Mark Drakeford promotes Rhodri Morgan’s legacy as an antidote to the far right

Martin Shipton

Rhodri Morgan’s vision of a less tribal, more equal and inclusive Wales should be an inspiration to all at a time when the world has become such a difficult and dangerous place, according to former First Minister Mark Drakeford.

In a keynote speech that could be interpreted as a denunciation of the rise of the far right in Wales, the current Cabinet Secretary for Finance said that Mr Morgan’s legacy was based on bringing people together rather than encouraging division.

The gathering in Cardiff’s Llandaff North Rugby Club was the latest fundraising event for a statue of Rhodri Morgan to be erected near the Senedd.

Mr Morgan, who died in 2017, served as First Minister from 2000 until 2009, and is often referred to as the father of devolution.

Before Mr Drakeford’s speech, numerous ethnic minority members of the audience told how Mr Morgan had been of help to them personally or to organisations they were associated with.

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Mr Drakeford gave four examples from the first years of the 21st century of the ways in which, he said, Mr Morgan had transformed Welsh politics for the better.

He prefaced his comments by saying: “I want to set what we’ve heard this evening in a slightly wider context, because I think there’s a linking theme in what I’m going to say that chimes with everything you’ve heard already, but sets those individual stories in a wider set of beliefs, values and political purposes that were there throughout Rhodri’s time as First Minister.”

Shortly after Mr Morgan took over the leadership of the Welsh Government, he asked Mr Drakeford to work for him as his senior adviser.

Mr Drakeford said: “Rhodri told me that for this institution to thrive, we need to find a way of forming a government that has a stable majority. A majority we can rely on to get the work done. And for that, we need a partner. And, you must go, he said to me, to meet the Liberal Democrats, and see if we can persuade them to come into government with us. And if it all goes wrong, you understand you’ll have been entirely on your own.

“And so it was that, Saturday after Saturday, during the spring and summer of that year, I would go down to Cardiff Bay, which would be deserted other than myself and a man called Michael Hines, who represented the Liberal Democrats. And Saturday after Saturday, we worked our way through what came to be the programme for government of that first majority government formed in October of the year 2000.

“I’ve always believed that was a turning point in devolution. That is the point at which the institution, instead of looking in on itself and worrying about how people were going to survive, began to look upwards, began to do the job on behalf of the people of Wales that devolution was designed to deliver. But today, when we’ve had 25 years worth of working across party lines, because there’s never been a party with a majority in the Senedd, we think of this as the normal way of doing business. But back in the year 2000 it absolutely was not at all.

“Politics is sectarian by its nature. You belong to a tribe and you know who the other tribes are, and you work in that sort of way. Working across tribal lines with other parties was not in the DNA of the Welsh Labour Party. I think you could say it was quite the opposite. And actually, I believe it was only Rhodri who had the political authority and the amount of political investment in the bank to draw on that could have created that sort of alignment between two parties at all.

“And what you see is somebody widening the boundaries of political participation, being prepared to include people within government who are not in your own tribe, not in your own party, and to take that step towards a more inclusive way of conducting politics in the Senedd. That has stood us in enormously good stead ever since. It’s become the normal way of doing business, not the huge exception that I think it was back there in the year 2000.

“A consequence of that was inevitably a reshuffle and into government, Rhodri brought Sue Essex, Jane Davidson, Jenny Randerson. For the first time ever, certainly the first time ever in Wales, there was a Cabinet where there were more women than men, in those seats of power. And women were not doing the jobs that women would normally be thought of as doing in politics. Women were in every part of the government: a woman finance minister, a woman economic development minister, women doing the jobs that not that long before at all would not have been thought of as being within their sphere. And that’s a second example. A second example, I think, of where Rhodri’s commitment to the widening circles of politics could be seen from the very beginning of his career.”

