‘Being idealistic is not naive’
10 March 2010
Bethan speaking at the IWD event organised by Chwarae Teg
On International Women’s Day (March 8), Bethan Jenkins was invited to speak at a specially-convened Chwarae Teg conference about what and who had inspired her. This is what she said:
It is still vitally important to mark International Women’s Day – to celebrate the role women play in society, but also to raise awareness of issues such as equal pay and women’s rights issues that are still as relevant today as they were 50 years ago.
When I sat down to consider this speech, I found it difficult to understand why I had been asked to take part in this event. I think this is much to do with the lack of confidence that many women experience, and our inability to push ourselves out there for personal recognition and praise.
Where I always start is from the point of how I can advance a certain agenda or campaign, how I can influence key decision makers to make people’s lives better. This may be idealistic, and often this is seen as a negative thing, but I don’t think age or sex should make us any less idealistic. Being idealistic is not naive.
If by being a politician I can help others to the best of my ability, if my title assists in that process, then so be it. But I don’t relax of an evening congratulating myself that, for example, I may have helped lobby the council to find a new home for a mother and her children as her previous flat was cold and inaccessible for her young children, or that I have helped raise awareness of eating disorders at the National Assembly, and hounded the Health Minster enough to implement a much needed national strategy in Wales, or encouraged some new young members to join Plaid Cymru.
I see it as something that I would expect anyone to do, and I’m merely a part of the jigsaw in encouraging others to find their voices, and to find the get-up-and-go they probably always had inside themselves, so that they too can go out there and inspire others.
The crux of what I am saying is that some people may find others inspiring, some may view them as the opposite, but it’s how our actions and work reflects the aspirations of inspiration, drive and get-up-and-go that is all important.
It may be no surprise to some when I say I have always been political. When people say that I am young to be in politics, my response is that it is all relative. I was out on the streets of South Wales at anti-apartheid demonstrations from the age of six. I was handing out leaflets asking people to boycott South African goods every cold Saturday in Merthyr Tydfil town square. I went to see Desmond Tutu speak at a packed-out church in the town. All of these early experiences, I am convinced, seeped in to me so that as an adult, I felt a duty to campaign against injustice and inequality when I saw it.
At that time, I was evidently inspired by the courageous Nelson Mandela as I chomped at a birthday cake outside Merthyr library to celebrate his birthday while he was still in prison in South Africa. But, looking back, I was inspired by my parents who took us everywhere, on rallies and demonstrations, who did not shy away from showing us the harsh realities of how people were treated elsewhere in the world. I was inspired by other campaigners who devoted their lives – and still do – to Internationalist causes, who turned out to campaign in wind and rain. I don’t remember the Miner’s Strike, but I can see the sentiment and spirit of South Walian peoples, caring for others they have never met, in the same way as the rallied to support one another when times were tough and mines closing down around them.
I have to be honest and say that as a teenager, the political fervour did not catch on as much as earlier in my youth. My inspiration for that time was dominated by music, literature and drama – though I can remember when we did a play about the anti apartheid movement, I was the only one who knew the hymn Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.
My English teacher in school, the ever-eccentric Jennifer Evans, was my inspiration throughout school, nurturing us as her prodigies to take on the world. A strong feminist, our A level studies were dominated by the likes of Alice Walker, The Wife of Bath, and a never ending discussion on the love affair between Cathy and Heathcliff.
I was definitely inspired by music, whether that was going to rock gigs, or playing classical music in an orchestra, or when I eventually set up a folk- pop band in university where discovering playing ad lib viola was the greatest inspiration of all – losing oneself in the music, and nobody dictating which notes you should play, or when you should stop.
I was inspired, and still am, by female singer songwriters – far more so, I’m afraid, than by male artists – like Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone, Eleanor McEvoy, Ashely Maher, Thea Gilmore, and the authors Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood, Jaqueline Wilson, Gillian Clarke, the Brontes, to political writers and activists like Mary Wollstonecraft, Simone Weil, the Greenham Common Women – the list is endless.
Nonetheless, when I went to university in Aberystwyth, my political edge returned. I don’t think I could have ignored it even if I wanted to. I became involved in student politics, and was Women’s Officer, then President, of the Students Union, inspired by lecturers such as Richard Wyn Jones to put my political studies into action. It frustrated me that so many people who studied politics did nothing political outside the lecture theatre.
As well as campaigning on issues like top-up fees and Welsh language rights, I was inspired to get involved in the peace movement in Aberystwyth with the onset of the Iraq War. The movement was like one big family and, like my childhood, I was inspired by how the community came together in its activism, young and old working together. It was not an event that I could merely watch on the television screens without a care in the world. I took part in demonstrations, organized peace festivals and so forth.
It angered me, it created and formed the passion I had for changing things, and to try and make a small difference in the world. The war continued, as we know. But, during that time, Adam Price set up the campaign to impeach Tony Blair, and opened up the door to party politics, something which I had always shunned before as I did not want to be put in any box, or confine my political thinking to one agenda only.
I was probably always a Nationalist, but I had never really been introduced to Plaid Cymru on any formal footing before going to Aberystwyth. There, I was inspired by young politician Leanne Wood and Dafydd Iwan who came to Aberystwyth on an Independence discussion tour of Wales. After that, I was hooked, and set up a new youth movement for Plaid called Cymru X.
I don’t think I was inspired to stand for election as an AM by any one human being, or music track, or book. I had a bad car crash in 2005, and realised that if I wanted to change things for the better, or play just a small role in political life here in Wales, then I didn’t have all the time in the world as I had once imagined. Life is short, and precious at that.
I think that all of my experience up until the point where I sought election as an AM gave me the inner confidence to push on and put my name forward. It was truly not because I wanted a title, or more money, or the kudos, that I wanted to become an AM. I saw it as an extension of my campaigning, as a way to get other people involved in progressing Wales. Labour had done very little to inspire me in to politics in the south Wales Valleys where I had grown up, so I was intent on offering other people, especially those of my age, and alternative vision.
I am still working on this now, and hope that this national movement to change Wales is inspiring more people in to politics- whether that is at a grass roots level, a national level, or European. The challenge is to get to those people who are losing faith, who see no point in voting, to encourage them to believe in themselves as opposed to relying on others to work hard at it for them. Directing responsibility on others should not be part of the Welsh psyche.
So my main point is that there are inspirational people and movements, and groups all around us. It’s how we pull them all together that matters, and how we try and take the labels away from people. I don’t want to be labelled as a young female AM doing good all on my own. I’m only here because others have inspired me, that I’ve had the passion filtered down to me by my family, from learning from my Irish heritage and the world around me.
Let’s not forget that there’s people out there waiting to be inspired by the very people in this room, so I urge you all to go back to your communities and put that in to action.
