Plaid Gomiwnyddol Cymru was founded in 2023, with activists from the Welsh Underground Network taking the decision to deliver a clear, genuine opposition to the state of ‘politics’ in Wales today.

The Party advocates for an Independent, Socialist Republic of Wales – by and for the working classes.

“Our Revolution is not a battle of fine phrases” – Thomas Sankara

Who are Plaid Gomiwnyddol Cymru?

Formed in 2023, and launched in 2024, Plaid Gomiwnyddol Cymru translates to the Communist Party of Wales in English. We are a Socialist-Republican Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, fighting for the world envisioned by Marx, Engles and their peers, organised along Leninist lines to achieve this via a transition to socialism.

Before us, there has never been a Communist Party of Wales – whilst there have been attempts at left-wing national movements, notably the Welsh Socialist Republican Movement, but these attempts stopped short at a vangaurdist revolutionary party, like the one we are building today. Most importantly, and distinctly, we know that socialism will not be achieved via ‘pushing the Labour Party to the left’, as communists before us have advocated. We live in Wales, we have had 2 decades of Welsh Labour rule, 25 years of austerity, of a lack of vision, of maintained poverty and managed decline.

We know what not to do.

Who are we?

Specifically, who are we? Firstly, we established ourselves within the Welsh Underground Network in 2023, as the natural progression of the Marxist-Leninist line they adopted over 2021-22. We voted for the creation of the party at the 2023 national congress of the Welsh Underground Network, to address a growing need to have a political wing to our movement. 

The Welsh Underground Network was never intended to be this, but was designed to be the starting point of the conversation, the catalyst. However the collapse of the political movement for Welsh independence, in particular the ousting of progressives from Yes Cymru and the slide into obscurity of other progressive movements made it necessary for us to formally organise a political wing more immediately.

What makes us different?

We, as communists, agree that we should be organised, we should fight for our vision. It is not only our vision of a Socialist Republic of Wales which separates us from the British unionists, but also our intersectional knowledge of class and oppression. The working class is oppressed as a whole, and elements within it are oppressed specifically due to racism, misogyny, ableism, transphobia. Our fight is for the whole of the working class, addressing the general needs of the working class and the specific needs of elements within the working class. We specifically call out the rise of transphobia within the socialist movement, who seem to assume that being trans removes someone from being working class, a ridiculous and anti-Marxist position.

As established earlier, we do not seek to follow the Labour Party into government or to use the tools of the capitalists to overthrow them. It is one thing to buy the rope to hang them with, another thing altogether for the working classes to seize the machinery of the state and wield it for their own devices – a state which is designed to oppress the working classes. Instead, we follow the Leninist line that the state must be destroyed, and must be replaced by a working class state, which cannot help but wither away. 

Why now?

Decades of neoliberal politics, 14 years of austerity, has led the people of Wales to reconsider their relationship to Britain. Aided by the breakdown in relationships between the British and Welsh devolved administration, recent years have made us in Wales question ‘could things be different?’. There has been a massive rise in popularity for an independent Wales, the idea that we don’t need to take orders from London, we could make decisions ourselves.

An issue remains, independence via a capitalist state is impossible both in general and specifically in Wales. Any independence via capitalism will immediately sell the workers of Wales out to the highest bidder, in London, in New York, in Paris, in Berlin. Why is this impossible specifically for Wales? Because we have no national bourgeoisie (a native capitalist class) to speak of, and therefore cannot have any form of bourgeois independence. 

Why not now? Why not us? The path forward is clear to us, the road behind littered with mistakes and surrenders – let us move forward together.

Forward – to a Socialist Republic of Wales!