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Saunders Lewis
A founder of Plaid Cymru in 1925 and a major Welsh-language dramatist, Lewis was jailed in 1936 for setting fire to an RAF bombing school at Penyberth on the Llŷn peninsula. His 1962 radio lecture Tynged yr Iaith, 'The Fate of the Language', warned that Welsh would die without direct action, and directly inspired the founding of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, the Welsh Language Society, whose campaigns for bilingual signs and services changed public life. He argued the language mattered more than self-government.
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Jim Griffiths
Born
A former miners' leader, Griffiths became the first Secretary of State for Wales in 1964, after years of pressing Labour to create the post, and set up the Welsh Office as a department in Cardiff. It gave Wales an administrative identity of its own for the first time, the machinery on which devolution was later built. He also backed an elected council for Wales, though Labour colleagues blocked it. The institution he founded handled more and more Welsh business until the Assembly took it over in 1999.
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Gwynfor Evans
Born
Evans won Plaid Cymru's first parliamentary seat at the Carmarthen by-election of 1966, which, like Hamilton in Scotland, pushed Labour towards devolution. His most direct impact came in 1980, when he threatened to fast to death unless the Thatcher government kept its promise of a Welsh-language television channel; the government gave way and S4C launched in 1982. It remains one of the clearest cases of a single politician changing a government decision by personal pressure.
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Neil Kinnock
Born
The sceptic's entry. As a young Labour MP from the south Wales valleys, Kinnock was one of the most effective opponents of the 1979 devolution proposals, arguing an assembly would be a talking shop that divided Wales and distracted from economic problems. Wales voted No by four to one. His later shift as Labour leader to accept devolution reflected how far opinion had moved during the Thatcher years, when Wales repeatedly voted Labour but was governed by Conservatives.
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Wyn Roberts, Baron Roberts of Conwy
Born
A Welsh-speaking Conservative, Roberts served as a Welsh Office minister for most of the Thatcher and Major years and steered the Welsh Language Act 1993 through Parliament. It established the principle that Welsh and English should be treated equally in public business in Wales and created the Welsh Language Board, which required public bodies to adopt language schemes. Coming from a party that opposed devolution, his act shows that language policy and constitutional politics did not always line up neatly.
More about Wyn Roberts, Baron Roberts of Conwy6
Ron Davies (Welsh politician)
Born
As Labour's Welsh Secretary, Davies designed and won the 1997 referendum, carried by 50.3 per cent on a margin of 6,721 votes, and coined the phrase that devolution was 'a process, not an event'. His Government of Wales Act 1998 created a weak, executive-style assembly without primary law-making powers, a compromise with Labour sceptics. In October 1998 he resigned after what he called a 'moment of madness' on Clapham Common, and he never led the institution he had created.
More about Ron Davies (Welsh politician)7
Alun Michael
Born
Michael became the first First Secretary of the Assembly in 1999 after Tony Blair's office backed him over Rhodri Morgan in a contested Welsh Labour leadership ballot. Seen as London's choice and lacking a majority, he resigned in February 2000 just before losing a no-confidence vote. His short tenure is the lesson that shaped everything after: Welsh devolution could not be run from Westminster, and the Assembly would choose its own leaders.
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Rhodri Morgan
Born
Morgan led Wales from 2000 to 2009 and gave devolution a distinct identity with his 'clear red water' between Welsh Labour and New Labour: no foundation hospitals or academies, free prescriptions from 2007 and free bus travel for older people. He renamed the executive the Welsh Assembly Government and formed the first coalitions, with the Liberal Democrats and then Plaid Cymru. His folksy, unspun style helped make the institution feel Welsh rather than an outpost of Whitehall.
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Dafydd Wigley
Born
Wigley, Plaid Cymru's leader through the 1997 referendum and the first Assembly election, made the party a serious contender beyond its Welsh-speaking heartlands; in 1999 it won Rhondda and Islwyn, Labour strongholds, and became the official opposition. Earlier, as an MP, he steered the Disabled Persons Act 1981 through as a private member's bill, drawing on his own family's experience. He combined language-centred nationalism with practical welfare politics.
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Ivor Richard
Born
Lord Richard, a former Labour cabinet minister and Leader of the Lords, chaired the commission that reported in 2004 that the Assembly's corporate structure, with no legal separation between government and legislature, was confusing and should give way to primary law-making powers and a larger membership of 80. Much of it was enacted in the Government of Wales Act 2006, which separated the Welsh Government from the Assembly. The call for 80 members was ignored for two decades, until the Senedd grew to 96 in 2026.
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Ieuan Wyn Jones
Born
As Plaid Cymru leader, Ieuan Wyn Jones took his party into government for the first time in 2007 as Deputy First Minister in the 'One Wales' coalition with Labour. The price of Plaid's support was a commitment to a referendum on full law-making powers, which was held in 2011 and won by 63.5 per cent, and a new Welsh Language Measure giving Welsh official status. His party suffered at the ballot box afterwards, a familiar fate for junior coalition partners.
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Carwyn Jones
Born
Jones led the successful Yes campaign in the 2011 referendum as First Minister, giving the Assembly direct law-making powers across devolved areas, and then used them: Wales became the first part of the UK to introduce an opt-out system of organ donation in 2015 and passed the Well-being of Future Generations Act the same year. He also pressed for a reserved-powers model, enacted in the Wales Act 2017, that brought Wales closer to the Scottish settlement.
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Kirsty Williams
Born
The sole Liberal Democrat in the Assembly after 2016, Williams joined Labour's government as Education Secretary and drove one of devolution's largest policy projects: a new Curriculum for Wales, legislated in 2021 and rolled out from 2022. She also secured funding to cut infant class sizes as part of her agreement to join the government. Her career shows how much leverage one member can have under proportional representation. Weak international test results since have prompted debate over the new curriculum.
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Elin Jones
Born
Elected Llywydd, the Senedd's presiding officer, in 2016, Elin Jones of Plaid Cymru oversaw the institution's own reform: the Senedd and Elections (Wales) Act 2020 renamed the National Assembly as Senedd Cymru, the Welsh Parliament, and lowered the voting age for its elections to 16. She also guided the Senedd through remote and hybrid sittings during the pandemic. Presiding officers rarely feature in political histories, but the institution's name and franchise changed on her watch.
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Mark Drakeford
Born
First Minister from 2018 to 2024, Drakeford was the most constitutionally ambitious Welsh leader. His government's cooperation agreement with Plaid Cymru produced the Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) Act 2024, expanding the Senedd to 96 members elected by closed-list proportional representation from 2026, and his distinctive pandemic rules made devolution visible to everyone in Wales. The 20mph default speed limit was his most controversial decision and was later partly rolled back.
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Eluned Morgan
Born
Morgan became First Minister in 2024 after Vaughan Gething's short tenure and led Welsh Labour into the first election to the enlarged 96-member Senedd in May 2026. Labour fell to nine seats, its worst result in Wales in over a century, and she became the first serving First Minister to lose her own seat. The result ended Labour's unbroken leadership of Welsh devolution since 1999, a reminder that the new electoral system she inherited could reshape the parliament quickly.
More about Eluned Morgan17
Rhun ap Iorwerth
Born
A former BBC journalist and Plaid Cymru's leader since 2023, ap Iorwerth led his party to first place in May 2026 with 43 of 96 seats, ahead of Reform UK on 34, and became the first First Minister from outside Labour since devolution began, and the first representing a north Wales constituency. He governs short of a majority. How a Plaid-led government uses the powers its founders campaigned for, and how it handles Reform as the main opposition, will define the next stage of devolution.
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