THE INVASION OF DOUBT

That's democracy, the people have spoken, the result should respected, you win some, you lose some - that's the way it works. Personally I thought that  it was lacklustre campaign from both sides, with a few honourable exceptions. There was a lot of emphasis on people's fears and much stoking of them by both sides. 

What must not happen is a demonisation of voting classes by the chattering classes who did not get the result they want. Democracy often means that someone else wins, it's not their fault, it's not because they made a bad choice, it's not because the electors are stupid (they are far from that) - that's the way democracy works. The one overwhelming thing that should be learned from the referendum is that the voters disillusioned or otherwise should never be taken for granted. 

There will now obviously be a period of blame, some soul searching and then probably a longer period of economic consequences for all of us. I am pleased that much of my former constituency (Monmouthshire) voted Remain, but am disappointed (but not entirely surprised) with the other Leave results in Wales.

There will be much speculation and column inches (electronic and otherwise) over the next few days, weeks and months about the result. The other 'I' word (immigration) was a key factor, but, I genuinely believe not the key factor in the result. The failure of the political elite to discuss this issue in a responsible way created a political vacuum into which UKIP (and others of their ilk) were able to step into and make the issue their own. 

This was clearly a massive mistake as a vacuum in both nature and politics is soon filled. There was the failure to argue a positive case on Europe (with some honourable exceptions, Plaid, the SNP, the Greens and some others) was another massive mistake with the Westminster focused political parties relying on a revamped 'Project Fear’. 

As a former parliamentary, national assembly and local government candidate the grow disconnect between the ordinary voters and their elected (and wannabe elected) representative has been (and is) increasingly palpable. I think that for the best part of fifteen years, a growing number of increasingly abandoned and disillusioned, but not necessarily all older (although many were) voters who had major reservations about Europe (and the European project) have been offered little by a whole raft of politicians from a whole raft of political parties who increasingly did not reflect their views on identity, the EU and immigration.

I think some of what happened revolves around the concept of bring 'British' and Europe's perceived threat to 'Britishness'. It does not matter that there was not and never has been a threat to it. In England to be 'British' and 'English' is the same thing. In Scotland and in Wales that is not the case, being 'Welsh' and 'British' does not necessarily mean exactly the same thing. I believe that a significant percentage of the leave voters in Wales are quite content to be both 'British' and 'Welsh’. 

I am very much reminded of something Gwyn Alf Williams wrote in his book When Was Wales? about the Welsh people being the first of the British and probably the last of them too [ “This history of the Welsh may close then with the intriguing thought that the Welsh, First of the British, look like being the Last.”].  As far the Europe of the possible and Wales’s place in it, we may politically be back to a near 1979 moment, save this time we have (or almost have) a Welsh Parliament (as flawed as it may be) to act as a shield and to give us a voice within the UK. 

In Wales some voters chose to buy into the Leave campaigns message which via a fractious and often vicious campaign that was tainted with more than a measure of racism and palpable deceit (the old adage about a simple repeated lie worked a treat). There was demographic split in the vote based on age - whether or not the referendum was used to give the elite a poke in the eye and to give vent to frustrations that have long built up is now largely irrelevant - we are where we are and there is no going back. 

Analysis of the vote may not be easy, the focus on immigration may well mask a far deeper disillusion. Some of the Leave vote may be about a rejection of the more socially destructive side effects of globalisation and despite the highly visible infrastructure investment people feel that little has been done for them or their communities. 

Some of the communities that voted 'Leave' have suffered from the impact of years of generationally destructive economic policies. Other communities that have a similar history of economic neglect and have also suffered from the effects of years of destructive economic policies voted 'Remain'. Ironically almost all of these communities that chose 'Leave' were also significant recipients of EU regional development aid.

Some things cannot be ignored - it is very likely that Wales will suffer significantly when the EU funding get runs out. Westminster will never invest in Wales to the same degree as the EU did. If Westminster had looked after Welsh economic and social interests then Wales would never have been eligible for EU regional aid in the first place and it would never have been needed. 

Wales at Westminster has become electorally and politically irrelevant in recent years. Our country will become even more irrelevant at Westminster when the number of Welsh MP's drops from 40 to 29 when the new parliamentary boundaries are implemented before the next Westminster general election. 

The UK is now effectively on its way out of the EU - Wales in its current state of political existence, will have within a few years no relationship with the EU save for a trading, geographical, cultural and sporting one. Within the national movement in Wales we need to work out what comes next, certainly our soon to be parliament will gain more powers (just exactly how Boris views the Wales Bill is an unknown) and a degree of control over taxation and energy - but what will future Welsh governments do with them? 

