Statement from Plaid Gomiwnyddol Cymru / the Communist Party of Wales

This weekend, the Labour Government in Westminster decided to ‘take over’ the British Steel steelworks in Scunthorpe. They recalled parliament, which is on a break for Easter, and passed emergency legislation to take this action. This is after Jingje, the company who owns British Steel, began the process of closing it down. This is a welcome move for the 3000 workers at the site, their friends, family and community.

Whilst this is welcome, the move itself has left a bitter taste in the mouths of the Welsh and the Scottish, seeing the government move so swiftly in to secure the Scunthorpe steelworks, but not for the steelworks in Port Talbot in Wales, or Grangemouth Oil Refinery in Scotland.

We are asking – why not Port Talbot?

We all watched in despair as Tata, the company who owns the Port Talbot steelworks, said they were shutting the blast furnaces – this despair turned to anger as the Conservatives and the new Labour government refused to nationalise it. Welsh Labour, the governing party in Wales, dismissed the possibility of nationalisation, with the First Minister calling it a “pipe dream” and “student politics”.

The dismissal of nationalisation didn’t happen just because we’re Welsh, it was because of the peripheral nature of Wales, the economic differences between Port Talbot and Scunthorpe, and the realpolitik of it.

Some of this decision can be explained by political realities, both domestic and internationally.

Domestically, Wales does not yet constitute a political threat to either of the main parties of the British state, the Conservatives haven’t had a majority in Wales for over 100 years, and Labour view us as a safe bet. Scunthorpe, a former safe Labour seat which turned Conservative in 2019, is now a political battleground. Reform know that if the Conservatives can win, they can win, Labour knows that their majority in Westminster rests on a low electoral turnout.

This means that all British political parties have a vested interest in being the saviour of Scunthorpe.

On the international front, the neoliberal order of Europe and America is in a crisis of its own making: the shuttering of industries from the 1970s onwards to move production abroad to exploit workers in the global south. 50 years on since Thatcher and Reagan reshaped the world, the European & American world is reliant on industrial and domestic goods from China, India, Japan, Korea, food from mega-farms in Africa and South America, and more.

Trump’s Tariff War is a result of this, it is an attempt to shore up American domestic production and secure their supply chains. Britain is no longer capable of being self-sufficient, and our neoliberal politicians are desperately scrambling to secure what they can.

Geopolitics also plays a role in this, both the steelworks are owned by foreign steel companies, Tata (Port Talbot) is an Indian company, Jingje (Scunthorpe) is a Chinese company. We have entered a world where China is our ‘enemy’ whilst India is our ‘friend’, despite both companies making the same decisions. This is strikingly similar to the old Cold War rhetoric, where the Soviet Union, or simply ‘the Russians’, were the hated foe and any action was justifiable to take action against them. The British state is more willing to nationalise Scunthorpe due to this, they can use this reheated Cold War narrative to justify their action, and weather any blowback from it.

The best example of this is in the media, which works to manufacture consent for this takeover. British media has consistently referred to Scunthorpe as ‘Chinese’, Port Talbot as ‘Tata’.

When Jingje act as any private company would, and demand massive compensation, they will no longer be a private company, they will be Chinese.

But the fact is, Jingje and Tata are no different. Both are seeking to concentrate production in places where they already have a concentration of iron, coal and coke, all necessary to making steel. Both these companies will outright own the means to produce these products, or have controlling interests in it – this is called monopolisation.

Monopolisation drives private companies to build massive industries around core resources, particularly in the over-exploited global south, but it also needs to push up sales from these concentrated sites of production. This is what drives the international company to buy up steelworks in places, only to shut them down, the cost is outweighed by the increased profits from a streamlined site of production.

Over 100 years ago, this monopolisation occurred in Wales. The Dowlais Iron Works drove the industrial revolution forward, and made the British capitalism class the most dominant in the world. Today, the Dowlais Group PLC own steelworks, iron works, car manufacturing and more across the world – but not in Wales. Similarly to Tata and Jingje, they purchase and shut down factories based on concentrating production to create profit – in 2021, GKN (a subsidiary of what became Dowlais Group PLC) shut down an automotive plant in Florence, and a steelworks in Birmingham.

The Welsh economy has been thoroughly turned from a productive, industrial one, to a service economy. Our largest employment sectors are the public sector, retail, hospitality, research, all larger than our industrial sector.

The industrial sector in Wales is shrinking, it cannot help but shrink, the concentration of production, the globalisation of trade and the free market does not deem us as ‘profitable’ when it comes to an industrial productive economy.

This week, we have seen Welsh politicians blame England and our servile politicians in the Senedd for what happened in Port Talbot, this is only part of the story. The full story is one 50 years in the making, it is the child of the neoliberal capitalist order which is championed by politicians of all camps in Wales.

The Workers’ Way Forward!

The workers of Port Talbot, Scunthorpe, and their communities, do not deserve to be left to rot. We welcome the saving of jobs in Scunthorpe, but point out the hypocrisy over Port Talbot.

There is only one way forward for Wales, and that is socialism. When Welsh politicians say “if Wales was independent, this wouldn’t have happened”, we need to ask if this means that they seek to end the neoliberal, free market relations that have ruined Wales.

The truth is, any argument for an independent Wales which includes a membership with the neoliberal EU, the imperialist NATO, or any other capitalist alliance, will do nothing for the Welsh workers.

As we always say – dim ond sosialaeth fydd rhyddhau Cymru, only socialism will liberate Wales.