Everything Delyth Jewell said in her speech to annual conference
South Wales East Senedd Member Delyth Jewell's speech to annual conference in full.
Wel, gynhadledd, am braf yw hi i gwrdd yng Nghaerdydd, a braf cwrdd hefyd ar adeg pan mae’r Blaid ar i fyny. Ydych chi’n gallu teimlo’r potensial yn y neuadd hwn, yn y bobl sydd o’n cwmpas ni? Mae’n teimlo fel bod newid mawr ar droed. Gyfeillion, bydd 2026 yn flwyddyn dda i Gymru – mae gen i deimlad da iawn am hynny.
Ac mawr mae angen newid ar ein gwlad. Ers inni gwrdd diwethaf, mae sgandal ar ôl sgandal wedi cydio yn Llywodraeth Lafur y Bae, dan Vaughan Gething, y dyn digydwybod, y dyn digywilydd. Dyna fallai’r bennod helaethaf o hubris yn hanes gwleidyddiaeth Gymreig fodern: bu rhaid iddo gwympo, achos ei falchder. Ac ers iddo fynd, ffocws y Blaid Lafur yng Nghymru ydy’r Blaid Lafur yng Nghymru. Dewison nhw arweinydd a fyddai’n tawelu’r meinciau cefn, fyddai’n osgoi rhagor o ymrafael, ond person a oedd heb ddarlun clir o paham roedd hi eisiau’r swydd. Mae gennym lywodraeth sy’n blaenoriaethu cadw’r dyfroedd yn dawel, yn lle creu tonnau, a’r tonnau sy’n troi’n llanw. Llywodraeth sy’n gwrthod yn llwyr y syniad bod ganddyn nhw ddylanwad ar eu meistri yn Llundain. Wel, o leiaf maen nhw’n realistig.
Na, ffocysu’n fewnol a wnânt, wastad yn barod i ildio i Sir Starmer a’i griw, yn cilgamu i osgoi unrhyw letchwithddod.
Gynhadledd, ryn ni yng Nghymru angen llywodraeth a fydd yn sefyll lan er budd ein pobl – yn lle aros yn dawel pan mae camwedd ar ôl camwedd yn cael eu gwneud i’n cenedl. Dewis oedd tynnu nôl arian o bensiynwyr mewn cartrefi oer; dewis oedd cadw’r cap creulon ar 2 blant, dewis oedd gwrthod rhoi arian yr HS2 maen nhw’n gwybod yn iawn sy’n ddyledus inni. Dewis a dethol a wnaethant gyda phob un cam – dewis rhoi Cymru wrth waelod y ciw, dewis anwybyddu ein hanghenion ni a’n pobl. Doedd dim byd anochel am eu llymder. Maelstrom a grëwyd gan greulondeb y Toriaid, a gwendid Keir Starmer, yn ymweu, gan droi a throelli, a bygwth tynnu’n pobl dan y dyfroedd.
Ond wir i chi, maen nhw wedi gwneud cawlach o bethau. A dim ond hyn a hyn o gaffes gwleidyddol y maen nhw’n cael eu gwneud cyn i’r wasg, a’r cyhoedd droi yn eu herbyn nhw. Mae di dechrua digwydd ers misoedd. Mae’r llong hon yn gollwng dwr.
Mae dirfawr angen cyfeiriad newydd ar Gymru. Capten newydd wrth y llw. Llywodraeth a fydd yn brwydro er budd ein pobl – nid dim ond pan mae’n gyfleus, neu’n hwylus i’w ffrindiau yn Llundain bell. Llywodraeth Plaid Cymru sydd ei hangen – a dyna beth bydd gan Gymru wedi’r etholiad yn 2026.
