Rhetoric and policy learning: On Rhodri Morgan’s ‘Clear Red Water’ and ‘Made in Wales’ health policies

Abstract

One of the benefits of multi-level systems of governments, according to their supporters, is that their plurality of governmental institutions/levels provides the scope for valuable policy innovation and learning. One vocal supporter of this view has been former Labour First Minister of Wales (2000–2009) Rhodri Morgan, who labelled the United Kingdom’s devolved bodies “laboratories” for the formulation of new ideas to be subsequently shared and learnt from across the Union. An issue which has yet to be discussed, however, is the underappreciated but nevertheless important role played by the rhetoric of key actors such as Morgan in facilitating such a culture of policy learning. This article focuses upon this subject, looking at rhetoric as a factor in policy transfer through an analysis of the governmental language of Morgan himself. Specifically, it analyses the rhetoric through which his administrations’ health policies – which radically diverged from those followed at Westminster – were justified and described. It argues, in so doing, that Morgan’s administrations adopted a non-universal rhetoric of national (Welsh) specificity based around phrases such as “Made in Wales” and “Clear Red Water” politics to justify their policy programme, which may have actually delimited rather than facilitated possibilities for cross-border learning. Policy makers aiming to promote cross-polity institutional learning, it concludes, would do well to learn from the case of Morgan’s Labour administrations and avoid the dangers of nation-bounded rhetoric.

Keywords

Health policy in Wales nationalist rhetoric policy learning rhetoric UK devolution Welsh Labour

Advocates of systems of multi-level governance often claim ‘multiple levels of government provide scope for policy innovation in one jurisdiction to be disseminated as best practice to other jurisdictions and levels, through a dynamic of emulation’ (Mackay, 2010: 166). Rhodri Morgan, former First Minister of the National Assembly for Wales, has been a vocal proponent of this position. Speaking in 2010, Morgan described the United Kingdom’s devolved institutions as legislative “laboratories”, a plurality of which would mean (and had meant) a plurality of “new ideas”. Through the formulation and application of such new ideas, he argued, devolution allowed policy makers to “learn lessons” from one other, developing a system where policy transfer across legislative boundaries becomes the norm (Morgan, 2010).

Such pronouncements look especially apposite in light of the rainbow-coloured governmental map of the UK following the May 2011 devolved elections: red in Wales, yellow in Scotland, blue and orange in Westminster and an increasingly accepted mix of green and red, white and blue in Northern Ireland. If policy divergence provides opportunities for policy learning and transfer, more is likely under such multi-faceted conditions. Furthermore, during Morgan’s period in office, the Assembly lacked primary powers; however, such powers were “unlocked” in the successful 2011 Welsh referendum, providing greater scope for future policy development in Wales (Wyn Jones and Scully, 2012).

An issue which has yet to be discussed, however, is the underappreciated role played by the rhetoric of key actors such as Morgan in facilitating cultures of policy learning. This article focuses upon this subject, looking at rhetoric as a factor in policy transfer through an analysis of the governmental language of Morgan himself, as an avowed believer in such a system, during his first two terms as First Minister (2000–2007) up to, but not including, the One Wales coalition with the nationalist party Plaid Cymru.¹ Specifically, it analyses the rhetoric through which his administrations’ health policies – which radically diverged from those followed at Westminster – were justified and described. As Scott Greer (2009: 134–135) notes:

Health politics, and government, are full of concepts like ‘modernisation’, ‘devolution’ and ‘choice’. Much of the thinking is of such poor quality that we can only speculate as to whether the ideas are the rhetorical instruments of policy makers with other motivations, or whether they are the true beliefs of policy makers with weak minds. This means that the writers about ideas tend to divide into two. Some take the concepts at the government’s word and write, critically or uncritically, as if White Papers were real policy and serious philosophy. Others evaluate the policies hidden behind the words but do not question the words themselves or identify underlying changes.

This article seeks a third way, looking not at policies or beliefs behind rhetoric, instead drawing inferences regarding its affectivity.

On this basis, it argues that, far from consciously acting to facilitate inter-institutional learning as maybe expected, Morgan framed his administration’s policy choices in what amounted to nationally bounded terms, where their adoption was linked to a particular nation-derived necessity. It seems more likely, as is therefore postulated, that through his rhetoric Morgan hindered rather than facilitated the dissemination of his radical policies to governmental institutions outside of the Principality. This is due to the manner in which Morgan and his administrations adopted a non-universal rhetoric of Welsh specificity based around concepts of national “smallness”, “Made in Wales” policies and a “Clear Red Water” agenda (this, it should be emphasised, being before entering coalition with the nationalists). With this rather ironic deafness to the role of rhetoric vis-à-vis policy learning, metaphorically speaking, Morgan allowed his laboratory door to be closed (if not totally) to possibly sympathetic and curious outsiders. His example, it is argued, may therefore provide significant lessons for others seeking to develop the governmental culture Morgan professed to desire. Specifically, it warns of the dangers of articulating their policy programmes through ultimately nationalist rhetoric.

