Billy Bragg Gig - Caernarfon 11th June 2009 - part of the Miners’ Strike Tour.

From the Socialist Party Wales website http://www.socialistpartywales.org.uk/

Review by Jan Underwood

Under the South Wales Area NUM’s banner with the words “Forward to a Socialist Britain and World Peace”, Billy Bragg treated us to a great concert and political rant, declaring that he was proud to stand in front of those words.

To kick off the evening Billy had found a young group Dan Amor from Penmachno [a feat in itself, as few in the North know where that is!!] They sang beautifully in English and Welsh about various struggles and life in North Wales. Their rebelliousness mostly amounted to different coloured shoelaces, and their sweet harmonies would only contrast Billy’s gruff – however, it was great to see Billy backing local youth.

A hard-line political poet, Patrick Jones from South Wales followed. He really set the scene, staring with an anti-BNP poem. Other poems were daringly anti-organised religions and pro-female. He finished the set with a tribute to Aneurin Bevan and his vision of the NHS ‘free at the point of entry’ ideals, ‘The Healing House’, set to music by Billy.

On to Billy’s cracking start with ‘The Sound of Ideology Crashing’ – no prizes for guessing the topical subject! He continued with several rare Woodie Guthrie songs, arising from a collaboration with Woodie’s daughter, which could have been written today, such that we are still in the same political mess! Onward with many more political rants which included ‘Oh Freedom’, ‘From Red to Blue’, ‘Which Side Are You On?’ and ‘All You Fascists Are Bound to Lose’. He interspersed ‘I keep Faith’ and ‘There is Power in The Union’ with a call to action. He defined his use of the word ‘faith’, stating: “Faith is international solidarity – there is power in the Union”, linking these two great songs brilliantly.

Whether you love him or hate him, he is a man of action, working constantly at grass-roots level. He even found an opportunity to raise funds for his charity ‘Jail Guitar Doors’ keeping all his fans happy with original signed pictures. He didn’t stop until he had spoken to everyone who wanted a chat and an autograph, which was well after midnight.

The Bangor Socialist Party also had a great night, selling 15 papers, two copies of Socialism Today as well as various books and pamphlets – including a paper and our bilingual pamphlet “The Great North Wales Quarry Strikes” to Billy himself! Countless ‘Youth Fight for Jobs’ leaflets went home with many at the gig. The good feeling spread over to donations on the night (£10), and the following day at a Socialist stall in Bangor, where £15 was raised. If this is his influence, he is very welcome to come again!

UNITE March for Jobs in Birmingham

North Wales Socialist Party acheived a new record today - for getting members to stuff outside of North Wales. Usually we are hamstrung by the sheer cost of stuff -paying for a £50 ticket to get to stuff in London usually limits how many of us can go to stuff and usually we tend to club together to pay for things. But the demo today had free coaches so we managed to get a whopping 4 of us to something (actually we had more go to the Socialist Party Wales Conference, but i won't count that), which would have been even more if members weren't either working/having an operation on their foot/grounded 'til the end of their exams/students visiting home.
I travelled down on the North West Wales UNITE coach, where Socialist Party members were conspicuously young. Indeed the entirety of the rest of the people on the coach were UNITE members, shop stewards and full-time officials. We also had a member travel down on the North East Wales coach where the story was fairly similar too.
The demo itself had a few thousand on it, mostly UNITE members, although there were a few other trades unions that had mobilised for it too, i've been led to believe that the local UNISON branch was amongst them. I was on the Youth Fight For Jobs contingent which, to be fair wasn't the largest (but that said most of our uni/college students have exams at the moment - and the SP UNISON caucus was this weekend where we have a fair few young members too).
Anyways - the platform at the end of the rally was full of the usual platitudes (and Digby Jones too) So I scarpered off to the National Shop Stewards Network meeting to hear Rob Williams speak about his victimisation at Linimar (although when I went it was pissing it down too!).

Youth Fight for Jobs Launch Conference

Somewhere between 100 and 150 (the room made it a bit awkward to tell, plus people who were there either only in the morning or afternoon) attended the launch conference of the Youth Fight for Jobs. After some good opening speeches by Alex Gordon from the RMT executive (speaking in place of Bob Crow), Tracy Edwards from the PCS, James Kerr and a Belgian CWI member, the timing of the rest of the opening session clearly went awry as they jammed in a few short contributions from a Tamil student, a member of the SP from South Wales speaking about the sacking of Linamar (ex-Visteon) convenor, Rob Williams and a hip-hop group At Risk of Offending. There simply was too much stuff attempted to be fitted in which meant that the plan of having contributions from the floor didn’t really work.
After a short lunch break the conference split up into workshops. I had been asked to chair the session on ‘What Is The Cause of Unemployment?’ Given it was only a small session (I think the debate on the European elections attracted the most attention), we were able to get into a bit of depth on Marxist economics and also able to discuss the working conditions of those who do have jobs too.
The next session took motions to the congress, all those submitted (which can be found on the Youth Fight for Jobs website) were passed, although a few of them were amended slightly, whilst the age limit for the campaign was remitted to the newly elected steering committee to discuss.
The Conference concluded with a closing rally with a speaker from the CWI in France, a Lindsey Oil Refinery worker and Sean Figg, the newly elected National Organiser for the campaign.
Speaking with comrades after the conference, we were a little disappointed with the attendance, but this is partially due to a number of reasons. In North Wales, it was a combination of lack of money to pay for people getting to London as well as several college students who have been grounded until their exams are over.
Yet the composition of the conference was fairly good. There were a sizeable number of young PCS members there, indeed the PCS Young Members Committee had submitted several motions to the conference as well as the East Midlands PCS NOMS branch and the Student organiser for UNITE was in attendance. In contrast to what a certain ex-member of the Socialist Party has been repeatedly stating online, whilst including university students in the campaign, it isn’t dominated by them as the presence of a substantial number of young workers at the conference showed. Indeed, the delegation from North Wales consisted of a college student and a shop steward.
The conference also received greetings from the workers who occupied the Prisme factory and featured sessions with speakers from the Lindsey Refinery dispute and one of the Visteon Conveners. From a shaky start with the morning session, the conference finished on a good note, despite me missing the last train back to Bangor.