Labour has been back in power in Westminster for a year – enough time to assess the performance of Jo Stevens, Kier Starmer’s selection as Secretary of State for Wales. The Cardiff East MP is the 11th Welsh Secretary appointed by the UK Labour party (and 9th different person – two having held the post twice, as shall be explained).

Following 14 years in power from 2010 to 2024, the total number of Tory Welsh Secretaries now stands at 13. This article is a companion piece to a blog I wrote about 10 of them in 2019 – titled Tory Welsh Secretaries – which predated the last three who came in the chaotic Johnson/Truss/Sunak days. They were all appointed in the wake of the disastrous Brexit cooked up by Nigel Farage and other malignant far-right buffoons, which so far has wiped over £200 billion off the value of the UK economy.

I have no intention whatsoever of wasting time on Simon Hart, Robert Buckland and David Davies. Suffice to say, Englishman Hart’s two and a half years as Welsh Secretary are only noteworthy for a fanatical obsession with the hunting down and killing of foxes, badgers and other sentient mammals for “sport”. Rishi Sunak awarded him a peerage in his resignation honours list, meaning Hart has still got his fingers in the public purse as the ludicrous ‘Lord Hart of Tenby’. Buckland was Welsh Secretary for a mere three months in 2022, the all-time record shortest period in the post, so there’s little to add to what I wrote in this 2024 blog. As for David T.C. Davies, who is somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun (c406-453), as soon as he lost his Monmouth seat last year he quickly arranged another fat pay-packet for himself, courtesy of Tory leader in the Senedd Darren Millar, as the Welsh Conservative’s Chief of Staff (in a Senedd whose very existence he has spent 30 years opposing).

What all three will be remembered for is presiding over a massive theft of Welsh resources. The structural and rural funding Wales received from the EU, a small but important recognition of the systemic impoverishment inflicted on Wales for centuries by the British State, was not replaced by the Tory government despite their avowed pledge that Wales would not lose “a single penny” because of Brexit. So far, this has cost Wales approaching £2 billion in lost revenue. The piddling “levelling up” measures concocted in its place amount to under 5% of what was lost and moreover have undermined devolution itself through the unconstitutional Internal Market Act, which the UK government has repeatedly used to seize control over devolved matters that were nothing to do with them and prevent decisions about Wales being made in Wales – unlike the EU funds which were allocated directly to the Senedd.

Brexit has reduced the value of Welsh exports by over £1 billion while many key sectors like manufacturing, agriculture and fisheries have been decimated by the Tories’ inept ‘trade deals’. On top of this is Wales’ share of the wider UK damage inflicted by Brexit: £30 billion in lost trade per annum, 400,000 jobs gone, devastation for small businesses, and an average loss of £2,000 per person at a time when the cost of living has rocketed. Not once did any of these three Tory Welsh Secretaries do their job and represent Welsh interests; they were just obedient yes-men for the xenophobic, bigoted Farage/Johnson ‘British’ agenda. The cabal of liars, crooks and ignoramuses who brought about the insane chaos, damage and impoverishment of Brexit, along with their enablers in the rightwing media, should never be forgiven – especially in Wales.

How then do Labour’s Welsh Secretaries compare to the collection of anti-Wales bastards the Tories have inflicted on us? Let us go back to the beginning…

JIM GRIFFITHS (1890-1975)
Over the last 45 years the Labour Party has disgracefully abandoned its loyal voters, its founding principles, its core values and indeed its very reason for existing – to such an extent that the shabby Tory tribute act of today, bowing and scraping to billionaires and fascists, would be completely unrecognisable to a man like Jim Griffiths.

