Here's the third in a series of extracts from the new autobiography of former Torfaen MP Paul Murphy:

“IT DIDN’T really hit me until the following day that I was actually a member of the British Cabinet.

I was over the moon, but there was a tinge of sadness that my mother and father were not alive to see their son sit at the top table.

The press was pretty good....

I had a sincere welcome from Alun Michael as well as Dafydd Wigley, and from Richard Livsey, who noted that “the need to obtain sufficient match-funding to draw down the £1.2 billion worth of Objective 1 funding from Europe will provide him with a severe test of his negotiating ability”.

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My shadow, Nigel Evans, said: “Finally, we have someone who should take the job seriously instead of concentrating on his own career.”

Nick Speed wrote a sympathetic article: “Coming out from Mo Mowlam’s Shadow”.

The article outlined the main responsibilities of the new Welsh Secretary, which were not what they had been before devolution.

My new duties were to represent the Cabinet in Wales and Wales in the Cabinet, as well as being responsible for primary legislation relating to Wales; to negotiate the Block Grant for Wales; to counsel the Assembly on the government’s legislative programme; and “to ensure that the arrangements for co-operation between the Assembly and the UK Government are working effectively”.

It was a political and diplomatic job, not an administrative one. The old Welsh Office functions were now devolved to Cardiff.

With regard to my previous anti-devolution views, Nick Speed observed, “when it comes to giving Wales a greater say in its own affairs, this devout Catholic is seen as having had something of a conversion on the road to Derry”.

The main headline in Catholic People, the newspaper of the Catholic Archdiocese of Cardiff, read: “From Welsh Catholic to Cabinet”, while the Protestant Northern Ireland newspaper wrote about my “switch to Wales” at a time when Unionists had wanted Mo to be switched!

Rhodri Morgan told the Daily Mirror, “his appointment is well-deserved: the most memorable thing which makes him stand out is that he is not driven by ambition and doesn’t have an ego!”

The next thing I had to do was to visit Cardiff and meet up with Alun at the Assembly. I believed that my friendship with Alun could overcome many “teething problems” as far as the Cardiff–Westminster relationship was concerned, but I acknowledged that differences were “the inevitable consequence of devolution”, and realised immediately that the issue of finance, and particularly Objective 1 funding, was going to dominate my next year in office.

I received many letters of congratulation, among them one from the Prince of Wales, and others sent by organisations and individual constituents from Torfaen.

I was particularly pleased with those letters that came from the Foreign Minister and Deputy Foreign Minister in Ireland – David Andrews and Liz O’Donnell – as well as from politicians and people from all sides in Northern Ireland. These really meant a lot to me, because I had felt so strongly that I wanted to be part of making peace there.

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A very senior NIO official could not have moved me more than when he wrote: “whatever the future holds for us, Northern Ireland is a better place because you helped make it so”.

Before I left for France on my annual holiday, I had to collect my Seals of Office from the Queen at Buckingham Palace. I tied myself in a knot trying to open the red box (which contained the Royal Seal), and Her Majesty was duly amused!

At the end of the holiday, with Stuart, Pam, Phyllis and Bernice, I drove back to Northern Ireland to pick up my personal possessions.

It was the first time I had actually driven in Northern Ireland, and I decided it would be the last! Back in Wales, I started meeting all the Assembly members, speaking to many of them at a Labour AMs’ away day in the Rhondda in early September. I then attended my first Cabinet meeting – a “political cabinet” held in Chequers on 16 September.

I naively asked the Cabinet Secretary if I could sit anywhere and I was quickly and literally put in my place – which was not next to the Prime Minister.

I was to Tony’s left, sandwiched between Andrew Smith and Alan Milburn. Over the years, I gradually shifted along the table, and by 2005 ended up next to the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, just one seat away from Tony Blair!

The day before this meeting, the Pontypool weekly Free Press published an interview with me entitled “The miner’s son from Abersychan”, and it struck me how very fortunate I was to be in the Cabinet; I have never forgotten where I came from and how I owed my job, essentially, to the people of Torfaen.

Two weeks later, I was in Bournemouth for the Labour Party conference. I had been attending these events off and on since 1978, but this time I was one of the top team and had to address the full gathering, which I did on the Wednesday.

My speech was crafted by my special adviser Professor Hywel Francis, who had given up his job at Swansea University.”

Paul Murphy: Peacemaker is available now