I'm grateful to have the opportunity to speak in this debate, because I hope that history is more to us than simply a list of dates and understanding of the gentry and aristocracy. For me, history is far more than that. It's a history of our people, it's a history of our language, our culture, our geography, our economy. We can't have an economic history without Robert Owen and the impact that he is still having today, and I speak as a Co-operative Member of this Parliament. The culture that was created as a consequence of industrialisation is the culture that I grew up in, and we have to understand certainly the structural, if you like, history of our country.

The Minister will know the history of Cilmeri and its importance to us, and it's important that my son knows that history as well. But the Minister, of course, also, last week, visited the Brinore tramroad in her constituency in Talybont. Now, had the Minister walked along it, then she would've ended up in my constituency in Tredegar, and having walked across the hills and walked through Trefil, she would have passed Chartist cave. Now, I spent 30 years looking for it, I hope she would have more luck. She would have known there the history of Chartist cave where weapons were held before Zephaniah Williams spoke to the people in Tredegar in Twyn Star—he probably spoke in Welsh—and led them on that wet November weekend to the Westgate Hotel in Newport. Those are the things that connect us. They connect Breconshire and Blaenau Gwent and the Heads of the Valleys.

When I was in school, I learnt not only about the industrial revolution—the coincidence of coal, iron ore, timber and water at the Heads of the Valleys that drove an industrial revolution—but I also learned about the history of a people who were created as a consequence of that industrial revolution and a culture that was created by that people. I learnt about the red flag being held aloft by the workers of Merthyr, and I learnt about why they were doing that. I also learnt about the 'black domain' of the Scotch Cattle that enforced the strikes in Tredegar.

I also learnt where the ironworks were in Tredegar. There's no sign there today, but there is a gate to the old NCB works, which tells us another story about our history. That is a history that wasn't necessarily on the curriculum, but it was given to me by inspiring teachers. I still call Mr Darkins 'Mr Darkins' and not 'Jeff'. He inspired me to learn about the Chartists and he inspired me to learn about who we were and where we come from. And PJ—Peter Morgan Jones—who taught us all about the history of what Wales happens to be; he spent time talking to us about Father Ignatius, of course, in Capel-y-ffin, as well. So, we have a cultural, historical and religious history, far more than simply something that happens in a classroom and revolves around dates.

I hope that the Minister, in replying to this debate, would talk to us about what she has called in her work 'cynefin', which I think is a wonderful, untranslatable word that talks to us about where we come from, where we live, where our family lives and where our people live. I hope that the cynefin concept, the idea that we are what we have been made, is something that won't be limited to a history lesson. I hope it'll be a part of our economic lessons, I hope it'll be a part of our geography lessons, I hope it'll be a part of our language lessons, I hope it'll be a part of creating a citizen who understands not only what happened and when, but how that has impacted us today.

Let me say this in closing. I think we need to find a way of doing this outside school as well. Because Mr Darkins and PJ taught me as much outside the classroom as they did within the classroom, by inspiring us to find out more. Everybody of my generation understands and remembers Gwyn Alf and Wynford Vaughan-Thomas arguing across the country and through the generations in The Dragon Has Two Tongues. One of the first protests I went on was to remember the Merthyr rising and to remember what happened there. He spoke then about his personal history as a son of Dowlais, but he also spoke about his experiences on the beaches of Normandy, fighting what he described as the people's war against fascism—again, that resounds down the ages.

History is not always comfortable and not always convenient and not always easy. We are remembering at the moment the race riots in Cardiff. I spoke to people at home in Tredegar about remembering a century after the anti-Jewish riots in 1911. They didn't want to remember that. They were ashamed of what happened in our town in our name and ashamed of what that had done to us, especially now that we are still fighting anti-Semitism in this country. So, our history is not simply what has happened in the past, it's who we are today, and it is our responsibility as parliamentarians and as leaders of this country to ensure that our history remains in the hearts and minds of our people when we seek to create the future for our people.