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Paul Murphy, in his study at home

CRITICS of the Labour Government who make the case for how the party prizes loyality over ability might be tempted to cite Paul Murphy as a case in point.

Despite his work as a fulcrum for devolution between Wales and Westminster while Secretary of State for Wales and, perhaps more importantly, his role in both shaping and delivering the Good Friday Agreement, the Torfaen MP has been reshuffled out of government not once, but twice, and by two Prime Ministers.

And even though Murphy is arguably the most able Welsh politician of this age, a question about how Brown’s mired administration can afford to be without him is the only one upon which he demurs, a consequence of modesty rather than a determination to remain on-message. In fact, that he is able to deliver a cogent argument on Labour’s achievements without requiring recourse to the spindoctor’s handbook further demonstrates a heartfelt allegiance that rather casts his former colleagues – and particularly those who recently flounced out of the cabinet – in a poor light, and somewhat redefines loyalty as we recognise it among Labour MPs.

When the issue of his ejection from the front bench is raised, he will admit to disappointment (certainly when Tony Blair reshuffled him from the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, less so when he was recently replaced by Peter Hain at the Wales Office), he will reflect on his “good innings” as a minister (eight years in Government and at least double that if time in Opposition is included), and praise his successors (while making a good argument for that praise). However, on the sometimes-heard suggestion in political circles that he has played the fall guy because he is least likely to complain, Murphy will concede: “That may be true”, before smiling and adding – again modestly – “But that’s for others to decide”.

Murphy’s upbringing was classically Gwent Valleys, with a twist. Born in Abersychan – as have five other Welsh MPs, including Roy Jenkins, his father Arthur Jenkins and neighbouring Islwyn parliamentarian Don Touhig – Murphy’s father worked the seams below the local Blaensychan colliery. “My great-grandfather was an iron worker, the rest were miners,” he said. But there was a difference. Murphy’s family was devoutly Catholic, their religion passed down from Irish ancestry. Both were ever present in the Murphy household. “At times, I thought I was living in Ireland,” he adds, remembering Shamrock Day and other events like it.

His faith remains extremely important, but the pull of politics proved stronger. “I was born to socialism,” says Murphy, in between sips of ever-present Diet Coke. “Its influence on me is incalculable. I was raised in a socialist cauldron, and politics was and is my life.” Did he ever consider the cloth? “No. I’m too practical. Religion is very important to me, and I’m proud to be a Christian socialist. For me, the two things go together.”

He joined the party aged 15 and came under the influence of leading left wingers like Leo Abse, his predecessor as Torfaen MP. By the 1960s, while he was at Oriel College in Oxford, the coal industry had begun to decline. But the area’s economy was very much dominated by mining and steel production, heavy engineering and spinning, along with the 7,000 people employed at ICI Fibres, a company that Aneurin Bevan had attracted to the constituency. It was also the time that Cwmbran, a new town created after the war, really began to hum to life. The Murphys upped sticks from Abersychan and took a new house in the new town. He lives there to this day, and considers it unthinkable that he would ever live anywhere else.

Today, Torfaen is home to high technology companies, light engineering and small businesses. However, during the dark days of Tory government, it was altogether a different place. “The pits had gone, unemployment was high. I can remember young men crying in Cwmbran town centre during the 1992 General Election because they couldn’t find a job,” remembers Murphy. “Although we had done what we could as councillors, I couldn’t help feeling paralysed, unable to help my constituents. The hope of people had gone. Wales was run by quangos stuffed with Tory place-men. It was an awful time. When the General Election comes around, I shall be reminding people of what life under the Tories was like just before we came to power.”

Murphy entered the House of Commons in 1987, alongside another newly elected Labour MP, Mo Mowlam. The two struck up a friendship in Opposition and were keen to work together in Government. Once she was appointed as Northern Ireland Secretary, she lobbied for Murphy as her deputy. It was was to prove a dazzlingly effective partnership, if at first glance somewhat unlikely. The daughter of a Coventry postmaster, Mowlam was a political scientist who once claimed that the apartment she lived in while lecturing at Florida State University was broken into by serial college campus killer Ted Bundy. But she worked tirelessly to bring the Republicans to the negotiating table while Murphy, a deeply-convicted Catholic, won the respect of Unionists and encouraged them to join the talks that led eventually to the Good Friday Agreement.