He was the son of a blacksmith from Betws near Ammanford, utterly Welsh, proudly working-class and steadfastly socialist. A miner in the Carmarthenshire coalfield for 17 years, he was a fluent Welsh speaker, a fine orator, a dedicated trade union activist, a committed supporter of Welsh autonomy and a passionate advocate of education, knowledge and culture. When Labour came to power in 1964 after 13 years in opposition, Prime Minister Harold Wilson (1916-1995) abided by the Party’s pledge to give Wales a voice in the UK government and create the post of Secretary of State for Wales – a long overdue recognition of Wales as a distinctive entity that had always been vehemently resisted by the Tories – and so Jim Griffiths, MP for Llanelli since 1936 and the obvious and outstanding choice for the job, became the first ever Secretary of State for Wales in October 1964.

He had already made an enormous difference to the lives of ordinary people in the Clement Attlee (1883-1967) government of 1945-1951 when, as Minister of National Insurance, he was the driving force behind Labour’s acceptance of the pre-war Beveridge Report and introduced family allowances, a comprehensive system of social security and the industrial injuries act. Moreover, working closely with another great Welshman, Minister of Health Aneurin Bevan (1897-1960), he was instrumental in the establishing of the NHS in 1948. Now, of course, he would be drummed out of Labour as some sort of raving Marxist; but in the post-war Labour Party he was just another moderate centrist. That’s how far the Party has lurched to the far-right. And how did the UK ‘afford’ the high costs of setting up the welfare state when six years of war had drained resources, when there was strict rationing and when the Exchequer’s cupboard was bare? Pay attention Starmer and Reeves: BY INCREASING TAXES ON THE WEALTHY.

He did a good job as Welsh Secretary too: setting up the Welsh Office – the distant forerunner of devolution; embedding the concept that Wales had its own particular issues and needs; and accepting the principle of equal validity for the Welsh language (which then took nearly 30 years for the UK government to formally, and still only partially, accept). With his health declining in his late 70s, he stood down as Welsh Secretary after two years in 1966 and then as Llanelli MP after 34 years in 1970. Jim Griffiths was a warm, generous, sincere man who commanded respect and admiration throughout Wales and across the political spectrum: you will search in vain for anyone remotely approaching his quality among the 27 current Labour MPs in Wales – all hand-picked by control-freak Keir Starmer in London.

CLEDWYN HUGHES (1916-2001)
Wilson replaced Griffiths after winning the 1966 General Election with another excellent choice: Cledwyn Hughes, a bilingual, scholarly, cultured, ardent champion of further education, devolution and the National Eisteddfod. He was the son of a slate quarryman from Holyhead who left school at age 12 to work in the huge Dinorwig Quarry and later resumed his education and became the Calvinistic Methodist minister at Disgwylfa Chapel in Holyhead. Young Cledwyn attended the Chapel daily, absorbing the fundamental Calvinist principles of egalitarianism, activism, social justice and humanism, and was educated at Holyhead Grammar School and the University of Wales Aberystwyth, qualifying as a solicitor. He served in the RAF during WW2 and afterwards worked as a solicitor in Ynys Môn and joined the local Labour Party, toppling the Liberals to become Ynys Môn MP in 1951.

In Westminster, Hughes built a reputation in the Commonwealth Office for his high intelligence, unimpeachable integrity and considerable negotiating skills. He was Welsh Secretary for just two years, 1966 to 1968, but still managed to make his mark by extending the powers and remit of the Welsh Office and thus inching Wales forward on the tortuous, rocky road to any semblance of devolution. However, he was beset by major problems. The Aberfan catastrophe happened just six months into his tenure and, although he moved quickly to hold a Public Enquiry and set up preventative unit within the Welsh Office to stop anything similar happening again, the damage could not be undone – and would get worse under his successor (see below). With Plaid Cymru becoming a major challenger to Labour in Wales following the historic by-election victory in Carmarthen, Harold Wilson came under pressure from the reactionary, imperialist element in the Labour Party to stamp out Welsh ‘nationalism’ and, always a politician prone to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, he attempted to do just that with one of his countless reshuffles. Hughes was moved to the Ministry of Agriculture.

