Well, it's difficult to follow that, really, but I'll do my best. [Laughter.] I'll try and avoid repeating some of things that have been said, many of which I agree with. I very much welcome, Siân, that you brought this debate here. It's something I wrote about a while back after doing a number of talks in schools on historical issues and was surprised, actually, at the scale to which local historical events of incredible magnitude were not known, not only by the pupils but also by the teachers.

I do present, I think, a certain concern, carefulness, cautiousness about the teaching of history. Because when we talk about the history, we're talking about the history of people. We're talking about social history. We're talking also, very importantly in the Welsh context, about class. These are issues that don't just apply to Wales. They apply to England. You can very much criticize the teaching of history in England and in many other parts of the world, and the presentation of the teaching of the history of the British empire. And it's partly because history has tended to be selective, by those who were in control, and presenting a particular issue. So, the teaching of events during the British empire, the Amritsar massacre, the famine in Ireland, in England the Peterloo massacre—they're all matters that have only really now come to the fore as we begin to have a more accurate, I think, discussion around history. So, history is not about a particular version of history or even about a particular interpretation of history; it's about providing the information, the analysis, the local knowledge, the local facts, to allow people to develop the capacity to interpret history.

One of the issues that concerned me was, for example, the teaching in the Taff Ely area when I was in school. We talked about Dr William Price, and, of course, everybody knows that that's the bloke who cremated his son, wasn't it? But the importance was that it represented a challenge and a break between law based on church law as opposed to common law, because cremation was a direct attack on the belief in the reincarnation, the resurrection of the body—it was a fundamental change. And I've never heard that ever discussed or talked about or interpreted in any particular way. I've not heard any discussion within our schools about the importance of local people or the importance of people like Arthur Horner, people like Will Paynter who led the National Unemployed Workers' Movement—a very, very significant factor within Wales. 

I live in Tonyrefail in the Ely valley. In the Taff vale, of course, was one of the major legal cases arising out of an industrial dispute that led to one of the major issues around the freedom of people to organise, which led to the Trade Disputes Act of 1906. I've never heard it discussed. Yet, it is actually a very fundamental part of our understanding of the development of democratic processes. So, those are my comments on that, because, I agree, there is a lot of good teaching of Welsh history, I'm sure, but there are also enormous gaps in it and there is enormous weakness in terms of the localisation of the teaching, and particularly the teaching of class history, the history around the movements, around people and around class. That is what I would like to see resurrected.

The point I made during one of the committee sessions on this, which to me I think is very important, is actually the issue of the training of teachers and how that is adapted and how we actually take all these particular views in terms of a more effective teaching of local and Welsh history. That seems to me to be an issue. And also, the lack of availability of resources—the lack of specific materials that actually promote, that analyse, that talk about these social movements, that talk about mutualism and co-operativism. Co-operativism had one of its major developments in the Ynysybwl area, and led to the establishment of a major co-operative movement. So, all these things are there that are fundamentally important to us.

So, what I would hope is that, in the development of the new curriculum in terms of the teaching, we have a teaching of Wales. I've no problems with the wording of the motion, just that we do need to be cautious about our interpretation of precisely what we're talking about, what it means. But what it is, very importantly, is a recognition that there is a long way to go in Wales and in the rest of the UK, and in parts of Europe and the rest of the world, about, I think, a new, a modern and an honest and open approach to the teaching of history.