“She was my boss, but it wasn’t that sort of relationship. She was very good at personal relationships. I miss her terribly, even now,” says Murphy. But he’s also quick to praise a cast of thousands that brought about peace, including Blair (who Murphy believes was trusted by Unionists far more than previous Labour leaders), then-Irish premier Bertie Ahern, Northern Ireland politicians of all parties, Bill Clinton, George Mitchell, the “outstandingly intellectual” team of civil servants – even members of the previous Conservative government, who had set the wheels in motion. He also credits the people of Northern Ireland, who had grown “war weary”. And he doesn’t stint on the importance of the agreement, both personally and historically.

“It was challenging, but exceptionally rewarding. There is not a page of my political life that compares with those two years around the Good Friday Agreement. It was an outstandingly fulfilling time.” He does, however, believe there were times when it looked like the talks might not succeed. “Most certainly, around 1997-8, I thought we’d had it. There were people being killed, and the talks were very intensive – night after night after night. It was very exhausting, but very rewarding. We were cut off from mainstream politics – we lived there.

“However, I do believe it was the greatest achievement of the Labour Government. It’s still one of the most remarkable political stories of our life, in the world.”

Both Unionists and Republicans were being asked to set aside centuries-old emnity, and a legacy of tit-for-tat killings. Murphy admits to his own disquiet at times. “There was hardly a family not affected by the Troubles, but you had to cut yourself off from all that. When you met terrorists, some of whom had committed murder, you had to think of the bigger picture.”

He believes then, as now, that the problem of dissident republicanism was unlikely to assuaged. “There are people on the extremes who didn’t want to be part of what we were doing. But the overwhelming majority of Republicans had signed up to the agreement, and a referendum across Ireland was found to be in support. There was no real justification for a different outcome.”

In 1999, he returned to a different Wales as Secretary of State, to “nurture” devolution. It has always been suspected that Murphy helped bring about a settlement that he fundamentally disagreed with. This claim is always made on the basis of his chairmanship of the anti-devolution movement that prevailed during the 1979 referendum for a Welsh Assembly. But he sees it differently. “Back then, I was conscious that the people of South Wales didn’t want it. I thought it had developed as a kneejerk against nationalism. But that was 30 years ago. We’d had 18 years of Thatcherism, and the views in the Valleys had changed. The devolution we got was born out of a different stable.”

He also disputes claims that the Secretary of State was left with little more to do than organise paperclips. “Whitehall didn’t understand that the world had changed. I had to make sure that English politicians – and English journalists – understood how devolution was affecting Wales. They believed that all three countries (including Scotland and Northern Ireland) should be rolled into one brief. They said: ‘merge them all’. I thought we needed someone round the Cabinet table shouting for Wales. This was not a threat to the Union, as some thought, so the role of Secretary of State was important in those terms.”

Meanwhile, the job of Northern Ireland Secretary had passed from Mowlam to Peter Mandelson, who held the post for 15 months before resigning in the wake of the Hinduja scandal. He was succeeded by John Reid, who did much good work, particularly in advancing IRA disarmament. But when Murphy replaced him in October 2002, he inherited a suspended Northern Ireland Assembly, and the heady days of the Good Friday Agreement were long past.

“The job had got harder. George Mitchell said in 1998 that it was the start of a process, and he was right. It took a decade, but there had been centuries of conflict, so it wasn’t going to happen overnight.” Here, as if to underline the changing times, he changes the order of his appraisal. “It was very rewarding, but very frustrating. I was running the Assembly in abeyance. I wanted to hand power back, and instead I had to deal with the day-to-day running of the administration.” Matters improved, Murphy believes, when the two most trenchant parties, the Democratic Unionists under Ian Paisley and Sinn Fein, steered by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, were elected to power and were left with no option but to work with one another.

Then, after Tony Blair won a third General Election victory for Labour, he reshuffled his Cabinet and left Murphy out. “It came as a bit of a surprise. Reshuffles are reshuffles. I’d had eight years as a minister – quite a good time in the Cabinet. I was disappointed, but Peter (Hain, who succeeded him) did a good job.”

Instead, Blair gave Murphy the chairmanship of the Intelligence and Security Committee, a parliamentary body that scrutinises the work of the UK’s intelligence services and reports only to the Prime Minister. Murphy found the work “fascinating”. Its two biggest tasks during his tenure was dealing with the consequences of the July 7 bombings in London, and rendition.