The argument presented here is divided into three parts. The first details the nature of the health policy programme under discussion. The second reports and analyses the rhetoric through which this programme was justified by Morgan and his key (Labour) ministers. The third section concludes by demonstrating the nationally bounded nature of this rhetoric and making the case for this as a detrimental factor in facilitating policy learning.

Policy programme

As a constitutive part of a wider multi-level party, Welsh Labour under Morgan’s leadership demonstrated a clear formal and non-formal autonomy in its formulation of a policy programme in health that radically diverged from the Labour government in Westminster (Moon and Bratberg, 2010). The same cannot be said, however, with regards to the regional party’s ability to gain influence for these policies beyond itself (Moon and Bratberg, 2010): despite offering ‘probably the most striking case of policy and political change since devolution’ (Greer, 2005: 508), Welsh Labour’s programme has nevertheless, in the words of Mark Drakeford (2006: 554) been ‘unreported’ and ‘struggled to see the light of day’ outside of the Principality (see also Greer, 2005: 508).² Indeed, the main airing of the differences between the NHS in Wales and its neighbour England in recent years has been by the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron in his attacks upon its alleged inefficiencies at Prime Minister’s Questions (Hansard, 8 Feb 2012: Column 297) wherein his argument is that the only lessons to be learnt related to ‘what not to do’.

While the analytical purpose here is not to look at the content of the policies formulated by Morgan’s administrations between 2003 and 2007 per se but to focus, instead, upon how they were articulated, the main elements of this policy agenda must be briefly described. The key differentiations between Welsh Labour’s policies under Morgan and those enacted at Westminster can be broken down into three broadly delineated areas: (1) the localist re-organisation of NHS Wales and adoption of a co-operative’ service delivery model rather than a choice-based competitive one; (2) the rejection of private involvement in the health service in Wales; and (3) the pursuance of a Public Health Agenda over a focus on tackling waiting-lists.

Regarding the first area, policy-wise the main elements of Welsh Labour’s reorganisation of NHS Wales were broadly localist in nature. This primarily included abolishing the five existing Health Authorities in Wales, replacing them with 22 Local Health Boards (LHBs) organised upon local authority boundaries. The analogues of England’s Primary Care Trusts, though significantly smaller in size (Greer, 2004: 14), these LHBs were given responsibility for primary health care and commissioning services from Wales’ seven pre-existing Health Trusts (Longley, 2008: 45). This institutional reorganisation was matched by a re-structuring of the system of health provision based around the explicit rejection of competitive models of public service delivery in favour of a co-operative model. This delivery model was affirmed across numerous Assembly-produced documents spanning from 2004 to 2006 (see: NAW, 2005; WAG, 2004, 2005, 2006a, 2006b) but, ultimately deemed a costly failure, was rolled back following the 2007 election to a state closer to the previous system (Greer, 2007/08).

The second major policy thread of Morgan’s health agenda had to do with the use of private resources in the public sector. Thus, in marked contrast with policy in England, the Labour-led Assembly ruled out Foundation Hospitals in Wales and shunned the use of Private Finance Initiatives (PFI): ‘On PFI specifically, figures from 2007 showed that, out of a UK total of over £48.4bn in PFI projects, Wales totalled just more than £555 m compared to England’s £43.5bn. This constituted a proportion of PFI spent in Wales of around 1.27%’ (Batcup, 2007).³ This rejection of private involvement in health service delivery also extended to the decision to broaden the definition of the ‘clinical team’ to embrace ancillary staff such as porters, cooks and cleaners so that, in the event of a PFI contract, they would not be transferred to the private sector (Davies and Williams, 2009: 72).

The third major theme was a focus upon a Public Health Agenda (PHA) over an emphasis on cutting waiting lists. This PHA aimed to tackle the root causes of illhealth, principally identified as poverty, social exclusion and lack of equal opportunities (WAG, 2002). In practical terms this amounted to the implementation of ‘a strategy focused on health but not health services’, whereby it was recognised that ‘good education, good transport, good housing, a good job, and a healthy social and family life all contribute to a healthy life’ (Greer, 2007/08: 33). This most notably involved scrapping up-front charges in a number of areas. Thus, in 2001 the Assembly scrapped prescription charges for everyone under 25 and froze them for all other age groups. These charges then decreased in price, year on year, until, in 2007, they were scrapped completely. Free dental examinations were also introduced for people under 25 and aged 60 or over, and the maximum dental charge frozen. For those aged 60 or over optical examinations were also made free at the point of service (BBC News, 2007a). Further free services explicitly funded as part of the PHA included free school milk for under eights (BBC News, 2001), school meals for primary school pupils (BBC News, 2003), and swimming for under–sixteen-year-olds during school holidays and for the elderly outside of holiday periods (WAG, 2008a).

