At 5.30 pm on Friday, 5 November Dr Hywel Francis, the Labour MP for Aberavon, will deliver the 2010 Welsh Political Archive lecture in the Drwm at the National Library of Wales. The title of the lecture is ‘Ireland 1916; Russia 1917; Wales ?; Aberystwyth graffiti circa 1978’. This is the twenty-fourth public lecture in a celebrated series instituted in 1987 (recent lectures may be viewed on-line).
Dr Francis, the son of Dai Francis, who led the South Wales NUM during the industrial unrest of the 1970s, has been the Labour Member of Parliament for Aberavon since 2001. Prior to entering Parliament he was Professor of Continuing Education at Swansea University where he founded the Community University of the Valleys, the South Wales Miners’ Library and the South Wales Coalfield Archive, now re-named the Richard Burton Archives.
He has been active in Welsh political life as Chair of the Wales Congress in Support of Mining Communities and national convener of the Yes for Wales Campaign in 1997. As an historian, he has written widely on the South Wales mining communities including The Fed: a History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century (Cardiff, 1980) (written co-jointly with Professor Dai Smith); Miners Against Fascism: Wales and the Spanish Civil War (Cardiff, 1984) and most recently, only last year History on Our Side: Wales and the Miners Strike of 1984-85.
Tickets for the lecture are free and are available either via the Library’s website or from the NLW shop (01970) 632548. Further information on the Welsh Political Archive can be found on the web.
J. Graham Jones