice and policing is devolved to Wales.

2. All political parties in Wales to make public their total opposition to these attacks on human rights and democracy

3. Trade unions and other organisations that depend on human rights to make their opposition known.

4. All these organisations come together as an all Wales coalition to campaign and take action to defend our human rights, democracy and to fight for social justice.

5. Defend the existing devolved powers and support the continued devolution of state power to the Senedd and other steps toward independence.

Extending Senedd and council democracy

1. All candidates are subject to recall, annual accountability and to allow a vote of confidence in themselves if 10% of their electorate requests this in a petition.

2. Support a move to three-year Senedd elections and the same for councils.

3. Support a system of full proportional representation – and immediately support the use for the STV law for the next round of elections.

4. Complete open books. No confidentiality except individual privacy.

5. Immediate return to council committee governance with public and worker representation on all committees and the full council making final decisions. All meetings are public, broadcast and recorded.

6. All Senedd members to take the average wage of the people they represent. All councillors to only take justifiable expenses and loss of wages – not a regular payment. 

7.  All candidates commit to producing monthly reports produced for the electorate in a website format that will allow for electorate comments and further questioning.

8. Working groups involving elected representatives, trade unions representing the staff officers and members of the public to produce reports for council and an end to PR dominated consultation exercises.

Democracy and power at work

1. All employment law to be devolved to the Senedd.

2. All workplaces to recognise trade unions and all contracts to be based on collective bargaining.

3. Compulsory sectoral bargaining, with collective agreements legally enforceable across all workplaces in a sector.

4. Abolish the distinction between “worker” and “employee”

5. All rights at work to apply from day one.

6. Outlaw Fire and rehire in all circumstances

7. Unions to be guaranteed right of access to any workplace for recruitment purposes 

8. The reintroduction of collectively agreed “closed shop” arrangements.

9. Establishment of an effective agency to enforce trade union and workplace rights; with powers to impose remedies on employers who refuse to comply. 

10. Introduction of an enforceable right to strike and the abolition of all legal restrictions on the right to strike.

11. Ensure all ILO standards are incorporated into employment law

Collective ownership and control

1. To ensure production for people, planet and peace not profit, the aim has to be for a cooperative economy and society. 

2. Control and ownership will need to vary in mix between, worker, consumer and and elected Senedd and council, whichever is agreed by those involved. So for example Dwr Cymru could be a third consumer, worker, and Senedd. Whereas a worker cooperative would be 100% workers.

3. The Welsh government will need to support  a cooperative economy legally and financially through collective ownership and control at all stages of development, start up, succession, buyout, and public takeover.

4. Governance and democracy in all existing elected and public organisations will need to involve cooperative practice.

5. Many of these aims can become demands now, such as tenant control of housing associations, election and collective appointment of managers in all public institutions, consumer, worker Senedd in Dwr Cymru, worker and Senedd in Cardiff Airport. 

It has to be recognised that everyone learns differently, at a different pace and throughout their lives. Putting the learner at the centre of education means ensuring that everyone in society, in their own way, is enabled to have the ability and confidence to be an independent learner and indeed researcher. Learning in this sense is not just about receiving but about individually and collectively participating and adding to knowledge and understanding at every stage. And in the early years this should be particularly about enjoyment and learning through play. 

This requires the learner to have the right, ability, control and confidence to question existing knowledge and understanding, and for any unpredictable outcomes to be recognised. It requires a structure of support that allows for learner pathways that support their interests and questions, and for all outcomes to be equally credited at each stage through a form continuous assessment such as portfolios. Removing any remaining distinction between ‘academic’ and ‘applied’ and any notion of failure. Uniforms should go for the same reason. The system of Inspections is about policing the current system about selection, failure and league tables, instead there should be a collectively controlled system of sharing practice, support and development. 

Only free lifelong learning can start to achieve this aim.

A radical learner based and controlled approach to education is not only of central benefit to individuals but enables the release of creativity from all, benefitting society as a whole. It gives real meaning to the first part of the phrase from Marx: ‘from each according to their abilities…’ 

However, the history of education in the UK is one of being shaped not for the learning but capitalism, profit and sustaining the interests of the rich and ruling class. That is not only reflected in the provision of institutions from early learning through to Universities but also in the bias of the curriculum. As one who went to a secondary modern school in the late 1950’s I am acutely aware of how the 11+ selection worked to sustain class and privilege down into the early early years of primary school. 

The needs of capital and the defence of existing class power remain with us, through from the wealthy purchasing educational advantage through private schools, location – in England academies – through to the employment of graduates and the potential profitable application of research. The Starmer and the Tories see little reason to change this domination and the extreme right such as Reform, wish to go further and suppress any thinking that may challenge ‘British values’ as they define them. Cymru history and culture, as well language needs to be a key part of the curriculum.

