Anti-racists rally in Caerphilly
The Labour Party has suffered a historic defeat in the Caerphilly by election in South Wales.
Plaid Cymru took the seat in the Senedd—Welsh parliament—with 47 percent of the vote. The Welsh nationalist party rode to victory on a wave of anger against Labour’s betrayals—and revulsion at the racism of Reform UK.
The far right party, led by public school boy Nigel Farage, came second with 36 percent. It ran a racist campaign against what it brands Welsh Labour’s and Plaid Cymru’s “mass immigration agenda”.
Welsh Labour was humiliated with 11 percent of the vote in a seat it has held for more than a century.
Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) campaigned against Reform UK in Caerphilly. It said, “This result stands as a powerful testament to the dedication and determination of anti-racist campaigners and community activists across Caerphilly.
“Volunteers delivered thousands of leaflets, spoke directly with residents, and made clear the real dangers posed by Reform’s divisive politics.”
Caerphilly shows that anti-racist campaigning can make a difference and should boost activity against Reform UK in the Senedd elections next May.
The rise of Reform UK remains a major threat in Wales—and confronting it is a challenge for the whole movement.
Support for Welsh Labour in Caerphilly collapsed from 46 percent in the Senedd elections in 2021 when its vote increased by 11 percent.
The result of the by-election—triggered by the death of Hefin David—means Labour only has 29 out of 60 seats in the Senedd. First minister Eluned Morgan will have trouble pushing through the budget.
Welsh Labour has not recovered from the corruption scandals that brought down first minister Vaughan Gething in summer 2024. He was forced to announce his resignation after less than four months in post.
Gething, a close ally of Keir Starmer and the party leadership, had attacked his more left wing predecessor.
What was Welsh Labour’s solution? Unity around another figure from the right of the party. Morgan—or Baroness Morgan of Ely in the City of Cardiff—succeeded Gething in an uncontested election.
Morgan had previously said she would renounce her life peerage in the House of Lords if she ever became first minister. When she became first minister, Morgan said she only wanted to “pause” her yuppy title.
Afterall, she needed the “opportunity if necessary to think about what happens in the future”. A more honest translation is, “I want to keep taking expenses when I’m chucked out at the next election.”
The political crisis in Welsh Labour stems from turmoil outside the Senedd. When Gething came to office there were farmers’ protests over a new subsidy and anger over the 20mph speed limit in built up areas.
The Palestine movement in Wales also had an impact. Two Labour MSs—including Hefin David—sponsored a Tory amendment to a Plaid Cymru motion that called for a ceasefire in Gaza.
This replaced the word “ceasefire” with the weasel-worded phrase “suspension of hostilities” and said the Welsh parliament should “recognise the right” of Israel to self-defence in Gaza.
But the problems go deeper still. Labour has ruled Wales since the Welsh Assembly—now the Welsh Parliament or Senedd—was set up in 1999.
The party talked of “clear red water” between Cardiff Bay and Westminster when Tony Blair’s Labour government was in office. There were some benefits—for example, unlike Blair, it didn’t pursue privatisation in the NHS or schools.
But Welsh Labour’s more traditionally social democratic programme was premised on funding from Westminster. That strategy began to unravel after the global financial crisis of 2008 and the Tory election victory in 2010.
The Tories deliberately starved Wales of funds. But Labour politicians, aside from left wing flourishes, didn’t attempt to mount any sort of resistance through encouraging strikes and protests in response.
Instead, Labour accepted the logic of managing a system that fails working class people.
It should come as little surprise that people don’t give Welsh Labour a free ride after its managed Tory austerity for 14 years.
The NHS in Wales may have avoided privatisation—but it hasn’t dodged the crisis. Almost 600,000 people are on the waiting list for treatment and almost 100 GP surgeries have closed.
Some 29 percent of children in Wales live in poverty—and Labour’s two-child benefit cap is making it worse.
Morgan made some half-hearted attempts to distance herself from some of Starmer’s policies such as the disability benefit cuts.
But Welsh Labour is a far cry from the days of “clear red water”, itself limited in what it delivered.
Faced with anger over its failures, who did Labour pick as its candidate? A centrist business owner—and non-entity—Richard Tunnicliffe.
All he offers is managed decline. “If you don’t balance the budgets, you go bankrupt or you end up getting the auditors in, who will just hack and burn everything,” he said, justifying austerity.
Labour blocked Caerphilly council’s deputy leader Jamie Pritchard from standing because he had supported Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the party.
