I’m the great granddaughter of a miner - UBI Lab Gwynedd
Original image by Kieran Jones
Gwynedd, an incredible county where you can walk for miles along the stunning North Wales coast, go inland and climb the highest mountain in Wales or spend the day shopping in an urban town or city. From the University City of Bangor where term time the population doubles, to the historic royal town of Caernarfon where nothing beats sitting along the eastern shore of the Menai Straight eating ice cream, or maybe you’d rather learn about the rich slate mining history in the villages of Bethesda, Llanberis, or Blaenau Ffestiniog. The county truly is magnificent and has something for everyone.
I’ve been lucky, Gwynedd has been my home for most of my twenty-eight years, I’ve lived in a mountain village and a coastal valley and now in the city, I’m the great granddaughter of a miner and was blessed to attend school in a mining village. I know Gwynedd.
So, when I was approached by one of UBI Lab Wales founders, Jonathan, to ask if I was interested in establishing a Lab in Gwynedd I jumped at the chance.
You see, I’ve always been interested in the idea of a Universal Basic Income. My own personal experiences of looking for work after graduation and realising I could be financially worse off led me there. But learning more about employment and poverty in Gwynedd definitely sealed the deal.
In 2018 the New Policy Institute were commissioned by Gwynedd Council to conduct a report into in-work poverty in the county… and it makes for a sobering read. In-work poverty in 21st century Britain should not be a prevalent issue, but it is, and in Gwynedd nearly half of those in poverty are in-work. The problems are vast, high reliance on 16-hour contracts, reliance on seasonal work and the tourist trade, lack of local, affordable housing, failure of upskilling workers (especially women) who have been out of the job market to name a few of those.
And that is why, a UBI Lab in Gwynedd is important. If there is to be talks of a pilot of UBI in Wales, Gwynedd needs to be a part of that discussion, it needs to be considered as one of the areas that are chosen to take part. The mixed economy, along with the high level of in-work poverty means that any measurement of success of a pilot here would help in making comparisons to other areas of Wales.
That is why, after my initial discussions with Johnathan I approached Bangor City Councillor Kieran Ashton-Jones, who I knew was a supporter of a UBI, and asked him to come on this journey with me and together we co-founded the Gwynedd Lab. We immediately began listing the councillors we knew and working out who to approach first, who were more likely to be supportive of a UBI and would help us reach the local population with the UBI Lab message. It is very reflective of the passion we both feel on this matter that we got to work as quickly as we did.
Our current aim is to have discussions with councillors across the county and to get a motion through Gwynedd County Council calling for a UBI Pilot in Gwynedd. It’s a lot of work, but every second spent is a second closer to our hope of getting a UBI Pilot here in Gwynedd. These discussions have so far all been very positive, especially as our recent experience with the Coronavirus lockdown and the furlough scheme have opened people’s eyes to what could be. We live in not just a world, but a country and county, where children go to bed hungry, where people who work cannot make ends meet, where people are leaving the areas of their birth because of the lack of choice of employment and because staying is unaffordable. Our councillors see these issues like we do, and we hope that we will be able to persuade them that this is the future, this our generation’s NHS, Aneurin Bevan was belittled and villainized for the idea that we could have a National Health Service where anyone who needed it had access to free healthcare and now none of us could imagine life without it. 70 years from now, a generation could be just like us, looking back at the birth of something incredible and unable to imagine life without it.
More about the author
Steffie Williams Roberts - @SteffieSioned
Wales, UK
Steffie Williams Roberts is the co-founder of UBI Lab Gwynedd and an Independent Parental Supporter for SNAP Cymru a welsh national charity that supports families of children with Special Educational Needs.
Steffie graduated with a First-Class Honours in Law from Bangor University in 2017 and in 2019 Steffie stood as a Parliamentary Candidate in Arfon for the Labour Party. Driven by her life experiences, Steffie is a committed and passionate advocate for social justice and equality.