So the fight for an ecosocialist education has to be clear about putting the learner at the centre and removing the deadweight of class and profit in every demand and policy. And of course in Cymru, that means defending education through the medium of Cymraeg, the suppression of which is and was an additional feature of how class works in Cymru.

Current Cymru provision, policy and funding.

Compulsory and pre-school education is provided by funding that comes through the 22 county councils in Cymru. Pre school provision increasingly includes Flying Start support from the age of two together with up to 30 hours of nursery and childminding support. From the age of four, there is a reception class provision for all. From the years 3-7 learning through play is central.

Compulsory education covers 5 – 16 in primary schools than comprehensives. 23% of school students are educated through the medium of Cymraeg. Free school meals are now available to all in primary schools. It appears there are 16 private schools in Cymru with various stage coverage amounting to around 2% of total student numbers. All provision for the compulsory period of education is covered by the new Curriculum for Wales which could provide the basis of moving toward learning pathways as suggested above.

Post compulsory the provision is mixed. Around 40% of year 11 attend a sixth form mostly linked to a school, the rest attend one of the 12 FE Colleges controlled by their governing bodies. Over 132,000 are enrolled on apprenticeships with pay. There is learning income related learning financial support for FE students. There are nine HE institutions in Cymru, including the Open University. HE institutions are controlled by their councils or boards and operate within an international and local context both in relation to students and research. Undergraduate students domiciled in Cymru receive a loan for fees and access to income related grants, which also apply to part time students. Despite this only 30% of 18 year olds enter HE as undergraduates.  

Research is funded through a Quality Research assessment exercise and income from other sources. HE in Cymru sustaining research in all QR disciplines that are offered is critical to both sustaining an international standing and contributing to social and economic innovation. Both FE and HE are now overseen by the Commission for Tertiary Education (MEDR) which allocates funding that is distributed in Cymru centrally. 

Challenges

Funding – as with all public services education in Cymru has been bit hard by what is now 15 years of austerity cuts and the knock on effects of the pandemic. The NEU estimates that 69% of schools in Cymru have less real terms funding than in 2010. The NAHT Cymru reports that in 2024 a third of all schools are struggling with deficits now and more than half will be in the coming year. School student / teaching ratios are worsening. There is a regular attack on Cymru schools when the very questionable PISA results come out, which in reality is about trying to force education into the ‘ three Rs’ straightjacket for employer needs. The recent NEU Cymru response to the latest Estyn report emphasises these points. 

Similarly Colleges Wales reports on the difficulties of coping with college inflation, rising student numbers and keeping qualified staff when wages are rising in the private sector reflected in the UCU Cymru campaign . 

HE budgets in Cymru are taking a serious toll under the combination of falling government support and the loss of overseas students. The proposed course cuts at Cardiff University are a disaster and if Cardiff is facing this financial situation  with possibly the strongest budget in Cymru, then other universities will soon be making similar announcements. Across the whole provision of education workloads, class sizes, lack of professional recognition, poor conditions and pay, are resulting in trained people leaving the service. 

Trade union recognition and contracts – pay and workloads are under pressure in all sectors of education, making it difficult to retain staff, and leading to widespread use of part time, assistant and agency staff and cheaper super exploitative contracts. The systematic use of agency staff in Cymru schools has been an ongoing scandal for over 15 years, with promise after promise being broken or implementation delayed. 

Democracy, control and accountability – if education institutions and support systems are to be effective in sustaining a learner orientation, then it is the elected professional staff and the students and their union representatives that need to have the main voice in governance. At the moment there is very little democracy or collegiality that means anything in terms of the learning and research processes, with governance being dominated by councillors in schools, and employer orientated boards and councils in colleges and universities. Collective bargaining remains central to the education workers’ voice, and is constantly bypassed and undermined. 

Education and support does not just take place in institutional settings and evidence has indicated that family and wider community support is essential. So support for families to enable them to make their choice about how children could be educated and supported, the stress on lifelong learning instead of grading and failure, and recognition of the part all can play in the education process is critical. 

