Ex-council leader joined Greens as ‘only true socialist party’

The former Labour leader of Caerphilly County Borough Council said he joined the Greens because “they’re the only true socialist party in Britain at the moment”.

Cllr Sean Morgan stepped down suddenly and quit Labour in September, blaming disagreements over candidate selection processes and his wider disillusionment with the party’s direction. He remains a councillor for the Nelson ward.

The decision to join the Greens follows their path to a “more holistic” cause which combines their longstanding environmental campaigning with a wider emphasis on social and economic fairness, he said.

He also said Zack Polanski’s Greens are the only people “brave enough” to confront right-wing rhetoric and “challenge the idea that immigration is to blame for all the country’s woes”.

But Cllr Morgan’s switch raised a few eyebrows in the borough and sparked questions over his environmental stance and record as council leader.

Cllrs Jan Jones and Janine Reed, who represent the borough’s Ynysddu ward, alleged it was “difficult not to see this sudden conversion as one of political convenience rather than conviction”.

Their ward contains Ty Llwyd quarry, where chemicals dumped decades ago have sparked local fears about toxic leachate.

The Ynysddu councillors also claimed they had been “excluded from key cabinet meetings concerning the deeply troubling environmental situation” at the quarry site.

Cllr Morgan defended the council’s handling of the quarry and said his “green credentials are without doubt”, both on a personal level – he said he is a member of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth – and in his previous cabinet roles, which included pushing for Caerphilly to become one of the first Welsh councils to declare a climate emergency.

On a “complex” situation at Ty Llwyd, Cllr Morgan said the council had “done everything within its powers to keep the toxins contained”.

He said he would “welcome it being designated as contaminated land, because there would be more money coming from the Welsh Government to pay for some kind of cleanup operation”.

And on Cllr Jones and Reed’s accusations of exclusion, he claimed they had turned down offers to join other meetings.

Cllr Morgan will now sit as a backbench opposition councillor, listening to cabinet members present policies he helped shape before he stepped down.

He accepted it would be “unusual” to not support those policies already “in the pipeline” when he left, but he said he would evaluate his position “on a report-by-report basis”. 

On subjects like the potential closure of ten borough libraries, he said the Greens had not raised any concerns over his prior support for the measure.

Critics argue the cuts would disproportionately affect the youngest, oldest and most vulnerable in areas which already have fewer public services.

But Cllr Morgan said the local authority had kept libraries open despite government austerity measures, and argued that while closing the ten sites “sounds like a terrible thing”, Caerphilly Council would retain “a far more significant amount of libraries per capita” than elsewhere in Wales.

Cllr Morgan also said he would use his new role to look at the impact of asset extraction in the borough and further afield – in the belief that foreign investment “is only extracting wealth from the country – often untaxed wealth being extracted from the hardest-hit”.

He suggested this, and not the migrants who contribute “so many positives” to sectors such as health and social care, should be the focus of political scrutiny.

Cllr Morgan said he advocated a “proper and legal route for immigrants into the country”.

He stressed “that’s not an open door policy”, adding he wanted tougher checks on foreign money – which “flows without any questions being asked over whether that investment is going to do any good to the country, or any damage to the country”.