Ond gynhadledd, fallai fy mod i’n neud cam â’r Llywodraeth ‘ma yn San Steffan. Fallai fy mod i’n annheg. Wedi’r cyfan, maen nhw wedi rhoi envoy inni – dyna posh. Sue Gray, y Marco Pollo modern. Er, sneb cweit yn siwr beth ydy envoy. Cynrychiolydd Keir Starmer yn y gwledydd hynny maen nhw eisiau eu cadw dan reolaeth, fallai. I osgoi unrhyw ddisgwyliad anffodus y byddai’r Prif Weinidog honedig ei hunan eisiau siarad gyda ni’r plebs y tu allan i Loegr. Rhyw hangover ymerodraethol mae’n siwr ydy busnes yr envoy yma. Swydd i rywun oedd wedi ypsetio pawb, nad oedd, ma’n debyg, yn deall gwleidyddiaeth – so dyna ni, wnawn ni ei rhoi hi i’r bobl sydd ddim yn cyfri.
Dyna i chi ble rydyn ni’n sefyll yn y trefn flaenoriaeth. Ond peidiwch â phoeni, Sue, ymhen rhai blynyddoedd, nid envoy fydd ei angen arnom ond llysgennad.
Achos mawr yr edrychwn ymlaen, wrth gwrs, at y dydd pan na fydd gan San Steffan unrhyw ddylanwad drod ein gwlad. Tan hynny, mae gennym griw o bencampwyr yn Llundain yn ymladd dros ein corner cenedlaethol: Liz a Ben a Llinos ac Ann. Gyda Dafydd, a Carmen, criw ydynt a fydd yn tynnu lawr tyrrau adfeiliog yr hen balas ger y Thames, darn wrth ddarn. A phob llwyddiant iddynt yn eu gwaith.
But for the months to come, conference, our thoughts will centre on another parliament, one far closer to home. In this same city, where land and sea meet. Our chance is to offer new hope to this place, and to the lands who feel forgotten at its borders.
It is a glorious city, Cardiff – with its boulevards and arcades, its cafes and canals, its churches and Chippy Lane.
This splendid city, a place founded with the dreams of our forefathers, but built on the misery of miners.
No, we should not shy away from the two aspects of its story, exploited as its docks and workers were to ship the wealth out from our valleys.
Legend has it that the first million pound cheque in the history of the world was signed in Cardiff docks off the proceeds of our coal. It was a ledger soaked in blood – for none of those profits stayed in places where the miners ripped their fingers raw and slaved in the drudgery underground.
No, we were left with the dust that clogged the lungs of miners, and the slag heaps that crowd out the sky.
They made a wasteland of our prospects, and called it progress.
The insult of those coal tips still catches in the throat. Westminster must be made to pay to clear those tips, at long last. Our valleys have waited long enough under their shadow.
But it isn’t just our light that’s being stolen. On our streets, too, proud testaments to our past face closure. Budget cuts mean places like Llancaiach Fawr and Blackwood Miners’ Institute are fighting for survival. How short is the memory of some local authorities. How easily they forget the struggle it took to establish those institutes. Places paid for from miners’ wages to ensure the community had places to go for libraries, concerts, for meetings and dances and lessons. Life dealt those miners a cruel hand: they slogged and sweated their days in the dark, but they saved their shillings to give their children something better. Those miners’ institutes were more than buildings: they stood as cathedrals to the kindness of men with blackened hands and poisoned lungs.
Men, in Harri Webb’s words, “with 90 per cent dust, who could hit top C as if it never existed.”
The sacrifices those men made. The horrors they endured in the deep. But still, with their last breath, they sang. And their memory stays still in the hallowed halls of miners’ institutes. How shallow is the memory of those who would close them.
Because, conference, we in the valleys are so proud of our history – bitter as that history has been. It a story, yes, of exploitation. But it also a story of defiance. Men who fought for better wages. The widows of Senghenydd. The parents of Aberfan.
We do not forget our history. But it is the future we must face.
And what the valleys need today is better wages, secure jobs, opportunities for young people. The calamity of what’s happened in Port Talbot has brought back harsh memories, and conference, I know, we all stand in solidarity with those workers. Those men and women who’ve been cheated out of jobs by the wanton pursuit of profit. The governments in Cardiff and in London have betrayed those workers. And we in Wales cannot afford to see it happen again.
