The Cardiff South and Penarth constituency has been a safe Labour seat since its creation. But that didn’t stop Vaughan Gething pushing to increase the party’s vote share. At the last Senedd election in 2021, he won the biggest majority of seats under the unique circumstances of the pandemic. “I was making national choices for a country where just over 6% of the population are not white. My race didn’t stop them voting for me,” he told the Guardian.
Gething insists he’s not a token diversity candidate as he continues to advocate for more black politicians and senior political figures cross-party, but especially within Labour. But he doesn’t want anyone to be put into positions of power because of the colour of their skin. “It’s not about being black, but about being good enough,” he stresses. “And then to be really good at what you do. And I do know that you get judged differently. That’s still how it is.”
He is the first black Welsh minister of the devolved administrations and the only black member of the Senedd. No other black person has represented a Welsh constituency in either Welsh or UK parliaments in more than a decade.
“I’m good at my job to get away from the ‘you’re only here because you’re black’ line. It’s not ‘giving a brother a chance’ time,” he says. “It’s actually, I’m really good at what I do and I should be here. It’s for more people to be able to go to conference and say, ‘I can do this job for the whole community, for the whole country’. I’m not here as a token diversity candidate. I’m here because I’m part of a team.”
Gething was thrust into the spotlight during the Covid pandemic. Delivering daily Covid briefings, he quickly became one of the most popular UK politicians. He felt the pressure during Covid not only because of the intensity of his workload and making difficult decisions for his high-risk mother but also because of what he represented. He recalls receiving messages from people from across the UK encouraging him to “carry on”, being one of the few black men linked to the Labour party.
Born in Zambia and raised from the age of two in Dorset, Gething became politically active as a 17-year-old campaigning for the 1992 general election. He wasn’t elected as a member of the Senedd for another two decades. Unsuccessfully standing for election to the Welsh National Assembly in 1999, he later became a councillor on Cardiff council, while working at Thompsons solicitors. Eventually he became the youngest-yet president of the Wales TUC at the age of 34.
“It’s hard not to be noticed, but it’s easy to be missed,” Gething says, stressing the importance of persistence in politics. “You don’t always succeed on your first or even your second try. There are lots of people who have ended up in parliament because they have been persistent and refused to take no for an answer. That doesn’t guarantee they’re always going to be the greatest parliamentary lights. But the determination to want to carry on is important. But it is also important to make sure that your processes are fair as possible.”
While he believes Welsh Labour is great for its “unity” across factions, Gething recalls how difficult it was working in the party as a black man who was not on the hard left during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. “Every leader of the Labour party has been accused of wanting people who are broadly supportive,” he says. “ If you go back to the previous leader of the Labour party, there was plenty of evidence that’s what happened … but the picture isn’t quite as desperate, as I think every now and again, it’s painted.
“There’s positive discussion of the Labour party about who we put up for selection and election in Wales and in the rest of the UK, in the Senedd here, as well as in the UK parliament. I want us to have a parliamentary Labour party that reflects Britain as it is today.”
Proud of Welsh Labour’s ability to avoid bitter internal fights, it would be surprising for Gething to not want to one day take the helm of the devolved administration. But he insists: “It’s very clear there’s not a vacancy at the moment. I’m not getting drawn into this as we’ve got a job to do. I’m certainly not going to go out and set hares running that risk undermining the first minister.”