As for our national project, Europe is pretty much off the radar, if not gone for the foreseeable future. This means that we need to map a new path to achieving our national objectives and our national ambitions for this nation, rather than redefining them and to take the people with us, or we are going no where. 

WALES AND TRANS-ATLANTIC TRADE

On the 3rd December Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood led a debate in the National Assembly on the importance of increasing trade between Wales and the USA. Plaid believes that public services, including the National Health Service, should be exempt from the effects of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

TTIP – RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

France has announced that it will not sign up to the TTIP in 2015, and will not agree to the inclusion of the highly controversial ISDS (Investor State Dispute Settlement). This is highly significant and follows Germany’s earlier indication that it could not agree to the inclusion of ISDS. Other European governments, including the UK, are pushing ahead.

ISDS is a secretive arbitration process whereby multinational corporations can sue democratically elected governments if they feel that the national law in a country not only reduces their actual profits but also prevents them from making potentially greater profits. This is something that Plaid strongly opposes, as it could lead to privatisation of our public services by the back door. 

The European Commission suspended the TTIP talks on the Investor State Dispute Settlement in January to carry out a public consultation. The influential Corporate Europe Observatory gives another example of what this means in practise. It revealed that oil and gas company Lone Pine is suing Canada for CAN$250 million after the province of Quebec imposed a moratorium on shale gas extraction (fracking) because of environmental concerns. 

The ISDS consultation recorded 150,000 responses, with the majority calling for it to be taken out of the agreement. 

There has also been analysis of the promise of millions of new jobs. The Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) was asked by the UK government to analyse the impact on the economy. Their figure of £10 billion in gains by 2027 depended on scrapping three quarters of non-tariff barriers in the chemicals, automotive and business/ICT sector. This is not even being discussed in TTIP and is simply not credible.

The CEPR, in another report for the Commission, could not predict any general impact on employment from TTIP, but it did see a risk of EU and US jobs actually being lost! 

The European Parliament will adopt a report with recommendations to the Commission on TTIP. It will be wide-ranging and discussed by many committees, including the Culture and Transport committees on which Plaid’s Jill Evans MEP sits. The Conservative group, the ECR, opposed having this report. The timetable is expected to be short, with the vote possibly as early as March 2015. 

Some of the committees will hold public hearings to examine the detail of different aspects of TTIP.

Plaid Cymru adopted a strongly worded resolution opposing TTIP back in our October conference. Members of the RCN and Unison gave strong backing to our position. Plaid will continue to campaign against TTIP. 

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO…

Some 25 years ago last week back in October 1989, amidst growing frustrations with East German style communist rule a wave of mass protests swept East Germany. Barely fifty years after East Germany was created in the Soviet occupied eastern Germany following the Second World War, these demonstrations would ultimately led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent transformation of Europe.

During the Cold War there were around some 5,000 successful escapes to West Berlin, and many failed escape attempts. There is an on-going argument about how many people died trying to escape to freedom - according to the Center for Contemporary Historical Research (ZZF) in Potsdam there were 136 confirmed deaths. Where once people risked everything to cross the old border now you stroll from one half of the city to the other with barely a thought about it.

I remember clearly recall watching the protests on TV and keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that the tyranny would fall. Almost miraculously it did and from that moment onwards all things literally became possible, it is easy to forget that we live in a post cold war Europe were it is quite possible and entirely normal for the peoples like the Scots, the Catalans and others to seek self-determination

NOT GONE AWAY

While the eyes of the world have been distracted by events in Hong Kong, eastern Ukraine and the Middle East, Russia has continued to apply pressure to the Crimean Tartar minority in the Crimea. There have been documented attacks on Tartar leaders, on-going harassment, raids on houses and flats have taken place; records and documents have been taken and passports confiscated and libraries have been shut down.

Nadir Bekir (pictured here in 2013) says four masked men pulled him from his
car, forced him to the ground, and took his Ukrainian passport and mobile phone.

Crimean Tatar Scholar Attacked, Library Shut As Pressure Mounts

SIMFEROPOL, Crimea -- A Crimean Tatar scholar says masked assailants dragged him from his car and took his passport in an attack meant to prevent him from attending a UN conference in New York.

