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Welsh Labour Conference 2010
Rt Hon Peter Hain MP
Welcome Carwyn to your first conference as First Minister. A young Welsh Leader for the future who, as we campaign flat out to beat the Tories in the coming general election, will be a huge asset win back votes for Labour as he campaigns the length and breadth of Wales to make sure we do not have the nightmare of Tory government imposing its right wing policies on Wales again.
And thank you all, everyone of you in the Welsh Labour Party. It’s been a fantastic privilege to do this job as Secretary of State for Wales for seven years – to represent the people of Wales who have such a special passion, humanity and warmth, something I have always treasured, something I always will.
I vividly recall coming for the very first time to Neath, the day before Nelson Mandela was released 20 years ago. Witnessing my first Welsh Male Voice Choir in the former pit village of Seven Sisters. The next day seeing Mandela walk to freedom from 10,000 days in prison. And then, a few months later, one of proudest days of my life, being chosen by the Neath Constituency Labour Party as their parliamentary candidate. Going on to win the subsequent by-election in the face of a vicious Nationalist attack. In 1994 welcoming the National Eisteddfod to the Neath Valley, speaking in Welsh and receiving an ovation. Winning the biggest ever Labour majority in Neath in 1997 and being appointed a Welsh Minister. Organising the Referendum campaign – with Neath delivering biggest YES vote. Welcoming Nelson Mandela to Cardiff to receive the Freedom of the City in 1998. Becoming Secretary of State in 2002. Negotiating and taking through the 2006 Government of Wales Act to deliver more powers for Wales. Just recently insisting the Barnett formula must be reformed to deliver a better deal for Wales.
Now I have three Welsh-born grandchildren. My son and daughter and law, my sister and niece, and, since last May my parents, all live in the Neath Valley.
It’s been a long journey from apartheid Pretoria and I want to thank you all for the privilege of serving Welsh Labour and the great people of Wales.
Welcome to all our parliamentary candidates who offer a choice for Wales, offer a choice for Britain, as we reach out beyond our Labour heartlands, to campaign hard these coming weeks.
A special welcome to our marginal seat MPs working hard, going door to door, street by street. They are up against Tory candidates armed with Lord Ashcroft tax exile riches. Money pouring into the ten Labour seats the Tories want to buy off the people of Wales. But Wales is not for sale, never has been, and the people of Wales will not be bribed into voting Tory by tax exile Tory millions peddling right wing policies.
Labour has always been the Party of the people, not of any wealthy elite. We have never been cowed by Tory riches. Generations ago we ran our campaigns with miners’ pennies, with millions of workers and pensioners contributing their weekly shillings. We can and must raise funds from our people again.
A special welcome to Sue Ellen Jones, our candidate for Clwyd South and Alana Davies our candidate for Vale of Glamorgan. Two strong able Labour campaigners replacing longstanding, dedicated male colleagues. We in Welsh Labour are proud of our commitment to equality, proud that we – the Labour Party in Wales and no other Party – ensured that, at the very beginning of its life, our Welsh Assembly was the first legislature in the world to contain a majority of women.
Just as a century ago our first Labour leader the MP for Merthyr and Aberdare, the great Keir Hardie, stood shoulder to shoulder with the Suffragettes in their struggle for votes for women, against bitter opposition from the Tories, so today we stand up against Tory threats to cut child benefit, to cut longer maternity leave, cut paid paternity leave and stop the right to request flexible working.
We are the Party for all of Wales. That is why we stand up to the Tories in Preseli Pembrokeshire and Clwyd West where the sitting right-wing Tory MPs have alienated local people – welcome to Marie Rees the candidate for Preseli, Donna Hutton the candidate for Clwyd West. Welcome also to Hamish Sanderson, the candidate for Monmouth standing against the abrasive David Davies, who only recently launched a disgraceful attack on the Muslim community that was almost worthy of the BNP: so much for David Cameron’s so-called ‘progressive conservatism’, there’s certainly no sign of it in Monmouth.
Welcome also to our candidate Christine Gwyther. Christine: it would be a delicious moment if you take Carmarthen East and Dinefwr back off the Nationalists – just as Adam Priceless heads off to America to become a trainee Professor. Not so much a Fullbright Scholar as Halfbright Scholar.
Now give a welcome to Jenny Rathbone our candidate for Cardiff Central where, with the rising Tory vote and Labour holding firm, the Liberals are in deep trouble after six years of chaotic mismanagement of Cardiff Council.
