Over on Wales Home Duncan Higgitt interviews Jenny Willott four years after she successfully wrenched Cardiff Central off Labour with a 13% swing following 30 years of campaigning in the area by the party. Today the Welsh Liberal Democrats hold the Parliamentary, Assembly and every Council seat in the constituency.
Since then, Willott – who lives in a terraced house in Adamsdown, in the heart of her constituency – has built a solid reputation in Parliament for tenacity, particularly following her work in the five-year fight to secure payouts for South Wales steelworkers who lost their pensions when ASW went bust in 2002. Meanwhile, in her constituency, she has become well-known for handling large amounts of casework.
When asked how she made good on her promise to “make Cardiff proud”, she says: “I think for local residents I’ve been very accessible, very available. Absolutely thousands of people have contacted me since I was elected. I’ve picked up masses of cases. We’ve not won them all – particularly if the Home Office is involved. But we have a pinboard upstairs where we put all the cards we’ve received from people we’ve helped. It’s there to remind us during the bad days.”
In the time before she won the seat, Jenny had worked for Lembit Opik, Kirsty Williams, Jenny Randerson, Peter Black and former AM, Christine Humphreys. She also worked for around five months in Bihar, in India for a NGO that the state itself had established and for Victim Support in Cardiff. She also does a good line in diplomacy:
Does it bother her, at this time, that she doesn’t generate the same kind of headlines that Opik, her former employer, frequently does?
“There’s never very much glamour in working hard. I can’t control the media attention, and if you’re getting on with stuff that isn’t to do with your personal life, or scandal, there’s little interest for the media. You need profile for a campaign, but if I get publicity for a case in the news, it’s probably likely that the person involved in that case will get publicity, and they often don’t want it.
“It may sound a little twee to say this, but I can walk around my constituency and meet hundreds of people that we’ve been able to help, and that’s what I always wanted to do in Cardiff. It’s what MPs are supposed to do.”
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