"Raymond Williams’ journey from working class south Wales to academic life in Cambridge gave him a similar perspective and appreciation of the importance of grounding political economy in geography. A Plaid member, in the 1970s he saw the renewal of politics emerging from the periphery of Europe, not from its cosmopolitan centres. This new politics would come out of an appreciation of place and he thought Plaid offered a valuable alternative to Labour’s tradition of ‘metropolitan centralism’.[1] Challenging the hegemony of the UK state, he wanted Wales to gain ‘real independence’, based not around the illusion of national political sovereignty but on more local economic control. In 1981 Plaid formally enshrined these ideas by adopting ‘community socialism’ as a constitutional aim. Williams was not the first to take such an approach, from the start Plaid had seen the importance of a decentralist approach to the economy, rooted in consideration of real places with their very different issues. D.J. Davies, one of Plaid’s founders, sought ideas from other small countries on the edge of Europe, and looked at Irish and Scandinavian economic policy. He emphasised the power of community to create an alternative, co-operative economy for Wales, which he thought could “undermine capitalism and transform it from within.”[2] This tradition continued with Plaid championing the ideas of economists like Leopold Kohr, who opposed what he called the “cult of bigness” in social organization and Ernst Schumacher, author of Small is Beautiful. Using this thinking, Plaid set out its Economic Plan for Wales in 1970, based on a decentralised network of hubs across Wales, very much in tune with grassroots, green thinking."
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:26:40 +0000
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