Suggested demands and policies

1. Oppose all cuts in courses, budgets, staffing, education services, and the undermining of collective agreements. 
2. Support all staff and student trade union campaigns and actions to defend education and learning provision and for real pay increases and reductions in workloads. Staff student ratios need to be established through collective bargaining, published and made legally enforceable if broken. 
3. For a needs based comprehensive spending review for all education in Cymru.
4. Free Lifelong student centred and controlled learning covering all institutional support from home, early years, compulsory, further and higher education as well as other support as required, such ALN and free meals in schools and colleges. As part of this, a right to play needs to be recognised. 
5. All education in Cymru to be free from fee payment and students from the age of 16 to receive grant support based upon a minimum income.
6. Ensure open access to the highest quality inclusive local school for all children regardless of their special needs and circumstances, using a transparent admissions process without recourse to test or selection.
7. Learning to be available to all through the medium of Cymraeg, including bilingually.
8. Governance and internal management systems based on principles of local democratic accountability and co-operatives being an equal partnership between parents, staff, students, and the elected representatives of the local community.
9. All staff without exception to be employed on collective agreed contracts of employment negotiated with fully recognised trade unions and to have access to lifelong learning for professional and personal study.
10. Content of the curriculum and the processes of learning to be continually updated through a process of collective control of what is best practice as opposed to an imposed top down inspection regime. 
11. Research aimed at making an original contribution to a discipline is rightly systematically undertaken at university level however, the aim should be to allow for unpredictable outcomes at all stages of learning, enabling such a contribution to be made by all either as an individual or part of a group. 
12. It is critical in building and sustaining education in Cymru that is comparable to the best in the world that a full range of HE courses and research disciplines are sustained at our universities.

The Socialist Health Association (SHA) is a very useful source of information, analysis and comment. It is an affiliate of the Labour Party, but recently came close to losing that relationship, which is not surprising seeing that their aims are well to the left of Starmer and indeed any Labour government: https://sochealth.co.uk/the-socialist-health-association/ . They have a clear commitment that health is not just a question of care and treatment when needed, but ensuring that people’s environment provides ongoing support for a healthy life as stated in one of their aims ‘To demonstrate the relationship between environmental conditions, poverty, inequality, access to transport, and ill health, and to work for improvements in economic, housing, transport, nutritional, industrial, and environmental conditions’. The Association changed their name from ‘Medical’ to ‘Health’ to emphasise this point. SHA Cymru has been active for decades and produces information, analysis and comment that is relevant to our discussions: https://sochealth.co.uk/the-socialist-health-association/sha-country-and-branch-organisation/sha-wales/socialist-health-association-wales/ 

The point of starting this discussion with SHA is to emphasise that considering health and the NHS in Cymru is not just about waiting lists and hospital treatment, but considering the health and support needs of people throughout their lives, and it is useful to have at least one socialist body make this case, even though its reports are aimed at influencing Labour Party election policy. Having said that, it is clear then that as ecosocialists we follow through on this link with health and all aspects of our lived environment when considering the importance of all demand and policy areas. It is hoped this has come through in our two other workshops so far. In this discussion paper the focus will be on defending the NHS as a public owned and controlled service, free at the point of all medical need including mental and chronic as well as acute, how that is supported by public health services and how social support and care should enable people.

Austerity has deeply damaged the health and support services in Cymru. Public Health Wales produced a report in 2020 that showed that whilst Cymru life expectancy increased in the ten years to 2010 by 2.6 years for men and 2.0 years for women, it only increased 0.2 and 0.1 respectively for the following ten years. Moreover, the class way of death worsened with mortality worsening in areas of greatest deprivation from 2011. Throughout this period the People’s Assembly Wales was  probably the only organisation that produced regular analysis of just how deep these austerity cuts were and in their last and the most recent report in 2022 ‘…shows that between 2009 – 2020 the cumulative effect of cuts to the Welsh budget and directly to welfare spending in Wales amounted to a loss of around £3.5bn a year or a real terms cut of 22% over 2009.’ The NHS in Cymru is still struggling to overcome the consequences of these cuts coupled with the huge impact of the Covid pandemic. A recent analysis by the BMA reveals in stark graphic form just how NHS target after target are not being met. Local Councils are key providers of social care and support and public health and other public protections that affect the health of their populations. However, the regulation they provide has been one of the main areas of austerity cuts with regulation and planning being cut across Cymru by 60%. Social Care, whilst protected by statute, has been under pressure to make ‘efficiency savings’ the catch all euphemism for cuts. 

In terms of staff GPs have since 2012 a 127,000 increase (4%) in registered patients but a nearly 30% decrease in the number of GPs and a 100 less practices. Spending on this key level of primary care, which provides 90% of NHS patient support, has fallen from 11% to below 8% as a proportion of the Cymru NHS budget. Leading to attempts to push patients toward chemists and charging providers. In nursing 78% of respondents in an RCN survey reported that ‘the number of nursing staff was not sufficient to meet the needs of patients safely’. In terms of social care a recent survey revealed that 33% are finding it difficult to manage financially and 26% thought it likely they would leave the sector. Filling vacancies remains a problem across the sector. The RCN estimates there are 2000 vacancies for registered nurses in Cymru in 2024. One consequence is expensive agency nurses are used amounting to over 6% of staffing and the role of nursing assistance is stretched.  

