Researching the history of Welsh Government, recovering sources and memories
And a brief note about REM.
Ordinarily in my planned sequence for this newsletter I would have been writing about the Welsh Government Cabinet Committees in 2005. However, a number of interesting reactions to my post last week about the Cabinet Minutes in 2005 more generally stimulated some thoughts that I thought were worth sharing on trying to write the history of the making of the Welsh Government. In this post I will cover a number of relevant matters:
The problem of individual memory
Institutional archival materials
Individual records
Individual memory
One eagle-eyed reader drew something to my attention last week. I wrote in last week’s post that the first Cabinet Minutes of 2005 recorded that Rhodri Morgan
had held a ministerial reshuffle, following which Dr Brian Gibbons joined the Cabinet as Health Minister. Jane Hutt had moved to Business Minister and Karen Sinclair to Chief Whip.
The reader had a different memory of this from me. Their recollection was that Karen had not continued as Chief Whip, despite what had been said to Cabinet and the Labour Group, as she was unhappy with what she was offered. In the Cabinet Minutes for 10 January, she is recorded as having been present for items 1-4 only, and she does not, as far as I can see, appear at subsequent Cabinet meetings.
I haven’t checked this with Karen yet, but I think my reader was right. It is also an illustration of how memory can play tricks. I found this when I carried out my interviews for my book on the 1997 Welsh referendum, and of course it is a staple of scholarship on oral history methods that memory can be faulty and always needs to be cross-checked with the record. I found myself a little confused this week on some details of the way in which Rhodri Morgan was appointed First Secretary aftervAlun Michael, so it’s a natural thing to happen.
But in this case, the record itself is a little misleading, and doesn’t, as far as I can see, again unless I have missed something, get formally corrected subseqently.
My diaries are no help either, as I noted last week, because I recorded little from January 2005 until after the 2007 election. There are a number of reasons for that, one of which I will come to shortly. Compiling a record of developents within the Welsh Government over time requires drawing on a patchwork of resources, including individual memory.
Institutional archival records
I explained in one of my early posts on this Substack the difficulties of the recording and capture of archive material relating to the making of the Welsh Government and the welcome support I had received from Mark Drakeford when he was First Minister on this issue. I won’t go back over that again, as that post covers it in some detail if people want to read it, and contains some useful communications from Mark and between Mark and the National Archives.
I want instead to say a word about the Senedd’s own archives, particularly its Record of Proceedings, the equivalent of Hansard. The Senedd’s search engine has never been brilliant, from the early days of the National Assembly onwards: even on simple matters - for example, if you want to search the Record of Proceedings using the search engine, you are offered the option of searching by current or previous members. When the list of previous members comes up, it is only members of the Senedd before the current one:
Initially this gave me an existential crisis!
Thankfully, there is a link on the Senedd website to its archives. I know that this is not as well known as it should be from the reaction I have had after I posted an extract from one plenary session on Twitter. The archive link provides material from the Senedd business pages for each of the Assembly/Senedd terms:
Each of these buttons gives links to Lists of Former Members, Committee Proceedings, and Plenary Proceedings. For the Third Assembly, there are also links to Petitions, Legislation and Standing Orders. For the Fourth Assembly, there are no links to Petitions but there are additional links to Members’ Proposed Legislation, the Presiding Office, and Cross-Party Groups. For the Fifth Senedd, as it is now entitled, no links to Cross-Party groups, but there are additional links to Legislative Consent Motions, Emergency and Urgent Questions.
I will comment here on the links to Plenary Sessions. Clicking on the link for the First Assembly lands you not on its first year in 1999, but in 2001. So here is the link for 1999 if you want to start there. Clicking on the link for the Second Assembly lands you not in 2003 but in 2005. So here is the link for 2003. Clicking on the link for the Third Assembly lands you not in 2007, but in 2011. So here is the link for the Third Assembly’s first year in 2007. For the Fourth Assembly, the link lands you in 2015, not its first year, 2011. So here is the link for 2011. And for the Fifth Senedd, which ran from 2016-2021, you land on 2021 by clicking on the link. So here is the link for 2016.
I know there is interest in the Senedd Plenary in particular, so I am very pleased that the transcripts have been filed in an accessible way right back to the beginning of the Assembly.
Individual Records.
