Ann Clwyd

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

Thank you for granting this debate, Mr Deputy Speaker. First of all, I thank Ann’s family and friends, some of whom have joined us in the Gallery, for their support as we in the Chamber pay tribute to Ann Clwyd. Croeso i chi—welcome to you. I did not know Ann as well as many of those present this evening, having met her on only a handful of occasions. However, since I was elected I have had many positive conversations with local people and activists who knew her. Others will have had much more direct experience of working alongside Ann, and I thank them for coming to pay their tributes.

When I look back at Ann Clwyd’s life and career, I so much respect her work, and I think so much of it resonates with what we face today. Ann was a strong, independently minded woman, an advocate for women’s rights, international human rights, the Welsh language, good-quality public services and so much more. She was the first woman to be elected as an MP for the south Wales valleys, so I take pride in having had the opportunity to follow in her footsteps in Cynon Valley.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Having sat for many years next to Ann on this very spot on the Back Benches, and on the other side of the House as well, I want to echo my hon. Friend’s remarks about Ann’s incredible passion, pride and sense of justice, but I also want to mention her sense of mischief and the twinkle in her eye. She brought both passion and humour to this Chamber. She is sadly missed, and we are all greatly diminished by the lack of her presence in this House. Certainly in Cardiff West, where in her latter years she was a very active constituent and correspondent with me as her local MP, I certainly miss her letters, even though they created a great deal of work for me here in this place.

[Beth Winter]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention.

Ann understood the need to keep jobs in local communities. Tyrone O’Sullivan, leader of the Tower Colliery buy-out, who sadly also passed away earlier this year, spoke at an event for Ann that was organised in March last year by our local Labour women’s branch in Cynon Valley. Tyrone acknowledged and celebrated Ann’s contribution to the fight for Tower Colliery, and he reminded me, only weeks before his death, of the importance of the working-class struggle for today. They showed the way to build local economies, building local wealth for local people, not encouraging local people to leave in order to get on in life. I share that vision and I try to carry on in the same vein with my work on the local economy in Cynon Valley.

Ann fought battles on behalf of miners. When she became MP, our constituency was in the throes of fighting to keep the mining industry alive. Next year, we will remember 40 years since the 1984 miners’ strike—the year when Ann became MP for Cynon Valley. I was, as a child, on the demonstration through the town of Aberdare with Ann. In her maiden speech in Parliament, Ann said that the miners’ strike was

“a symbolic fight, a fight against the two Britains—the haves and the have nots. It is a protest on behalf of a lost generation of young men and women who have never been able to find a job in the valleys of South Wales.”

That fight continues. Public service workers, rail workers and health workers today are fighting against two Britains—the haves and the have nots.

Ann also fought tirelessly for compensation for miners suffering health problems as a result of their work. As she said in the same speech:

“It is a heartbreaking experience—I wish that Conservative Members could share it—to see a miner gasping for breath even while using an oxygen mask. Yet, because he has not been diagnosed as suffering from pneumoconiosis, he does not get a penny in compensation. That is more than wrong, it is cruel and unjust.”—[Official Report, 7 June 1984; Vol. 61, c. 476-77.]

I, like other Members in the Chamber, am currently involved in the ongoing battle for miners’ pension rights and compensation, so again the fight goes on; the thread of history continues.