1. Leo Abse was a British Labour MP for nearly 30 years, noted for promoting private member's bills to decriminalise male homosexual relations and liberalise the divorce laws.
31 Facts About Leo Abse
1. 2.
Leo Abse was one of the sons of Rudolf Abse, a Jewish solicitor and cinema owner who lived in Cardiff.
3.
Leo Abse attended Howard Gardens High School in Cardiff and then the London School of Economics, where he studied law.
4.
Some 10 years after her husband died, Mrs Czepulkowska-Leo Abse broke her silence and spoke to the South Wales Argus and paid tribute to her husband.
5.
Leo Abse confirmed that she is still living and working in London.
6.
Leo Abse was in Cairo in 1944 when some of the British military personnel stationed there set up a "Forces Parliament" in which they debated the structure of society they wanted to see in the post-war world.
7.
When Leo Abse moved a motion supporting nationalization of the Bank of England he was arrested and the Forces Parliament was forcibly dissolved.
8.
Leo Abse was elected as Chairman of Cardiff Labour Party for two years from 1951, relinquishing the post when he was elected to Cardiff City Council in 1953.
9.
Leo Abse fought the safe Conservative seat of Cardiff North in the 1955 general election, and was defeated.
10.
Leo Abse won the candidature and then won the seat at the by-election.
11.
Leo Abse made a point of dressing flamboyantly on Budget Day and liked to drop references from Freudian psychotherapy into his speeches.
12.
Leo Abse made his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 22 January 1959 on the subject of education, mentioning that he had a primary school in his constituency which had two classes of over 50 pupils in one room.
13.
In 1963, Leo Abse was selected in third place in the ballot for Private Member's Bills and introduced the Matrimonial Causes Bill, which simplified and made easier the legal process of divorce.
14.
Leo Abse began to promote a Bill to put Wolfenden's recommendations into law in February 1962.
15.
Leo Abse kept pressing the issue, and after Humphry Berkeley lost his seat in the 1966 general election, Abse became the main sponsor for the legalisation.
16.
Leo Abse was elected Chairman of the group of Welsh Labour MPs in 1971.
17.
In 1973, Leo Abse requested that the government ban the rock singer Alice Cooper and his group from performing in England, stating that Cooper was "peddling the culture of the concentration camp".
18.
Leo Abse said: "Pop is one thing, anthems of necrophilia are quite another".
19.
Leo Abse was chosen as chairman of a select committee on abortion from 1975 to 1977.
20.
Leo Abse's report advocated restrictions on abortion, including a lowering of the time limit within which abortion was legal from 28 weeks.
21.
Leo Abse fought in the House of Commons for the enactment of his committee's recommendations, and continued the fight in 1980 when the Conservative MP John Corrie proposed a bill along similar lines: Abse refused to compromise on a limit of 24 weeks.
22.
Leo Abse was an opponent of devolution when it was proposed in the late 1970s.
23.
Leo Abse proposed a separate referendum on whether the Shetland Islands ought to be part of a devolved Scotland.
24.
Leo Abse was briefly Chair of the Welsh Affairs Select Committee when it was first set up in January 1980, but resigned in November 1981.
25.
Leo Abse added to his reputation for taking maverick stances by strongly urging that British forces be withdrawn from Northern Ireland.
26.
Leo Abse opposed nuclear power and nuclear weapons, and criticised Margaret Thatcher for insisting that Argentina unconditionally surrender over the Falkland Islands.
27.
Leo Abse was elected for the renamed seat of Torfaen in 1983, but retired from Parliament in 1987.
28.
The first of the books Leo Abse wrote following retirement, Margaret, Daughter of Beatrice, is a "psycho-biography" of Margaret Thatcher, taking its title from the observation that while Mrs Thatcher frequently referred to her father, she claimed not to have had anything to say to her mother from the age of 15.
29.
In Wotan, My Enemy Leo Abse took a psychoanalytic approach to explaining the origin of British hostility to Germany and the idea of the European Union.
30.
Leo Abse analysed the tendency for men to engage in risky behaviour by placing their trust in women whom they barely knew and linked it to political developments.
31.
Leo Abse was played by actor Anthony O'Donnell in the TV series A Very English Scandal.