Overall the picture is of an NHS, care and support service that is permanently on the edge of a crisis and in many cases is being sustained by the commitment and indeed unpaid work of staff. The picture yet again, is a range of many supportable targets and legal intention, but acute inability to deliver, largely due to 15 years of austerity. The recent crisis with the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend and the first period of the Covid pandemic, revealed just how close to breakdown the service can come. In this situation acute medicine has to take priority, and it is the long term health needs and prevention which take the hit. In the case of elective surgery an increasing number of people are using what savings they have to ‘go private’ even maxing out on their credit card with unimaginable interest rate payments. For people in this situation, it starts to become very difficult to defend the NHS and argue against privatisation. 

The Cymru NHS budget for the current 2024/25 financial year is just over £11bn. The additional £600.00 penciled in the draft 2025/26 budget amounts to an increase of just over 5% but taking account of NHS inflation which is significantly affected by an aging population and the level of deprivation in the country, is about 1.5% in real terms. This hardly starts to address the level of crisis identified in this paper, let alone start to overcome the effects of austerity and the Covid pandemic.  

What needs to be done – demands and policies. 

Devolved powers have enabled some beneficial policies in Wales such as provision of free prescription services, an early banning of smoking in public places, free car parking at hospitals, an end to PFI and less marketisation. Other benefits such as free transport for older people, thus reducing social isolation, also impact on people’s health and well-being.

However, these policies mean little if adequate and needs based funding is not available in Wales for the NHS, together with social care and support. Welsh led Labour Governments and members of the Senedd failed each year to resist round after round of austerity cuts. NHS spending in Wales is beginning to recover but councils and primary care are still struggling. 

Evidence above indicates that Covid costs and consequent ‘catch up’ costs are not being fully covered.

These following demands and policies would start to both defend and address the health and support needs facing people and the NHS in Cymru. 

1. Faced with future cuts in budgets MS/AS should refuse to implement them and prepare for collective support and resistance across Cymru with this type of programme of demands and policies. 
2. A comprehensive needs-based review of all public sector funding to be instituted immediately.

3. Privatisation, competitive tendering and PFI to be totally abolished and all NHS, care and support provision, including social care, to be returned and retained in public ownership. 

4. Health and Social care services to be fully funded to the highest possible international standards and free at the point of need and publicly provided.

5. Legal limits for professional staff – patient ratios to be set

6. All employees to be trained to the highest level and employed on trade union negotiated salaried contracts – the longer term including all doctors and consultants.

7. More investment in training of doctors, and greater investment in primary care provision through GP led community health centres to avoid hospital admissions wherever possible. Multi disciplinary primary health care teams on local/community level to be integral part of this provision. 

8. Prevention and support need to be recognised as a key part of the public service in Cymru.

9. Seamless delivery of health and social support ensuring the maximum possible personal independence of the person being supported based upon the principles of independent living for the future: https://www.rofa.org.uk/independent-living-future/

10. Care and support to be provided in or as near to a person’s home as possible, appreciating that there will be circumstances where specialist services are only available at a distance.

11. Welsh Government to oppose and refuse to support or recognise any trade agreements that cover services including the NHS and social care

12. Increase democracy in health and social care services – strengthen bodies like CHCs – not abolishing them as has happened in Wales – , establish local patients groups, and social care forums, and increase democratic control by local and community councils. Clearer role and core funding where needed, for the third sector.
13. Health boards and their relevant professional leads should have a statutory duty to report to local authorities in their areas about local health issues – so Cwm Taff would report to BCBC regularly and provide an annual report on the state of health and care in BCBC which would be subject scrutiny.  CHCs are a good idea but, for whatever reason, never really caught the public imagination.  
14. Health and social care users need advocacy support when they need to raise concerns about the service. Wherever possible these concerns should be raised as part of a dialogue rather than being escalated to formal complaints which often leads to an adversarial (unfortunately) response.]

We are facing what Marxists have called a ‘metabolic rift’, where the competitive exploitation of the earth’s resources for profit maximisation is creating an environmental catastrophe where all ecosystems are in extreme decline. Cymru is no exception and the Welsh Government declared a nature emergency in 2021. There are a plethora of research reports and Welsh Government statements providing a range of answers, but as we noted in the climate collapse workshop, there is a yawning gap between setting targets and their implementation. 

