Jim Griffiths

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.