The emphasis placed upon public health was in marked difference to England, where the reduction of hospital waiting lists was the principle drive in terms of health investment (Adams, 2005). Subsequent figures showing waiting list figures increasing in Wales post-devolution in contrast to England (McClelland, 2008: 37), were linked, critically, to Welsh Labour’s choice to focus priority on the PHA rather than waiting lists by a number of organisations (Auditor General for Wales, 2005a, 2005b; Sheelah et al., 2010). Waiting lists thus became a defining disparity between the systems and following criticisms Labour’s 2007 Assembly manifesto reversed its emphasis, promising significant cuts in waiting times (BBC News, 2007b).

Under Rhodri Morgan’s leadership, Welsh Labour nevertheless demonstrated a clear autonomy in the formulation of a policy programme that diverged from that at the centre of the post-devolution UK Labour Party. As Finlayson (2005: 20) declared in comparing Labour’s 2005 manifestos in England, Wales and Scotland, the differences between the former and latter two demonstrate how ‘the party is fragmenting in many ways and Welsh Labour and Scottish Labour are becoming ever more different entities’ offering ‘manifestos in their own right’. In terms of influence, however, while the policy of scrapping prescription fees has since been adopted in Northern Ireland and Scotland, the key elements of Morgan’s policy programme described above have not yet gained notable purchase beyond the borders of the Principality, where similarities have been broadly conterminous, rather than post facto, choices.

Why might this be? Clearly, a number of variables play a role in facilitating or delimiting policy learning between institutions. This might include: the lack of intra-party structures though which the regional parties can promote their policy agenda internally to the rest of their party;⁴ institutional lock-in and path dependency in a devolved system which is, relatively speaking, still new, and to which the civil service has yet to comfortably adapt (Trench, 2001); and the question of how successful policies are viewed, ideologically, by other legislators. For a party leadership following a distinctly different conception of public service delivery in England, for example, what is described as a success at Cardiff Bay might be seen as a failure elsewhere (and indeed, as the conclusion shows, real ideological disagreements existed within Welsh Labour itself).

In the following focus upon actors’ rhetoric as an affective element, this article does not seek to discount or underplay the importance of such factors. Rather, it makes the case, with reference to the Welsh Labour example, for the possible significance of this one hitherto overlooked factor in facilitation or delimiting policy learning and subsequent transference between bodies. As regards the particular case under analysis, the argument, as detailed below, is that the particular rhetoric through which Morgan and his administration explained/justified their health policies should in this way be seen as one explanatory dynamic. Having detailed the three main aspects of Welsh Labour’s health policy programme between 2000 and 2007 – localist re-organisation and a co-operative service delivery model, the rejection of private involvement, and the pursuance of a Public Health Agenda – the following section reports and analyses this rhetoric.

Rhetorical analysis

A quotation from a BBC Panorama interview offers a useful entrance point to Rhodri Morgan’s rhetoric as First Minister. Questioned on policy differentiation between Westminster and Cardiff, Morgan told the interviewer: ‘I think the key lesson is that devolution has to mean what it says. There's not a one size fits all. We are talking variable geometry UK here’ (BBC News, 2000; cf. Morgan, 2000a). Morgan relayed a similar message in a 2005 keynote speech when he declared that as Welsh Labour ‘reform[s] our public services we need to recognise the particular circumstances of Wales’, arguing for the rejection, in so doing, of what he labelled ‘the English model’ – as differentiated from his own administration’s ‘Welsh Way’ (Morgan, 2005; Davies and Williams, 2009: 9).

Localism and co-operative reorganisation

The former was equated by Morgan with a competitive, choice-agenda model of public services. This he had rejected in a 2002 speech on the grounds that:

our commitment to equality leads directly to a model of the relationship between the government and the individual which regards that individual as a citizen rather than as a consumer. Approaches which prioritise choice over equality of outcome rest, in the end, upon a market approach to public services, in which individual economic actors pursue their own best interests with little regard for wider considerations. (Morgan, 2002)

Later, in the same speech, Morgan further rejected the policy, in his words, of ‘basing our services on a model of the user of public services as some sort of serial shopper, forever out there in the market place looking for the piece of education policy or health care which best meets their individual needs’ (Morgan, 2002). This ‘choice agenda’, according to the Assembly-produced document Beyond Boundaries, had ‘not found favour … on grounds both of principle and practicality’ (Brand, 2007: 5). Referencing, perhaps, this notion of practicality, Morgan told BBC News (2004): ‘it's not really relevant in Wales whether you're talking about health or education …. Our geography does not encourage this social model, and I don't think our values encourage this model either’.

