WM
DESPITE being a Labour Party stalwart for 50 years, Jeff Jones has a disregard for many of today’s politicians that partly stems from his admiration for the Labour giants of the past.
Brought up in Maesteg, he studied international political history at the London School of Economics before becoming a teacher and at one time one of the youngest councillors in Wales: firstly on Mid Glamorgan County Council, and after local government reorganisation, at Bridgend.
While he read Marx and Gramsci at the LSE, one of his greatest political inspirations was his father, a miner and steelworker.
Jeff Jones said: “My father was a strong man, and he always taught me [that] when you believe in something, you stick at it. If you think you’re right and you’re helping other people, stick to it.
“And I’ve always believed that, even though very often people have said to me: ‘Why didn’t you keep your mouth shut?’”
He said the classic case had been when, as a young councillor, he voted against the party whip and got suspended from the Labour group: “A guy who I liked said: ‘Why didn’t you do the normal thing... and go in the toilet when the vote’s taken?’
“I said: ‘I can’t do that, I didn’t believe in it’.”
After being elected as a county councillor, he attended a dinner at which the Royal Toast was proposed. The only two people not to stand for the toast were Will Paynter, the Communist General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers who was the guest speaker, and Jones himself.
Afterwards Paynter came over to shake Jones’ hand and said: “Nice to see a young comrade keeping the flame going”. I always remember that. I’m still a republican – I’ve always believed that.”
When it was put to him that many non-Labour people saw Labour’s historic legacy in the Valleys not as one of standing up for local people but as engaging in petty and sometimes not-so-petty corruption, Jones said: “I represented a ward called Maesteg East, [which] was involved in one of the most famous corruption cases of the 1970s, the Ernie Westwood case.
“Westwood was sent to jail for taking a bribe for converting a miners’ agent’s home into a nightclub.
“One of my proudest boasts is that all the old boys in Mid Glamorgan used to say that if I’d been the county councillor, Ernie would have still been free because he wouldn’t have dared take a bribe in my ward.
“And there’s absolutely no doubt that people joined the Labour Party to get on, etc. All the head [teacher] posts in Mid Glamorgan were decided before the meeting.
“We had a deputy director’s position. My officer was a lovely man – Rhys Williams, RH Williams, who played second row for Wales and the Lions, who won the famous line-out in the last Test in 1959 against New Zealand. Rhys was a lovely guy. He was going up against somebody else and he didn’t have a very good interview. The man sitting next to me said: ‘That man hasn’t got a chance’. And I said: ‘Watch the vote’. Rhys lost the position by one vote. I didn’t vote for Rhys because I didn’t think he was the best man for the job. The guy turned to me and said: ‘How did he get so many votes?’ I said: ‘Because he’s the finest second row to play for Wales since the Second World War’.”
Jones spoke of how Mid Glamorgan had a director of education, Ken Hopkins, who was an active Labour Party member, and who told him when he was pushing for tertiary education in Mid Glamorgan: “We can’t have this. We’d lose every seat in the Rhondda.’ I told him he was supposed to be doing things that were right for the kids’ education.
“It’s the one party state issue. The simple fact is that politics in the South Wales Valleys finished in the 1920s.
“A number of mistakes were then made. Bright working-class people – too many – joined the Communist Party. They should have stayed in the Labour Party and fought for socialism. They wasted their time in the British Communist Party.
“What then came in to fill the gap were ex-Liberals who’d opposed the Labour Party before 1914, and people who just saw it as a means to status, power, whatever.”
Jones argued that in a one-party state there shouldn’t be a fear of discussion: it should be like the direction taken by the Czechoslovak Communist Party under Alexander Dubcek, which led to the Soviet invasion in 1968.
“Ironically I think that’s why people like Jeremy Corbyn, because he does allow discussion to a certain extent. He is an unusual man who says what he thinks. He’s criticised for it, but people respect that, even if they disagree with him.
“What they don’t like are politicians who don’t seem to understand what ordinary people are feeling, or will say one thing and then do something else when they get elected. Hence the disillusionment that colours so many people’s views of politics today.”
Jones also spoke candidly about the occasion when he faced the possibility of being jailed for contempt after writing a letter in which he described the Clywch child sex abuse inquiry into the crimes of Welsh-language drama teacher John Owen as a witch-hunt against council officers.
He said: “The person accused of the abuse, John Owen, had worked for Mid Glamorgan... and left under a cloud. What people don’t realise [is that] when he did leave, it’s not like now, there was no teachers’ council, he was no longer an employee. So it was no good saying, we have issues with this character: he doesn’t work for us any more. What can we do? Legally we can’t do anything.
“I still believe the inquiry was a shambles. Peter Clarke [the first Children’s Commissioner for Wales, who died in 2007] was completely out of his depth.”
Two council officers were “given a hammering” at the inquiry, and Jeff Jones thought it was very unfair.
He said: “I really thought that they were getting at the wrong people. So I wrote a private letter to the thenFirst Minister, Rhodri Morgan... He handed it on to Clarke.
“I was called before Clarke to give new evidence... I’m then advised to get legal advice. I got a solicitor through my contact and a very good barrister from England. He advised me not to go, so I didn’t.
“They still went ahead... They decided to send off to Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, asking him to prosecute me. But he decided not to. They were in a quandary. They then went ahead and prosecuted me themselves for contempt.
“I can honestly say, and people who know me well would say, I wasn’t under pressure. If I had been a single man, I wouldn’t give a damn. But you can go to jail for two years for contempt. My daughters were being told, ‘your dad’s going to jail’, my wife was very worried about it all. My parents were still alive – my mother was petrified. It was an appalling mental situation on the whole family.
“I was confident and told my wife I’d done nothing wrong. But they wouldn’t release Goldsmith’s reply. I went in the dock and was crossexamined by a QC for the Children’s Commissioner. My barrister conducted a brilliant defence from an academic point of view, citing cases from 1834 involving Ludlow Town Council.
“I was found not to have committed contempt. But straightaway, one of the other side jumped up and demanded that I don’t get any costs. The judge only awarded me half my costs, so I had to pay £10,000 which I didn’t have. My father had to give it to me.
“The judge said in his summing up we would never know why the Attorney General wouldn’t prosecute. Oh yes we did know. I used the Data Protection Act to get the letter. They refused and wrote to Goldsmith asking him that the letter shouldn’t be released. He released the letter, which I will remember until the day I die.
“It said he had consulted the top contempt lawyer in the UK. In his opinion I had not committed contempt, even though my words might be a bit strong. He advised them not to go ahead with the contempt case, but they did. People should ask why. It’s because they were frightened of what I was going to say. It was an attempt to silence me – and that’s why I will never agree to a separate legal jurisdiction in Wales: there are too many people in this part of the world who know each other.”