Old school new Plaid

Steffan Lewis, pictured in Cardiff Bay

“I TAKE no pleasure from the demise of Labour in Wales. ”

This isn’t what we normally hear from Plaid Cymru…

“My grandfather was a card carrying member of the Labour party, solid NUM, who would pick people up to take them to vote.”

…And particularly from a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate based in the Valleys, where red-green battles have proved to be some of the most vicious in British politics in recent times…

“Everywhere you went, people had so much affection for Labour because, at the time, it reflected their interests.”

…But then, the the two sides have found themselves no longer quite so much at daggers drawn. For while the parties remain implacable political foes in areas like Islwyn and the Rhondda, their leaders have come together under the One Wales agreement, managing to maintain a harmony in coalition.

“Yes, it is a strange situation,” laughs Steffan Lewis, who currently works as press officer to Plaid AM Bethan Jenkins, and will stand for the party in Islwyn at the next general election. “I can’t think of any other parallel in Europe. It wasn’t easy, because in the Valleys there’s been turf wars, but I think One Wales is one of the most progressive political arrangements in the country. For a long time, it’s the differences between Plaid Cymru and Labour that have been underlined, more than the similarities. But when I speak to ordinary Labour party members, which is all the time, I think there’s very little difference between us.”

So why vote Plaid? “I think people are fed up with the status quo, and Labour have been unable to change that. It’s sad that people have lost faith, but that’s a problem for the Labour party to resolve. We have to prove that we can step up to the plate and deliver social justice to the people that Labour have turned their backs on.”

For Lewis, “picking up the mantle” begins in Islwyn. It won’t be easy, Sitting Labour MP Don Touhig has carried all before him since being first elected in 1995, succeeding Neil Kinnock. He’s never polled under 60% of the vote, although it would be wrong to think the constituency’s fortress is impregnably Labour’s. In a shock almost as great as losing Rhondda, Plaid’s Brian Hancock won the seat in the first Assembly elections in 1999. Although Irene James took it back for Labour in 2003 and held on to it in 2007, Lewis says “50 years of hard work” in the area and elsewhere across the Valleys has been “a key factor in Plaid’s success in the Valleys, on its councils”, and helped take the party to within “a handful of votes” from further gains in the recent European poll.

Lewis is very much seen as a rising star among Plaid’s ranks. Aged only 22, he stood as the party’s parliamentary candidate in the titanic Blaenau Gwent by-election that followed the death of local MP and AM Peter Law in 2006, a contest that drew national headlines as Labour fought to regain the seat it had lost when Law became an independent. It lost, and Lewis admits he found himself increasingly on the sidelines as the campaign went on. “It became very clear, very early on that it was going to be very hard to fight against Dai Davies (Law’s former agent who stood as an independent for the Commons – and won). That’s because there was very little difference between our outlooks. He very much believes in social justice beginning in your local community, as I do.”

Lewis’ stock has risen since then after he gave a speech to a Plaid conference that was so eloquently delivered, delegates said, that many of them were moved to tears. The passion is often evident, but it is combined with unconventional approaches to problems. “We have not recovered from previous recessions – recessions, not recession – because there is a London consensus to economic planning, and that is to build the country’s economic fortunes on an inflated financial sector in the South East of England.

“One of the frustrations of being in the union is that we don’t have the fiscal powers to push through legislation to deal with the recession. When Barack Obama unveiled his economic stimulus package, there was $100 million for local financial businesses. We couldn’t do that here, but why shouldn’t we? We can’t we have a grass roots financial system here in Wales? I think we could be radical about it. We could make Merthyr Tydfil the financial capital of Wales – move the Assembly’s economic department there, have a business school as part of the new Heads of the Valleys university that’s just been announced for the area.”

Lewis is very much in favour of moving towards a stronger emphasis on vocational training in the Welsh education system. He wants to see the return of engineering and associated hi-tech, field-leading technology developed here in Wales. “The UK puts an awful lot of emphasis on academic achievement,” said Lewis, who was dropped his studies at Cardiff University to take part in the Blaenau Gwent campaign began, never to return. “Small countries can do very well this way – Sweden is in the top 10 worldwide countries for patents filed.”

He concedes that the public sector needs to be more closely scrutinised in order to rebuild the public trust that has been so conclusively destroyed by the MPs’ expenses controversy. But Lewis sees other, far greater challenges ahead, for the Assembly in particular. “People like to dress up the conflict between the public and the private sector, but what they don’t want to see is an onslaught unleashed in the form of public spending cuts. The Assembly is looking at a budget cut of half a billion pounds. This is the issue that we have to deal with, here and now.”

Lewis also concedes that his political approach, particularly where matters of social responsibility and wealth redistribution are concerned, sound more like old Labour than the Plaid Cymru steroetype, focused on independence. However, in that respect, Plaid’s support outside of what is known as its traditional heartlands is now established, while he says of any dispute as to how to move towards full powers “is an argument that’s already run its course”.

Perhaps it’s a measure of how the party has evolved, particularly since the One Wales agreement, that Steffan Lewis chooses instead to focus upon the day-to-day business of Welsh government, starting with what he sees as the time-consuming and cumbersome practices that govern the Legislative Competance Orders – putting the argument for more law-making provision to Whitehall on a case-by-case basis. He is clearly frustrated by it, and cites AM Jocelyn Davies’ long running battle to allow the Assembly to opt out of right to buy on council homes, claiming that it would lead to more affordable housing for those in need.

“We shouldn’t have to be obsessed with this constant questioning. We should be allowed to get on with it. Many good things have happened on Plaid’s watch, but it could be more if we were just believed when we say we know what’s best for Wales more than London does.”

Instead, Lewis consoles himself with his role as Islwyn PPC. “It sounds like a cliche, but there’s nowhere I’d really rather be than living in the Sirhowy and Ebbw Vale valleys. Having real contact with real people is so fulfilling.”

He also finds time to indulge in a little amateur genealogy, which led him to a rather interesting recent find. “We were looking at all the surnames of the Plaid and Labour councillors that sit on Caerphilly County Borough Council. We discovered that all the Plaid names were descended from West of England, from the time that miners from that part of the country came here, while all the Labour councillors had traditional Welsh surnames. I thought it was funny that we’re the ones pushing for greater independence, and yet we all came at one time from the other side of the border.”