There was, in his words, ‘a perfectly respectable case to be argued for this model [i.e. in England], but not for Wales’ (WAG, 2004: 3) since ‘greater consumer choice in public services does not fit in with Welsh values’ (Hetherington, 2004).

Meanwhile, in the afore-mentioned 2005 speech, Morgan further linked the rejection of a competitive model of public service delivery to Wales’s nature as ‘a small country made up, in the main, of relatively small communities’:

Traditionally the organisations responsible for delivering our public services are on a relatively small scale. By British standards, we have small local authorities – most with a population of around 100,000. We have relatively small Local Health Boards – working on the same populations as local authorities. Our hospitals are often small in scale. (Morgan, 2005)

These circumstances, according to Morgan, meant that health service reform was required based around ‘effective collaboration’ and the localist restructuring described above (Morgan, 2005):

We are clear that this path will produce better results, and not only in terms of efficiency gains …. More significantly still, a collaborative model fits better with Wales’ size as a small country of three million people, our geographical pattern with an absence of large metropolitan areas and Welsh values and attitudes and sense of ownership in our public services. (Morgan quoted in WAG, 2004: 4)

The position of Morgan’s administration was thus, as described by his then minister for Health Jane Hutt, that ‘achieving consensus’ was ‘key to service reconfiguration’ (Smith, 2005: 142).

What can an analysis of the above rhetoric indicate about the nature of how health policy was expressed by Morgan and his team? In answering this question the concept of “articulation”, taken from the work of Laclau and Mouffe (2000), is valuable; this refers to the process whereby a relation is discursively established amongst different elements – linking them together in a particular ‘elemental chain-of-equivalence’ – such that their identity is modified. This abstract process ultimately describes the basic ontological underpinnings of all rhetorical communication since the latter ‘is not epiphenomenal vis-à-vis a self-contained conceptual structure for no conceptual structure finds its internal cohesion without appealing to rhetorical devices’ (Laclau, 2007: 67): rhetorical communication essentially amounts, therefore, to the re-articulation of these conceptual structures qua ‘elemental chain-of-equivalence’.

This noted, several significant articulations can be identified as structuring the afore-given rhetoric. The first key articulated linkage was between the “necessity” of Morgan’s chosen approach and the specific circumstances and conditions of the particular Welsh polity. Morgan thus spoke against ‘one size fits all’ approaches and called for the recognition of a ‘variable geometry UK’; to ‘recognise the particular circumstances of Wales’; and to reject ‘the English model’ for a ‘Welsh way’ – the former, as he presented it, being ‘perfectly respectable’ for England ‘but not for Wales’ (it not being ‘really relevant in Wales’ since neither the Principality’s ‘geography’ or ‘values’ ‘encourage this social model’).

Morgan did express his ideological preference for a non-competitive model of public service delivery – a seemingly universal standpoint (see above; Morgan, 2002). In linking these values and principles with contextual circumstances, however, he again – to quote Martin Laffin (2004: 221) – ‘presented Welsh policy divergences as responses to specific Welsh conditions rather than as philosophical or ideological departures from the Blair government’, ‘justifying Welsh policy distinctiveness … as a response to special Welsh circumstances rather than as an ideological divergence from new Labour’. Davies and Williams (2009: 13) similarly describe Assembly ministers as ‘usually explaining policy differences in purely pragmatic terms, related to the distinct culture or geography of Wales’.

This notion, explicitly mentioned by Morgan, of geography as policy justification also links with the notion of Welsh specificity and the concomitant necessity of his approach via a rhetoric of national “smallness”. One of the particular circumstances of Wales prominently identified by Morgan is the Principality’s apparent natural/geographical and social smallness: Wales, in his words, is ‘a small country made up, in the main, of relatively small communities’ and ‘a small country of three million people’, with ‘relatively small scale’ public services, ‘small local authorities’, ‘small Local Health Boards’, hospitals ‘small in scale’ and ‘an absence of large metropolitan areas’. In light of this, his argument goes, ‘a collaborative model fits better’ with Wales’ size as a ‘small country’.

