Alan Williams was elected as a Member of Parliament with the victorious Labour Party in 1964 for Swansea West.
He recalls his first days as a newly elected member.
“I came in, put my coat in the cloakroom and went to look for my hanger. The fact that i was a marginal member was bitterly rubbed in for me when i found my hanger with ‘Williams’ on it had one set of initials crossed out and my initials written in……in pencil. They weren’t going to waste a good label.
I went to the chamber for the swearing in. You can imagine it. I was thirty-four; there was Harold Wilson and all the cabinet sitting just two rows below me, and there opposite, looking very dejected, all the outgoing famous Tory faces. Tudor Watkins, the Breconshire member, was sitting next to me – he would be in his mid-sixties at that time – and i turned to him and said, “Tudor, it must be marvelous to be on this side of the house after thirteen years over there?”
“Yes, my boy,” he said. “The sun gets in your eyes on the other side of the House.”