There are of course many individual records which are relevant to any history of devolution in Wales. I have not yet contacted the National Library to look at any of the websites which they digitized, but since writing about 2005 last week I decided to look back through the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine at my own blog, which I began writing in 2005. Blogs in those pre-Twitter days were somewhat different. I notice occasional very short posts which after 2008 I and others would have put on Twitter (or sometimes on Facebook). But one of the reasons I made fewer diary notes in this period was almost certainly because I had started the blog.
But in terms of relevance, for example, to last week’s post in devolution developments in 2005, here is what I wrote in June 2005 on the newly re-elected UK Labour Government’s White Paper, Better Governance for Wales (warning - some of the external links won’t work):
The Government White Paper on the future of the National Assembly was published today. This will be quite a long blog-post as I go through some of the issues raised. I hope that people will comment on this and we can develop a dialogue as we move along.
I have welcomed the White Paper proposals, just as I welcomed the Richard Commission Report. There are three key elements:
1) Ending the corporate body status of the Assembly so that there is a real separation between the executive and legislature.
2) Enhancing the powers of the Assembly, with a route-map towards primary powers.
3) Reform of the electoral system, to prevent people standing for both a constituency seat and a list seat.
I will comment on all of these issues in turn:
1) Changes to the corporate body status have cross-party support in Wales and have been widely welcomed. This will mean, amongst other things, committees becoming proper vehicles for scrutiny rather than ways of prolonging broad general debates that should really happen in plenary. Ministers will no longer sit on the Committees, which will have the effect of making them less partisan in effect. This will all require primary legislation. The Committees will have to take more time on legislative scrutiny - see below.
2) The powers of the Assembly will be enhanced in three ways.First, the UK Government will move immediately to fulfil the Richard Commission suggestion that in primary legislation broad enabling powers can be given to the Assembly to make laws within the specific field. This will not require primary legislation.
Second, there will be a new arrangement, whereby the Assembly can ask Westminster to devolve powers to it to legislate in a given area, subject to this being approved by Orders in Council in Westminster. This will require primary legislation. It will come into effect from 2007.
Third, the Government of Wales Act implementing these changes will also establish a trigger emchanism whereby, following a vote of 2/3 of the Assembly, the Assembly can apply to Westminster to hold a referendum which would enable primary powers to be granted to the Assembly. No further referendum Act of new Government of Wales Act would be needed.
The first option implements the Richard proposal faster than Richard suggested. The second proposal goes further than the Richard proposal for first-stage transfer of powers. The third element could occur within the Richard timeframe of 2011 for primary powers to be given to the Assembly.
3) The electoral system reform will be a controversial proposal. It is designed to end losers becoming winners: in Clwyd West, Alun Pugh won the seat, but Plaid's Janet Ryder, Tory Brynle Williams and Lib Dem Eleanor Burnham who all lost were all elected on the list.
I have been a supporter of devolution since the 1970s and campaigned for it and voted for it as a student in Bangor in 1979. (For details, see my book, Wales Says Yes )
After the 1979 defeat, I came to the view that we would need a referendum to redress the 1979 situation and ensure we were taking the people of Wales with us. I was one of the co-founders of the Yes for Wales campaign in 1997.
I have always believed that law-making powers for the Assembly would need a referendum, and argued that before I was elected to the National Assembly. I believed that Welsh Labour had to forge a new consensus for change.
I think that the White Paper starts to do just that. I think that the referendum trigger mechanism is clever, and avoids the danger of the 1970s where a referendum clause was written into the Bill during its passage through Parliament. My own suggestion for avoiding that, which I argued publicly, was to commit to a pre-legislative referendum rather than a post-legislative referendum, but this trigger mechanism probably does the trick.
As I said in the Chamber today, the White Paper demonstrates that Welsh Labour is taking devolution forward:
Leighton Andrews: Many of us on all sides of the Chamber were proud to have been involved in the referendum campaign in 1997, which delivered a ‘yes’ vote for devolution. However, it is Welsh Labour that has delivered the National Assembly for Wales; it is Welsh Labour that is now strengthening the powers of the Assembly and taking devolution forward. First Minister, do you agree that the first stage proposals outlined today in the White Paper would operate faster than the first phase that the Richard commission proposed, and that the fast-track proposals go further than the Richard commission proposed? Do you also agree that the White Paper identifies a clear route map to primary powers for the Assembly, if backed by the Welsh people in a referendum, which will be set out in the new Government of Wales Act? Is this not evidence that Welsh Labour is the party of practical, effective and popular devolution for Wales?