This rhetoric of smallness can also be seen in a paragraph of Morgan’s 2002 speech not specifically related to health policy:

The small scale of the Assembly, and of Wales itself, is surely a major advantage to us …. Wales is of a size where we are well placed to work together to make things work better …. We should therefore be able to take advantage of small scale to make big decisions more easily. Inside the Assembly we have done our best to maximise the advantages of being the relatively small government of a relatively small nation. (Morgan, 2002 [italics added])

If Wales was, as articulated by Morgan, objectively small, these small characteristics were also linked to a particularly defined set of ‘Welsh values and attitudes and sense of ownership in our [the Welsh’s] public services’. Indeed, looking beyond health policy again, a similar linkage was articulated by Morgan in 2000 when he stated that:

The structure of the Assembly is very much oriented towards trying to develop a communal ‘small-nation psychology’ way of working. In pushing the devolution process forward we don’t want to keep the Westminster style for Wales. (Morgan, 2000b [italics added])

Here again, in explaining the decision to reject procedures used in England (the ‘Westminster style’) on the grounds that they are wrong for Wales, the attribute of national smallness was linked to a special (non-English) Welsh circumstance (‘small-nation’) as well as to a particular, identified Welsh culture (‘psychology’) and non-competitive (‘communal’) politics. This, in turn, echoes Hutt’s reported desire for ‘consensus’ over competition as the basis for NHS reorganisation. In each case policies were defined by a difference between Wales and England.

Vital in this articulation is the link between smallness and Wales as a nation, with Wales presented as characterised by its smallness, and smallness articulated as characteristically Welsh (psychologically, politically, communally). As an ideological concept, therefore, smallness, in the Welsh case, can be seen to function as a modality of nationalism or, rather, as a concept adjacent to it (cf. Freeden, 2005). Wales is small, the logic goes, so if the justification for a policy is smallness then conterminously the justification is “Welshness”: that is, tautologically, the Welshness/smallness of Wales means policies deemed Welsh/small must be adopted.

Substantiating this point further, Coupland and Bishop (2007: 35–36) note that, ‘the idea of “smallness” is itself conventionally if rather meaninglessly attributed to Wales’, prefacing this by stating that ‘phrases like … the innocent-sounding “small communities” tap into a familiar ideological seam of meaning’ linked to ‘Welsh-speaking communities’ and predispositions ‘to find intense cultural value in communities, often with the idea of the Welsh language embedded in this idea’. Indeed, as J. Barry Jones (2000: 199) notes, ‘Wales is frequently referred to as a “community of communities”’ and arguments of ‘smallness’ clearly tap into and link with the idea of both ‘Welshness’ (specifically, in this case, in terms of culture/language) and subsequently a communal, non-competitive and thus consensual politics: Welshness/smallness/community – the very articulation illustrated above.

Labour’s rhetoric surrounding this area of health policy can, thus, be seen as evoking the fundamental necessity of its policies due to a particular Welsh specificity: small in geography and values, which is to say communal and consensual in politics and values, Wales’ health provision must respond to these national characteristics and resultantly be local and specific. This is framed in direct opposition to “big” England and its model of health provision, antithetical to Wales’ needs, which is competitive and generic. Articulated thus, smallness is closely linked with Welshness, and this Welshness with specific values of anti-competitive, anti-market, communal politics.

Private finance

This linkage of a specified Welsh particularity to the necessity of Morgan’s chosen policy differentiations from those enacted in Westminster can also be seen in Welsh Labour figures’ rhetoric regarding the rejection of private capital. Thus, when asked in 2007 whether the policy regarding provider choice in the NHS would change, Morgan was adamant: ‘No. Our position has never been against choice per se, but we are, and remain, firmly against organising services on the basis of marketisation’ (Bevan Foundation, 2007: 4–8). This echoed his argument back in 2002, when he stated:

My objection to the idea of Foundation Hospitals within the NHS is not simply that they will be accessed by those public service consumers who are already most articulate and advantaged, and who can specify where they want to be treated, but that the experiment will end, not with patients choosing hospitals, but with hospitals choosing patients. The well-resourced producer will be choosing the well-resourced consumer as the kind of patient they want – the grammar school equivalent in hospitals. In other words, in welfare markets, producer-choice, rather than consumer-choice is too likely to be the outcome. (Morgan, 2002)

The anti-consumerist view was repeated by the then finance minister, whose justification for rejecting private influence in the health service was an ‘aim to maintain the public sector ethos, which we value, in all public services’ (Chaney and Drakeford, 2004: 134).

