What next for Julie Morgan, a woman who shaped Welsh politics for 40 years

Wales Online

22-04-2025

What next for Julie Morgan, a woman who shaped Welsh politics for 40 years
The Cardiff North MS, one half of a famous political couple, is preparing for a new chapter after a lifetime of frontline politics
Julie Morgan has a year remaining in elected politics
(Image: John Myers )
It is 40 years since Julie Morgan first became an elected politician. Since taking her seat on South Glamorgan county council in 1985, she has also been a city councillor, an MP and a Senedd member. But, she is one of the 13 Labour Senedd members who has said she will not stand again for re-election, and her long career in politics will end when the Senedd is disbanded ahead of the election next spring.
Born in 1944, she was raised by a single mother after her father died when she was very young. Her mother was someone who wasn't party political she says, but someone who "believed very strongly in people's rights". Her mother worked with children who had learning disabilities in Ely Hospital, and she was the first person to take the children out of the hospital for trips on the bus or to the swimming pool. That nurturing profession is something her daughter followed her into when she entered working life, working as a social worker in Barry and then as assistant director of Barnardo's before entering politics.
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Julie Edwards, as she was, joined the Labour party at 17, her first campaigning role was to get Jim Callaghan elected to the-then Cardiff South East seat. He, so the story goes, told her she should return to university, but joined by names such as Neil Kinnock, Glenys Parry (later Kinnock), and one Rhodri Morgan, she stayed. She had roles within the party but was first elected as an MP in 1997, she was returned in 2001. At the 2005 election, her seat became the most marginal in Wales as her Conservative challenger reduced her majority to 1,146, a seat she then lost five years later. Before that she had never considered going to the Senedd, but then she did and she has served the same constituency since 2011. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here
Her step from social work to politics was, she said, a "natural one". "Social work is a huge privilege because people will tell you things they wouldn't in your normal life. People would confide in you and tell you things, it was a job I loved and you were able to make you were able to make a difference. but on an individual level with individual families and I began to think I needed to do something a bit more collective or something with wider implications," she said.
She joined South Glamorgan County Council first, with Mark Drakeford, Jane Hutt, Mick Antoniw - all people she now sits in the Senedd with. There, she and Jane Hutt started the council's women's committee, the first in Wales and a cause she has fought for throughout her career. They faced opposition in their ambition of promoting the rights of women, she recalls. "We had some strong male supporters but we were a very small group of women," she said.
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Julie Morgan meeting HIllary Clinton
(Image: Julie Morgan )
In and outside the chamber was "male-dominated" and some of those men found it "unnerving", she says, that the committee was even set up. Their approach wasn't shouting or wagging fingers, but to be patient and to chip away at issues.
"I think that's what I've learnt from politics more than anything else, it takes a long time to change things and the things I'm really glad to have seen happen have taken a long, long time and you just have to stick with them. And you usually get it in the end, I've found," she laughs.
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She made the step to Westminster in the peak of New Labour's stratospheric rise to power. It was not a given she would go for a Westminster seat but she did feel an obligation. "We had very few women MPs then, an awful situation, and I thought 'well, I'm one of this very few number of women councillors so if I don't go for it, who will'? I felt sort of a bit of an obligation to go for it," she said.
There was a little hesitation. "Like most women, I don't like pushing myself, I still don't, and I wasn't keen on that bit at all," she said. "You think, 'Oh, people must think I think I'm great' because I'm standing for this position, and really, nothing could be further than the truth. I think it was that feeling of hesitancy and nervousness but I made myself do it," she said.
Now, you can commute to London relatively easily, work en route, but the practicalities were harder then. Her children were teenagers, and an added complication was that for two years of her tenure, her husband Rhodri was an MP too. "It was obviously a difficult thing with two parents away," she said, but their age helped, as did her mother living with them.
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There is something of a fascination when people who are married are in the same professional field, particularly at Westminster. There was, she remembers, a lot of interest when she arrived. "There's absolutely no doubt that when I arrived, they defined me by Rhodri," she said. When asked if that has continued throughout her life she says yes, some people "always look at me and think of Rhodri". "But it never bothered me really because minus two years, we were never actually in the same institution and at that period, he wanted to be First Minister and we were going through all the referendum, and him being blocked by Tony Blair, so there wasn't much crossover," she said.