And last but by no means least – welcome to Tredegar boy Nick Smith, the MP candidate for Blaenau Gwent, as we campaign to win back that proud Labour seat of Nye Bevan and Michael Foot. We have learnt and listened to the people – and in neighbouring Islwyn, and Pontypridd too, local Party members will soon be choosing their next Labour MPs.
Welcome also to all my MP colleagues who will I know forgive me for singling two out: my good friends Nick Ainger and Chris Ruane. Nick is facing a right wing Tory supported by hordes of hunters who want to end Labour’s ban on blood sports. I hope the good decent majority of people in Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire will turn out and vote for Nick Ainger, not least to keep the ban on grisly practice of hunting with hounds.
Chris Ruane’s Tory opponent in the Vale of Clwyd, Matt Wright, has been revealed as one of just two Tory Candidates around the UK to sign up to the aims of the extreme right-wing “Albion Alliance”, a dubious organisation whose Chief organiser, John Higham, has posted on his own blog this highly offensive diatribe against Muslims: “In the end, those mosques will no doubt come down and the irritating, piercing chanting will cease but I do hope it can be done with an absolute minimum of bloodshed.”
Another extreme right wing Tory adopted by David Cameron, exposing Cameron’s claim to have changed the ‘nasty party’ as sheer, two faced hypocrisy. Scratch below the slick spin and they are the same old right wing Tories.
Yes, the Tories want ‘change’ alright: but change for the worse, not change for the better. Tories taking the country backwards, Labour taking us forward.
This is a real time of choice for everyone. A choice in the coming election for every parent who drops their child off at school, nervous at what the future will hold. A choice for every public sector worker afraid of savage Tory cuts, a choice for every business person struggling to survive, a choice for every family worried about paying their mortgage in an age of insecurity… a choice for every young person wanting a job, a choice for every pensioner, trying to make ends meet.
A big choice for Wales which is just weeks away. The big choice, the outcome of which will be momentous for everything we value in Wales. If we got a Tory Government, everything we have become accustomed to will be thrown into turmoil: free prescriptions, free bus travel for older people, free breakfasts in primary schools, tax-free winter fuel payments to pensioners.
We enter this general election campaign as the underdogs, standing up to save Wales from the disaster of a Tory Government again.
And we say: ‘Stand up and be proud of thirteen years of massive Labour investment in schools and hospitals, determined not to hand over everything we have achieved to be destroyed by the Tories. Stand up and be proud of the minimum wage, of tax credits, of doubling spending on the NHS, of trebling our overseas aid budget, of more than doubling the Welsh budget – Stand up and be proud of hundreds and hundreds of concrete Labour achievements – because absolutely all of them would be threatened under those callous, right wing Tories.’
I’m proud of what we have achieved as a Labour Government, including peace and power sharing in Northern Ireland, painstakingly negotiated, Paul Murphy and I playing our part, Labour delivering what the Tories never did and could never have done.
Yes – of course we have made mistakes, I’ve made mistakes; everyone makes mistakes.
But NOBODY can take away the fact, even after the global financial crisis, after all the problems people face, that there are still 2.4 million more jobs in Britain with your Labour Government than under the Tories. Yes – and 95,000 more jobs in Wales with your Labour Government than under the Tories.
Nobody can dispute that with Labour there are still over 800,000 more public sector workers – well over 50,000 more in Wales alone – especially doctors, nurses, teachers, police officers. All vital public sector workers, vital to ensure that waiting times for hospital operations are now down from years to weeks, that school standards are up, and that crime is down.
All of these and many, many more concrete and tangible Labour achievements are at risk. Wales is at risk, Wales is in danger.
But our labour and trade union movement will never give up on Wales: we never have and we never will.
And the next general election will be much, much closer than the Tories and their media friends have been saying: they think it’s in the bag, they think they’ve won it already.
Over recent weeks the polls have been closing. Yes, last year, in the European elections, they won Wales – shockingly - but with the backing of only six out of every hundred people registered to vote. In Wales, and across Britain, anti-Conservative voters have simply been staying at home – by the millions.
Come polling day, I hope voters will set aside reservations about our Government, and ask themselves a much more fundamental question: do they really trust the Tories? Do they really trust the Tories with their jobs, their mortgages, their families, their pensions, do they really trust the Tories with the economy, do they really trust the Tories with their own futures?