The First Minister: I agree, and I am glad that you made that point because opposition parties have tried to pretend that Labour is in business to veto legislation. In fact, Labour is the only party that has delivered devolution. The first attempt in 1979 failed, but the second attempt in 1997 succeeded, and, this being in Labour’s manifesto, on which we achieved a historic third term with a working majority a month ago, I have no doubt that it can also be delivered. It is a matter of democratic accountability to the electorate; we do what we say we will do on the tin, as it were. We put it to a conference; if we get a majority support in a conference, we put it in the manifesto; if we win a majority in the subsequent general election, we activate what we said we would in the manifesto. That is basis on which I trust that, not only the House of Commons, but the House of Lords—which has a different party composition—will accept that, under the Salisbury convention, they are not going to oppose the implementation of this principle and all the main things covered in Labour’s manifesto commitment. It is exactly the same with women’s equality.It is true that this Assembly is gender balanced. It is gender balanced because of what Labour has done to bring about gender balance, and we have carried the burden on that, if you like. It is exactly the same for devolution; we do not think of it, we implement it.
Please forgive the contemporary boosterism, which was very much of its time. But the rediscovery of this old blog (again, the links aren’t perfect!) is handy in the absence of diary notes for particular years, and I will doubtless draw on it as I move forward through the Welsh Government Cabinet Minutes. I subsequently commented later in 2005 on the Assembly’s own Committee Report on the White Paper.
In writing about the Welsh Government’s past on this Substack, I have been contacted by other researchers asking, for example, about what exists in respect of the policy areas where they have an interest, and also by people with a longstanding interest in Welsh devolution who have themselves forgotten some of the details, for example on the 2003 Assembly seating debate. All questions and queries welcome and I will try to answer them if I can!
Finally, the poster above is of course for REM’s 2005 tour. I was at the Millennium Stadium gig when they played there. I note that my then blog records:
REM/Stipe dedicate 'Everybody Hurts'
Playing Cardiff tonight, Michael Stipe dedicated Everybody Hurts to the victims of the London bombings and their families.
OK, some may say this was an obvious thing to do. But there is scarcely a more appropriate song to act as the dedication. REM play London at the end of the week.
They rocked tonight. New songs, old stuff, and 35,000 people joining in.
Michael Stipe came back on to do Imitation of Life as the first encore, wearing a Welsh rugby shirt with Stipe 1 on the back. One of the band was drinking Brains SA, and said he thought 'Wales was strong on the organic stuff'.
One of the best gigs I have ever seen.
Of course, these days it's always reassuring when the lead singer is roughly your own age.
World Leader Pretend.
Thank you, Hugh. I will definitely ask NLW and Aled about the footage. When I get near the interview stage I would love to talk to you and to Carys as well about a range of things related to this project. And so should other researchers, as you have in your brains more material than I can accommodate in my study, I am sure!
I’m enjoying this, it’s a la recherche du temps perdu!
A tangential point, as you mention the NLW: you might want to ask them if they ever received from the BBC the probably hundreds of hours of fly on the wall film they shot in the period Nov 97 to July 98 showing how we in the then Welsh Office developed the policy and delivery of devolution following the 97 referendum; there was a short series on BBC Wales, but it didn’t begin to make use of all the stuff they had. (Aled Eurig negotiated the access with Jon Shortridge, so Aled might know what happened to this material, which ought to be of considerable historical interest).
As you will probably be aware, Carys Evans wrote the Richard Report, and she then handed the baton to me; I was seconded to the Wales Office to write what became Better Governance for Wales. Getting BGW through ‘the process’ was an interesting exercise given the prevailing culture at that time in the Wales Office (which had been out of the loop re Richard); it’s a testament to the quality of Carys’ work that they recognised they had to respond to Richard at least to some degree, albeit without enthusiasm. Hence the excruciating experience of what later became known as LCOs (though that is not the language of the 2006 Act). But from a civil service standpoint, it was the separation between the Assembly and the executive function that was the most important aspect of BGW.