RIP Leo Abse - a pioneer

"Leo had the satisfaction of outliving most of his enemies. He heroically challenged the accepted stereotypes of the companions of the ageing process.
His second marriage was to a young woman when he was in his eighties. He worked with the enthusiasm, energy and chutzpah of an enfant terrible until his final days."
Paul Flynn MP

And so farewell then Leo Abse, one of the most significant politicians in our history, who died this week.

Leo Abse was a backbench Labour MP for thirty-nine years, and an admired lawyer and author. He famously got more legislation on to the statute book than any other backbencher, and most important of all he was the man who drafted and championed the act that brought us the legalisation of homosexuality in the UK.

His achievements include not only the Homosexual Law Reform Bill in 1967, but the 1975 Children's Act, the Divorce Reform Act of 1969 (that for the first time allowed divorce on the grounds of breakdown of a marriage) and the ending of barristers' monopoly of the High Courts.

A dramatic, flamboyant and outspoken character, Leo was born into a family of Polish Jews who had settled in Wales (his grandfather was reputedly the first Jew to speak Welsh with a Yiddish accent and Yiddish with a Welsh one).

His clothes - designed by his first wife - were a welcome splash of colour in a world of the pinstripe suited, Eton-tie-wearing establishment of Westminster, and his extravagant fabrics and bouffant hair caught the attention of the media - in particular on Budget day, for which he reserved his most elaborate and eye-catching outfits.

Unabashed in his choice of topics on which he would write, in 2000 he published the wonderfully-titled Fellatio, Masochism, Politics and Love, apparently "an analysis of the repressed homosexual components of the relationship between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair"; and in 2006 The Bisexuality of Daniel Defoe: a psychoanalytic survey of the man and his works.

A pioneer - we owe Leo Abse a massive debt, and we should remember his achievements with pride.

Read his obituary in the Daily Telegraph