VAUGHAN GETHING addresses the Wales TUC on Thursday in its 50th anniversary year.
He does so as a new first minister in a devolved Labour government — in a year we expect to see Labour elected at British level as well.
That provides an opportunity to reset relations between devolved and central government which have, over 14 years of Tory rule at Westminster, deteriorated to the point of mutual contempt.
Devolution was originally a labour movement cause. George Wright, the first Wales TUC general secretary, went so far as to declare that the autonomous TUC was “the first act of devolution in Wales. We put Wales on the map.”
In Scotland, too, the Scottish TUC was the key driving force for a Scottish Parliament, with support for devolution, eventually delivered by the 1997 Labour government, growing as unions looked for ways to defend industries and communities condemned to decline by Tory prime ministers dancing to the tune of the City of London.
In the early years of devolution both Welsh and Scottish Labour used devolved power to resist the neoliberal, marketising consensus that Tony Blair inherited from the Tories, putting what the first Welsh First Minister Rhodri Morgan termed “clear red water” between them and Westminster Labour.
Their ability to do so should not be exaggerated: the damage done by privatisation, outsourcing and the erosion of workers’ rights is severe in both Scotland and Wales.
But some of the achievements of those devolved Labour governments have lasted: free prescriptions in both countries, publicly funded university tuition in Scotland, water publicly owned in Scotland and in Wales run by a company limited by guarantee with no shareholders, meaning any surpluses must be reinvested: sharp contrasts to the robbery of billions in dividends by privatised, foreign-owned, debt-laden water companies in England.
More recently, union campaigning has secured commitments from the Scottish and Welsh governments not to use the draconian Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act to break strikes.
The Welsh and Scottish governments have also taken rail back into public hands, pre-empting the promise that an incoming Westminster Labour government will do so across Britain. Devolved power can be a platform for us to win policies and raise pressure for them to be adopted at British level.
That’s an opportunity to influence the direction of a future Labour government, essential since Westminster Labour remains tied to the neoliberal dogma which has gutted Britain’s industries and hollowed out public services. It offers to renationalise the utterly dysfunctional privatised rail system: but why not the equally dysfunctional privatised water, energy and postal systems?
Even on foreign and military policy, where devolved administrations have no power, Scotland has shown a positive example by demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and opposing Britain’s possession of nuclear weapons, weakening Westminster efforts to ridicule and suppress such positions.
If devolution is to be more than a porous barrier against Westminster attacks, and become a positive force for political change, it needs to be extended.
A progressive federal state, with powers for English regions as well as devolved nations, would increase the scope for rolling out progressive policy — the wave of projects by regional Labour mayors to bring buses back into public hands indicates the greater political will for fixing systems when decisions are taken closer to the communities affected.
It would, by giving English regions a stake in devolution, weaken the capacity of future British governments to undermine devolution, as this Tory government has done through laws like the Internal Market Act.
And it could sweep away an unelected second chamber dominated by dodgy donors and electoral rejects, replacing it with an elected chamber of the nations and regions.
The last Labour government introduced devolution. A progressive federal vision could unite the labour movement of our nations in pushing the next one to develop and strengthen it in a programme of democratic renewal.