Time and again, Labour told us they had a plan to save those jobs, ready to go as soon as they reached Downing Street. It seems the sickness of deception is catching on whoever walks through that black door. Hollow words is all we’ve had, and a decision to stick to the same mistakes that’ve been made before. No renewable sector can be generated in Wales without steel. No sea change in how we power our houses and fuel our future, unless we first make materials. It is short-sightedness tinged with vandalism to deprive our workforce of its metal. How can they be content to throw away such vast potential?
The Labour party is turning its back on these communities, just as the Tories did before. And conference – they will get the same reward.
Our valleys should not be treated as forgotten lands, but as the cradle of a new revolution – of green jobs, harnessing the power of our nation’s assets to catapult us into our future.
But the mistakes of the past must still be reconciled. Our communities still wait for compensation.
What right can be done, now, to atone in these places where the wrongs of our past echo still?
In Welsh, we call echo a “carreg ateb”, an answer found in rock and stone. Perhaps it’s time we found an answer in those walls of rock, the mountains that have guarded us, the coal tips that scar their skyline.
Because clearing those tips is only the beginning of what we in the valleys are owed. No, our valleys deserve recompense. For the wealth they stole from under our feet. And the long years their coal tips kept us in darkness.
Not daylight robbery, but the robbery of the daylight.
What answer can those rocks give us? Our geology that so condemned the coal miners and their widows. Well, what answer can there be for darkness, save light?
Why not insist Westminster pay to install solar panels not on mountains, but on the sides of public buildings – to take up the corresponding space as was lost to those tips. On those who dwelt in lands of darkness, a light will be shone – a light that can power our buildings and ensure our wealth stays in our own small square of land. The coal tips have clouded the horizons for too long – it’s high time we reclaimed the light that was stolen from us.
Westminster must pay its debt to us – outstanding as it is. The money owed to the miners’ children. The charge they will never clear.
“ ‘Oh, what will you give me?’ Say the sad bells of Rhymney.”
It’s a line from a ballad known the world over. A song that sings of the wrongs done to our fathers and families.
Idris Davies’ words, made famous by Pete Seeger’s song, speak hauntingly of a landscape in our valleys that is recognisable still: empty churches, mourning the losses of lives and the scantness of any reckoning. It asks:
“ ‘Is there hope for the future?’ Say the brown bells of Merthyr.”
Isn’t it time that question was answered? Isn’t it time we gave those communities some semblance of hope, instead of always having things taken away?
Shuttered windows, empty properties, boarded-up banks and snuffed-out street lights. Don’t out communities deserve better than this? Why does the investment never come to them?
No, this cannot be the end of our communities’ story.
With reforms to business rates to breathe life into high streets, policies to bring empty properties back in use, ending the iniquity of unfair council tax, and greater investment in jobs, our valleys will the centre of our vision for Wales. Not some place on the periphery, commuter towns for Cardiff. But places worth investing in for their own sake, as the vibrant, wonderful place so many of us call home.
Together, conference, we will make the valleys sing again.
And what songs do we want our children to sing of us? Of we who live in this time of our history, a time of permacrisis, weak governments, burned earth?
Do we want them to say that ours was the generation that lost its voice, or do we want them to proclaim our triumph? Sing that ours was the time Wales shook off her shackles
That on our watch, the wait was ended?
Wales, the newest nation in the world.
What a chorus that will be. When we only find the song.
It’s said that, towards the end of the Cuban revolution, in the hours before they took Havana, Castro and Che Guevara wiled away the hours of darkness recounting the exploits of Owain Glyndwr.
Our stories have inspired other nations into being.
That same fate awaits us, too. The coda we must meet.
Oh, we are a people that have known pain. But we have turned trials to our tune. The answers found in rock and stone, that clamour down the ages
Why should we not sing our song to the world
As brilliant as its anthem will be. The land of song finding her voice at last, in pitch and tone and in key. It will carry the chords of the miners, the music of those gone before
We will raise our voice to the heavens
A nation, at last, that is free.