A devoted Welshman, European, a great admirer of David Lloyd George and R S Thomas, and a passionate supporter of electoral reform.
After 1992, when both of us were no longer active in politics, our paths never crossed again. We exchanged a rare phone call but I should have done more to keep in touch. How often is that the story of life—we busy ourselves with all and sundry but forget the more important human aspects. So in the end one has to rely on some distant memories rather than more recent experiences and friendships.
It was in 1969, when I was
Research and Public Relations officer for the Welsh Council of Labour (Welsh
Labour Party now) that I first came across Tom Ellis. We immediately formed a
bond because, other than his passion for the poetry of R.S Thomas, his political
beliefs and mine coalesced.
Tom was 46 years of age when
he was elected as the Labour MP for Wrexham and I was 27—so he was considerably
more experienced than I was in the ways of the Labour Party and the trade union
movement. Looking back on certain events
and decisions, I wish I had taken his advice on more occasions than I did! We
were also different in personality and character—I was exuberant, loud and assertive
and Tom quiet, reflective and thoughtful. But we shared an awful lot in common during
the SDP/Liberal Alliance days of the 1980s and had an enormous amount of fun
and enjoyment!
His background was unique.
This will become apparent in the interview recorded at his home in the late
1980s. A product of a hamlet called Pant
near the more famous village of Rhos close by Wrexham, his autobiography aptly
titled ‘After The Dust Has Settled’ tells an interesting life-story. He was the
son of a miner who was a socialist—Tom often said that he learnt ‘The Red Flag’
when a young boy! Following his time at Bangor University, where he gained a degree
in Chemistry, he soon went to work underground in the mine where his father
worked. I will refrain from saying anymore because it is all in the recording below
and Tom tells the story much better...
In the interview he recalls
the General Election of 1945 where he was active in the Meirioneth constituency
and also of how he heard Lloyd George, Jim Griffiths and Aneurin Bevan speak. In
1970, he became MP for Wrexham and he soon became disillusioned with the Labour
Party over its attitude towards devolution, Welsh Language, Common Market and voting
reform. The last two were his passion and he became part of the Labour Party
Westminster delegation to the European Parliament in Strasbourg in 1975 until
direct elections in 1979. Later, he was a leading figure in the Labour Campaign
for Electoral Reform. On both of these matters he was outside the mainstream of
Labour thinking and the support for his views was in his words ‘sparse’ and ‘opposition
plentiful and vehement’—even within his own constituency party. Blind loyalty
to a party was not Tom’s credo—he often used to say in speeches that one of the
problems with politics in Britain was that ‘The Party’ had become too powerful
and dominant. He was a free-thinking ‘backbencher’ who refused to toe the party
line when it contravened his own conscience.
In variably during the week in
the Commons a group of Welsh-speaking Labour MPs would meet in the evening for
a drink and a chat in the Harcourt Room, as I think it was called. Anyway, it
was generally known as the Tories haunt—other than for the presence of Lord
George Brown and a couple of Liberals. Stories shared in that circle were both
fascinating and hilarious—with Cledwyn Hughes, Wil Edwards, Elystan Morgan,
Denzil Davies and of course Tom vocal. In the recording, Tom recounts a couple
of them. I tried to get him to say a few more, including a couple during his
days as a colliery manager, but his response was ‘Gwynoro I can’t say them in
public—God knows what you will do with the recording!’
He was there at the
beginning of the SDP in early 1981 and, in fact, before then as a member of the
Manifesto Group (a dozen or so like-minded moderate Labour MPs). Tom’s
principled stand can best be illustrated by the fact that he was MP in a safe
Labour seat and he knew full well that come the next General Election, which occurred
in 1983, he would lose his seat. What did surprise me somewhat on reading the
book was that he only devoted some 25 pages to the 1980s—because much of what
was achieved then was often done under his watchful eye! Although I was Chair
of the SDP for two terms and Joint Chair of the Alliance for the duration, not
much would go on without cross-referencing with Tom—certainly on the big issues, including how
to keep the SDP office in London and David Owen at arms-length, or even further
if possible!
In the 1980s Tom became
chair-person of the McDougall Trust which gave grants to research workers in
the fields of electoral systems and representative democracy. Also he pursued another one of his passions
which, as I said earlier, was the poetry of R.S.Thomas. Tom claims in his book that Thomas ‘stands supreme’ and that ‘ I am the
proud possessor of every book of poetry he has published, from Stones in the Field in 1946 to Residues published posthumously in
2002’.
That’s a brief snapshot of
Tom Ellis the man and his beliefs. Like the previous Vault feature with Mark
Whitcutt and his political impersonations, this recording too was entirely
unrehearsed and unedited. For many who remember Tom Ellis it will bring back fond
memories...