LEO ABSE

Labour MP whose parliamentary Bills helped liberalise British society

LEO ABSE'S parliamentary causes, not one of which was ephemeral and most of which lasted for the three decades of his constant activity in and out of Parliament as Labour MP first for Pontypool and then for Torfaen, had one thing in common - Abse knew one heck of a lot about his subjects.

The penal system, adoption law, the abolition of capital punishment, the divorce laws, homosexuality, family planning, legitimacy of children, widows' damages, industrial injuries, congenital disability, relief from forfeiture, in-vitro fertilisation and many other delicate matters were brought on to the floor of the House of Commons, with passion and knowledge: in doing so, Abse enhanced the British Parliament in which he believed, to the extent of defying his party to fight "Vote No" on Welsh Devolution in 1979.

Not only did Abse talk at enormous length on these subjects but he actually did something about them: he introduced a plethora of Bills amounting to some of the most radical legislative changes in the post-war period. It was his Sexual Offences Bill, receiving royal assent in July 1967 a full decade after the Wolfenden Report, that finally decriminalised homosexual activity between consenting adults. He was also a dominant figure behind the Divorce Reform Act 1969, which liberalised the laws on divorce. In his 2000 book Fellatio, Masochism, Politics and Love, Abse remarked that, until the intervention of the Labour government under which he served, "our laws relating to divorce, suicide, illegitimacy, adoption and homosexuality were unbecoming to any society claiming to be civilised."

In 1969, the Inter-Parliamentary Union sent a delegation of six MPs to Japan, under the leadership of John Cronin, MP for Loughborough, which included Leo Abse and myself. On our return to Tokyo, after we had been at Kyoto, Nara and Osaka, we were scheduled for a 15-minute courtesy call on the then Japanese Prime Minister, Eisaku Sato, really with no more than the objective of saying a polite thank-you for the welcome we had received.

When we trooped into the Prime Minister's office, and before we had had time to sit down or for Cronin to get a word in edgeways, Abse said "Prime Minister, we must use our time to discuss abortion with you!" Sato was not in the least taken aback: "I'm most concerned about what we in Japan should do about abortion, and whether we ought to have updated abortion laws." Abse proceeded to hold forth: our allotted slot in the prime ministerial timetable went by and Sato lifted his phone and said something in Japanese. Cronin made to go out of politeness. "No, stay here," said Sato, "I was just postponing my next meeting." And then, half an hour later, officials from the Health ministry arrived, hurriedly summoned by Sato to listen to Abse.

Fifteen minutes eventually extended to two hours and 50 minutes. Abse was phenomenal in his grasp of the subject, and his passion for justice in any abortion law. This extraordinary little man, smaller in stature than most of his Japanese hosts, transfixed them. Years later, I was told by Michita Sakkata, the Japanese Education minister, that Abse's encounter had had a profound influence on the official Japanese approach to abortion.

No MP ever claimed a more ancient lineage than Leo Abse. His father - a Cardiff merchant - and all his family, unlike the Ashkenazi Jews who constitute the vast majority of Jews in Britain, were Arabic in appearance. He told me that his strange name was not shared by any other family of Jews in Western Europe or the US, and was Phoenician in origin. He suspected that his ancestors were in Tyre long before the Jewish tribes arrived in Canaan.

There is the story - not apocryphal but true - that soon after Abse arrived in the House of Commons, he found himself walking across Westminster Hall with Aneurin Bevan, who proceeded to offer fatherly advice that, on coming to Parliament, Abse should do as he himself had done, and cultivate irreverence. Jenny Lee told me that Nye had come back to her that night, nonplussed, and told her that his advice to Leo Abse had provoked the retort that "however the English ruling classes might appear to a Celt, to a Phoenician they are mere parvenus!"

After Howard Gardens High School, in Cardiff, and the London School of Economics, where he fell under the spell of Harold Laski, Abse volunteered for the RAF in 1941. No other aircraftman was to be the subject of a Parliamentary debate devoted to his situation.

In 1944, while serving in the Middle East, Abse was detained for left-wing political activities. On 5 July, D.N. Pritt KC, the socialist MP for Hammersmith North raised the matter in the House. He asked the Secretary of State for Air Sir Archibald Sinclair why Aircraftman Leo Abse was posted to Britain immediately after he had taken office in the Forces Parliament at Cairo, at a time when he still had 18 months unexpired of the normal period of service in the Middle East; why he was kept under open arrest for 14 days awaiting his departure from Egypt, without any charge, pretext or explanation; and why the protest of the educational officer of his unit that his posting was detrimental to the educational work of his unit, which Abse was assisting, was ignored.