He still had much to offer as a unifying moderate voice, through Labour’s loss of the 1970 election, return to government in 1974, Wilson’s sudden decision to stand down in 1976 and his replacement by James Callaghan (1912-2005). Then he retired before the 1979 election that returned the Tories to power under Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013) and became Baron Cledwyn of Penrhos in the House of Lords, where he was an influential figure before retiring in 1992. His last great service to Wales had come in 1982, when he was a major factor in persuading the Tories to abide by their manifesto pledge and allow a Welsh language TV service. He lived long enough to see the return of Labour under Tony Blair in 1997 and the formation of a strictly limited devolved Welsh Assembly in 1999 – the first faltering, tiny step towards the Welsh autonomy that was his life’s mission.

GEORGE THOMAS (1909-1997)
Wilson’s intentions for Wales were made quite clear by his appointment of the virulently anti-Wales, rightwing British nationalist George Thomas, MP for Cardiff Central from 1945 and, following boundary changes, Cardiff West from 1950. I do not intend wasting many words on this treacherous collaborator, the epitome of the loathed ‘Dic Siôn Dafydd’ character, created by poet John Jones (1766-1821) of Glan-y-gors, who betrays Wales in order to ingratiate himself with the English and gain personal advantage.

His two years (1968-1970) as Welsh Secretary are best remembered now for the way the thoroughly nasty piece of work robbed the grieving Aberfan people of their appeal fund – a £2million heist that wasn’t corrected until the almost powerless Welsh Assembly that Thomas so virulently opposed found the money from its miniscule budget in 2007. If Thomas the traitor had had his way, Aberfan would never have received a penny.

After a career grovelling to the powerful and persecuting the weak, years in which the bible-bashing hypocrite repeatedly got his fellow Cymruphobe, lawyer Leo Abse (1917-2008), to pay off the rent-boys and bits of rough who blackmailed him, he ended up as the far-right slimeball Lord Tory Pansy. Post-mortem, his history of child abuse came to light and, even though the police didn’t bother pursuing an investigation properly, few were surprised that the private life of the creepy-crawly mam’s boy was as sick as his politics. Order! Order!

JOHN MORRIS (1931-2023)
Edward Heath (1916-2005) was Prime Minister for four years until 1974 when Harold Wilson led Labour back to government with his third election victory. Heath belonged to a Tory species that is now completely extinct: a cultured, well-read, civilised, decent man who, on today’s political spectrum, would be to the left of the entire Labour Party. Wilson had his faults but, measured against the 21st Century occupants of 10 Downing Street, he now looks like a towering statesman of good will, rectitude, intellect and integrity. Comparing him to Kier Starmer, a not particularly important example illustrates the depths to which UK governance has sunk: Huddersfield-born Wilson was a life-long supporter of Huddersfield Town football club, three miles from his front door; Starmer was raised in Home Counties Surrey, on the far south-east outskirts of London, yet claims to be a passionate supporter of north London giants Arsenal, 40 miles away. To me, this starkly reveals their personalities: one had roots, understood the past and thus the present, and was true to his community; the other is a shallow, cherry-picking, know-nothing glory-chaser, pathetically latching onto second-hand glitter in the doomed hope it rubs off on him. But I digress…

Wilson didn’t repeat his George Thomas mistake. This time he appointed as Welsh Secretary someone who loved Wales rather than hated it and someone who was a recognisable human being not a megalomaniac monster: John Morris, MP for Aberafan since 1959. Born in Capel Bangor, Ceredigion, into a Welsh-speaking farming family intimately connected to the land, brainy Morris became a lawyer after studying at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Gonville & Caius, Cambridge, and the Academy of International Law, The Hague. He was practising as a barrister in Swansea, specialising in personal injury claims by miners and steelworkers, and acting as legal adviser to the Farmers’ Union of Wales when he became an MP, and he would continue to represent Aberafan right through to 2001.

