Tributes to Nelson Mandela

Hywel Francis Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Hywel Francis (Aberavon) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier). I should like to place on record my thanks to you, Mr Speaker, for allowing me to be called early in the debate, and to apologise for my absence earlier in the day. I have not been particularly well but my doctor, Dr Grant, allowed me to come here because I insisted on doing so.

It is with great pride that I speak today not only as the hon. Member for Aberavon but as the Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, whose work has been enormously influenced by the new free democratic South Africa. I have also been a member of the Wales anti-apartheid movement since its earliest days, and I want to pay tribute to my long-standing friend Hanif Bhamjee, who kept the movement going through the most difficult times. He should have been mentioned in Nelson Mandela’s speech in 1998 when Mr Mandela received the freedom of the city of Cardiff, but Hanif insisted that his name be replaced by that of someone of the same age and vintage as Nelson Mandela—namely, Bert Pearce, who was the general secretary of the Communist party in Wales.

Many tributes have been paid to Nelson Mandela, but to me the most striking was the one from his long-term adversary, F. W. de Klerk. He emphasised how important Nelson Mandela had been in convincing so many people, including himself, of the importance of the universality of human rights.

We all have particular memories of Nelson Mandela and, listening to the debate today, it has been striking to hear how diverse those memories are. My most important memory of him is my first memory, and it dates back almost to the beginning of Nelson Mandela’s journey, at the end of the Rivonia trial. I went with my father, who was the general secretary of the south Wales area of the National Union of Mineworkers, to Llandaff cathedral. Like many cathedrals and churches across the world, Llandaff had decided, under the leadership of the World Council of Churches, to hold a vigil through the night at which people would pray and show their solidarity with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and all the other African National Congress leaders who could be sentenced to death. It was our duty and privilege to be there, just as it is a privilege to recall that moment. Bishop Glyn Simon and Dean Eryl S. Thomas read from the New Testament through the night until dawn. That gathering was remarkable for its diversity of political opinion and faiths. There, in microcosm, was a kind of mirror image of the African National Congress: it was representative of the emerging Wales anti-apartheid movement, and all progressive opinion in Wales was there.

That was the beginning of the long journey that Nelson Mandela started and, we would like to think, of the journey for those in Wales and Britain who were in solidarity with him. The two most important social movements or institutions at the heart of that movement from beginning to end were the churches, led by the Welsh Council of Churches, and the trade union movement, led by the South Wales Miners Union.

My second memory is of two particular moments in Cardiff in December 1969, when Wales played the Springboks. First, when the main march came to the bottom of St Mary street, it met a separate march from the black community in Butetown, which unified with ours. It was led by the Cardiff International athletic club—the CIACs—with the banner that I understand was made specially for the occasion, and with one of its proudest members and sons, the late great Joe Erskine, the British and European boxing champion. Symbolically, the two marches unified at that point. A second, but sadder, moment was when one speaker said that it was a shame for Wales to have the people’s game played behind barbed wire. The one consolation was that there were more people on the demonstration than inside watching the match.

My third memory was of my late hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare and then for Cynon Valley, Ioan Evans, who did so much solidarity work in South Africa. He came with me to deliver a letter from the Bishop of Namibia in exile, Dr Colin Winter—he had been thrown out of Namibia for his solidarity work in support of striking miners there—urging the members of the Cwmbach male voice choir not to go to South Africa. I mention that choir’s name in tribute to them, because they eventually agreed not to go, and I salute them now, although I had never done so. I suppose that that is our little contribution to reconciliation.

Finally, I have a received memory, not a personal one. A matter of a few yards from this Chamber, the then Leader of the Opposition, Neil Kinnock—he played an enormous part in the anti-apartheid movement in Wales and Britain, and internationally—welcomed Nelson Mandela to the shadow Cabinet room in 1990. It was very striking that Nelson Mandela paused and looked at a particular Welsh miners’ banner that had been made in 1961, a year after the Sharpeville massacre. It was in the brilliant, beautiful colours of the African National Congress—black, green and gold. Importantly, the banner showed a white miner shaking hands with a black miner, with a miner’s lamp shining between them to symbolise the light of the world. I had arranged for the banner to be there, and I had insisted that the Welsh slogan, not the English one, was shown. Nelson Mandela was puzzled by the slogan, “Mewn undeb mae nerth a heddwch”—in unity there is strength and peace—and he asked about its significance and meaning. Neil Kinnock replied, “You will understand when I tell you that that is the banner from the South Wales miners. That is the Abercraf miners’ banner.” Neil said to me, with pride, that Nelson Mandela had said, “I do understand.”

I will end by telling the House that it has been arranged for that banner to return to the shadow Cabinet room. I spoke to the librarian of the South Wales Miners’ Library, Sian Williams, earlier today and she is happy for it to be returned. I suggest that it should be returned on the condition that it stays in the shadow Cabinet room in perpetuity, irrespective of who occupies that room, as a salute to Nelson Mandela, his comrades in the ANC and our comrades in the Anti-Apartheid Movement who did so much to remove apartheid in South Africa.