User:ThatRandomGuy1/sandbox4

Early life and education
Alun Edward Michael was born on 22 August 1943 at a cottage hospital in Bryngwran in Anglesey, North Wales. He was the son of Leslie and Elizabeth Michael, one of whom was a shopkeeper. Leslie came from a family of Welsh speakers in Birkenhead, England, and had met Elizabeth while he was serving in the army. One of Michael's grandfathers was also a farmer in Anglesey. The family lived on the Wirrall Peninsula in England before returning to Wales when Michael was five, settling in the seaside town of Rhos-on-Sea in Colwyn Bay, which is where he grew up. Michael's first language was Welsh, having learnt to speak it before learning English. He lost the language during his teenage years but later relearned it after moving to Cardiff as an adult. He lost his Welsh accent in adulthood. He remembered his childhood fondly in his later life and would try to visit the associated areas of Colwyn Bay and Llandudno as often as he could, describing them in a 1998 interview with The North Wales Weekly News as his "home territory". He maintained close links with Colwyn Bay in particular, regarding it as his hometown, and continued to campaign for local causes there during his political career.

From 1954, Michael was educated locally at Colwyn Bay Grammar School. He finished his secondary education there in 1959 with seven O-level passes in English language, English literature, history, geography, mathematics, biology and in physics and chemistry. He remained in the school for the sixth form, during which period he became a Queen's Scout and is believed to have become the first person from North Wales to receive The Duke of Edinburgh's Gold Award. He left the school in 1962 with two A-level passes in pure mathematics and further mathematics. In the same year, he left Colwyn Bay for Staffordshire in England to study philosophy and English at Keele University. At the university, he edited the student newspaper, stating in 1998 that he had done so "to try and get to the truth of things". He graduated from the university in 1966 with a bachelor of arts (with honours) in philosophy and English. In the same year, he married fellow Keele University graduate Mary Sophia Crawley, with whom he would have three daughters, Aelwen, Eirlys and Bethan, and two sons, Taliesin and Geraint.

Journalism and youth work
Following his studies at Keele University, Michael moved to Cardiff to train as a journalist at the South Wales Echo.

Early political activism
In his youth, Michael was active in the Colwyn Bay branch of the Young Liberals. In 1967 or 1968, he joined the Labour Party. At some point, he also joined the Co-operative Party. In 1998, he said he became a member of these two parties "because I believe partnership and co-operation are very important". In the 1960s, he became a strong supporter of Welsh devolution, which would become a lifelong cause of his. During this period, he was the editor of the devolutionist Labour newspaper Wales Radical Cymru. At the time, the Labour Party in Wales was divided between pro-devolutionist and anti-devolutionist factions; Michael later described these divisions as "a big divide [...] one that was very deep and damaging". Michael's fervent support for devolution in the newspaper led to criticism from Labour politician George Thomas, the secretary of state for Wales from 1968 to 1970, who felt he had been too supportive of it.

In response to electoral victories made by Plaid Cymru in 1966 and the Scottish National Party in 1967, the Labour government of Harold Wilson set up a royal commission on the constitution of the United Kingdom in 1969 to investigate the possibility of devolution for Scotland and Wales. Chaired by James Shaw, Baron Kilbrandon, the commission published its findings in 1973, recommending the establishment of devolved, directly elected assemblies for Wales and Scotland. Michael campaigned for the creation of such an assembly for Wales into the 1970s. As the Scottish nationalists continued to threaten Labour's dominance in Scotland, the Labour government moved to propose the creation of the assemblies as set out by Kilbrandon in 1974, legislating for referendums in each country on the issue in 1979. Michael was a member of the devolution campaign in the 1979 Welsh devolution referendum. In an interview with BBC News from 1998, Michael said he had planned to stand for election to the new assembly if the election returned a devolutionist victory. In the event, the referendum failed by a margin of four to one and no assembly was established.

Cardiff City Council
In the 1973 Cardiff City Council election, Michael was elected as a Labour councillor for the electoral ward of Rumney. He was reelected at the 1976 and 1979 council elections. In the 1983 council election, he was elected as a Labour councillor for Trowbridge. He was reelected at the 1987 council election but did not stand for election at the 1991 council election.