At first sight the difficulty in getting action can be seen as a tension between the competing uses of land as a finite resource. However, when looked at from the needs of people and the planet it can be seen that achieving production that does not contribute to the metabolic rift, is much more about the power of ownership being used for profit maximisation. As farmer Alex Heffron suggests an alternative “… is required are land reforms that take us beyond the regime of private property, which is so fundamental to the rule of capital. It will need to be a slow, gradual process, but it’s essential for ecosocialists to be engaged in this. We need to move towards a system where land workers gain control. Otherwise, concentration of land ownership will only get worse over time.”

Around 88% of the land in Cymru is farmed. Some of that will be ‘pseudo farmed’ after being purchased to secure planning windfall profits. As this report shows, 55% of farms in Cymru are designated as ‘small’ but they only cover 7% of the farmed land, as it goes on to show there is a tension and contradiction of interest between those who farm for a profit and those who do so to exist.  Any strategy to tackle the decline of ecosystems in Cymru will need to win the support of those who farm the land. Who actually owns the land in Cymru has yet to be comprehensively surveyed, but some will be institutions such as councils and the Crown Estates, potentially helping to achieve this. However securing the needed cooperation and achieving the restoration of ecosystems will require strategies that either provide an income for the farmers or the compulsory purchase of land by the Welsh Government using the legal powers it has dating back to the Welsh Land Act of 1974. These powers have been used recently for this purpose. 

Possible policy and demands

One key demand that would help make the links between farming producers and food consumers in a way that encourages cooperation, is helping to develop food production for sale locally. Local demand such as through the provision of school dinners and meals on wheels and for public institutions such as hospitals and universities. would help but also the re-establishment of a system of cooperatively owned local markets across the country and a legal requirement that all suppliers, including supermarkets, purchase through these before going elsewhere. Welsh Government and local council support would be needed to rebuild this infrastructure. 

It is clear that currently, the Welsh Government is making announcements in terms of white papers and planned legislation, which will not come into operation before the next Senedd elections in 2026. This context starts to open up a space for radical demands. 

This space is also opened up by the final consultations that will be taking place across Cymru during this year, involving each of the 22 council’s Local Development Plans, that will lay down land use planning up until 2036/7. This process is very important and all plans will have to have regard to the Welsh Government National Development Plan 2040, thus enabling strategies and demands to restore ecosystems into the public debate. To help this to happen as ecosocialists we should be facilitating local in person and online open discussions. Many local landowners looking for windfall planning profits will be revealing their intentions in the planning applications, and making the case against, is a real opportunity to expose how destructive profit is to land and ecosystems.

Background – housing

Shelter Cymru, among other research and campaigning organisations, identify the housing crisis in Cymru with six aspects, bad quality, discriminatory, second homes, land values, homelessness, and social housing. And we would add a seventh, exploitative rents and landlords with the average tenant spending 32% of their income on rent. The Bevan Foundation points out that there are currently 6,447 people who are homeless and living in temporary accommodation in Cymru. One recent estimate is that there are 140,000 on council house waiting lists, and 11,000 in temporary accommodation and  yet only around 5,000 new houses are being built of which only 1% are by local councils.

There is a housing crisis in Cymru.

Last October 2024 the Welsh Government started a consultation on ‘adequate’ housing and securing a path to fair rents and affordability. Yet again it has been made clear that whatever is decided it will be after the Senedd elections in 2026 before any law comes into force. This follows on foot dragging on no fault evictions and rent freezes since 2016, when the last piece of Welsh housing legislation came into operation. 

Land, housing and homelessness

Housing as shelter is a basic human need and right. This, however, is far from being our current criteria of provision which is totally dependent on market provision and profitability. Whether social needs or rights are fulfilled is incidental. If you can pay, a penthouse suite or a many floored basement is yours. If you cannot, you will have to sleep on the street or in a tent if you are lucky.

Huge profits are made at every stage of provision and are subsidized by the state if they are not sufficient. Land bought cheap as farmland can make owners millionaires overnight if planning permission is granted. A political decision, made by community representatives for local people who, in turn, will not see a penny of this increased value. Little wonder planning decisions are a constant source of sleaze stories. Houses won’t be built unless the profit is high enough as aided with the Tory’s Help to Buy scheme. Even 98% of those that are built have defects.  Four in ten council houses sold with huge discounts under the Tory’s Right to Buy are now in private renters hands. Landlords can evict if it suits their profits.

There is a fundamental structural crisis in housing that can only be solved by a radical transformation of a socialist programme, completely removing the role of profit, the market from future housing provision thus ensuring provision is based on need and as a right.

But how do we get from here to there with actions now and demands.

Land ownership and planning

Land for development must be a collectively owned resource removed from market forces. Wherever possible land that is owned as corporate farms and large estates possibly using Community Right to Buy such as in Scotland should be collectively owned and controlled, particularly when being sold, and open access ensured.  The decision should be how can it best be used for people and the planet: not what is the value and how can that be creamed off or increased.

