In Welsh politics, clear red water (Welsh: dŵr coch clir) is the name of the signature political strategy of Welsh Labour since the early 2000s of maintaining its support in Wales by distancing itself from the UK Labour Party by adopting a more distinctly socialist, progressive and culturally Welsh policy platform. It was formulated by First Minister Rhodri Morgan and his special adviser Mark Drakeford in the early 2000s and was further developed by Morgan's successors Carwyn Jones and Drakeford during their terms as first minister in the 2010s and 2020s. Ideologically, the strategy has been described as being aligned with the soft left factional tradition of the Labour Party.
Background edit
Wales was conquered by England in the 13th century and fully annexed into the Kingdom of England in the 16th century.[1] In 1707, Wales and England united with the Kingdom of Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, which later became the United Kingdom when it unified with the Kingdom of Ireland in 1801.[a] Although Wales has been heavily integrated with England in a constitutional and economic context for much of its modern history,[2] it has long had a distinct political culture to England.[3][4] From the Welsh religious nonconformists to the Welsh Chartists, the Welsh political tradition has often been more radical and more centered on the working class than English politics.[5][6] The growth of a Welsh working class organised around the Labour Party and the trade union movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries against the dominant Anglican Church which was seen as representing capitalist and English interests led to a more distinctly nationalist and socialist orientation for Welsh politics.[2] Labour, which sits on the centre-left of the political spectrum, came to dominate the country's politics in the 1920s, going on to win a plurality of seats and votes at every general election since 1922.[2][7] The presence of the Welsh language and Welsh nationalism, as well as the growth of the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru in the 1960s, further contributed to a distinct political culture in the country.[8]
In the 1970s, the Labour government of James Callaghan campaigned to devolve power from the UK Parliament to a new assembly for Wales. This culminated in the 1979 Welsh devolution referendum where Wales, a traditionally unionist country, voted against devolution by 79.74% of the vote to 20.26%.[9] The Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher entered government following a victory in the 1979 general election, with Thatcher leading the party to two more victories in 1983 and 1987 before her resignation in 1991.[10] Thatcher governed on a platform of ending the post-war consensus in Britain and reducing the influence of socialism.[11][12] Her government sold off the majority of government owned industries to private companies, cut the welfare state and taxes, deregulated the economy and introduced legal restrictions against the trade unions. She also introduced the right to buy which enabled occupants of council housing to buy their own home for the first time, which led to a shift in support from working class voters for Labour to the Conservatives in much of England.[12][13] While Thatcher's policies were largely popular in England and were credited with growing the British economy, in Wales her policies were credited with causing large rises in unemployment, leading to significant unpopularity for the Prime Minister in that nation. Thatcher's policy of closing the mines and her hardline response to the trade unions in the miners' strike which followed was also considered a leading factor in her unpopularity and led to a large rise in support for devolution in Wales.
Thatcher was succeeded in 1991 by John Major, who continued most of her policies and led the Conservatives to another unexpected victory in the 1992 general election at the expense of Labour. During Thatcher and Major's premiership, the Labour Party gradually moved from the left toward the political centre under leaders Neil Kinnock, John Smith and Tony Blair in a bid to recover its lost support from the Conservatives. Labour abandoned its traditional positions on the welfare state, trade unions, nationalisation and socialism and accepted many of Thatcher's economic policies. By 1994, the party had rebranded as New Labour and positioned itself firmly to the political centre under Blair, endorsing market economics and abandoning Labour's committment to a nationalised economy. While this initiative proved popular with the mainly middle class electorate in England, it had a mixed reception in Wales, where many of the party's traditional positions on issues such as socialism and trade unionism remained popular with its more working class populace. Labour returned to government on a centrist policy platform after it secured a landslide victory against John Major's Conservatives at the 1997 general election, whose government had become unpopular following a series of scandals in his party and the 1992 Black Wednesday financial crisis.
Blair's government pledged to hold a second devolution referendum in Wales to determine whether to establish a devolved assembly for Wales. The 1997 Welsh devolution referendum was held in September 1997 with Labour, Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats supporting devolution and the Conservatives campaigning against it. A narrow majority of 50.3% voted in favour of devolution in the referendum, with the first election to the National Assembly for Wales scheduled for 1999. In 1998, the Labour Party in Wales was given limited autonomy from the UK Labour Party in anticipation of devolution and was allowed to elect its own devolved leader for the first time in its history, with Ron Davies being elected as the first leader in Wales in September 1998. He resigned a month later following a controversy where he was mugged after allegedly cruising for gay sex on Clapham Common and the UK Labour leadership moved to install the Blairite Alun Michael as his successor. Rhodri Morgan, a popular Labour politician who belonged to the soft left of the party. A leadership election was held in 1999 with Michael becoming the new leader after winning on an electoral college with a minority of the membership vote. The election was controversial, with Morgan's supporters and commentators in the press describing Michael as a parachute candidate forced on Wales by London.
References edit
- ^ Johnes, Martin (22 November 2019). "A brief history of Wales: the resilient nation". History Extra. Retrieved 28 January 2022.
- ^ a b c Jones, Barry (2013). "Wales: A Developing Political Economy". The Political Economy of Regionalism. Edited by Michael Keating and John Loughlin. pp. 388–405.
- ^ Rhys, Steffan (4 March 2014). "16 ways in which the Welsh and the English are really very different". WalesOnline. Retrieved 28 January 2022.
- ^ Hussey, Peter (2018). "Some thoughts on the cultural differences between England and Wales" (PDF). MFW Focus Group. Retrieved 28 January 2022.
- ^ "The Newport Rising and Chartism in Wales". BBC Wales. 7 May 2021. Retrieved 10 May 2021.
- ^ Geliot, Emma; Gomez, Cathy (26 September 2016). "What gives theatre in Wales its radical edge?". Theatre and Dance.
- ^ Davies, Daniel (15 November 2022). "Welsh Labour 'has longest winning streak of any party in the world'". BBC News. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
- ^ Davies, Nye (20 May 2020). "Drakeford, Nationalism and Welsh Political Traditions". Thinking Wales - Meddwl Cymru.
- ^ Seldon, Anthony; Daly, Gerard; Allan, Philip (1990). UK Political Parties Since 1945. Philip Allan. p. 22. ISBN 978-0-86003-410-0. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
- ^ Haseler, Stephen (30 May 2012). The Grand Delusion: Britain After Sixty Years of Elizabeth II. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-0-85772-252-2. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
- ^ Stewart, David (30 August 2009). The Path to Devolution and Change: A Political History of Scotland Under Margaret Thatcher. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 221. ISBN 978-0-85771-558-6. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
- ^ a b Gennard, John; Judge, Graham; Bennett, Tony; Saundry, Richard (15 March 2016). Managing Employment Relations. Kogan Page. p. 39. ISBN 978-1-84398-435-1. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
- ^ Burrows, Tim (27 June 2019). "The invention of Essex: how a county became a caricature". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
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