The Welsh Socialist Alliance (WSA) was a socialist political organisation in Wales. It was closely related to, but separate from the Socialist Alliance.
It was founded by the Socialist Party and Cymru Goch and some independents. From the start this seemed to many an unlikely alliance given that the two principal groups involved have major disagreements over many issues, mainly over the national question. Cymru Goch called for an independent socialist republic whereas Socialist Party Wales at the time supported a Welsh parliament with law making powers short of independence. However they agreed to discuss the issue while the WSA called for the Welsh Assembly to have the same powers as the Scottish parliament. The WSA ensured that no one party could "control" it through the self-denying 40% ordinance which limited members of any organisation to no more than 40% of the Alliance committees.
The Welsh Socialist Alliance stood on a joint United Socialist ticket with the Socialist Workers Party at the Welsh Assembly election, 1999.
The Socialist Workers Party has originally declined to accept the invitation to join the WSA because the SWP was opposed in principle to standing in elections. In 2000 it changed its position and entered the WSA. The attempts by the SWP to dominate the WSA destabilised the organisation and by the end of 2002 both Cymru Goch and Socialist Party Wales had left.
The SWP ignored the 40% rule and packed meetings with members to ensure that its position prevailed and its supporters were selected as candidates. Cymru Goch left when any opportunity to argue for its pro-independence position was closed off and the Socialist Party left when the SWP packed a selection meeting in Swansea to ensure that no Socialist Party candidates would be selected for Swansea seats in the General Election. The Socialist Party's open letter of resignation (http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/CampaignsSocialistAlliances.htm#SPW) blamed the SWP: "To lose one founding organisation could be unfortunate; to lose both can only mark the decline of the WSA as a genuine alliance"
The WSA is now largely inactive and was regarded by some as being little more than a front for the SWP standing in elections until the launch of the Respect Coalition.
Famous quotes containing the words welsh, socialist and/or alliance:
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“I pass the test that says a man who isn’t a socialist at 20 has no heart, and a man who is a socialist at 40 has no head.”
—William Casey (1913–1987)
“I think that a young state, like a young virgin, should modestly stay at home, and wait the application of suitors for an alliance with her; and not run about offering her amity to all the world; and hazarding their refusal.... Our virgin is a jolly one; and tho at present not very rich, will in time be a great fortune, and where she has a favorable predisposition, it seems to me well worth cultivating.”
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)