Thanks, and I’ve given a minute to Dawn Bowden.

We owe the Wales we live in today to trade unionism. This isn’t just my view. Anyone who has read the work of Gwyn Alf Williams will know that he pinpointed one particular moment in time, the uprising in my home town of Merthyr Tydfil in 1831, as the moment when the Welsh working class moved from what he called the ‘primitive stage’ to organising itself. While trade unionism first came to Wales in 1830, when Flintshire miners joined the friendly association of coal miners, it was the flashpoint that was the Merthyr rising, with its totemic moments like the first raising of the red flag and its still-unpardoned hanging of Dic Penderyn, that were to deliver the impetus and the inspiration for an organised and active working class in industrial Wales.

Most of industrial Wales is now gone. Perhaps Port Talbot in my region is one of the last outposts of what we would recognise as heavy industry and an industrial community, and long may that continue. But even though trade unions were such key players during that era—and you can also see their cultural importance and community roots in the writing of Alexander Cordell, Jack Jones, Lewis Jones and Raymond Williams—it doesn’t follow that they belong only to one time. Far from it.

‘Trade unions have been an essential force for social change, without which a semblance of a decent and humane society is impossible under capitalism.’

That quote comes from Pope Francis.

It is also my belief that, for all the time we have capitalism and capitalism’s problems, we’re going to need trade unions. US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis—I’m not sure if I said that right—dubbed a ‘militant crusader for social justice’ by his enemies, once said:

‘Strong, responsible unions are essential to industrial fair play. Without them the labor bargain is wholly one-sided. The parties to the labor contract must be nearly equal in strength if justice is to be worked out, and this means that the workers must be organized and that their organizations must be recognized by employers as a condition precedent to industrial peace.’

The story of trade unionism in the UK over the past 35 years—since I was born, in fact—is one of unprecedented and sustained attack upon their very right to exist, from Government, the media and the rest of the establishment. We know why. Were it not for the tenets of Thatcherism, would we have zero-hours contracts, institutionalised blacklisting and so-called ‘lawyers’ houses’, where professional people live eight to a property, sharing bedrooms because they cannot get on the housing ladder? And were it not for trade unions and their tradition of resisting neoliberal doctrine, surely we would have it a lot worse.

We’ve seen a greater concentration of wealth in the hands of the already-wealthy, and we have our public services paying for the recklessness of our bankers. Men and women paying with their jobs and their terms and conditions—teachers, nurses, firefighters—all because of City folly. And through a similarly decades-long propaganda war fought by the right-wing press, people have been conditioned to think that there is something wasteful and unnecessary about public services; that we should decimate our emergency services, endanger the safety of our country through cuts to the police and the Border Force; reduce our children’s opportunities through education; and risk the lives of our loved ones in hospitals because of slashed budgets—all in the name of austerity.

This is the environment in which trade unions now have to operate: outright hostility from those that oppose them, and, sadly, widespread indifference among those they could be helping. There hasn’t been a more bleak landscape for employees for generations. And yet, worse is to come. I don’t doubt for a minute that scrapping the working time directive will be among the Tory Government’s first post-Brexit priorities. It is this chip-chipping away at workers’ rights that trade unions were specifically designed to resist.

There is bitter irony in the realisation that austerity has put trade unions and Labour-led administrations here in Wales on either side of the negotiation table. We’ve seen some pretty terrible examples, unfortunately. Neath Port Talbot council threatened to fire its entire workforce and re-employ them on worse terms and conditions. Many of those workers were part-time, single parents, trying to run single-income households.

Bridgend County Borough Council took longer than almost every other Welsh local authority to implement job evaluation. I know it was a challenge, but still, by the time they got around to it, we were already deep into austerity’s winter. What that meant was those people who were due a cut soon saw their salaries reduced, while those who should have been given a rise didn’t receive it. When tackled about it, the council shrugged its shoulders and said it didn’t have the money.

There has also been industrial unrest in agencies like the National Library for Wales and, particularly, National Museum Wales. Here, PCS, as has been mentioned in questions today, put up a spirited fight against plans by management to slash working hours and premium payments among its lowest paid staff, and actually pitted union against union, which is something I hope never to see again. The dispute dragged on for the best part of two years and culminated in a two-month strike that was only recently resolved. Staff blamed management and management blamed the Welsh Government for cutting its budget. For whatever reason, it was resolved, but there is no doubt in my mind that it was down to the sheer determination of the union to look after its members’ interests that carried the day. Had they not been there, it would have been a very different story, and an unhappy one at that.

We wait to see what will happen in Natural Resources Wales. Here, we have two successive staff survey reports that scream unhappiness among staff at the way the organisation is run. Will it result in industrial action? That remains to be seen and I severely hope not. I have met with Unison, which represents a majority of the staff there, and, once again, they are conducting their own survey and tell me they will consult on the way forward when they have done that.

The right-wing press would have us believe that unions are still stuffed with insurrectionists who cry, ‘All out, brothers!’ on the flimsiest of excuses. The truth is that most industrial disputes never get beyond a disagreement, and they are resolved by people sitting down and actually talking through the issue. In my experience—and you can choose to decide whether it is anecdotal or not—it is often hard-headed management that potentially escalate disagreements into these types of disputes.

As I’ve mentioned, a lot of these disputes pit political allies against one another. As such, trade unions will often come to me or other non-Labour representatives to seek our help—and I’m obviously happy to give them such help. But, what I would say to any trade union that may be watching this or may want to respond afterwards is: please don’t feel we can’t work together because we come from a different political background. In fact, I joined Plaid partly, although not indefinitely, because—and Dawn may have something to say about this—I saw the Labour Party in my own hometown as a party that did fail to represent me. They weren’t like me; they didn’t represent me; they didn’t want to engage with people like me. I think that’s something for the Labour Party in Wales to reflect on as to how they can engage with people in their own Valleys communities.

With a Welsh Government now in place for the coming five years, think back to what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said about the balance of a bargain. Why not consider signing a memorandum of understanding with parties such as Plaid Cymru—naturally left-leaning parties that are supportive of the needs of workers and the aims of unions? I would ask any trade union listening to this debate to go away and actually consider the idea. Go away and ask yourselves what there is to gain, and what you might lose. I think you have more to gain by engaging with us.

To everyone else, and particularly to those young people, some of whom I have spoken with, who were left distraught by the referendum result, now is the time for you to organise as they did in Merthyr in 1831. As well as joining, potentially, a political party, I would also urge you to join a union. As Frances O’Grady, the first woman TUC general secretary, said recently:

‘All the evidence shows very clearly that if you are a member of a trade union you are likely to get better pay, more equal pay, better health and safety, more chance to get training, more chance to have conditions of work that help if you have caring responsibilities...the list goes on!’

If you don’t want to leave the fate of your country in the hands of people whose views you profoundly disagree with, then remember what it is that unions have done in the past, and continue to do to this day. I’ll leave the last word to another American civil rights advocate, the lawyer Clarence Darrow:

‘With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization…that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association’.

Diolch yn fawr.