Demands. The key strategic aim must be land, other than that for primary living and private households, should become collectively owned so that planning can be exercised through political and democratic processes. Clearly such a demand would be a challenge to capitalism which is fundamentally defended by some very deep seated vested and personal interests over property ownership. How such a transformation could take place A priority demand should be that the Welsh Government and local authorities fully use the powers of compulsory purchase and exclude any value gain (hope value) resulting from a proposed change of use. The Senedd Research report explains the current situation and still seems to operate within the 1961 Land Compensation Act that added compensation for ‘hope value’ gain. Land compensation is a devolved matter and the 1961 law should be immediately repealed, limiting any compensation to the value before any planning gain.  

Direct action. Between now and 2021 new National, Regional and Local Development Plans will be drawn up to criteria defined by the Welsh Government. These will influence land use over the 10 years up to 2037. The Welsh Government has started the process of considering the criteria and then all local councils in Wales will draw up their plans All local councils are at the final stages of drawing up plans and having public consultations in preparation to submitting the plans to the Welsh Government . At this stage expect all those who own farms or other land to submit for planning permission with the lure of potential fortunes sparkling in their eyes. At all these stages we need to mobilise for demands aimed at benefiting the planet and removing the market and profit from any development, arguing for land to be purchased All land that is currently owned by the Welsh Government and local councils should be used to the maximum to achieve this and in addition compulsory purchase powers are used to prevent any ‘hope gain’ planning profiteering before any planning decisions are made. Action could be taken to identify who owns the land locally so we are clear about who will profit so they can be exposed to public scrutiny.

Housing

Since 2004 the start of the current housing crisis the balance has started to move back to renting so that by 2016 50% of 24 – 34 year olds were paying rent, and a political battle has now started over whether the state should again subsidise owner occupation or whether renting should start to become the norm again with the state supporting this shift through public provision of council housing, devoid of the ‘exceptional needs’ stigma. [Add a full stop after ‘rent’ delete and then reword] What is available to rent should increasingly be provided through an immediate programme of council house building and private renting made more secure through tenancy law, removal of no fault eviction and rent and standards control.  

Demands.

The basic aim must ensure housing is available for all, whatever income, or none. All housing needs to be of the highest standards and quality in terms of space, design, and the environment. It needs to be recognised that housing requirements vary over a lifetime, so the stock should reflect this, combined with ‘constructivists’ ideas about easy adjustment to an existing home, including a variety of options for people who wish to have access to a garden. Community provision in terms of services, local land use, site use has to be part of collective ownership and control.

Market value of housing needs to be controlled so that it does not become the prime source of savings, personal value or source of profit based renting. More than sufficient houses should be available to achieve this the aim should be to build 150,000 new homes in Cymru by 2030. Currently only an average of around 5000 are being built each year and only 1% are being built by local councils and 20% by social landlords. Collective ownership encouraged in all future development through council renting or forms of cooperative ownership and personal ownership facilitated only through mutual building societies. Housing associations should be brought back into council services. Second homes are taxed. Architecture, planning and building services nationalised [Delete initial wording] Unnos currently a small Welsh Government start in providing a publicly owned building and construction services organisation should expand to become the main provider of architecture, planning and building services and merged with worker, political and community control. Help to Buy finances should be moved into house building.

Tenants need to have assured tenure for life if it is their prime home. All landlord immigration controls to be removed. Fair rents only should be charged fixed according to a notional return on the property to provide maintenance. Rent tribunals with power to impose a fair rent re-introduced. The aim will be to encourage all large scale renting to be undertaken through councils in as short as possible time, unless it is renting of the prime house for personal reasons, such as working away. Rent subsidies to be provided according to assessed family need.

Demand that a house is available for all, no one to be homeless for more than one night.

A publicly owned Welsh building, architecture, and planning cooperative to be established to provide all new housing for the Welsh Government and unitary authorities ending competitive tendering and private building.

The provision of safe housing for victims of domestic violence to be provided across all counties.

Rent support to be based upon and included in a minimum income calculation.

The establishment of a mortgage to rent scheme to keep families in their homes.