Asked if she felt she had to mop up the mess created by the row between Welsh Labour and the UK party, she said no. "I thought it was absolutely the right thing to do and so I didn't worry about it. Rhodri was very well known and well liked in Westminster, there was a lot of goodwill towards him, apart from the leadership and people around them," she said.
In fact, the first year of their crossover in Westminster felt - as many new parents could relate to - like a holiday, being away from the pressure, the day-to-day demands of family life. Being married to someone in politics had its perks. "We had great discussions at home because it was really nice to check out with somebody who knew everything that was going on...It was important sharing all those things," she said.
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As soon as she arrived work began on the Government of Wales Bill, and things like the minimum wage legislation. "Something like that is why I didn't carry on with social work. I could see that by going to somewhere like Westminster and promoting something like the minimum wage, what a difference that would make."
In her tenure, she had three Private Member's Bill, something almost unheard of. One became law, a ban on sunbeds for under-18s, which came about after Kirsty McRae, from Barry, was admitted to hospital after using an unmanned salon in Barry. The 14-year-old suffered 70% first-degree burns after spending 19 minutes on an unmanned sunbed.
It went through on the last day of the last Labour government, and Julie was sat there in the House of Lords to see it go through. While the actual process was over in a flash, and slightly anti-climatic, it is something she remains proud of to this day because it showed politics in action.
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The two others were the voting age to be lowered to 16 - now in place in Wales for Senedd and council elections, and a ban on smoking in public places.
She too has campaigned hard for a ban on smacking children - also a law in Wales - and is an ardent supporter of assisted dying, something she recently led a debate on in the Senedd, although it was ultimately defeated.
The campaign to stop physical punishment of children is something she did not get through in Westminster and her own government at the time did not bac it.
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That is not the only issue she has disagreed with her party on. She voted against the Iraq War, and against tuition fees. "It was one of the most difficult things to do because you're elected for the party, and expected to have collective responsibility for your manifesto. But the things that I voted against weren't in a manifesto. They never said in the manifesto we would go to war in Iraq, or we'd raise tuition fees, in fact we probably said we weren't going to raise tuition fees," she chuckles.
Julie Morgan has been a long time campaigner in the battle for justice for the victims of infected blood
There were, she admits, "huge efforts" behind the scenes to ask her to change her mind. The party whips tried their "utmost to try to influence you". Was it ever unpleasant, I ask. "Well," she says, diplomatically. "It's different with different people, I think. You've heard of stand up rows but I was never really involved in that, but lots of meetings and every effort made to get you to change your mind and to vote with the government."
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She recalls getting a phone call while on a family holiday in west Wales and a whip getting through to tell her if she voted against the government they would write to her constituency party about her behaviour.
"Ultimately, I do believe there are some things that you have to obey what you think is the right thing to do. Obviously you compromise all the time in politics but there are some things that you can't compromise on and I think you do play a role in the party by sticking to those things. But it was very unpleasant," she said.
She lost her seat in Westminster in 2010 by 194 votes, and while she had campaigned for and supported the Senedd, it wasn't her plan to come to Cardiff. She didn't plan to go to the Senedd, that was Rhodri's ambition, as was being First Minister.
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But Cardiff North was a bellwether seat, one which shows the national picture. That was the election where Gordon Brown had his outburst at Gillian Duffy, calling her a "bigoted woman" and despite a changing national picture, her result was close.
She went into the count not knowing the result, or how close it would be, but knowing Labour was expected to lose. It was one of the last seats to be declared, so there was extra attention on it. It was, she says, a "bit of a low spot".
The next day they had already planned to go to Marseilles to see rugby because Rhodri was "desperate" to go, the distance helping. But losing is always personal. "It is personal, they voted against you. I had a lot of sympathy from people, and messages of support, which is great. But then I think we had 2 or 3 months to wind up the office and the issue came up about whether I'd stand for the Senedd," she said.
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She was actually away in west Wales when a journalist called her and asked if she would stand. "I really hadn't thought about it, but I said 'well, of course I am' and that was it."
