Arts

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in what has been a great debate. I particularly welcome my noble friend Lord Bragg’s powerful and penetratingly relevant speech on the arts today. He referred, quite rightly, to the chaos caused by the former Culture Secretary and Arts Council England to the English National Opera.

I will refer to opera outside London, which has equally been affected by the decision of the Arts Council to reduce funding. The Arts Council was given 9% more funding in the last settlement but has cut opera by 22%. The effect in England and Wales, outside London, is on touring opera. My noble friend Lord Rooker referred to Mid Wales Opera and the work that it does. I want to refer to just three companies, because that is all we have, in England and Wales which deal with touring opera: Glyndebourne, Opera North and—inevitably—the Welsh National Opera. Despite its name, the Welsh National Opera does a great deal of work in England and a big part of its funding comes from the English funding council as well as the Arts Council of Wales. As a consequence of those cuts, we have seen cuts in performances.

On the touring aspect of opera, those three companies go to 13 cities in England, including Plymouth, Hull, Newcastle, Bristol, Southampton, Birmingham, Oxford, Milton Keynes, Canterbury, Nottingham, Liverpool and Manchester. In all of those cities, we have now seen a reduction in performances. The year before last there were 146 performances, but now there are 87; 10 years ago, there were 250 performances throughout England and Wales outside London. The figures speak for themselves. Take two continental European countries as a comparison: in Germany, there are 78 companies, and in France, there are 17 companies. You can go through all the countries in Europe, and the Scandinavian countries, and find that they serve their people better in opera than we do.

If we make opera less accessible, with performances reduced and production ceasing in various parts of the country, we will make it elitist. But it should not be; it should be for everybody. As a consequence of that decision by Arts Council England, we are in dire trouble, and touring opera in England and Wales now faces a crisis. It is the opposite of levelling up.

I hope that the Minister will refer to my remarks in his wind-up. I ask him two things. First, I ask him to liaise with his counterpart in the Welsh Government to ensure that the Welsh National Opera receives proper funding. Secondly, before Arts Council England’s next funding round—I think it is in three years—and to save opera in our country, I ask for this crisis to be dealt with directly and not left in the hands of Arts Council England, which is not doing opera any good at all.

Armistice Day: Centenary

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, 100 years after the Armistice was signed, it is an interesting commentary on the diversity of this Chamber as well as on the unanimity in what I am sure we will say in the coming few hours that I, the grandson of a south Wales miner, should be following the grandson of Earl Haig.

I want to reflect on the impact of the sacrifice in the First World War on the eastern valley of Gwent, which used to be Monmouthshire. It is a valley that includes Cwmbran, Pontypool and Blaenavon and which was, 100 years ago, made up almost wholly of men who worked in the collieries and in the steelworks. Over the last four years, a very good friend of mine who had been a local councillor—Stuart Cameron—has been compiling month by month a register of those who perished in the war. That has come to an end, and we now know that, over those four years of the war, in a valley whose population was much less than it is now, 1,300 men perished. A whole generation of young men in that valley was decimated. It is ironic that 1918 was the highest year for casualties: some 317 men died in that last year of the war.

Almost every single family was affected by that war, more than by any other conflict before that. That was, of course, because of conscription. Many men had to go to war because of national service, and others went because they volunteered. From those 1,300 men to whom I referred, 37 families lost two sons and five families lost three sons. The family of Henry and Elizabeth Williams of Pontnewydd had seven sons who fought in that war and three were killed. Of those seven sons, one was a steelworker and six worked underground.

Most of them joined up with the 2nd Battalion The Monmouthshire Regiment and the South Wales Borderers, but many others as well. Some 65 of those who died were in the Royal Navy, despite the fact that the south Wales valleys were not naval areas. That included a relative of mine who was killed in the Battle of Jutland. Six served in the very young Royal Air Force. This coming week, the Royal Welsh Regimental Association of Torfaen, of which I am president, will play a significant role locally and beyond that. The Cwmbran and District Ex-Servicemen’s Association has been chosen to represent south Wales, among others, at Ypres, in the coming celebration and commemoration there.

Four women from my valley died in the First World War. One was in the RAF and the other three were nurses. The Minister touched on what happened afterwards: the life of women changed dramatically. In 1918, they received the vote, although my grandmother—because of her class—had to wait another 10 years before she was able to vote. It has often struck me that I actually knew my grandmother; she did not really have the opportunity to cast that vote until she was in her 50s. More than 100 senior and significant medals were won by the men of Torfaen and I pay tribute to them.

It is quite interesting that the war began with enormous enthusiasm and euphoria. The Reverend Williams was the rector of the parish of Panteg in the eastern valley. Through his sermons and his speeches, he encouraged the men of the valley to sign up. It is said that by 1918, he was a broken man because of the shock of the fates of so many young people whom he had urged to sign up to fight in that war.

The men of the eastern valley were commemorated 100 years ago this weekend. The church bells rang in our valley churches, as they will in this great city, but the hooters of the factories and the steelworks, and the whistles of the locomotive collieries, also celebrated the end of that war. It is significant that during this debate we will hear many stories of ordinary men, and sometimes women, who lost their lives in the conflict.

The services held 100 years ago this week, and those to be held this week, are not just for those who died but for those who came back as well: those who were injured, psychologically and physically, and indeed for all the men, women and children who remained at home. Tragically, of course, two decades later it all happened again. The significance of this week should be that when we look back at history, as we must, we learn those lessons. We did not learn them in 1938-39 in quite the same way as perhaps we can today, but we can still remember those men, and sometimes women, whose courage inspires us and whose sacrifice is still undoubted.