Considered to be on Labour’s centre-right, Morris was a diligent, capable, compassionate public servant and doughty defender of his constituents’ interests who was totally committed to Wales having control over its own affairs – attributes that would place him on Labour’s far-left these days. He was Secretary of State for Wales for the entirety of the 1974-1979 governments of Wilson and then Callaghan, making a significant difference by setting up the Welsh Development Agency and securing special support for north-west Wales. But his term at the Welsh Office was horribly tarnished by the devolution referendum of 1979, which was resoundingly lost by a huge margin thanks to the wicked campaign of lies, scaremongering and divisive anti-Wales propaganda conducted by Welsh Labour’s treacherous fifth column of destructive Quislings. By which I mean people like Callaghan himself, a Cardiff MP, duplicitously undermining his own referendum; George Thomas, of course, telling southerners they would be dominated by bigoted Welsh speakers from the north and west and telling northerners they would be dominated by the elitist Taffia from the south; and a particularly appalling man called Neil Kinnock, later to become a two-time losing Labour Party leader, whose pig-ignorant comments about Wales during the referendum campaign would have him arrested for extreme racism and hate crime if he dared to utter them today. Reading his remarks about Wales today, it’s striking how similar they are to the kind of things said about, say, Greenland, Palestine and Ukraine by Trump, Netanyahu and Putin. Over 46 years later, Kinnock has never apologised; one must therefore assume he remains on the side of imperialist, land-grabbing despots.

All this conveniently paved the way for the coming of Thatcher and the introduction of the turbo-capitalist, globalised free-market insanity that has been destroying society and the natural world ever since. None of it was the fault of John Morris. In opposition he ploughed on as Aberafan MP and ultimately he had the deep satisfaction, after Labour returned to power in 1997, of seeing the second referendum on Welsh devolution won and the establishment of the Welsh Assembly (now Senedd Cymru) in 1999. In Blair’s first government he was Attorney General until he retired at the 2001 General Election and took a seat in the Lords as Lord Morris of Aberavon (sic), remaining active in the second chamber right up to his death.

RON DAVIES (1946-)
One of the best things Tony Blair did on becoming Prime Minister was to make Ron Davies Welsh Secretary in 1997. The Machen-born man of Gwent, MP for Caerffili since 1983, had been appointed Shadow Welsh Secretary in 1992 by Blair’s predecessor John Smith (1938-1994) and during those five years in opposition he developed, espoused and built wide support in the Party for Welsh devolution. Many of his proposals were stymied or watered down by the usual suspects within Labour (essentially the hostile British nationalists of south-east Wales), but Davies persevered bravely and doggedly and was able to put a coherent proposal to the Welsh people and successfully lead the momentous campaign for a ‘yes’ vote in the referendum of September 1997. His famous quote when the result was known – “Good Morning, and it is a very good morning in Wales” – confirmed his place in the pantheon of Welsh greats; the architect of the first morsel of Welsh self-determination for well nigh 600 years.

Some of the inadequacies of the devolution settlement have been gradually whittled away, particularly after the resounding endorsement of limited law-making powers in the second referendum of 2011, but there is still a very very long way to go to unshackle Wales from the clammy clutches of the atrocious British state and, as the last decade has shown, there remain plenty of colonial overlords in England and colonised minds in Wales who will stop at nothing to resist the existential actualisation of Wales. As Davies said in another of his famous quotes: “Devolution is a process, not an event”. And that process has barely begun.

Ron Davies was never able to take his rightful place as the inaugural First Minister. A couple of risky and silly sexual foibles, and the resulting shrieking headlines in the gutter press, sabotaged his political career in 1998. He resigned as Secretary of State for Wales, but he was much admired by the people of Caerffili who knew him best and was elected to the Assembly in the first intake of 1999. But his increasing alienation from Blair’s Labour Party and the 2003 decision to wage an illegal war in Iraq as America’s compliant poodle caused him to quit Labour on principle in 2004 and therefore surrender his Assembly seat. Eventually he found his proper political home in Plaid Cymru and then retired from the political fray in 2012. He was entitled to put his feet up; he had more than played his part; he had made history. Diolch yn fawr, Ron butty – and, by the way, diolch also for saving my life in 2008!

