Editing Kim Howells (section)

===Professional career===
On returning home to [[South Wales]] from college, Howells worked as a researcher and editor for the ''South Wales Miner'', before becoming a South Wales [[National Union of Mineworkers (Great Britain)|National Union of Mineworkers]] official and local representative of the [[Communist Party of Great Britain]].<ref>{{cite news|url=http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/seumas_milne/2008/02/kims_game.html|title=Kim's game|first=Seumas|last= Milne|newspaper=The Guardian|date=11 February 2008|access-date=2 May 2008 | location=London}}</ref> He joined the [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]] in 1982.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1507781/Owning-up-the-man-with-a-habit-of-hitting-out.html|title=Owning up, the man with a habit of hitting out|first=Neil |last=Tweedie|newspaper=The Daily Telegraph|date=14 January 2006|access-date=31 July 2014 | location=London}}</ref>

Howells ran the NUM Pontypridd office which co-ordinated the South Wales miners' efforts during the [[1984–1985 United Kingdom miners' strike|UK miners' strike]]. A serious incident during the national dispute occurred in his area at the end of November 1984, when taxi driver [[Killing of David Wilkie|David Wilkie]] was killed when two striking miners dropped a concrete block off a local bridge onto Wilkie's taxi, which was taking a strike-breaking miner to work. On being told of the incident in a telephone call from a reporter of the ''[[South Wales Echo]]'', Howells rode his bicycle to the NUM offices.

After allegations that he hid evidence associated with the death of Wilkie, and an investigation by [[South Wales Police]], Howells in 2004 commented in a [[BBC Wales]] documentary that when he heard the news, he thought "hang on, we've got all those records we've kept over in the NUM offices, there's all those maps on the wall, we're gonna get implicated in this". He then destroyed a large number of papers because he feared a police raid on the union offices.<ref name="Destruction">[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/3435161.stm "Howells' strike papers admission – inquiry"], BBC News, 27 January 2004.</ref> He has commented that the attack by the strikers was a result of pressure to get the miners to return to work.

Following the miners' strike and the closure of 29 of the 30 [[National Coal Board]] pits in South Wales, Howells became a writer and presenter for television and radio, and a college lecturer.