Especially since most fair minded people in Wales are offended at how David Cameron and George Osborne so transparently relish the chance to make right wing cuts, to exploit this global banking crisis to do what even Margaret Thatcher could not do. It’s as if they have a gleam in their eyes to slash and burn vital local government services, to privatise, to outsource, to put the burden on the individual rather than on us all to look after the elderly, the infirm, the vulnerable, the sick. To chop away at community projects, to remove vital support for businesses.
Labour has led the country through over ten years of good times, and now also through the bad times. But, with a hard won recovery coming, this is not the moment to start gambling. It’s a time to make serious judgements, very serious judgements, about the future of Wales and the future of Britain.
And that will mean making a decision between the Tory way and Labour's continued leadership. I know there are tens of thousands of decent people in Wales who see themselves, not as dyed in the wool Labour supporters, but as progressive individuals who may vote for the Liberal Democrats or Plaid Cymru or the Greens. I am not asking them to sign up to every dot and comma of Labour's record or all of our policies, still less to renounce their principles.
But the truth is that this coming election will be one where we have to take sides. And at the moment there is no doubt which side is in the lead. It is David Cameron's Tory side and all that they stand for. After 13 years in which people in Wales could vote, or stay at home, safe in the knowledge that the Tories could not win, that is no longer the case.
In a couple of months - yes, only weeks away - David Cameron and George Osborne could be running Britain – the two people who first called for less regulation of the banks, then who said just let our own banks go bust, the two people who said that we should let the recession take its course, the two people who said that everyone should fend for themselves, not rely on government to give a helping hand, the two people who said that we should cut deep into our vital public services – just at the moment when these services matter more than ever before to the families facing job losses or short time working, or risk and uncertainty.
Cameron and Osborne – sounds like an undertakers firm for Toffs – these two people could be making all the decisions: forcing the Welsh Assembly Government to cut free bus travel for pensioners and to reverse many of the other vital gains people in Wales have enjoyed under Labour.
So when it comes to taking sides, my plea to everyone in Wales is to remember this: your vote this time is more important than ever, because the choice is bigger than it has ever been. Especially in those crucial seats where Labour is locked in a two-way battle with the Tories. This time round a protest vote could mean paying a permanent price, the heaviest price for far too many here in Wales.
I say today, here in this proud Welsh city of Swansea, on the eve of our biggest test as a nation for generations, lets remind ourselves why we need to beat the Tories. Fundamentally because we all share the same values, and the really encouraging thing is that the vast majority of the British people share these values too. The same values of caring, community, solidarity, social justice, equality, fairness, liberty, democracy.
The same values that brought me into politics through the anti-apartheid struggle – opposed by the Tories. The same values which motivated the great Nelson Mandela – denounced as a ‘terrorist’ by the Tories. The same values of the mining trade unionists who banded together to protect workers in the most atrocious conditions – opposed by the Tories. The same values of the Chartists and the Suffragettes who struggled for working people to get the vote – opposed by the Tories. The same values that inspired us to win that historic vote for devolution and our own Welsh Assembly – opposed by the Tories. The same values that led Labour to introduce the minimum wage – opposed by the Tories. And – yes – the same values of mutual care and mutual support that inspired that great Welsh Labour leader Nye Bevan to create the NHS – also opposed by the Tories.
British values. Welsh values. Labour values. Labour values that today stand for fair taxation. Not Tory values that will reward 3,000 of the very richest people in Britain with inheritance tax cuts of £200,000 each. £200,000 each! Whilst they plan to give nurses, doctors, teachers and police officers the sack or a wage cut.
That’s the threat Wales faces. That’s why we must all stop the Tories from destroying all that is best about Wales.
Now we focus on this election together. We will stand up for the people of Wales: from Angelsey to Newport, from Delyn to Pembrokeshire, from Cardiff North to Carmarthenshire, from the Vale of Clwyd to the Vale of Glamorgan. Never forget what we are standing up for: not Tory values of personal greed and everyone for themselves. Welsh values, Welsh values of mutual support and mutual care.
So let's be proud of our nation, Party, proud of our Labour traditions, proud of our heritage. Proud to be Welsh and, Yes, proud to be British too.
We don’t walk away, we never give up. We are going to do everything – absolutely everything – in our power to stop the Tories destroying all our achievements and wrecking Wales and Britain again.
Did Wales give up in those last five minutes against Scotland at the Millennium stadium? No. And we won’t give up now. Let’s keep driving forward until the final whistle to save Wales and win the next election.
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