ALUN MICHAEL (1943-)
The very existence of the Assembly meant that the Welsh Secretary post had become virtually redundant. All the decisions pertaining to Wales previously made by unelected civil servants in Whitehall were now made by a democratically elected body in Cardiff. Yet Westminster finds it so very difficult to let go of its first colony – probably because that would leave insecure England with nobody to boss around and nowhere to brazenly exploit. Tony Blair, becoming ever more Tory and autocratic, exemplified this when he rode roughshod over the wishes of the people of Wales and the Labour Party in Wales and imposed Alun Michael as the first First Minister in 1999, ignoring the widespread clear preference for Rhodri Morgan (1939-2017). What made it worse was that Michael, the rightwing MP for Cardiff South & Penarth, was already the Welsh Secretary, appointed by Blair in 1998 when Ron Davies resigned. This meant that Blair was conflating the two posts, attempting to meld them into one as though nothing had changed and Welsh affairs were still controlled in London, while simultaneously marginalising the Assembly into a subordinate rubber stamp before it had even been born.

It didn’t work for Blair: his errand boy Alun Michael, in an untenable position from the outset, humiliatingly quit rather than lose a vote of no confidence after just nine months as First Minister, Rhodri Morgan was elected by Assembly members in his place, and at last the nascent Assembly could begin to function. Blair was losing the plot; this farce showed that his much vaunted political acumen was a myth. As for Alun Michael, he was just collateral damage. He had stood down as Welsh Secretary after two months as First Minister when Blair had decided on a suitable yes-man to fill the Mickey Mouse post (see below), so in effect his political career was over. He limped on as an MP, held minor cabinet posts in Westminster for a few years, hit new lows with the exposure of his particularly shameless freeloading in the expenses scandal of 2009 and finally stood down in 2012 – but not before making sure his ghastly protégé Stephen Doughty inherited the Cardiff South & Penarth sinecure, as if it were some rotten borough within his gift to bestow. Incidentally, speaking as one of the seat’s unfortunate constituents, I can confirm that the overwhelming majority of the population are as thick as two short planks.

Alun Michael made sure he was alright. He immediately swanned into the South Wales Police & Crime Commissioner money for old rope post (starting salary £85,000 per annum, plus expenses) and, after 12 years adding to his fortune, at long last mercifully departed public life and retired to his Penarth mansion in 2024.

PAUL MURPHY (1948-)
We need not detain ourselves very long with Paul Murphy, MP for Torfaen from 1987 to 2015. He had two stints as Welsh Secretary: from 1999 to 2002, when Blair shifted him to the Northern Ireland equivalent, and from 2008 to 2009, when Peter Hain (see below) was forced to stand down and Gordon Brown, who took over from Blair in 2007, settled for the soft option as a short-term filler.

The Welsh Secretary job was now much devalued and in many ways quite pointless, so it suited Murphy. He was Welsh only in so far that he was from Abersychan in eastern Gwent; far more important to him was his devoutly Catholic family with Irish and English roots that had come to Wales to work in the pits. From that source he inculcated the routine anti-Wales attitude common among Catholics of his generation, disseminated as policy by Catholic churches and schools. He was implacably anti-devolution as a young Labour Party member, only gradually softening that knee-jerk opposition as it became judicious to do so. The best that can be said about his terms as Welsh Secretary is that he didn’t do anything and just let Rhodri Morgan’s popular and effective administration in Cardiff get on with it. He was far happier as Northern Ireland Secretary, where the perpetual conflicts and boycotts in Stormont gave him the opportunity to adopt the posture of a sensible peace-maker.

He was firmly on the reactionary right of the Labour Party, particularly when it came to Catholic obsessions like abortion and same-sex marriage, so had little in common with Morgan’s soft-left, progressive values. However his aversion to friction kept his profile low, just how he likes it. After retiring as an MP in 2015, he became Lord Murphy of Torfaen in the House of Lords, where he attends regularly and expresses more pro-Wales opinions than he ever did as an MP. Well, better late than never…

PETER HAIN (1950-)
What do you mean you haven’t read Me and Peter Hain, my entertaining account of the strange synchronicity that has dogged the pair of us over the years? Correct that omission forthwith! Of course, as it was written in 2012, much has changed (for instance Neath FC was wound up later that year!) – but do please note my spot-on prediction, three years before it happened, that one day he would become Baron Hain of Castell-Nedd (although, in all honesty, that prophecy hardly required a crystal ball).

