Baroness Glenys Kinnock leaves a 'significant' legacy says First Minister
ITV Wales' Daniel Bevan looks back on Baroness Glenys Kinnock's life.
Baroness Glenys Kinnock's legacy will be "very significant" and not just because of the causes that she advanced such as advocating for the rights of people in Africa, the First Minister told ITV Wales news today.
He said that her political career, starting as it did later in her life "gave confidence and heart to so many young women in Wales that that could be you, that you too could think of yourself as having a voice, having a view, and being prepared to articulate it. I think it permeates across a whole range of different aspects of Welsh life."
That's similar to the view of Eluned Morgan, who worked with her in the European Parliament and then in the British Parliament as peers. She told us that her friend "was funny, she was committed, passionate and certainly a role model for people like me and other women who entered politics."
Born in Anglesey, Glenys Parry grew up in a Welsh-speaking, chapel-going household.
Politics was an early passion, and when she went to Cardiff University, she found an older student with red hair. He was a good speaker too, and shared her love of the Labour Party. As he canvassed a lunch queue she asked, "Are you the man from the socialist society?" His name was Neil, and their marriage would last for 56 years.
She stood by him as his political career took off. While he became Labour Party leader, she focused on their children, Stephen and Rachel. Two election defeats meant Neil Kinnock would never become Prime Minister, and his frontline career ended, hers stated.
Glenys Kinnock had always been political, campaigning for the causes which interested her, but in 1994, she stood for office and was elected to the European Parliament, representing Wales.
When she stood down from one parliament in 2009, Prime Minister Gordon Brown elevated her to another, in the House of Lords, bringing her into his Government. Neil never became a minister, Glenys did.
"She will be mourned on every continent," said the former Prime Minister, "everywhere where she gained an international reputation for standing up for human rights."
In 2017, she developed Alzheimer's disease. She and the family fought a private battle, only going public with her condition last year in an interview with Sharp End.
"She had so much more to give and now she can't give it," said Neil. "I find it infuriating, not in any way pitiful because she's done such a lot."
I met and interviewed Baroness Kinnock many times over the years and can attest to her humour, her commitment and her forthrightness. But she was also down to earth. I remember her telling me the best way (or the least dangerous way) to force unwilling cats to take their medication by wrapping them in a towel.
On another occasion, she was due to speak and hand out prizes at the Welsh Woman of the Year Awards that I was covering back in the mid-1990s. She'd had to stay later than planned in Brussels so had arranged with the organisers for them to choose and collect a ball gown from Laura Ashley - all this in the days before the internet and mobile phones. Then her plane had been delayed - as had my interview.
With time running out, I stood at the top of the stairs in Cardiff City Hall to see her arrive from the airport, baggage still in hand to rush up to a private room, change into a red velvet ball gown she'd never seen before before appearing minutes later to answer questions from me and then go directly on stage without betraying any sense of stress.
It may not be one of her political achievements but it showed me what a dedicated, determined and down-to-earth person she was and that's why I still remember the way she was that evening thirty years later.
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