Rhodri a friend’
that needed to win over large sections of the population who had voted against its creation or abstained, the Assembly desperately needed a charismatic leading figure who could make it seem worth sticking with.
Enormous hopes had been raised about what it could achieve. There was always going to be a lengthy “bedding in” period during which the new body needed to create new structures and ways of working. What it lacked in Alun Michael was a colourful leader who could inject a bit of magic to give the impression that something important was under way.
Most of Wales despaired at the contrast between what the nation craved from its new institution and the humdrum reality. There was a real possibility that devolution could peter out before it could properly get going.
The opposition parties seized on an issue that became at the time a cause celebre. The Labour UK Government had refused to provide the “match funding” needed to supplement the £1.3bn EU aid which had been awarded to Wales’ poorest communities, and most of the required cash had to come from the Assembly’s core budget. This was seen as a betrayal of Wales and was used as the means to vote Michael out of office.
Rhodri Morgan’s day had come at last. He was seen as the only conceivable successor to Michael and he took to the First Ministership like a one-legged duck to water.
He enunciated the philosophy that distinguished his policy approach from that of Tony Blair in a speech delivered at Swansea University in 2002. He had, he explained, created “clear red water” between his administration and Blair’s. He was against anything that smacked of creeping privatisation in public services, like foundation hospitals or schools. Sometimes this could come across as inertia, because it entailed retaining the status quo rather than innovating. Yet by steering clear of the headlong embrace of Private Finance Initiative schemes seen in England, Rhodri helped the public sector in Wales avoid billions of pounds of debt that will take a generation and more to pay back at unnecessarily high interest rates.
Equally, many people have reason to be grateful to Rhodri for his espousal of the principle of universal free benefits, under which many older people pay nothing for bus travel and everyone is entitled to free prescriptions.
Of course Wales continues to face challenges in the spheres of health, education and the economy, but to suggest that Rhodri Morgan failed as First Minister because of that would be grossly unfair.
He was hampered by some Welsh Labour MPs from pushing the devolution agenda forward and full lawmaking powers for the Assembly only became a reality after his successor Carwyn Jones won a referendum. But Rhodri’s commitment to a powerful Assembly was beyond question.
People sometimes refer in complimentary terms to politicians who possess a “hinterland”, a reference usually to their intellectual interests beyond politics. In Rhodri’s case, such a compliment is inadequate. He was a true maximalist, for whom politics was part of a much richer cultural whole that encompassed history, philosophy, literature and sport too, as well as other disciplines.
I shall greatly miss our irregular but pre-arranged meetings in Cardiff’s Chapter Arts Centre at which our conversations could veer off in any direction and into any era. Rhodri was always brimming with ideas and keen to share them.
He’s a great loss: Wales needs more Rhodri Morgans.
Rhodri Morgan – a life in pictures: Pages 30&31