Head of TUC Cymru wins ballot to top Labour list in Senedd election

Martin Shipton

TUC Cymru general secretary Shavanah Taj will top Labour’s closed list in the new super constituency of Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf and will almost certainly be elected to the Senedd next May.

The constituency covers the Westminster seats of Cardiff East and Cardiff North.

Runner-up in the party members’ ballot and therefore number two on the closed list was Cardiff councillor Jackie Jones, who represented Wales in the European Parliament from 2019 until 2020.

Two more Cardiff councillors – Dan De’ath and Sarah Merry – will take the third and fourth places respectively.

Reacting to Ms Taj’s victory in the contest, a Labour source said: “This is great news. A highly experienced trade unionist with a track record of fighting for social justice, Shav will be a breath of fresh air.”

Ms Taj was born and raised in Cardiff, where she went to Cathays High School, going on to Coleg Glan Hafren, the University of Glamorgan and the University of the West of England in Bristol. She’s also a graduate of the TUC training academy – the elite course for high-flying union officials thought capable of great things.

When she became general secretary of what was then known as Wales TUC in 2020, Ms Taj represented around 400,000 affiliated union members. She was previously head of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) in Wales, with around 22,000 members, mostly civil servants.

Racial discrimination

It was as a teenager in Cardiff that she got her first taste of racial discrimination in the workplace: “I’ve always worked, since I was 15 – getting part-time and holiday jobs while studying,” she said.

During an interview that took place in 2013 when she became the head of PCS in Wales, she said: “One day I was with a friend when we saw a notice in a shop window advertising a job. I went in and was told the job had gone the day before. Sure enough the advert continued to be in the window and when I rang up using a British name I was told I could have the job. But I didn’t go to work for them.

“My family are from Pakistan. My dad came here in 1958 and he worked in the steel industry. I’m a Muslim, although I don’t really like to put myself in a specific category. For me, working in the trade union movement is entirely consistent with the values I grew up with at home.

“My father is probably my biggest influence – he has always been involved in his trade union and was a rep himself.”

She also said in 2013, when she wasn’t a member of the Labour Party, : “The Labour Party needs to remind themselves of who they were and who they supposedly are, and how they began to begin with.

“They need to remember that it was the working people and trade unions behind them that set them up in the first place, and who it is that they represent. It shouldn’t be the bankers, it shouldn’t be the super-rich. They need to remember what their values and principles were. And if they can manage to commit to that, they might be able to get somewhere.”