Immediate demands

1. Assessment for housing of all unoccupied properties, including office premises.
2. Provision of high quality emergency housing for people who fall homeless including refugees and asylum seekers. 
3. Street by street renovation Retro fitting of all homes requiring insulation and refurbishment to the highest standard.
4. Welsh government and councils should use compulsory purchase powers, to build and own homes to rent as well as support collective forms of ownership and control.
5. End to all existing and proposed leasehold clauses.
6. End to the bedroom tax in Cymru.
7. All second homes to pay more than full local rates and taxes. Council tax premiums to apply to all empty and second homes and be paid by the owner not the occupier. 
8. End to section 21 evictions.
9. Rent freeze while rent controls are being put in place.
10. Support all direct community and tenant action campaigns to take these demands forward such as those organised by ACORN and the People’s Assembly, including the occupation of land, houses and publicly revealing all private landowners and their holdings in Wales by an open books legal requirement on all developers, landlords, banks and government bodies.  

Sources used: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KPwnx0HS36TC1eCv1i4kJ1snOANgapDOYkYzv0L60bI/edit?usp=sharing 

There is now little dispute that the planet is on fire.

The IPPC reports and the very latest information support evidence of rising temperature trends, more deadly weather events and the loss of biodiversity. As Michael Roberts put it in his piece on COP29 

“The latest data indicate that the planet-heating emissions from coal, oil and gas will rise by 0.8% in 2024. In stark contrast, emissions have to fall by 43% by 2030 for the world to have any chance of keeping to the 1.5C temperature rise target set by the COP Paris agreement. That target is dead and the planet is heading fast towards 2.0C rise (and above) compared to pre-industrial times.”

Many others could be quoted making the same point.

In Cymru we are certainly not immune and as the recent very informative Senedd Research briefing on COP 29 testifies that we have ‘experienced an average increase in land temperatures of 0.9% and a 2% increase in rainfall between the 1970s and 2010s and an an average annual sea level rise of around 1.4mm over the past century’. Such changes threaten ‘human life, built infrastructure, wildlife, and agriculture’, and will impact on the health and wellbeing of the whole population of Cymru. 

The emergence of capitalist production and its spread to global domination has been based on the intensive use of fossil fuels emitting greenhouse gasses in particular carbon dioxide and methane. The latter are now more than 2.6 times higher than in pre-industrial times, the highest they’ve been in at least 800,000 years.

As the latest IPPC report states:

“Back in 1990, the first report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that human-caused climate change would soon become apparent but could not yet confirm that it was already happening. Now, some 30 years later, the evidence is overwhelming that human activities have changed the climate. 

Hundreds of scientists from all over the world come together to produce IPCC reports. They base their conclusions on several kinds of scientific evidence, including: 

• Measurements or observations, sometimes spanning more than a century back in time; 

•Paleo (very old) climate evidence from thousands or millions of years ago (for example: tree rings, rock or ice cores); 

•Computer models that look at past, current and future changes (see box What are climate models? on page 9); 

•Understanding of how the climate works (physical, chemical and biological processes).” 

How does this happen?

As Michael Roberts argues “Market solutions won’t work because for capitalist companies it is just not profitable to invest in climate change mitigation.” This is not a short run situation. As Marx and Engels argued, the constant search for the maximisation of the most profitable return on investment, is at the systemic driving heart of capitalism and of globalised fossil fuel based industrial use and extraction. It is driven by competition between capitals to secure a greater mass of profit to accumulate more and preserve existing capital values. We spell this out in another discussions paper.  In this competitive profit driven situation all other considerations and concerns are thrown to the wind, literally, in the case of greenhouse emissions. 

Challenging this as Michael Roberts again argues would require a 

“A global plan could steer investments into things society needs, like renewable energy, organic farming, public transportation, public water systems, ecological remediation, public health, quality schools and other currently unmet needs. And it could equalize development the world over by shifting resources out of useless and harmful production in the North and into developing the South, building basic infrastructure, sanitation systems, public schools, health care. At the same time, a global plan could aim to provide equivalent jobs for workers displaced by the retrenchment or closure of unnecessary or harmful industries.

The task.

From the Guardian:

“According to the 2024 edition of the Emissions Gap Report, released in the lead up to COP29, countries must cut emissions by 42 per cent by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Yet current climate plans would see an increase of 2.6°C to 3.1°C this century, a rise that would be disastrous for the planet.”    

So for us the target has to be at least a 42% cut in emissions by 2030. This of course is ‘net emissions’ meaning the balance between cutting the source of emissions and the effect of removing them from the atmosphere.

At the moment the international goal toward cutting emissions was agreed at the 2015 COP 21 meeting known as the Paris Agreement where the aim of keeping the increase of global average temperatures above pre industrial levels well below 2% with an aspiration to 1.5%was agreed.  Separately from the COP meetings the UK is a member of the Climate Group that has agreed the international goal of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050. 

This target was agreed by the UK government in 2015 and was incorporated into the Wales Environment Act in 2016. It was more recently updated to be defined as a 100% decrease over the base year of 1990. 