9/11

A further telling point in Mr Morgan’s career, said Mr Drakeford, was his reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States: “That changed the nature of global debates at the time,” he said. “It made the world a harder place, a harsher place. It made the world a more suspicious place. And here in Wales, Rhodri took the initiative in response to that to establish the interfaith forum.

“He decided to bring people of all beliefs, and indeed none, together around one table to demonstrate that in Wales with solidarity between different peoples from different parts of the world and with different beliefs we could find a way of resisting those forces that were so powerful at the time, which pushed communities away from one another – that taught people that other people were the enemy to be suspected and to be treated harshly. Well here in Wales, we had a very different response. And the community faith forum celebrated its 20th anniversary only a year or so ago.

“It’s a remarkable achievement, I think, for a First Minister to respond to pressures which are pushing you in the opposite direction – to think, no, here in Wales what we will do is bring everybody together instead. Everybody around the one table. It’s stood us in enormously good stead.” The third example of Mr Morgan’s innovative approach derived from a speech he gave in Swansea in 2002, where he outlined the “clear red water” values that distinguished his approach from that of then Prime Minister Tony Blair in Westminster.

‘Clear red water’

Mr Drakeford said: “The clear red water lecture was a lecture of its own time. It dealt with some of the policies and the preoccupations of that era, but it also set out a set of underpinning political beliefs – beliefs which I think remain as important to us today as they were when they were articulated.

“He said that universal services were always to be preferred to means-tested services. You’ve never wanted, if you could avoid it, to see a child standing by themselves in a queue for free school meals because they have been singled out with the stigma that always goes with being singled out in that way. In this Senedd term we’ve managed to achieve universal free school meals for every child in primary school.

“And maybe most importantly of all in that clear red water speech, Rhodri said that the object of public policy in Wales should be to create a more equal Wales. A Wales with a gap between those people who have more than they would ever know what to do with, and those people who worry about where their next meal should come from. That the object of political action should be to narrow that gap as much as you can. Because more equal societies are healthier societies.

“They’re more successful economically. They have less crime. They have less fear of crime. They teach you that the things that matter to you in your life, the things that you would like for your family, for your friends, are the things that your neighbours want for their families and their friends.

“The things that unite us are always more important than the things that divide us. It’s about reaching out and including people and recognising that the more you do that, the greater the strength of your community becomes. That diversity is a sense of strength. And when you can turn it into a sense of unity as well, then you have laid down the foundations from which more than ever before our fellow citizens are able to prosper.”

Welsh language

Mr Drakeford’s fourth example related to Labour’s manifesto for the 2003 National Assembly election: “It committed us to support for the Welsh language and for Welsh language communities,” he said. “It committed us to support for BAME communities and it says specifically that the Labour Party committed ourselves to having a black candidate on every single list that we put up for election in every single part of Wales.

“It committed us to internationalism. It committed us to Wales playing our part in Europe, to being part of that wider movement of progressive nations and progressive causes, and it laid down the foundations for the Wales and Africa programme.

“It is remarkable, I think, to look back and to see the determination that he had to shape the nature of politics and world society from that very beginning.

“Rhodri used to say: ‘There is nothing we can do about today. Today is over. Don’t go home and worry about what went wrong today. Go home today and think about what we can do better tomorrow.

“I think that’s my last message from tonight, really. To pay tribute to everything we’ve heard, the best thing we can do is to look forward in the spirit that Rhodri laid down for us. Because the world is a difficult and dangerous place, and has become more so in the last 12 to 18 months than at any point in my lifetime.

“The utterly distressing scenes that we see in Gaza. The continuation of a war in Europe on our doorstep here. The world economy threatened by the unfathomable actions that we see from what was once the leader of the free world.

“These are really, really tough times. And the answer as best we can make it is to draw on that sense of acting together. Recognising the things we have in common. Having a purpose that says, we will not be divided from one another even when the forces of the world appear to push us in that direction.

“There is a spirit and a purpose to our politics that Rhodri represents. And that’s why we have to work so hard to make sure we preserve and stay alive in that difficult future.”