My father, Vaughan Williams, who has died aged 81, was instrumental in bringing Welsh-language education to his native Gwent. That he managed to do so, against indifference and opposition, is testimony to his determination.
Vaughan was born in Cwm, in the Ebbw Valley, the son of a steelworker, Baden, and his wife Blodwen (nee Morgan). The first in his family to go to university, he gained a degree in history from Aberystwyth. It was there that he met my mother, Jane (nee Davies), a fellow student, and found in her Unitarian background a match for his socialist principles and interest in education. Neither spoke Welsh, both products of their time when it came to education in Wales. My mother managed to learn when we were children, but despite many attempts my father never mastered the language. However he used the little he knew to great effect.
Vaughan taught in Ebbw Vale and Manchester before moving into adult education, initially in Caldicot, Gwent, and then as warden of a Workers’ Educational Association centre, Oxford House, in Risca, where he set up a Fabian debating group.
In the early 1960s he campaigned alongside like-minded parents to establish a Welsh-language primary school in Gwent, and the first school opened in Risca in 1967 with 15 pupils. By 1973 Vaughan had become an assistant director of education for Gwent and he was the officer who oversaw the burgeoning growth of Welsh-medium education across the county, including through the opening of the first Welsh-language secondary school, Ysgol Gyfun Gwynllyw, in 1988.
Fifty years after the first Welsh-language school was established, parents in Greater Gwent can now send their children to a choice of 20 primary schools, with the third secondary due to open this September. Its headteacher elect is my sister, Rhian Dafydd.
For most of his life Vaughan was a member of the Labour party, recently rejoining after the election of Jeremy Corbyn. He campaigned for the MP for Newport East, Jessica Morden, daughter of his great friend Mick Morden, and had a long and happy retirement, campaigning wherever there was a socialist seat in danger.
He is survived by his second wife, Liz (nee Ewings), whom he married in 1995, and by Rhian and me, the children of his marriage to Jane, which ended in divorce in 1991.