He found that his his prevous experience of terrorism was not of much use, pointing to the global nature of Islamist attacks, its use of modern technology, and its absence of warnings, as departures from IRA tactics. But he does believe that while many plots have subsequently been stopped, 7/7 was almost unavoidable. And, somewhat echoing the chilling warning made by the IRA in the wake of its attempt on Margaret Thatcher’s life at the Tory party conference in Brighton in 1984, when it said “Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always”, Murphy adds: “This is something that we will have to live with for years, because of the cost of what could happen if we let down our guard.”

He agrees with Gordon Brown that the most effective way of dealing with such extremism is to attack it in its crucible, the near-lawless tribal areas of Pakistan that border Afghanistan, and believes that by stablising Afghanistan and denying them a base, pressure can be brought to bear on Islamists across the world. He says he doesn’t know enough about the current war situation to comment on whether it is being fought correctly, or if the Government is supplying troops with the resources they need to win.

It is difficult to ascertain whether Murphy welcomed his return to the Wales Office, following Hain’s resignation over donations to his campaign to become Labour’s deputy leader. “I didn’t expect to go back. I went back in unusual circumstances, and I’m glad Peter was exonerated.” He returned to a new constitutional settlement and the One Wales coalition with Plaid Cymru, which initially he did not support, preferring a new arrangement with the Liberal Democrats. “I’m not so sure now,” he concedes. “The coalition has worked as well as could be expected. the LCOs (legislative competency orders) are getting through.”

But there was an old problem with which Murphy was reacquainted. “I was still battling departments in Whitehall. There are people there that find it all complicated. You need a Secretary of State to ease problems and keep the peace. Explaining the situation and ironing out differences – it’s a diplomatic job.”

But by the time Murphy had been reshuffled out again, to make way for the returning Hain (Did it bother him? “Not really. I’d had a good innings”), Parliament had become engulfed in the MPs’ expenses row. He did not escape. “I wasn’t the worst but, for four days, I was the only Welsh MP being talked about.” The Daily Telegraph, which broke the story, focused a claim of £3,419 for the replacement of the plumbing system at his second home in London. The paper somewhat mocked his complaint that the water had become “too hot”. Murphy tells it different.

“The heating system wasn’t safe. The water was scalding. When they went to fix it, they found that it was the water cylinder that had gone. It was 44-years-old, and it was affecting the water system throughout the building. The whole thing was very traumatic experience for all of us. We were collectively and individually pilloried. There were unjustifiable claims, but most weren’t.”

He believes in reform of the system, however, and supports an overnight allowance as the most transparent way forward. But the outrage in the papers wasn’t echoed by Torfaen constituents. “We had about a dozen to 20 letters about it. Almost all complained about the system. But I think there’s no doubt that more people feel strongly about it. The fact that it came at a time of recession, when people were losing their jobs, made it worse.”

The eradication of inequality was Labour’s core mission. But as the dole queues fill – though not with the bankers that caused the recession, who have disappeared unpunished and recompensed – does Murphy think that mission was lost? “We have achieved the minimum wage, pensioners are better off, we’re not there yet but we are tackling child poverty. I understand the concern over bankers’ pay – I represent a South Wales Valleys constituency where people are paid less. But the quality of public services and the way we deal with people who have lost their jobs are much improved. People are experiencing hard times, but in many ways it’s still better than it was when we came to power.”

Murphy also cites the establishment of the Assembly as a major Labour success and, although he acknowledges some of the frustration with LCOs, he believes that people here need to be more patient, as “teething troubles” are overcome. But he is happy for the Government to park the development of devolution in order to focus on dealing with the recession, arguing that “Keynesian-like intervention” and Gordon Brown’s mustering of the recent G20 conference in London is the right response.

“Further devolution is up to the people of Wales. They have the convention. I don’t think it’s on the tip of the tongue of most people. When people are most concerned about keeping their jobs, a discussion over further powers becomes largely irrelevant.”

He also believes that the recession may simplify how people will vote in the General Election. “The choice we have is between a Labour and a Conservative Government. I’m not complacent about my seat, but I think a General Election is very different to local or European election, and I’ve got to make sure people understand what the difference between the two are.

“It will be very much tougher than 2005. We’ve had 12 years of Government, and we have the recession, but I still think people’s minds are not made up, and I think it’s an argument we have to win.”

Murphy believes a predicted autumn coup will only lessen Labour’s chances of remaining in power. “We’ve got a leader. We must carry on with him, and pull together. People like less a party that’s falling apart, and if they see us tearing each other to bits, they won’t vote for us.”

In such circumstances, it’s likely that Paul Murphy, who appears to prize service above power, will go where he’s needed. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that it will only be to Gordon Brown’s detriment if he fails to take advantage.