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Event #141: Lurching Toward The Holy Days
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With this in mind, on Thursday, 18 September, 1997, the two million voters in Wales were asked to go to the polling booths and answer "Yes" or "No" to this question - "Should Wales have a National Assembly?" Turnout was fairly low with just over half the electorate voting - and the "Yes" vote won by a very narrow margin of just 0.7%, less than seven thousand out of more than a million votes cast.
So why such little interest? Don't the people of Wales want to have their own parliament?
Well there's the problem - an Assembly is not a Parliament. Unlike the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly will not be able to raise taxes, although it will be able to decide how £7 billion (US$11 billion) of UK taxpayers, money will be spent in Wales every year. It will in effect carry out all the duties that the Welsh Office, a Government department, handles at present. This means that instead of policy being determined by Labour's appointed leaders in Cardiff, MPs from all over Wales will be able to have their say on policy in.......um...Cardiff!
And instead of policy being decided by the Welsh Secretary it'll be decided by the new National Assembly's First Secretary who could well turn out to be the same person. Is it any wonder then that the people of Wales seem pretty cynical about the whole shebang?
Choosing the location of the Assembly was another bone of contention. Despite claims that the Assembly should be located in "real" Welsh-speaking Wales, the chosen location was Cardiff in the extreme south east of the country. Although it is the official capital of Wales, some people feel it's too much like an extension of England for comfort. With that decided, then came the farce of exactly where in the city the Assembly would be housed. The favourite was always Cardiff City Hall - Wales's very own White House. Currently home to departments of the capital's local authority, it would have cost £13 million (US$21 million) to relocate staff to a new building. The deal fell through when the Welsh Office only wanted to pay £3 million (US$5 million). The search for a new building turned into a search for a new location and for a while it looked as though the Assembly might go to Wales's second city Swansea, or maybe even move around the country like a travelling circus. However it was decided that Cardiff would be the best place after all and that instead of using an existing building a new one would be designed.
A good measure of that cynicism is directed towards the possible candidates who may be standing in the May, 1999, elections. Wales, in common with Scotland, has long been a Labour stronghold but the party has changed beyond all recognition since its election victory in May, 1997. The so-called New Labour business-friendly and union-bashing unlike the traditional socialist party dismissed by some as being "Old Labour", is seen as being more akin to the Conservative Party, which relied in government on a series of appointed, unelected commissions known as "quangos" (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations) to carry out its policy in Wales because the country returned very few Conservative members of Parliament. And there's still concern that big business will have the run of the Assembly.
Wales has suffered from bitterly high levels of unemployment since the demise of industries like coal-mining and steel production --- and most recently the Asian economic crisis --- and the high value of the pound has resulted in job losses in foreign-owned factories across Wales as in other parts of the UK.
Moreover, the lack of "real" socialist Assembly candidates being accepted on the Labour ticket doesn't help - it would seem that only obedient party members and friends of Tony Blair need apply. Being Wales's foremost living working-class hero didn't help Tyrone O'Sullivan, the coal miner who saved his local pit from closure by leading a workers' buyout, deemed too socialist to be a Labour Assembly candidate.
Even so, Labour is still very likely to dominate the Assembly. A recent attempt to shift the New Labour balance was made by MP Rhodri Morgan. A vocal defender of Labour policy while in the opposition, he found himself sidelined by the party after the their election win, possibly for being too outspoken and independent of mind. He thought it unconscionable that the then Welsh Secretary Ron Davies would have no competition for the post of Labour leader in Wales and decided to stand against him. During the contest it was discovered that Ron Davies had used the Welsh Office's franking machine to post material for his campaign. As the Welsh Office is a government department this counted as a misuse of public funds, however minor a misdeed.. Ron Davies paid back the money but it was argued that documents for an internal party election campaign had no place being in a Government building in the first place.
It looked cut and dried: Ron Davies the Welsh Secretary would hand over power to Ron Davies First Secretary of the Assembly, until the latest in a series of set-backs to hit the Welsh Assembly happened. Last week Davies was forced to resign after a mysterious scandal that still hasn't been fully explained. He was mugged by a stranger he'd just met in a South London park and failed to dispel speculation that he'd been cruising for gay sex there. Despite some supportive people in his home town, in the eyes of his less-than-enlightened party leaders such behaviour was deemed unforgivable in a Government minister.
Nevertheless, Ron Davies or no Ron Davies, the Assembly opens next May and because the new building will be far from ready will have its first meeting in a hall at Cardiff University before continuing in temporary office accommodation next to the building site where the new Assembly chamber will be constructed. With the leadership campaigns restarting we still have no idea who will become the first Prime Minister of Wales. The campaign might be enlivened by the possible entry of former drugs smuggler Howard Marks who since his release from an American jail has been a tireless advocate of cannabis legalisation. But many people here are wondering if this great leap towards self-government with the Welsh Assembly will worth all the hassle.
+++ The Next WELSH TAKE +++
