I joined Plaid Cymru the Party of Wales in 1978 because I believed that it was the only party that had the policies to improve the lives of the people of Wales and tackle the real problems of poverty and disadvantage - particularly in areas like the Rhondda where I live.
Twenty seven years on I know that I was right. And the reason is simple: we are the only party with that aim. That is why Plaid Cymru-the Party of Wales exists. That's what we are all doing here.
Because it’s a well known fact that people hate politicians so why become one!! People often ask me why I chose to become a politician. Well the answer to that is simple too: I didn’t choose it. Like the people in this hall today, I had to do it. I met people like Vic Davies, Glyn James and Geraint Davies - people who were passionately committed to making a difference - and I wanted to be like them. I had to get involved.
I’m here because I really believe that we can build a better future. Wales can work. We have the proof! Many small countries are not only surviving but prospering in today’s world. It’s not a great mystery. It’s no big secret.
The truth is that Wales could do well. We need a parliament - a parliament which can pass laws so we can do what we need to do to improve things. The truth is that Wales could do well. We could do what other small nations in Europe are doing. But we can’t because New Labour and the Tories before them have stopped us.
We have a government in Cardiff and in London - it’s the same New Labour government - which is always telling us what’s best for us. They tell us we’re doing well as a country - but we are so poor we’re entitled to the same level of European funding as former Communist countries. They tell us we have the best health service - but people die on hospital trollies in corridors. They talk about the environment but they build poisonous landfill sites and incinerators. They talk about climate change but they are planning to build more nuclear power stations. Where? In London? I don’t think so!!!
They talk about an ethical foreign policy but they engage in an illegal invasion of Iraq resulting in tens of thousands of innocent deaths. They talk about moral politics and inclusivity. But they launch vicious personal attacks on other politicians - most recently the disgraceful attempts to undermine the excellent work of one of the most honest and well respected members of the National Assembly, Leanne Wood. How many times has the Labour Assembly member for the Rhondda reported - or claim to have reported - Plaid Cymru members to the standards committee or the Ombudsman? He would be better off spending his time working for the people of the Rhondda - not watching us - flattered as we may be by all the attention!
I was in the Basque Country last month and wherever we went - even to the smallest towns - there were excellent new roads and new development growing up around those roads. But we can’t get decent roads up the Rhondda Valleys or a good north south link. Why not? Because they don’t want to. It’s not a priority for New Labour. That’s obvious. It’s not an accident that we have bad roads, bad housing, bad school buildings. It’s the policy of Labour and the other parties. Like some other parts of Britain, Wales was heavily dependent on the coal industry in the past. But if you compare the situation today in the south Wales coalfield with the other biggest coalfield, Yorkshire, the differences are striking. Yorkshire has done much better than Wales, particularly in terms of non-coal jobs created since 1981. The real unemployment level in the south Wales coalfield is 13.5% - the highest of all the former coalfields in the UK. We have the highest percentage of incapacity benefit claims by working age men of all the former coalfields in Britain - nearly one in five! These things don’t happen by accident but because of government policy. There's been a lack of investment, a lack of political will to change things.
Gordon Brown says that we can't "run our race towards competitiveness on low salaries". But that's exactly what we have in Wales. That’s the main reason why Wales is poor. If you compare us to Galicia or the Basque Country or Ireland you will see that low wages are the main difference between us. Differently from other countries, the jobs created in Wales over the past few years are often short-term contract, temporary, part time and badly paid. We are not poorer than other parts of Europe because of any failing or weakness on the part of the people of Wales. We are a skilled people with everything that it takes for economic success - well almost everything. What we lack, and what other countries have, is real power to shape our own political and economic destiny. For all these reasons New Labour is obsessed with attacking independence for Wales. They are scared to even discuss it. They don’t want to lose control so they tell us we have to do things their way. But we don’t. It could be different. It could be better. New Labour have set up endless committees and send out reams of consultation documents. But they aren’t listening and there’s no action. They block action. The most shameful example of that is on European funding. We really have been betrayed by New Labour on this one, in Westminster and by the meek agreement of their Assembly Government counterparts. It is incredible that they can ignore the right of West Wales and the Valleys to receive three billion pounds of money that’s essential to help develop the economy and create jobs for local people over the coming years - stealing the money from our pockets and jeopardising the good work that’s been started in places such as Gwynedd. It’s New Labour that proposed to cut the EU budget to 1% GDP so that there wouldn’t be enough money for structural funds. It’s New Labour that’s been lobbying to renationalise the funds and only give money to the new member states. And it’s New Labour that refused to cooperate in the June Summit and delayed the decision on the budget, threatening Wales’s chance to qualify for full funding. Their betrayal is astounding. And this is their last chance.- they’ve had far too many chances by the people of Wales. If this money doesn’t come to Wales we’ll all know who to blame. After all they are the reason the poverty exists in the first place and now they either can't or won't address the problems.
But it's not only poverty in Wales that is of concern to Plaid Cymru.
Why are we still having to campaign for fair trade and better aid? I was one of the hundreds of people from Wales in Edinburgh on the Make Poverty History protest the weekend before the G8 summit. It was such a positive event, with such a wide range of organisations and individuals taking part, having travelled up to Scotland on buses and trains overnight. Together with peple who'd travelled from across Europe we created a 'human white band of hope' around Edinburgh and showed that a better world was possible. It sent a strong message to world leaders that we had had enough. It's totally unacceptable that a child dies every 3 seconds becaue of poverty. We wanted action taken.
But in the United Nations conference in New York this week the compromise reform package - the only way to ensure that the UN can implement the millennium goals to combat poverty had been undermined. The US have put in 750 amendments deleting the new pledges of foreign aid to poor countries, deleting the calls for action to stop climate change and deleting the call for the nuclear weapons states like Britain to make greater progress in dismantling their nuclear arsenals - as they are obliged to do under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
I will be going to Hong Kong in December to lobby at the meeting of the World Trade Organisation where fair trade issues will be discussed again. I'm going becase I know how strongly people in Wales feel about this. We have many fair trade towns now because of action by church and community groups to set them up. It is not just a cliche that the people of Wales have a strong internationalist feeling. You can see it throughout the country and you can certainly see it in the letters I have in Parliament.
As Dafydd Iwan said this morning "'Plaid Cymru is the party that looks out to the world.". This is a crucial time for Wales as it is for all of Europe. Since the ‘No’ votes in the referenda in France and the Netherlands, fundamental questions are being asked about the aim and the purpose of the European Union. And when I raised a fundamental question with Tony Blair in the European Parliament, I succeeded in confusing him completely, but then I was speaking Welsh. As he fiddled with his headphones he didn't quite get the point that there is no translation for Welsh - and that's something we're fighting to change.
There has been a lot of talk of the distance between the EU institutions and its citizens in different countries. And how can we help tackle this? By being more directly involved in the EU as a full member state, that’s how! We have to look at Wales’s place within Europe and that means looking at Wales’s place within Britain and the world too. Why shouldn’t we be able to speak for ourselves like Ireland and Malta and Latvia? Why have we got four MEPs when a smaller country like Latvia has nine? Why shouldn’t we be able to use the Welsh language in the European Parliament? We should have the same rights as other peoples and nations.
When we talk about independence we are talking about equality: equality for all the people of Wales, equality with other nations and equality in the world. With Labour we are powerless onlookers. Plaid Cymru offers you the chance to become equal partners for all our futures.
