Sir Ray Powell

Raymond Powell, politician and trade union official: born Treorchy, Glamorgan 19 June 1928; Senior Administrative Officer, Welsh Water Authority 1969-79; MP (Labour) for Ogmore 1979-2001, opposition whip 1983-95, pairing whip 1987-95, accommodation whip 1987-95; Kt 1996; married 1950 Marion Evans (one son, one daughter); died London 7 December 2001.

It is in the nature of parliamentary democracy that there should be some names who, although hardly well-known outside the confines of the House of Commons, are extremely important in the day-to-day workings of Parliament. Ray Powell, from 1979 the Labour MP for Ogmore, south Wales, was, internally in Parliament, outstandingly important.

As pairing whip at a time of slender and volatile majorities, as accommodation whip, and as chairman of the Parliamentary New Building Committee 1987-97, Powell touched the life of every Labour MP on a weekly basis in the 1980s and 1990s. On many occasions have I heard one colleague say to another, about a pairing leave of absence, "You'd better go and sort it out with Ray!"

As chairman of the Building Committee, Powell was deeply involved at every stage with the creation of Portcullis House, the extension to Parliament which was opened by the Queen last year. He was also a crucial member of a select committee on House of Commons services from 1983 to 1987, where his skill, patience and capacity for hard work showed his colleagues of all parties that he had the capacity to be responsible for the very delicate and difficult matter of over-seeing a suitable building for Parliament in the late 20th century.

Sir Patrick Cormack, chairman of the All-Party Arts and Heritage Committee and a senior Conservative on the Buildings Committee, says,

Ray was one of the unsung heroes of Parliament. He did a massive amount of work for Parliament, without publicity, as chairman of the committee of Portcullis House. It was during his chairmanship that all the crucial decisions were taken. As his colleague and latterly parliamentary pair, I know at first hand what a diligent and hard-working chairman he was. He never missed a meeting.

The job of pairing whip is at the centre of the smooth running of the House of Commons. Every parliamentary day, MPs will come running to the pairing whip to ask for time off either for campaigning activity or constituency business or for personal reasons. Powell was generous and understanding, yet firm in handling often difficult situations. His friend and Deputy Chief Whip Don Dixon, now Lord Dixon, said,

I found in the House of Commons that you have many colleagues, but very,

very few whom you could really call close friends. Ray Powell came into that category. I would have trusted him with my life.

The Labour Party in the late 1980s and 1990s has every reason to be grateful in its time of adversity to the trio leading the Whips' Office – Derek Foster, Chief Whip, Don Dixon, Deputy Chief Whip, and Ray Powell, pairing whip. Foster says,

Michael Cocks, my predecessor as Chief Whip, had the foresight to make whips of two of the most effective rebels of the 1979 intake – Don Dixon and Ray Powell – both serious trade union-based left-wingers. Under my leadership, three unreconstructed non-conformists gave 10 years to uniting a fractious party in the darkest days of opposition until the threshold of power. Ray Powell did most of the toughest jobs throughout. His mischievous sense of humour never let him down. His love of manoeuvre and intrigue belied a man of unusual compassion and generosity.

Appropriately, Powell was also the parliamentary champion of the Showman's Guild, and persuaded his colleagues to take their concerns seriously.

Though he kept it very quiet, I would like to reveal a fact about Powell in this time when so many people think that politicians have their snout in the trough. As pairing whip in opposition, Powell was entitled to a salary. At the Parliamentary Labour Party, some colleagues said that no salary should go to unelected officers of the Parliamentary Party. Elections were considered proper for the post of Chief Whip and Deputy Chief Whip. It was thought that election was inappropriate for pairing whip. "Quite simple," said Powell, "I will be pairing whip, but I will not take a brass farthing as a salary." Over the years, he must have been £100,000 out of pocket.

Born into a mining family in the Rhondda in 1928, Powell won a place at Pentre Grammar School. On leaving, he became a fireman with British Rail for five years and then, in 1951, a shop assistant. This was the beginning of his life-long association with the Union of Shop Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW).

In 1956 he decided to set up his own butcher's business and at the same time, he became more and more involved on a voluntary basis in helping Walter Padley, president of USDAW, MP for Ogmore, Chairman of the Labour Party and a prominent member of the International Committee of the Party. Padley's interests were shared by Powell, who himself developed a particular interest in Britain's relations with Bulgaria and Romania.

Padley was keen, when he stood down in 1979, that he should be succeeded by Powell, by then his agent of 13 years, as MP for Ogmore, where the huge Labour majority of about 25,000 meant that the votes were proverbially weighed.

Powell was a man of many causes which he pursued on the floor of the House of Commons in that slow delivery and lilting Welsh voice, always sincere and always meaning what he said. He was not interested in the petty yah-boo of politics.

He was the first MP of whom I am conscious to be a proponent of grandparents' rights. As so often, this rose out of an individual case where Powell was in contact with a grandmother who had brought up her grandchild for the first seven years of his life and then found that the child had to be handed back to drug addict parents who claimed that they had been cured of their addiction. Powell would tell me of the child's horror at the prospect of going to a mother who had been totally unfamiliar to him for seven years.

On further investigation, Powell discovered that the law was totally against the grandparents who had made the child happy and with whom the child felt comfortable. Powell would shake his head and say that such a situation could not be right and that the law was making bad judgments in relation to childcare. It was his persistence in the cause of grandparents rights that has altered the climate for the better in the courts.

Another of Powell's causes, in which he was less successful, was "keeping Sunday special" – in respect of Sunday trading, Sunday drinking and licensing hours of pubs and clubs. His main motivation was less a prudish concern for the Sabbath born out of a background of Welsh non-conformity than a concern for those who had to work seven days in the week and were rather poorly paid members of USDAW.

Among his other causes was the need to provide proper meat inspection and to campaign against unfit meat. He also championed a whole range of causes that concerned pensioners, such as war widows' pensions, pensioners' fuel costs, dental services, heating bill assistance and orthopaedic treatment. His activity on behalf of the deep mine at Margam in his constituency actually changed the terms under which the pit was closed.

But above all, he was relentless in championing Bridgend Hospital. On 27 June 1983, Powell asked:

Will the minister give the House and me an assurance that the second phase will be developed in the interests of the 250,000 people who will be served by this hospital? The entire medical staff of the new Bridgend hospital are expressing grave concern that the phase two development might not take place as a result of the directive that he has sent to area health authorities regarding capital spending programmes.

The Welsh Office minister Wyn Roberts was thus obliged to take special measures to ensure that Powell's constituents got the hospital of the quality they needed.

It is little wonder that in 1997, when the Labour leadership tried to pressurise Powell to give up his seat in favour of the ex-Conservative minister Alan Howarth who had defected to Labour, the Ogmore constituency party pleaded with Powell to stand again. This unusual pressure was the result of the effective and caring service that Powell and his wife Marion, who lived in the constituency, had rendered.

Tam Dalyell