The far right is growing out of the collapse of mainstream politics in Britain. The two parties secured 63 percent of the vote in Caerphilly in the last Senedd election, while their combined support has now plunged to 16 percent.
Reform UK has been buoyed by a realignment of the right. Seven in ten people in Caerphilly who voted Tory in 2021 have switched to Reform UK, according to polling.
But Reform UK will have also taken votes from Labour. That’s driven by the constant normalisation of racist and far right rhetoric by the mainstream.
The Reform UK candidate, Llŷr Powell, has relentlessly pushed the line, “Vote Plaid, get more immigration.” “A vote for Plaid is a vote for even more immigration into Wales. Vote Reform to end the Nation of Sanctuary,” he says. “Sign our petition”—pointing to a website called Stop Sanctuary set up by Reform UK.
Lindsey Whittle, the left-leaning Plaid Cymru candidate, describes how some people “yell stop the boats” when he’s campaigning. “You hear that all the time,” he says. “But the boats are not an issue here.
“There are no boats with immigrants coming up the River Taff, the River Rhymney, the River Tywi.” He adds that “97 percent of people in this constituency were born in Britain”.
During a BBC candidate’s debate, a woman said her family was among the 2.9 percent of people in Caerphilly not born in Britain. “I have never felt so unwelcome in my own home town as I do since your party came into Caerphilly,” she told Powell.
She said she’d had to tell her sons to stay away from some places, adding, “I blame you for that.”
Anti-migrant racism is the key driver of Reform UK’s rise across Britain. One voter in Caerphilly told the journalist Will Hayward he was voting Reform UK because “people want a change, people need change”.
So is it an anti-establishment vote over Labour’s austerity? The Reform UK voter continues, “Just look up and down here now without naming shops and whatever.
“They will go for a start and give the Welsh people a chance to… I’ve got to be careful what I say here.
“All these immigrants coming in, just look around.”
When challenged that there are hardly any migrants in Caerphilly, he replies, “There’s thousands of them.” When pushed again on the statistics, he laughs, “It’s gone beyond the pale—something needs to be done.”
What is to be done after the results? Building on the success of mass anti-racist campaigning against Reform UK is key.
The far right latches onto people’s anger at years of neoliberalism and austerity and present themselves as an “anti-establishment” force.
But opposition to “mass” and “illegal” immigration is the glue that binds together their story of Britain’s “national decline”.
Anti-racism and class struggle have to go hand in hand—fighting oppression is not a distraction or an optional extra. Saying “refugees are welcome here” is not a liberal or moral appeal not to be beastly to people.
In fact, as the rise of the Green Party’s left wing leader Zack Polanski shows, it’s a powerful mobiliser for many.
Breaking workers from racist and chauvinist ideas is vital if working class struggle is to be successful.
What happens if you don’t make anti-racist central to combatting Reform? What happens if you take the line of most union leaders that attacks Reform UK’s economic policies, but largely ducks the question of immigration?
Look no further than Llanelli in West Wales where racists campaigned to stop refugees being housed at a hotel in 2023.
Labour, Plaid Cymru and the trade unions claimed marchers were motivated by “economic” questions such as jobs and services. They ducked the central question, “Are refugees welcome or not?”
The result? A victory for the far right, racism normalised in the town, and Reform UK almost taking the seat in the general election.
Building SUTR in Wales is a central task. We need many more people saying, “Blame the rich, not migrants,” and taking that message into workplace, union and community meetings.
Second, there is an urgent need for a left alternative in Wales that can galvanise people who want an alternative to Welsh Labour and Reform UK.
Many Labour’s voters have switched to Plaid Cymru which offers social democratic policies. And Whittle has taken a more principled stance on immigration than Labour.
But Plaid Cymru is not a principled socialist alternative to Labour and its leadership has shifted rightwards towards the “centre ground” in recent years. At a local level, it has implemented austerity. At a national level, it has propped up Labour administrations.
It is a nationalist party that, ultimately, sees a unity of interests between the landlord and the poor tenant on Caerphilly’s Lansbury Park estate.
But a left alternative could popularise class arguments, which point the finger of blame at the bosses, to hundreds of thousands.
It could champion working class struggles, the anti-racist and Palestine movements and resistance on the streets and picket lines that is key to winning change. There is an urgent need for Your Party candidates to stand in the Senedd elections in 2026.
19 homes have been destroyed and at least 19 more damaged
Another Blairite gimmick
Human rights groups say the sentences are 'torture'
