For the last two years, Undod has been building up its membership and expanding its activities. As we have said previously, our guiding principle is that the work needed to build a fair, just and humane society must start now: it cannot wait until Wales has achieved independence from the British state. In that spirit, …
Author archives: Undod
Criminal Legal Aid in Wales
Dan Newman and Roxanna Dehaghani The criminal justice system of England and Wales is broken, according to the best-selling Secret Barrister. Decades of underfunding, exacerbated by the UK government’s austerity programme from 2010, have gutted the system posing great threat to access to justice. To date, the debate on the problems of criminal justice have …
Undod stands in solidarity with Gypsy Roma and Traveller communities
Undod stands in solidarity with Gypsy Roma and Traveller (GRT) communities, and with the protestors in Bristol who have this past week been brutalised by police whilst resisting the Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. If passed, this legislation will take away the right to trespass, with devastating effect on the lives of nomadic Gypsy Roma …
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Back to Thatcher for the National Library: Shredding our Heritage
Prospect Trade Union, National Library of Wales Thirty years ago, in the days of Margaret Thatcher, the Welsh Office conducted a review of the National Library of Wales and concluded that the Library required additional funding. A Whitehall-based Civil Servant quipped at the time to a member of management ‘You do like your National Library …
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First, Do No Harm
Staging a post-pandemic ‘recovery narrative’ in Wales – by way of a celebratory event born of a ‘culture war’ – is a contradiction in terms, argues Frances Williams. Instead of international cooperation, 2020 was a year which saw the pandemic prompt aggressive nationalist narratives. Projections of the virus as foreign body gave rise to a …
Holiday homes and homelessness: Wales’ housing crisis (video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci78Hy83bLc This discussion was recorded on Wednesday 18th November 2020. (Please note that this is a verbatim recording which does not contain the evening’s simultaneous translation audio track of contributions in Welsh into English. Technical lessons have been learned for next time!) Here’s the original blurb for the event: From small rural communities to densely …
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We must Reclaim Cardiff
Those of you familiar with this blog will know that we’ve drawn previous attention to the slow but sure desecration of our capital city by the current Labour-run council. The threat to Grangetown’s Tramshed and the welcoming of a British Military Museum on the doorstep of our Senedd are just two parables of the calamity …
Undod statement: The threat to security here has never been from migrants
Undod stands in solidarity with all people seeking passage to Britain’s shores, who are forced to face dangerous routes and exploitative brokers by the UK and the EU’s brutal immigration systems. We join in mourning the 16-year-old child who lost their life in the English Channel and in condemning the assault on another 20-year-old migrant …
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Undod statement on exam results in Wales
Undod condemns the decision by the Welsh Government not to trust in our teachers and to assign grades instead on the basis of an algorithm endorsed by a Tory Government in Westminster. This action has thrown into stark relief the structural inequalities that operate in our education system, and has further entrenched the biases that …
Remembering George Floyd: Undod stands in solidarity with anti-racist protesters
Undod stands in solidarity with those demanding justice for George Floyd, a Black man murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis, and all those who fight against racism and state violence everywhere. The violent suppression of protests across the US, from casual brutality to rubber bullets and the indiscriminate use of pepper spray reveals …
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No going back to normal: Gramsci, capitalism, political crisis, and our response
By: Tad Davies, Ted Jackson, Garmon ab Ion “This is the Italian Marxist revolutionary Antonio Gramsci. He dedicated much time and thought to the concept of crisis. Through the upheavals of the first world war and then the bienno rosso, the “two red years” of near-revolution in its aftermath , he believed that from …
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Wales’ next step: a new series
No more top-down politics: a one-way track to more poverty, more inequality, and a deepening of the ecological crisis. We need to take the initiative. Over the coming weeks we will set out the possibilities that present themselves to the country as it emerges from the crisis. The coronavirus represents the most drastic manifestation of …
Building a better Wales: beyond incarceration
Today should have been a celebration of Welsh culture, identity and independence in one of Wales’ most iconic towns, Wrexham: home of Welsh football, excellent lager, Gŵyl Twm Sbaen, Saith Seren, and pioneer of Welsh nonconformism, Morgan Llwyd. Instead, we are holed up during a period of self-isolation in a desperate crisis that few would …
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Vaughan Gething should go
The world will change utterly, even for those of us who make it through alive… But the people who led us into the disaster are still there. * In our recent round-up of the crisis, we drew attention to a litany of errors from the Welsh Government. We expressed the hope that their handling of …
Welsh Government has the powers to reduce crisis poverty – now
Attention has rightly turned to basic income as a way of ensuring financial security for everyone during the pandemic and resulting deep economic recession. Facing the prospect of shattered livelihoods and disappearing incomes, we have seen the UK Treasury make guarantees to business in the form of an 80% wage subsidy, rate relief and various …
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Welsh Government: always one step behind
More than two weeks into the COVID-19 crisis and the signs are not good in Wales. The NHS Health Board bearing the name of its founder is currently recording higher levels of infection per 100,000 people than London, while the state of Wales as a whole is comparable to the English West Midlands – one …
In a pandemic scenario, Welsh Government must offer decisive political leadership
Following last night’s announcement by the UK Government, echoed by the First Minister, Wales is now entering a soft version of the lock-downs that have been enacted in Italy, Spain and France. Yet there should be no doubt, immediate further action is needed here in Wales as outlined in Undod’s statement two days ago. Our …
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Responding to the coronavirus pandemic: our demands of Welsh Government
By initially following a strategy opposed to the guidance of the World Health Organisation and evidence of what has worked in other countries, the UK government has lost weeks in the fight against COVID-19 — a mistake that is likely to cost lives without urgent and radical steps to tackle the spread of the virus …
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Join Undod today
For the people of Wales, Thursday night served as final confirmation to an increasing number of us that there is no future for ourselves, and our children, within the structures of the British state. Alliances between our ‘progressive’ parties could have saved the day in terms of keeping the Tories out of our Parliamentary constituencies, …
Wales, the climate emergency, and the M4
Statement Undod is a movement established to secure independence for Wales. An independence worthy of the name follows several essential principles including, but not limited to: climate justice protecting our natural environment an ethical economy for all of Wales’ people, and all of the peoples of the world. Undod strongly opposes the idea to build …
S.O. Davies and economic independence for Wales
Thanks to Nye Davies for a great discussion event in Merthyr in the context of the labour movement and an independent Wales, giving us a lot to reflect on in terms of the relationship between socialism and Welsh independence. In particular, Nye was discussing the politics of the legendary S.O. Davies who was Labour MP …
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Undod: invitation to the launch of the Radical Independence for Wales movement
You are warmly invited to the launch of a new progressive movement which campaigns for independence for Wales. Siaradwyr / Speakers: Nia Edwards-Behi Sandy Clubb Dan Evans (Desolation Radio) + more Saturday 26th January 2019 11am till 3pm Yr Hen Goleg, Aberystwyth, SY23 2AU Undod launch event on Facebook At 11am, on the 26th of January, …
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