Any dignity that is inherent in our society comes from the aspirations we hold not for ourselves but for others. That is the glory of the trade union movement and its grace: the fact that it's upheld not by individual greed but by collective endeavour, the resolve that rights can be achieved for all. We have all benefited from workers' rights hard won by generations that have gone before us: paid sick leave, holiday leave, weekends. Our lives are incalculably richer and happier because of those struggles. We owe it to the workers of today and of tomorrow in Wales to repel Westminster's attempt to erode those rights and to fight for the powers to cement them in Welsh law. 

I am so proud that I was born in the Welsh Valleys, but it is a landscape that still wears the scars of an exploited workforce—the coal miners who were paid in dust and disease and disdain. But our past wasn't only distinguished by disasters—there was comradeship too. The days of Mabon, tireless champion of the miners, who secured holidays—the first Monday of every month, known as Mabon Days. And that same drive for the common good breathed something new into the lungs of our towns and our villages, places so choked of investment, of care, of concern.

The miners' halls that still stand in Blackwood and Bedwas speak to those communities' memory of a time when meetings and concerts brought families into the warmth of social events. Miners' welfare parks and gardens were nurtured and grown. Our choirs and eisteddfods gave workers the chance to soar above the blackened hills in song. So much was achieved in our Valleys by collective action, not just in industrial terms, but in the very fabric of our society. Nye Bevan said he was happiest when he was chairman of the book selection committee for the Tredegar miners' library—a library that, in the 1930s, circulated some 100,000 books a year. But the libraries have shut, Llywydd. So many of those halls have fallen into ruin and disrepair. Too many choirs no longer meet because there isn't the collective space to meet and sing.

But we in Wales can still snatch back the collective ethos we once had. We can build on that proud history and ensure that no more workers in Wales will be undervalued, exploited, will have their pride ripped from them by devolving employment law and securing collective rights for all. Because workers' rights in the UK, as we've heard, are already so much lower than the European norm. In Italy, 97 per cent of workers are covered by collective bargaining. In France, 90 per cent. In the UK, only 26 per cent, 27 per cent of workers enjoy this privilege. Even in Russia, the figure is higher. Union rights in these islands have been eroded purposefully since Thatcher and since, I am sorry to say, New Labour failed to restore those rights in their 13 years in power.

We need these rights in Wales to make right the wrongs of our past. Because in Wales our past should be our guide. It is a familiar feeling for the trade union movement. You think of the words sung about Joe Hill, the hero of the workers in the mines of Nevada, framed with an allegation of murder—there are echoes of Dic Penderyn and Merthyr there for certain. But the song says:

'Where working men are out on strike / Joe Hill is at their side'.

Llywydd, when women and men are on strike, they don't just do that for their own rights, their own wages; they do it for the rights of workers yet to enter the workforce, they do it to uphold the rights of people and generations yet to come. And the workers also stand in solidarity, Llywydd, with the generations that have gone before, because when working men and women are out on strike in Wales, Dic Penderyn is at their side, William Abraham is at their side, or the choruses of voices from our rich and wanting past—they're lending their voices to their song. On picket lines, just like Joe Hill, they stand alive as you and me in their proud memory. Let's make this right for Wales.