This approach was labelled by Morgan and colleagues as part of an overarching programme of Clear Red Water. This label referred to ‘the issue of distinctiveness … which has emerged over the lifetime of my administration between the way in which things are being shaped in Wales and the direction being followed at Westminster for equivalent services’ (Morgan, 2002). Indeed, described by Russell and Paun (2009: 75) as ‘the defining metaphor of Rhodri Morgan’s Welsh Assembly Government’, the phrase ‘soon became the accepted shorthand for the distinct Welsh agenda’ being applied across policy areas, not only health or funding systems (Davies and Williams, 2009: 49). The first analytical point to note is how, in rejecting the use of PFI and Foundation Hospitals, Morgan’s main argument echoed the previously detailed anti-market arguments, here linking it to policy agenda under the label of Clear Red Water. Through the use of this catch-all label the Welsh Labour leadership framed their politics in distinctive opposition to the Labour leadership in England by forging coterminous linkages around concepts of socialism and nationalism. How was this done?

The phrase Clear Red Water is generally accepted as originating in Morgan’s 2002 speech to the National Centre for Public Policy in Swansea – this despite the well-known fact that, while included in the distributed text, the phrase itself was left out of the actual oration (Morgan, 2002: 201). It can in fact, however, be linked back further to 1999 and Morgan’s campaign against Alun Michael for the leadership of the Labour Party in Wales when the former told BBC News: ‘I think you can see a clear blue water or a clear red water in my style of campaigning and the people I appeal to compared to my opponent’ (BBC News, 1999). This issue of the term’s origin is important to note. Davies and Williams (2009: 49) attribute the phrase to having been ‘first applied to Welsh Labour’s policies by the Guardian’ in a 2002 editorial regarding Gordon Brown’s budget – the source which the speech itself acknowledged (Morgan, 2002). That Morgan was actually utilising a version of this rhetoric as far back as 1999 is significant both insofar as it demonstrates that the phrasing was self-created, not adopted from an exogenous media description, and that it shows an element of long-term consistency in his political positioning. Indeed, the quotation amply demonstrates the two-fold link, mentioned above, articulated via the rhetoric of Clear Red Water.

First, it links the rhetorician’s position to socialism (“red”), depicting it as more socialist (“redder”) in comparison to the policy position, real or abstract, chosen on the other side of the “water” (e.g. in England, or in the 1999 case, by Alun Michael). The primary result of this articulation is, thus, an exclusionary logic whereby anyone disagreeing with the related policy choice is framed as taking up an anti-socialist or more right-wing position (an abusive presentation in the Welsh Labour context, where Michael for example was framed as the archetypal ‘Blairite poodle’ (Flynn, 1999). This further links into a wider set of rhetorical labels applied by Morgan and his supporters to Welsh Labour’s devolved politics including “Classic Labour” (Davies and Williams, 2009: 4), “real Labour” (Master, 2005) and a declaration that policies followed a ‘Welsh recipe for 21^st century socialism’ (Morgan, 2006).

Such phrases acted as signposts, or ‘signifiers of difference’ (Finlayson, 2007), for Welsh Labour’s separate policy approach and identity as distinguished from those of the Labour Party outside Wales (but particularly in England). Hopkin and Bradbury (2006: 145) refer to this as ‘Morgan’s strong rhetoric of differentiation’, a rhetoric which sets up a dichotomy between Classic/Real Labour and New/False Labour and thus, simultaneously Socialist/Welsh Labour and Non-Socialist/English Labour with ‘clear red water’ flowing between the two. Second, by the aforementioned divisionary logic, with water as a delineated border (Offa’s Dyke, perhaps?) and red as the colour of Welshness as embodied in the Welsh dragon (draig coch), Clear Red Water also resonates with depictions of those opposed to linked policies as ‘non-Welsh’, or not ‘real Welsh’ (Moon and Bratberg, 2010: 57).

Taken together, the phrase thus links socialism and Welshness,⁵ tapping into something akin to Keir Hardie’s message to his Merthyr constituents in 1908, to ‘have the Red Dragon of Wales, but have it blazoned on the Red Flag of international socialism’ (quoted in Davies, 1999: 3). The phrase furthermore plays a valuable rhetorical function for supporters as a quilting point, linking disparate policies together into the semblance of unified thought around a particular governing philosophy. James Mitchell (2009: 50) is thus on the right path when he asserts that ‘even if it was rhetorical, [Clear Red Water] indicated a shift in the terms of the debate which might result in substantial change’ – it is simply with his starting point, the ‘even if’, that he missed an essential point. But Clear Red Water was linked to another rhetorical trope which appears time and again in the arguments of Morgan et al. and can be illustrated with reference to the Public Health Agenda (PHA).

The Public Health Agenda

In 2001, the then Minister for Health and Social Services, Jane Hutt, described the decision to reorganise the NHS as ‘a plan made in Wales and designed to meet Welsh needs’ (Eaton, 2001). This same slogan, Made in Wales, was repeatedly related to the policies of the PHA also, including: the introduction of free primary school meals (WAG, 2004); free dental checks for the over 60s and under 25s (Perkins, 2003); and domiciliary care. All of these policies were separately described by Welsh Labour figures as Made in Wales policies, part of a ‘distinctive “made in Wales agenda”’ (WAG, 2008b).