Evidence reported leading up to this year’s COP 29 indicates that this target is unlikely to achieve the 42% reduction required by 2030, due to the increased pace of global warming and the foot dragging of the states which have the highest emissions. All of which was borne out by the failure of the COP 29 meeting and will be enhanced by the Trump election.

The UK

The Labour government shows little sign of taking all the steps necessary to even achieve the target of 100% net zero by 2050. On the contrary, a huge policy shift has been taken toward on priority of carbon capture with the projected spend of £22 billion, the least researched and possibly most ineffective method of reducing emissions, doing little to reduce emissions from the use of fossil fuel. And taking little account of the extensive advice from the UK Government’s own Climate Change Committee that has produced independent reports since being established in 2008.

Cymru

The background to our situation in Wales has been well documented by the Senedd research publications. These are very accessible and well worth a read. 

As mentioned above, the net zero target of 100% reduction over 1990 by 2050 was incorporated into the Climate Change section of the Wales Environment Act of 2016. This Act also introduced the idea of five year Carbon Budgets to show progress toward this target. The first was for the period 2016-20 which showed a 27.8% emission reduction, higher than the 23% target for the period, largely due to the closure of Aberthaw coal fired generating station. Targets for future years are included in the Senedd research publication linked above. 

In addition to these Carbon Budgets, the UK Climate Change Committee produces detailed reports of progress toward emission reduction across the UK and specific reports for the devolved areas. These are very detailed and actually include a good range of proposals that are worth considering. The latest report for Cymru is here and the Welsh Government response is here.  The Climate Change Committee report states that “… Wales is not yet on track to meet its targets for the second half of this decade and beyond.” and that “…Wales is not using its policy powers to full effect”.

This a useful diagram of the sources of emissions in Wales, changes over time, and targets.

Overall the picture in Cymru seems to be a heavy reliance on large impact changes like Aberthaw and now Port Talbot to reduce emissions, and despite listing a large number of initiatives, there appears to be a lacking in political will to provide the necessary funding and political leadership to bring them to fruition and strategically joining them up. There is also a reliance on top down government initiatives instead of strategically working with people and winning people over across the country. 

What could we do as ecosocialists in Cymru?

First we need to be very determined to establish Cymru internationally as a leader in how climate change can be challenged and challenged quickly, involving and winning over people in the process. We should reject the idea that Cymru is too small to make a difference, and by our actions and example show what can be done for all internationally, and inter alia make the case for the way we need to move toward independence. 

In the workshop it was also stressed that there are related crises to climate change in terms of biodiversity, soil degradation and pollution. And in addition to these there is the need to adapt and mitigate the climate change effects that are and will take place due to the increase in temperatures to 1.5% and beyond. 

Policy & Demands:

1. Change the Cymru 2016 Environment Act to set 100% net zero by 2030 as the target not 2050. Scotland has 2045 as the target date, this is argued for by the Green Party and Plaid’s policy is 2035. The Welsh Government is signed up to the principle that we are in the circumstances of a climate change emergency, and setting 2030 as the target date would galvanise thinking and demand the political will to take action to achieve the target.
2. Central to achieving all the targets in the seven areas for action and the CCC reports, has to be the direct involvement of people through their communities and at work. Where possible links need to be made to how collectively people will benefit both financially and in terms of job security from achieving the targets. What can be done should be developed by citizen and workplace assemblies and meetings with outcomes supported financially and in other ways by all sections of the Welsh Government and councils.

3. As a left we do not wait for Welsh Government action but initiate local campaigns for the 2030 target together with ideas for direct action and implementation in communities and workplaces, as well as demanding adoption of the target by local councils together with our direct action strategies. Examples would be Community Energy Wales; Bristol Energy Cooperative; and the People’s Assembly Wales made the political case. 

4. Climate change action is restricted due to lack of collective ownership and control, the Welsh Government has to use its powers of public ownership to the full and insist on further devolution where they are not sufficient. This applies in particular to land, essential utilities including the railways and the electric grid, and the crown estates.

5. At a national and local level investment and other financial support should be raised through the collective coordination of the borrowing powers of all councils and the Welsh Government as well as pension funds where appropriate. These are unlikely to be sufficient and the Welsh Government should demand devolved control over all borrowing limits as well renegotiation of the Barnett funding formula and a proper share of English infrastructure investment. It also an opportunity to rethink the regressive council tax system as suggested by Commonweal. 

6. Any funding to reduce emissions from the UK government must come to Cymru without restrictions on use, such as investment in technical carbon capture and nuclear power.

7. The Welsh Government and councils should support all climate change campaigns like XR and Stop Oil, undertaking that the anti protest laws will not be enforced in Cymru.