[...] This was in the late 1970s, before Thatcher, during the years of industrial unrest that preceded her election victory. We were talking about an imminent strike on the railways.

‘Your mother reckons the communists are behind it,’ he said. ‘But it’s not communists. You got to stand by the union. You got to know what kind of people ordinary workers are up against.’

My father and I hadn’t talked about anything other than football or the weather for years. He knew my politics. He wanted to connect with me in some way.

‘A while ago, right? We had this time-and-motion bloke come around,’ he said. Time-and-motion men are despised in the valleys, but my father had a guileless look on his face.

‘In front of the machine where I work,’ he said, ‘there was this big window… Looking out over the mountain. This bloke decided that if they changed the windows for frosted glass, we’d spend less time staring out at the grass and trees, right? It would probably increase productivity. So they put the frosted glass in. And they were right. Productivity did go up.’

I remember how my father shifted in his seat, a bit nervous, and then looked straight at me.

‘So what they did next, right? They decided that if productivity went up when they put the frosted glass in, it would go up even more if they bricked the windows up completely. Now I’ve got a blank wall to look at, haven’t I?’ ‘That’s the kind of people we’re dealing with,’ he said.