Discussing the PHA as an overall project, meanwhile, Rhodri Morgan (2007) declared that the Assembly was using its budget ‘in the way that we choose to suit Welsh circumstances’: ‘those circumstances are a large inheritance of a lot of chronic conditions and a lot of people on low wages for whom it is a disincentive to return to work or remain in work because if you are not in work prescriptions are free’. In the same vein, responding to criticisms of the PHA due to its apparent impact upon waiting list times and lengths, Hutt declared them to be just the ‘tip of the NHS iceberg’, asking rhetorically: ‘if you focus entirely on one segment [waiting times], are you moving the focus and resources away from the day-to-day management of primary care in a country where there is a legacy of ill health?’ (Hetherington, 2004). In the above ways, Morgan and his Welsh Labour ministers again linked the necessity of their policies to Welsh-specific circumstances. Approached thus, what can again be seen is the link of a policy – and divergence from the policies followed by the Labour government in England – to a set of contingencies particular to Wales. This mirrors the articulation of the necessity of re-structuring the health service and its model of delivery, necessity being here linked to socioeconomic and health ‘realities’ rather than small size and communal nature this time. ‘The rhetoric of this strategy’ as Greer (2004: 151) puts it, ‘hinges on, and is justified by, ill health and inequality’: thus, the scrapping of prescription charges was linked to the issue of high economic inactivity due to medication costs to a specific legacy of general ill health in Wales.

Alongside this was the interesting rhetorical trope Made in Wales, applied across PHA policies (and indeed beyond) by Welsh Labour figures. As rhetoric, the phraseology of Made in Wales can be seen to articulate a two-part message. First, it again frames policies as necessary by linking them to the particularity of the Principality: like the stamp on a packet of supermarket bought lamb, Made in Wales legitimises choices by linking them to the naturalness of the nation. This linkage once more constructs a circular tautological justification (cf. smallness qua Welshness): (1) these policies are made in Wales; (2) they are not made elsewhere (England); (3) policies made elsewhere will not work in Wales due to its particular circumstances; therefore, (4) policies must be made in Wales; and (5) Made in Wales policies such as these are thus necessary and good.

Second, as indicated above, Made in Wales plays a symbolic role as both a quilting point and signifier of difference – labelling and indicating a distinctive coherent Labour policy programme in Wales, differentiated from that followed by the party in England. As Betsan Powys puts it, the argument was ‘that the so called giveaway policies are a distinctively Welsh approach’ (Powys, 2008 [italics added]). “Made in Wales” thus chimes with “Clear Red Water” in delineating a national boundary with the two phrases becoming linked together; for example, then Welsh Labour Grassroots⁶ chair Dai Morris (2005: 34), argued that ‘supporters of the “clear red water” agenda cannot be agnostic on the need for a strengthening of the devolution settlement’ since ‘only when the Assembly has primary law-making powers … will it be able to pass Made in Wales legislation to deliver its Made in Wales policies’.

Analytical conclusions: Morgan’s nation-bounded rhetoric

The rhetoric of Morgan and his Welsh Labour ministers in his first two terms as First Minister thus articulated a two-pronged line of argument of the form that (1) Welsh particularity (its smallness, culture, socioeconomic legacy, etc.) necessitates different policies in Wales from those in England; and (2) specifically, it necessitates the rejection of the competitive politics which would otherwise be imposed from England, in favour of correlative anti-competitive (Made in Wales, Clear Red Water) policies. This is, as such, a nation-bounded rhetoric, where national particularity is articulated as the key element linked to policy choice. But if Morgan’s aim was, as he would later claim, to govern in a fashion which facilitated and promoted a culture of cross-border policy sharing, this article argues that the adoption of such rhetoric was mistaken.

The reason why is well explained through an encounter between Morgan and a supporter of his policy agenda. Speaking from the floor at a 2006 meeting in Swansea of the ginger-group Compass Wales, Nick Davies, a founding member of Welsh Labour Grassroots, directed a point of argument to the present First Minister. Welsh Labour, he declared, ‘shouldn’t dig a deep trench of “clear red water”’ between itself and ‘New Labour’ in England, ‘but should put pontoon bridges over and go tell them [our policies]’.⁷ Morgan chose, in response, to reiterate his different-policies-for-different-polities argument – yet Davies’ argument is interesting in the manner in which he sought to (re)articulate the Clear Red Water policy programme. Clearly the phrase denoted a bounded differentiation for him, but, significantly, one erected by Welsh Labour, not pre-existing and naturally derived. The “red water” filled a “deep trench” that Welsh Labour had dug, rather than being the result of necessity derived from determinate Welsh particularities as articulated by Morgan. Furthermore, Davies’ argument demonstrated his belief that, while the policy approach identified with Clear Red Water was a good thing, there was a political danger in its present articulation around alleged Welsh distinctiveness from England rather than differences with regards to universal, socialist principles between Labour in Wales and New Labour in Westminster.

