Category Archives: Articles

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 […]

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 […]

The politics of mutual aid during the COVID-19 crisis

Crisis and community There has been endless talk about the politics surrounding the COVID-19 crisis—including important critiques of the disastrous response by the UK and the Welsh governments. This is an important place to start, because we need to recognise this as a political crisis, especially during a time when some are condemning others for […]

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 […]

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 […]

A lethal case of one-partyism

This weekend has seen Wales embarrassed on a global scale, as the Welsh Government stood by whilst the WRU attempted to hold the dead rubber Wales v Scotland rugby game. At first, we thought it was a mistake, a delay. They’ll cancel it, don’t worry. Memes circulated – ‘we can’t cancel the rugby mun, Denzil’s […]

Felindre’s bitter pill: we need stronger protection for rural Welsh-medium schools

This piece was contributed by Angharad Dafis, a representative of the supporters of Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Felindre. We welcome the Welsh Language Commissioner’s far-reaching verdict that the City and County of Swansea failed to take the essential statutory step of carrying out an assessment of the effect on the Welsh language within the community before setting […]

Healthy communities are the basis of our lives

Healthy communities are the basis of our lives. That’s the belief of a group of people from Gwynedd and Anglesey who are developing an alternative strategy for community development. They call themselves “SAIL” – meaning “Basis” – because community is the basis of everything. “SAIL” has nothing to do with yachting! The basis of the […]

The problems of eco-capitalism

In the middle of our multiple crises, modified forms of capitalism – usually branded New Green Deal or something similar – are presented as solutions. This is a dangerous distraction. Introduction Only a madman or an economist would dispute that the world is in the grip of a series of related ecological, climate and equality […]

Precarious in the extreme: what the press isn’t saying about our universities

The pattern became obvious, soon enough. In the past, students asked for the extenuating circumstances form for a variety of reasons: an illness during the exam period, a death in the family, from time to time a personal crisis or a bout of poor mental health. But now, there are only two reasons: anxiety and […]

Mass civil disobedience breaks out in Catalunya

Cymraeg | català Undod / solidarity with Catalunya Yesterday the Spanish Supreme Court finally gave their verdicts against the nine Catalan political prisoners on charges, including ‘rebellion’ and ‘sedition’, associated with the October 1st 2017 referendum on independence for Catalunya. All were prominent politicians or cultural leaders and Catalunya has been anxiously awaiting the expected […]

Plaid Cymru and nukes – meltdown mentality

Plaid Cymru meets for its annual conference at Swansea over the weekend, and no doubt we’ll hear all sorts of promises about the independent Wales which seems to be closer than it has been for ages. But can we rely on Plaid to lead us to the promised land? Or will the party lead us […]

Does Wales even need a capital city?

Wales’ independence is an opportunity to rethink everything. In his widely praised speech delivered at the independence march in Merthyr Tudful, Eddie Butler called independence a blank canvas. A referendum will no doubt be the means by which we become independent but we shouldn’t let our vision be limited by that horizon. After the march, […]

Wales rising

Liminal 1, relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process 2, occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold *** Merthyr Tudfil; that crucible of the Welsh imaginary where industrial Wales began. Merthyr; that legendary name where the forces of Dissent first mustered in Wales; Merthyr; the word […]

You can’t fix Britain

There was no coup d’etat. Nothing illegal happened. The British state is doing exactly what it was designed to do. In Britain’s unwritten constitution, there are no rules, only conventions. What Boris Johnson did certainly feels wrong. A Prime Minister from a party that hasn’t won an election in Wales since 1885, winner of an […]

Boris Johnson can be defeated in Wales with radical democracy

You’ve heard it by now: some posh wanker has asked the Queen to suspend the Westminster parliament to push through a no deal Brexit. Even Philip Hammond is calling Boris’ move undemocratic. The UK is on fire, once again. Or rather it continues to be on fire but some Etonian has pissed petrol onto the […]

Why we in Wales should be defending the Rojava revolution

Wales’ independence movement offers hope for a different kind of politics. Those of us interested in Wales’ autonomy and freedom don’t want a carbon copy of the colonial British state. The hope is that with true independence we can lift our people out of poverty in the abolition of the class system, heal our environment […]

Arms licences for Saudi Arabia illegal says the Court of Appeal – what’s this got to do with Wales?

What’s the story? Undod welcomes the news that the Court of Appeal has ruled that the licensing of arms exports to Saudi Arabia is illegal. The judges said it was “illogical and therefore unlawful” that the UK Government’s Secretary for International Trade had authorised weapons export licenses, without an assessment of whether Saudi Arabia had […]

Bridgend Ford is a catastrophe. Wales must learn the economic lessons

Last week in Wales should, in years to come, be considered a few days that defined an epoch. After years of prevarication, the M4 relief road was finally scrapped for what must surely be the final time. Within days, Ford had announced they were shutting their factory in Bridgend, with the loss of around 2000 […]

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 […]

Interview with Jean-François Joubert, Québec Solidaire activist

Adam Johannes from Cardiff People’s Assembly talks to Jean-François Joubert, a Québec Solidaire activist. In October 2018 Québec saw a historic election with the two parties that have traded power for generations both hammered at the polls by voters hungry for change. The main beneficiary was the right wing Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), but the […]

A Brexit escape route for Wales?

A few weeks ago a most unusual occurrence came to pass. The Guardian ran a piece that focused some of its attention on Wales. Whatsmore, despite Brexit being its focus, it did not involve another of those narratives about a journey into the Heart of Darkness – the latest attempt to find out why the […]

Democratising the Welsh alternative media

This is an adaptation of an article which originally appeared in Welsh in the magazine O’r Pedwar Gwynt. Thank you to the author and the magazine for giving Undod permission to republish it. Before we start, let us accept a basic truth: there is nothing inherently Welsh about the Welsh media, and there is no […]

The night IndyWales became the best gig in town

“Something’s Happening” were the words that summed up the occasion. An ineffable feeling that could not be expressed in any specific terms, but only sensed in the moment. Well over a thousand people crammed into the Tramshed to listen to a veritable feast of artists singing under the banners #yesismore and #gellirgwell – urging people […]

US imperialism in Venezuela, and the legacy of colonialism

For too long, solidarity with the oppressed, the working class and the “wretched of the earth” has been an afterthought for those on the left of the Welsh independence movement. Solidarity with socialists abroad shouldn’t be an adjunct, a caveat to the “real” struggle of Welsh independence; it is part of one organic whole, our […]