The attack on Nadir Bekir late on September 18 came hours after Russian authorities moved to seize the Crimean Tatar assembly, the Mejlis, piling pressure on the Turkic-speaking Muslim minority group that largely opposed Moscow's annexation of the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine.

On September 19, the main Crimean Tatar library in the regional capital, Simferopol, announced that it is being shut down in accordance with an August government resolution to replace libraries on the peninsula with Russian state entities. 

Bekir, an expert on indigenous peoples, told RFE/RL he was attacked on his way from Simferopol to the city of Dzhankoi, where he planned to board a train for Kyiv and then fly to New York.

He said a white minibus abruptly blocked his car on the highway. Four masked men emerged, pulled him from his car, forced him to the ground, and took his Ukrainian passport and mobile phone. He said one of the attackers opened his passport and told the others: "Yes, that 's him!"

Without his passport, Bekir said he cannot leave Crimea. He believes the attack was meant to prevent him from participating in the September 22-23 UN World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, part of the UN General Assembly. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin promised that the rights of Crimean Tatars would be protected after Moscow annexed the region in March, a move opposed by most Crimean Tatars and denounced as illegitimate by Ukraine, the European Union, and the United States.

But tension quickly mounted and pressure on the Crimean Tatars intensified after most members of the Turkic-speaking minority group, which makes up about 12 percent of the peninsula's population, boycotted local elections on September 14.

Police confiscated records of the Crimean Tatar's Mejlis as well as religious books, computers, and
personal belongings of long-time Crimean Tatar leader and Ukrainian lawmaker Mustafa Dzhemilev.

Houses and apartments of leading members of the Crimean Tatar community, as well as the Mejlis offices, were searched by police and unidentified masked, armed men on September 16-17.  

In the Mejlis, police confiscated records of the Crimean Tatar self-governing body's sessions as well as religious books, computers, and personal belongings of long-time Crimean Tatar leader and Ukrainian lawmaker Mustafa Dzhemilev.

Dzhemilev is a well-known Soviet-era human rights activist who served six sentences in Soviet prison camps from 1966 to 1986.

Earlier this year, Russian authorities barred Dzhemilev and the chairman of the Mejlis, Refat Chubarov, from entering Crimea, saying their activities "incite interethnic hatred."

The pressure on Crimean Tatars is a source of particular bitterness because the community was deported en masse to Central Asia in 1944 by the authorities under Josef Stalin, who accused them of collaborating with Nazi Germany.

Many of the 200,000 deportees died on their way into exile.

Many Crimean Tatars returned to Crimea in the years before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and there have been frequent disputes over land and property on the peninsula, which are aggravated by ethnic differences between the Crimean Tatars and the Slavic population.

After Russia annexed Crimea, Putin publicly said that the rights of Crimean Tatars will be fully protected by Russian laws and signed a decree on the rehabilitation of peoples deported from Crimea in the 1940s. 

But in May, the United Nations voiced concern about what it called the "serious problems" of harassment and persecution of Crimean Tatars since the annexation.

By RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service and RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service

Last updated (GMT/UTC): 19.09.2014 11:30

AFTER THE PARTY IS OVER...

Despite the column inches, the wall to wall TV coverage and the spin, it is worth noting that UKIP only won a seat in Scotland at all because the Lib Dems imploded. Their success in Wales, while looking impressive was not quite enough to deliver a top of the poll position (although they came pretty close). It was an uncomfortable night for the Westminster based and Westminster focused political parties.

Despite the momentary glee on the part of the ‘Brit’ political commentators last night the SNP still came top of the poll in Scotland. In England, things were different, here UKIP came top (save for in a few of the electoral regions). For a while last night, the Conservatives and the Labour Parties struggled merely to secure second place. The Lib Dems pretty much ceased to register across England at least on the European level, coming in behind the Greens.

Does UKIP speak for England? 

After the European elections and the local government elections (in England) perhaps it’s time for a Party for England, to raise English concerns and English issues – which have long been ignored by the London based UK media, UKIP and the misnamed Westminster elite. I mention this because on more than few occasions disillusioned voters (in England) have told that they have nowhere to go politically as none of the political parties operating in England speak for them.

If you follow this line of reasoning, there is not much choice if you are an English voter and are genuinely concerned about your country. Well that’s actually not quite true, as there is a degree of choice providing that your politics sits on the extreme right of the political spectrum. There is UKIP, which despite presenting itself as a UK Party is culturally perhaps deep down more concerned with independence of England, something which may explain why it does less well in Scotland and slightly less well here in Wales.  