Battle of Passchendaele

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always an enormous pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, who made a fascinating contribution, as have been all the speeches made so far in this Chamber.

For about three or four years now, a good friend of mine and councillor, Stuart Cameron, has been compiling a register of those in the eastern valley of Monmouthshire, my former constituency of Torfaen in South Wales, who perished during the Great War. In her very good contribution, my noble friend Lady Andrews referred to those who came from my home village of Abersychan in Monmouthshire. They, too, are commemorated by the register that Mr Cameron has been compiling.

I had a look at that register for the months of July to November 1917, covering, of course, the third Battle of Ypres. I discovered that at least 50 young men from my valley perished in that battle. That is 50 in a relatively small part of our country. Tragically, too, of those 50, seven of the men who died had brothers who had also died during the course of the war. Most of them were coal miners. Of course, the majority of coal miners were in a reserved occupation, as my grandparents were: they were finding the coal to fuel the ships to which my noble friend Lord West referred. Others, though, joined up. We have heard today of the poets and mathematicians, and the other tragic stories of people who died, but this is also the story of coal miners, steelworkers and other working-class boys who lost their lives at the same time. Most of those eastern valley men are buried in Tyne Cot, near the town of Ypres. They came from different regiments, but mostly from the South Wales Borderers or from Second Battalion, Monmouthshire Regiment.

The successor to those regiments is the Royal Regiment of Wales, and I have the great privilege of being the local president of the association of that regiment, led as it is by Captain Lewis Freeman and Mr David Thomas. They recently visited Passchendaele and Ypres, and this afternoon gives us an opportunity to pay tribute to those veterans’ organisations up and down the land—involving veterans who have fought in more recent battles than even the Second World War, to whom I think we should pay tribute on this occasion.

Almost exactly 50 years ago, I visited Menin Gate in Ypres for the first time and saw the ceremony of the Last Post. The veterans I saw lined up then to pay tribute to their comrades who had died were themselves veterans of the First World War. It is interesting to note now that when we return to the Menin Gate, year after year, there are literally hundreds of young people from our country and the Commonwealth who commemorate those who, a century ago, lost their lives. I wonder whether, if the same thing had happened at the beginning of the 20th century, people would, 100 years later, have commemorated Waterloo or Trafalgar. I doubt it. The reason is, of course, that those who fought and lost their lives in the Great War came from a much wider section of society, and hardly a family was unaffected by death or misery as a consequence of that war. Indeed, at the 90th commemoration of the Somme battle, the Last Post Association in Ypres visited Cwmbran, my home town, and played their part in the commemoration.

In some parts, as the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, said, the third Battle of Ypres was even worse than the Battle of the Somme. The divisional historian of the Monmouthshire Regiment, just a few years after the Battle of Passchendaele, wrote this:

“By universal consent, the Third Battle of Ypres represents the utmost that war has so far achieved in the way of horrors … the cramped theatre with its slimy canals, becks, bogs and inundations; its shelled duck-boards; its isolated outposts; its incessant shelling and incessant rain; its mists and fogs; its corpses and its pestilential miasmic odours outdid anything that the Somme or Arras could boast”.


That moved me when I read it last week in a very old history of the Monmouthshire Regiment, which endured five months under those circumstances. Rightly so, its battle honours included the title “Ypres, 1917”. That was richly deserved.

Our debate today plays its small part in our country’s tribute and remembrance of those brave men who fell on the fields of Flanders a century ago.

Digital Understanding

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, in 2007 the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, appointed me as the Minister for Digital Inclusion. It was as bizarre an appointment to me as it was to my friends, but one of the most significant actions I took when I did that job was to recommend the appointment of the noble Lady, Baroness Lane-Fox, as the digital champion for our country. She did a wonderful job, and has done a brilliant job this afternoon in introducing this extremely important debate. She talked about the difference between skills and understanding. I think when I was Minister I had some skills, but I did not have much understanding. I hope this is better now.

What certainly is better is that 10 years ago there were about 17 million people in our country who had no digital skills at all. That figure has now gone down to about 11 or 12 million so there has definitely been an improvement. But there are of course still parts of our society where an awful lot more work has to be done: among older people, who can benefit enormously from digital skills, whether by shopping or by talking to their relatives abroad, or whatever it might be—that has got better; among younger people from different socioeconomic groups and from poorer groups in society, who will not get jobs unless they are digitally literate; and, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans told the House, among disabled people, whose lives can be greatly enhanced if they are linked up to the internet.

However, there is another divide, too, which is between the different parts of the United Kingdom. In England, in Humberside, Yorkshire and the West Midlands, there is a deficit, and there is certainly a deficit in Wales, where I come from, and in Northern Ireland and Scotland. Therefore my plea to the Minister today—this has not been mentioned yet, so I hope that he can reply to me on this—is for him to say how he will bring together the different parts of our country on the issue of digital improvement.

The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare—who is of course himself a Welshman—talked about the orchestra and the conductor. The fact is that in the United Kingdom there is more than one orchestra. There is the English orchestra, but also the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish ones. How will the Minister and the Government co-ordinate the work of all the different Governments in the United Kingdom and to share experience and best practice? There is one way of doing it, which is to ensure that they look at the various institutions which allow them to do just that. There is the British- Irish Council, which brings together Ministers and Governments from these islands, and the Joint Ministerial Committee. It seems that there is a great job of work to be done there to ensure that we approach digital inclusion, digital skills and a better digital understanding right across the United Kingdom. I look forward to the Minister’s response on those issues.