‘I am young, I am a woman, and I am Welsh... this is not the norm’: What the ‘punk peer’ said in her maiden address
WITH RED HAIR AND A FAKE FUR ROBE, BARONESS SMITH OF LLANFAES IS THE YOUNGEST EVER LIFE PEER AND AIMS TO BRING HER GENERATION’S PERSPECTIVE TO THE FORE
MUCH has been made of her punky appearance since Carmen Smith first donned her robes in the House of Lords a few days after her 28th birthday.
When the new Anglesey life peer delivered her maiden speech, its tone was strikingly different too.
Her hair is dyed red and she wears Dr Marten boots and Vinted clothes. She’s a Dua Lipa fan and, in her free time, she lifts weights.
She doesn’t believe the unelected Lords should exist. When she took her oath – wearing a fake fur robe, rather than a traditional ermine one – she swore allegiance to the King in Welsh as well as English.
After being nominated for the role by her party, Plaid Cymru, she chose to put her home village of Llanfaes on the political map.
She wanted to “send a message” about the experiences of people in rural, underprivileged areas like hers.
Baroness Smith of Llanfaes now represents a community on Anglesey’s west coast that was once briefly the capital of the kingdom of Gwynedd. In the Lords, she stands out. She’s one of the 30% of women there, and one of only 4% of representatives from Wales.
Moreover, Baroness Smith is the youngest-ever life peer in an institution where the current average age is 71.
For her maiden speech, she made a point of highlighting the challenges facing her generation.
She said: “My Lords, I am young.
“I am a woman and I am from Wales.
“Your Lordships know well that that is not the norm in this place.
“I am now one of only 33 members of your Lordships’ House who is below the age of 50, one of only seven below the age of 40, and the only one below the age of 30.
“I am conscious of the particular responsibility which now falls to me, as not only the youngest current member of your Lordships’ House, but also the youngest life peer ever to have been created.
“My responsibility, as I see it, is to not just be my own voice, or that of my party, or my country, but to be a voice of my generation.”
Born in Salisbury, Baroness Smith moved to Llanfaes on Ynys Mon aged seven.
She attended Ysgol David Hughes, Menai Bridge, and later Coleg Menai, where she was students’ union president at Grwp Llandrillo-menai.
The youngest of seven siblings, her dad – a former British Steel worker – was diagnosed with vascular dementia when she was 14, the age she began work.
He died in 2019 and she had to come to terms with him forgetting who she was.
She studied law at Bangor University for a year before leaving to be NUS Wales’ deputy president in 2016.
Baroness Smith stood in the European elections in 2019, and has been chief of staff for the party in the Senedd.
The House of Lords was never on her radar.
Highlighting her own experience of growing up on a council estate in Llanfaes, as a young carer to her late father, she said: “Battling on a daily basis the kind of prejudices and barriers that too many of our fellow citizens still face, trying to find hope and build a future for myself in a world where the odds seemed to be stacked against people like me, burning with anger at the deprivation to which my community had been subjected – and these experiences are not unique to me.
“My generation has a particular experience, a particular perspective, which deserves and needs to be reflected in this place.”
She said it was “imperative” the voices of young people were included in the deliberations of the Lords.
“We grew up through the global recession,” she said.
“We grew up in the shadow of terrorism at home and overseas.
“We grew up with the internet and social media.
“We grew up in the age of devolution.
“We grew up with the evergrowing threat, and reality, of climate change and mankind’s destruction of the natural world.
“We grew up at a time of increasing, and often aggressive, polarisation in our politics: in the age of [Donald] Trump, and Brexit and now, we have become adults in the age of Covid.
“During our still-short lifetimes, we have seen inequality grow and poverty deepen.
“We see wealth inequality all around us.
“We see high debts and housing costs, low wages and unstable work.”
Pledging to speak up for Wales, she went on: “Since the announcement of my nomination to this place, I have been quite open in my view that although I believe Welsh voices are necessary here now while this place has a say in the laws that govern Wales, I do not believe that an unelected, upper chamber has a place in a modern democratic society.
“While I may be in a minority in the House in holding that view, I would not be doing my job if I did not continue to express it.”
Baroness Smith’s appointment to the upper chamber was not without controversy, as she was not the first choice of the party membership.
Although she came second in the vote to a man, the rules meant she received the nomination because she was female.
Like other peers, she can claim the daily attendance allowance of £342 and up to £100 for overnight stays, plus travel expenses.
She has given up her job as a public affairs officer for Bute Energy, a Cardiff-based windfarm firm with sites across Wales.
Having just bought a home in Cardiff with her partner, she doesn’t plan to move to London – she can’t afford to and, besides, she wants to shake it up.
If voting runs later than the trains, she plans to sleep on friends’ sofas.