Over the years my opinion of Hain has nearly gone round a complete circle, not quite back to my 18-year-old idealism but getting there. The snarky, sarcastic tone in that old blog doesn’t reflect my stance today. I have re-warmed to him, mainly because contemporary Westminster politicians are so appalling he can only keep rising in my estimation. His record as Welsh Secretary begins to look superb (like Paul Murphy he did the job twice in 2002- 2008 and then 2009-2010) when set against the subsequent incumbents. He was always a strong supporter of Welsh devolution and autonomy – it helped that as a South African he was never subjected to the anti-Wales agenda hammered into UK subjects from cradle to grave and he was a witness to South Africa’s struggle against the odds for freedom from the vicious apartheid state that has so much in common with the annexing, ransacking, colonisation and dispossession suffered by Wales. That’s why he was up on the rostrum genuinely celebrating with Ron Davies and Dafydd Wigley and co when the ‘yes’ vote was announced in 1997.

He was the last Welsh Secretary to do the job properly: support, assist and advise the Senedd and communicate Welsh issues and concerns to the UK government. Since Hain, the job has been turned on its head to become: undermine, attack and ignore the Senedd and occasionally communicate diktats from London after the event. He remains a man of the liberal left and over the years has become an honorary Welshman, married to a Welsh woman and living in the Neath valley. The longest serving Labour Secretary of State for Wales is a reliable friend of Wales at a time when the enemies are gathering at our gates. We need more like Peter Hain.

JO STEVENS (1966-)
The fact that Kier Starmer, having won the 2024 General Election by a landslide, chose to make Cardiff East MP Jo Stevens the new Welsh Secretary after 14 years of Wales being bombarded by the relentless outright hostility and savage budget cuts of the Tories tells us everything we need to know about Starmer himself and the modern Labour Party. Stevens is an avowed, self-declared ‘unionist’ – a word usually only used by ugly, aggressive men wearing orange sashes marching through Ulster towns banging big drums and blowing tin whistles behind a huge flag celebrating the 1690 Battle of the Boyne. To appoint such a person as Welsh Secretary is akin to putting somebody who believes in unhealthiness in charge of the NHS. Starmer has merely continued the pattern set by the Tories whereby the role of the Welsh Secretary is to thwart, obstruct, hurt and oppose Wales.

But this is in line with Starmer’s approach to all issues: do whatever might mollify the far-right and please the editors of the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph. So he trashes green measures, scorns the protection of the natural world, promises to deregulate anything that could slightly hinder profiteering big business, abolishes long established international aid programmes, pumps up militarism and lethal weaponry, outlaws peaceful protest and dissent, imposes frightening authoritarianism and censorship, refuses to tax billionaires while persistently attempting to further impoverish the poor, the vulnerable, the old and the sick, grovels to neo-fascist brutes overseas, panders to US tech giants no matter what harm they cause…and on and on and on…while delivering barely articulate soundbites with that grating nasal voice emanating from his horribly overgroomed, big, stupid face in front of a sinister background of flapping Union Jacks like a pound-store Tory bigot.

Wales hardly figures in his calculations, being nothing more than an irritant that he can’t understand, that he knows nothing about and that offends his centralising control-freakery. So it’s no wonder he picked Stevens, an unpleasant rightwinger who after a year as Welsh Secretary has achieved absolutely nothing. Starmer’s only excuse is that, having approved all the candidates before the Election, it’s hard to think of anybody among the other 26 Labour MPs in Wales who would be an improvement. It has come to this for the Labour Party in its ultimate stronghold – it’s almost as if he’s a covert agent working for Reform UK…