Rhodri fears Labour vote collapse

Jan 10 2008 by David Williamson, Western Mail

LABOUR must overcome forces which threaten to divide Wales, First Minister Rhodri Morgan said yesterday.

Today he embarks on a tour of West Wales to discover why the Labour vote in the region has collapsed.

At stake is not only the future of Welsh Labour, he argues, but the cohesion of the nation.

He told the Western Mail, “The things which divide us are greater than the things which unite us, sadly. The centrifugal forces are stronger than the centripetal forces but we’ve got to overcome that.

“Because of Labour’s history as the party which has won every seat in Wales barring Montgomeryshire, it is our job to unite the whole of Wales and stop this sort-of separating out.”

Six months ago Mr Morgan had an emergency heart procedure. He entered hospital shortly after sealing the One Wales pact which brought Labour and Plaid Cymru together in government for the first time.

Labour had won 26 of the Assembly’s 60 seats. During the post-mortem that followed, senior figures such as deputy minister Leighton Andrews identified the poor performance in Welsh-speaking areas and called on the party to reach beyond its traditional industrial heartlands.

Today, a leaner Mr Morgan says he is enjoying a “second wind” – politically and physically.

Next year he will make way for a successor. In the meantime, he seeks to restore the “sense of trust” that bonded the Labour Party to the electorate in so many constituencies throughout the 20th century.

He said, “It was through Labour that people saw their ambitions and aspirations being achieved – in the West as well as the East.”

The 68-year-old is adamant that Labour is a “whole-of-Wales” party – though he acknowledges, “The western half of Wales has been a real problem for Labour, and we’ve got to correct that.”

Deputy First Minister Ieuan Wyn Jones has repeatedly described Plaid as the party which works for the “whole of Wales”.

The two parties are now joined in coalition but engaged in a subtle battle for the centre ground – the same political space targeted by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

Mr Morgan believes Labour has a historic advantage in this contest, saying, “All the other parties will have large swathes where they’ve never in 100 years of trying won a seat.”

Today and tomorrow he will visit Carmarthenshire, Aberystwyth, Ynys Môn, Caernarfon and Bangor in an effort to discover why rival parties have made inroads.

He is troubled that the Cardiff Bay administration is not seen as delivering for West Wales and contends that Labour is a defender of the Welsh language and a champion of the region.

“We have done the heavy lifting on the language in the same way we’ve done the heavy lifting on devolution and Objective One and now convergence funding – they are all part of a package,” he said.

The First Minister argues that building “sustainable prosperity” is one of the best guarantees for the language’s survival.

While he does not seek a new Welsh Language Act, as has been demanded by some Plaid activists, he believes the Welsh Language Board should be empowered to fight quangos and local authorities on behalf of the “embattled individual”.

“The Welsh language has stabilised after a century of decline in terms of numbers and percentage,” he said. “The question is: Where does it go from here?”

He gives parents credit for keeping the language alive in their homes, but admits that persuading teenagers to speak Welsh is a key challenge.

“There are massive forces which force minority languages to decline and competing with the English language is more difficult than competing with any other language,” he said.

But Mr Morgan also acknowledges that language policy is one of the most divisive policies in an already fragmented region. People who did not speak Welsh, he said, feared both compulsion and exclusion, while others who were fluent felt like “second-class” citizens.

He asked, “Which party in Wales can actually act as a bridge between the two?”

‘It’s a very difficult country to unite’ - page 2