WHEN Cardiff Central Labour Party members met to select their general election candidate two years ago, the Liberal Democrat anti-trade union dirty tricks team had started work.

They put out a story telling Labour supporters that Unite leader Len McCluskey had chosen their candidate.

They followed up that allegation with phone canvassing, after Cardiff Central members had plumped for Jo Stevens as their candidate, with teams in London ringing up people in Cardiff and asking: “Did you know that your Labour candidate is in the pocket of the trade unions?”

As recently as last week, the local Lib Dems put out anti-Labour knocking copy, referring to Stevens as the “trade union candidate.”

This is so much water off a duck’s back for the Labour challenger, who has worked for trade union solicitors Thompsons in their Cardiff office since 1989.

“I’m very proud to be a trade unionist,” she declares.

“I have been for nearly 30 years. I’ve spent my entire life working on behalf of trade union members. They’re my friends, my colleagues, people I rely on to give me a sense of what the real world is like.”

Stevens points out that there are thousands of trade union members in Cardiff Central and thousands of public-sector workers bearing the brunt of savage cuts dreamed up in Westminster by conservative coalition ministers.

“One aspect of this campaign that makes me angry is the dishonesty of the Liberal Democrats and Tories in Cardiff, having a go at the Labour government in Wales about the NHS and education, having a go at councils about services,” she says.

“These are Tory and Lib Dem cuts. They are not Labour cuts.

“It’s like a hospital pass in rugby [a pass that puts the recipient in great danger]. We’re being given the hospital pass and we take the flak for it. They made deliberate choices to do this and we would make different choices.”

Her rugby reference is not accidental. Apart from politics and looking after her two teenage boys, she reveals that watching sport is her passion.

“I’m a Cardiff City season ticket holder, a member of Glamorgan Cricket Club, I watch rugby whenever I can and I go to the darts every year. Apart from Formula One and golf, I could pretty much watch sport every day.”

Not that she has had much time for that recently as the contest against sitting Liberal Democrat Jenny Willott hots up.

Willott stepped down as government assistant chief whip five months ago when a poll by Tory peer Lord Ashcroft showed she is likely to lose her seat, prompting her comment that she wanted to speak out publicly for her constituents and to hold ministers to account.

However, Stevens characterised her resignation as “a shameful admission that Jenny Willott has neglected her constituency.

“It is completely arrogant of the Lib Dems to think, having delivered the bedroom tax, given a £100,000 tax cut to millionaires and trebled tuition fees that people will conveniently forget what they have done.”

Nonetheless, this is precisely the conjuring trick that Willott’s team is attempting to master.

According to their propaganda, it is “Jenny Willott and the Liberal Democrats” who have “reduced the deficit by a third while protecting the vital services we all rely on.”

It was also, in their words, the Lib Dems who raised the income tax threshold and gave older people the biggest ever cash rise in their pension.

Their Tory allies — the senior coalition partners — warrant no mention, except in classic Lib Dem spin that advocates tactical voting, declaring: “Plaid and Conservatives can’t win here. Only the Lib Dems can beat Labour in Cardiff Central.”

Stevens wants the Liberal Democrats to bear their full responsibility for all anti-working class measures promulgated by the conservative coalition.

“If you look at the things that have happened in government — the attacks on workers’ rights, employment tribunal fees, the proposals the Tories have on industrial action balloting, the things they’ve done on check-off in the Civil Service, the attacks on facility time — this will get worse and worse,” she states.

“The only reason they have been able to do these things is because the Lib Dems have helped them along the way.”

An as-yet-unquantified issue for Cardiff Central is the effect of the coalition government decision, driven by Nick Clegg, to end block registration of university students and care home residents.

The constituency’s electoral register is down by around 10,000 voters this year as a result.

“I think it’s a big scandal. Individual voter registration has been a disaster. It’s been rushed through,” Stevens complains.

“The changes over block registration of students in university halls across Britain has meant that millions of people won’t be able to have their say on May 7. We should be making it easier for people to vote, not harder,” she insists.

Stevens draws no solace from being the bookies’ favourite, insisting that she will take nothing for granted until after 10pm on May 7.

The items raised most strongly with her on the doorstep have been insecure employment and low pay, together with their knock-on effects of problems around housing and debt.

“There is this issue of growing inequality which people are seeing even if they’re fairly comfortably off,” she says.

“They can see on their doorsteps that inequality is ratcheting up and up over the last five years.”

She is pleased with Labour policy on the work manifesto, such as a minimum wage rise, while recognising that more could be done.

“It would be great to reach £8 an hour and I’d like to see us aspire to achieve it earlier in the parliament,” she says.

“I’ve campaigned on the living wage for a long time and I’d like to see the government using its might to have the living wage paid more widely across Britain, using public procurement for that and for tackling zero-hours contracts.”

Stevens draws inspiration from Labour’s Welsh Health Minister Mark Drakeford over pay for NHS staff.

“His key thing was that he wanted a deal over NHS pay. He wanted to give a pay award, but the red line was that he wanted to make the NHS in Wales a living wage employer and he achieved that.

“If you have imagination, you can set a standard and act as a role model.

“Through public procurement there’s all sorts of things we can tackle — not just low pay and trying to get people up to a living wage but using it to close the gender pay gap as well,” she declares.

Stevens is clearly proud of being a trade unionist and of being supported by trade union members, but what about the party’s senior echelons?

“Our message that the trade unions are at the very heart of our labour movement is getting stronger as the election campaign goes on,” she suggests.

“I’ve been really pleased by what I’ve been hearing about reversing employment tribunal fees and about zero-hours contracts.

“Ed Miliband understands the issues facing working people, the issues that trade unionists face at the workplace.

He’s very supportive and I think that message has got stronger and stronger as the days have gone on.

“We can all say that we’d like to see more, but I think we’re absolutely moving in the right direction,” she says.

One of the most frustrating issues for Labour supporters has been the party leadership’s reluctance to make a clear declaration that the rail industry will be renationalised.

Stevens was one of the signatories to last year’s letter to the Observer from parliamentary candidates calling for rail to be brought back into public ownership.

She believes that shadow transport secretary Michael Dugher will move this forward on the basis of his comments that the rail franchise system is completely broken.

“Where contracts are in place, the costs of trying to undo them are prohibitive, but every opportunity that we’ve got to release contracts either mid-term if there are break clauses or on expiry so that we can bring stuff back into public ownership, absolutely,” she enthuses.

Stevens also expresses her admiration for Wales Transport Minister Edwina Hart’s plan for a not-for-profit framework in Wales.

“Look at Edwina’s track record. She pretty much delivers what she wants to see,” she says.

“A lot of people you meet in political circles are good at talking the talk, but for me it’s about delivery. It’s about action. It’s about getting done what you say you’re going to do.

“It’s my mantra throughout my working life in law and it’s what I hope to do if elected.”