Of course there are the English Democrats, who on a good day,  to be honest can make Nigel Farage look slightly to the left of Lenin, as they are somewhat to the right of Attila the Hun. As for UKIP, their interest in Wales is simply a matter of electoral expediency even more so than the Westminster based parties who do make some vague gestures to Wales by periodically branding themselves as Welsh.

I have no doubt that UKIP, despite recent public change of heart,  would if it could entirely abolish the National Assembly, along with our emergent democracy (and perhaps Wales itself) if it could get away with it.  Policy wise UKIP is a strange blend of latent (and not so latent) bigotry, some of the stranger political and economic elements of American libertarianism (the Tea Party strain) and a nostalgic (almost 18^th century) vision of Greater England (sorry Britain) that has not existed in fifty years (if it ever did then).

Putting the obsessive fixation with referenda on EU membership aside, UKIP’s grip on political and economic reality might be described as fragile at best. Our (Welsh) national interests and concerns being entirely absent, if left to UKIP, regional aid (European and otherwise) to our country would entirely vanish and not be replaced - it’s already under threat from the Westminster based political parties.

Regional aid historically has been  used by Westminster based governments to attempt to redress the glaring economic  imbalance that exists today (and has existed for much of the last century) between much of Wales and significant portions (but certainly not all) of England. One question the Westminster based political parties have failed to answer is - if the Union has been so beneficial to us here in Wales over the last 40 years then why are we even eligible for regional development aid?

I digress, the one real question that probably should be really be asked  in England is not why is there no viable rational left of centre English political party, but perhaps the question should be where has it gone? Along with why is it that a monopoly of the sense of 'Englishness' being defined by the far right. Historically, at least, there was a pretty solid radical tradition in England, at least until it was smothered by the emergence of the monolithic Labour Party - who sold themselves to the Westminster system in the early 1920’s. 

Perhaps George Orwell, in The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, which was published on the 19^th January 1941, identified the underlying problem with England and political representation that applies as much today as it did then,  wrote:

“England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare's much-quoted message, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts...”

At the moment ‘England’ is being run by the irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts, but, enough of Nigel Farage, George Osbourne and Nick Clegg. Sooner or later, preferably sooner, a rational political party needs to emerge to articulate English concerns and to redress them. From a Welsh perspective the rise or at least the reanimation of a sense of English national consciousness, should pose no problems for Wales, though we might well ask why has it taken so long?

A SIMPLE CHOICE – PUTTING WALES FIRST

The ballot paper somewhat ironically may have been about two foot long, yet it offered little by way real choice. To cut to the chase, the real question has always been who is going to stand up for Wales and fight for our national interests? By way of answering that I ended up dismissing the out and out fascists, the fascist wannabees, the Little Englanders, the former Bolsheviks (or ex communists) and the former party of Arthur’s ego. That let me with the Westminster focused and Westminster based parties, who to be honest I can also dismiss, they may talk the talk and walk the walk at times, but have at best a peripheral (pretty much only an electoral) interest in Wales. They may be ‘Welsh’ branded or at least a Welsh tint but their priorities remain almost entirely focused on Westminster and their recent records show that Welsh national interests come second to their party interests.  Wales needs a strong voice in Europe - so as I said there was little choice in the end. If I want a party that focus on our national interests, one that will stand up for Wales and be answerable to the people of Wales then it comes down to Plaid Cymru, the Party of Wales. 

SCOTLAND AND NATO

Scotland and NATO

News that a meeting was held last month between Scottish government officials and NATO to discuss membership of the alliance in the event of independence, probably didn’t go down to well in with Westminster and the unionists. The talks were held at NATO's headquarters in Brussels. Senior Scottish government officials met with Dirk Brengalmann, the then NATO assistant secretary general for political affairs and security policy.

The meeting was held in early July and was facilitated by the UK's delegation to NATO, who also attended. NATO described the meeting as "informal and informational in nature". Scottish officials took the opportunity to argue that since Scotland was already within the alliance as part of the UK, it should not have to start from scratch in securing membership in the event of a Yes vote in next year's referendum. The SNP Scottish government, is committed to NATO membershipafter independence but has pledged to make nuclear weapons illegal in an independent Scotland.

Now, none of this should surprise anyone very much, as any potentially soon to be independent European state will probably end up talking constructively to NATO. European collective security has, by an large (with the exception of the Bosnian catastrophe) worked and we have managed to avoid any wide scale protracted continental land wars. NATO membership is a good and practical step for any European nation seeking its independence.