The election was 12 months after her Westminster loss, and much more comprehensive victory. She took back up the mantle about the physical abuse of children, something she got through the Senedd at the time she held a cabinet role. Despite continued loud opposition, she said "we were on the side of history". "Most people had stopped using physical punishment on their children, but it absolutely needed to be made illegal so there was a clear message to everybody."
Rhodri and Julie Morgan pictured together at an election count
(Image: Daily Post Wales )
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It was a "fantastic" conclusion to almost 25 years of campaigning on the issue. As we head towards the end of our hour-long interview in her constituency office, there are so many areas of her professional life we haven't discussed, like the constituency she said it had been the "honour of a lifetime" to represent in the statement announcing she wouldn't seek re-election, nor the loss of the deputy leader battle for Labour I recall being something deeply felt by her and her team.
An hour could not cover all that, it would take a book - but, a diary of memoirs is not something she has in the pipeline when she leaves the Senedd before May's election, something she confesses she does not want to do.
"I don't want to go. I have no desire to go, but it seems the right thing to do because it seems to commit to another four years...would you be able to, you know, give your all to the constituency during that time? And then the other issue is, of course, it's a new Senedd and different Senedd and lots of people wanted to stand and we've lots of people who want to stand in Cardiff north, so I think it's time for someone else to have a chance," she said.
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I put to her the words of a Facebook post by Eluned Morgan - words she had not heard - about her standing down. "Alongside Rhodri, Julie helped shape modern Wales, but she's always been a force in her own right. Her work on the smoking ban, children's rights, and social care hasn't just changed laws - it's changed lives. In the Senedd, she's been a voice of wisdom and experience, but also of progress and reform. Julie has never stopped pushing for positive change, never stopped believing that Wales can do better.
"What many might not know is how Julie has quietly mentored and supported countless others in Welsh public life, especially women. She's blazed a trail not just by being there first, but by reaching back and helping others follow. Her warmth, her integrity, and her genuine desire to help others have made her not just respected, but deeply loved within the Welsh Labour family. She's not just part of our movement's history; she's helped write its future. For that, and for so much more, we owe her our deepest gratitude," the First Minister said.
"That's very nice," she says, saying she is continuing to work to get diversity in the selections Labour is making. "There are people there who are going to be very great in the future," she said.
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Asked her advice to those people she is mentoring who face a very different type of campaign, thanks to the brutality of social media for one, than she did when she started, she says: "You've just got to think what you can achieve. Politics is such a fantastic job to have, you make such great friends to begin with and great alliances and in Cardiff north I've made lifelong friends and I think that outweighs the nastiness and the viciousness that is there. "
A photograph of Julie and Rhodri Morgan together
(Image: Western Mail )
For someone who has done so much in her own right, it feels almost wrong to talk so much about her husband, but she is used to it. Not a day goes by, she says, eight years on, that someone doesn't speak to her about Rhodri. "Hardly a day passes when someone doesn't bring up something about Rhodri. It happens all the time."
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That is an incredible legacy, I say. She smiles back. In the days after his sudden death, speaking to her, it was clear then that the very public expectation of mourning him wasn't the approach she would have opted for. She wanted to be with her family, continuing their traditions of having the growing family round every Sunday, serving up freshly cooked ingredients from their weekly trip to Riverside Market. That is one thing that hasn't changed, still a barbecue in the summer, a roast in the winter.
"It was so very public, all of that, but in a way I suppose the point of doing rituals is to help you get through it, isn't it? And that was quite difficult to do," she said. "Because it was all so public and everyone was talking about him, in a way it was as if he hadn't gone.
"So the difficulty is then living without him, and I always think 'I wish I could tell Rhodri this or that' but I think the intensity of grief does pass and you learn to live with it but there's always that you feel something is missing, all the time, that something's not quite right.
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"While we did take two separate political paths, we shared the same beliefs and we would always have such great chats in the night, we were such sounding boards and I would think 'I want to know what he thought' although I would probably do what I was going to do in any case," she says.
Asking what she will do with her freedom, she immediately shook her head, shutting down the question. "I can't think about it, I'm determined to go flat out until the end. I'm certainly not going to slack for a moment until the day goes well. I always remember the night before Rhodri stood down as First Minister he was still going through the equivalent of the red box, doing it exactly as if he had just started. And that was a good example, I thought. So I've kept that in my mind, to keep going right until the end," she said.