In the 2024 election, Reform got the third-largest share of the vote in Cymru. That placed it second in 13 seats. A More in Common poll in January predicted it could become Cymru’s largest party at Westminster with 12 seats.
The background to the rise of the far right is that while the forces of capitalism have ravaged the working class and communities across the UK, in Cymru the plunder is extreme. Our history is one of extraction and exploitation in which the vast wealth produced by our natural resources has been syphoned off for the benefit of a distant elite: a tiny few exploiting the many who generate that wealth. Reform exploits the general sense of abandonment and discontent this plunder produces with Westminster’s and Cymru’s establishment. In the past, Cymru’s natural resources, labour and wealth were extracted through coal mining; now sources of renewable energy are privately owned.
Cymru’s economy was destroyed by deindustrialisation. Port Talbot, the UK’s largest steel works in Wales, was part of an industry that employed 320,000 workers nationwide in 1971; now it only employs 33,700. Half of the 4,000 workers remaining at Port Talbot are due to lose their jobs over the next 18 months. Meanwhile, our natural resources such as wind energy have been contracted out to companies from outside Cymru, which extract millions of pounds of profit annually.
Reform now talks up the possibility of forming a minority government in Cymru after next year’s Senedd elections. But the party has no clear programme for Cymru and no policies that can serve the interests of the people of Cymru. Indeed, quite the opposite. From their vague privatisation plans for the NHS to their dismissal of Welsh language and culture, their messaging is at best confused. They have no substantive policy proposals, no manifesto, no programme and no leader here. Leaving Farage, a Clacton MP, in charge shows their contempt for Cymru.
We have always believed in the importance of grassroots, community politics. Now, however, it is urgent.
Cymunedoli
Cymunedoli, or communitisation (collaborative local networks of social enterprises), is a movement that originated in the 1970s in North Cymru. Blaenau Ffestiniog is pioneering it with Ynni Ogwen, a locally owned energy cooperative. This is one of many projects. Blaenau Ffestiniog has the most social enterprises per capita in the country.
Communities in the north of Cymru have a glue that binds them – the Welsh language – which cymunedoli can build upon. In the south there was once the glue of industry: mines, steelworks, working men’s clubs and trade unions. We must rejuvenate these communities by finding that glue again.
Two former politicians from different political traditions, we recently came together for a series of community meetings to facilitate villages and towns in the valleys of South Wales to find that glue themselves. They are making cymunedoli suit their locality – it must be built from bottom up.
We began in the Three Valleys communities in South Wales – Merthyr Tydfil, Cynon Valley and the Rhondda – to talk with and listen to people’s concerns and priorities, and work alongside them, drawing upon the cymunedoli vision. This united community movement can enable us to take matters into our own hands; to transform our economy, communities and nation so that the wealth created in Cymru stays in our communities. This is the community control that we believe provides the necessary antidote to the appeal of Reform.