This explains the desire of Davies and other Welsh Labour Grassroots members to place ‘pontoon bridges’ across to England and to disseminate to their comrades there the good message of what they described as ‘Welsh Labour’s under-appreciated health policy as a progressive alternative to its equivalent across the Severn Bridge’ (Davies and Williams, 2009: 77). Their key message was the avocation of Welsh Labour constructing a bridge with the wider Labour movement; that ‘Welsh Labour should … be promoting its own policies within the British labour movement as a practical example of how a progressive administration can use its power to make a positive difference’ (p. 14).

Here was an open call for exactly the inter-nation policy ‘”learning” later enthused about by Morgan, but the message did not fit with his own articulation of his administration’s policies as born of particular Welsh values, Welsh geography and Welsh needs. Thus lays the problem: where policies are explained as tailored to the particular necessities of the nation/region, the new policy compounds formulated therein (in the devolved “learning-laboratory”) will be fashioned – or at least presented as such – to work within the delimited boundaries of the tailored-to conditions only. In the case of Welsh Labour’s post-devolution health policies, the articulations underlying actors’ rhetoric, being predicated upon the centrality of the non-universal concept of Welsh specificity, did exactly the latter – even where universal concepts such as socialism were present, they were still, nevertheless, linked to Welshness in some manner. If the aim was to facilitate and promote policy learning from the Welsh case, then this, it is here argued, brought dangers – dangers which, as a few examples from Welsh Labour figures in Westminster demonstrate, were genuine, at least to some degree.

Thus, former Welsh Office special advisor John Adams (2005: 6–7) argued they were focused ‘on achieving “clear red water” with England for the sake of it’ rather than on ‘combating injustice and creating a society that treats all of its citizens with fairness and respect’, leading to negatives such as relatively longer waiting times. Similarly, following his first tenure as Secretary of State for Wales, Peter Hain MP (2008: 15, 24) declared the need for Welsh Labour to adapt to offer ‘policies which are not defined by their “Welshness” or “redness”’ but instead defined ‘by the quality of their outcomes’; Labour, he declared, needed ‘to ensure that there is not an over-emphasis on finding “Wales-only” solutions for their own sake’, asserting that ‘the point of devolution is not to be different but to be better’. Rhondda MP Chris Bryant (2005: 47, 49) also criticised the rejection of ‘policy ideas that do seem to have delivered improvements in England … purely so as to establish clear red water’ as ‘irresponsible and wrong’.

In each case these intra-party critics grasped Morgan’s Clear Red Water rhetoric and turned it back upon him to dismiss and deride the value of his administrations’ policy programme as one based entirely on the differentiation of Wales from England, not on the basis of universal “inter-national” values which would travel (e.g. ‘combating injustice’, ‘fairness and respect’, and ‘quality of outcomes’). Morgan’s rhetoric of national particularity thus allowed opponents to dismiss his administrations’ policies on the grounds that they were different, but only “redder” and “Welsher”, not better. The closest debates about their extension beyond Wales came were comments such as Lord Lipsey’s (2008) that the ‘dotty policy’ of free prescriptions – which he argued ‘transfers resources from poor to rich’ – was an ‘infection’ he hoped ‘does not spread across the borders’.

Of course, numerous variables, as already stated, will have played a role in facilitating or delimiting the other UK legislatures’ policy learning with regards to Welsh Labour’s health reforms; this article does not intend to overlook the important affective role played by such factors. Yet, as Davies seemingly recognised – and Morgan refused to – policy learning requires universal elements which can be shared across borders, but if policy differentiation is crafted to fit nations’ specific features, those same policies are logically designed not to fit elsewhere. By adopting an inherently nationalist rhetoric and articulating its policies via a language which excluded rather than formed links with factors which transcended Wales’ borders, the Assembly under Morgan, may, therefore, have unintentionally stymied policy travel beyond its legislative boundaries: a trench was dug along the border and claimed to be a natural feature – a position critics could happily exploit. Ultimately, then, if policy learning is to become a reality in the post-devolution UK, actors within each of the legislative bodies may want to adopt, wherever possible, political rhetoric based around universal terms that cross-boundaries, not nation-specific ones that do the opposite, avoiding “Made in X” policies.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Andrew S. Crines and two anonymous referees for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

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