Leo Abse
| Leo Abse | |
|---|---|
| Member of Parliament for Pontypool |
|
|
In office 1958 – 9 June 1983 |
|
| Preceded by | Daniel Granville West |
| Succeeded by | Constituency abolished |
| Member of Parliament for Torfaen |
|
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In office 9 June 1983 – 11 June 1987 |
|
| Preceded by | New constituency |
| Succeeded by | Paul Murphy |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
22 April 1917 Cardiff, Wales |
| Died | 19 August 2008 (aged 91) Charing Cross Hospital, London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Labour |
| Alma mater | London School of Economics |
| Occupation | Author, solicitor |
Leopold Abse (22 April 1917 – 19 August 2008) was a Welsh lawyer, politician and gay rights campaigner. He was a Welsh Labour Member of Parliament for nearly 30 years, and was noted for promoting private member's bills to decriminalise male homosexual relations and liberalise the divorce laws. Following his retirement from Parliament he wrote several books about politics, based on his interest in psychoanalysis.
Leo Abse was one of the sons of Rudolf Abse, a Jewish solicitor and cinema owner who lived in Cardiff. One of Abse's grandfathers was from Poland, and his grandmother from Germany. Abse's younger brother Dannie Abse (1923–2014) was a poet, and his older brother Wilfred Abse (1915–2005) a psychoanalyst. Abse attended Howard Gardens High School in Cardiff and then the London School of Economics, where he studied law. Having joined the Labour Party in 1934, he clandestinely visited Spain during the closing months of the Spanish Civil War, in 1939.
Abse married Marjorie Davies in 1955. They had two children: Tobias (now a Marxist historian) and Bathsheba. Marjorie died in 1996. His second marriage was to Ania Czepulkowska, in 2000, when Abse was 83 and Czepulkowska 33. Abse died on 19 August 2008. According to a newspaper report, he left his £1.2m estate to his second wife, with no financial provision for his children or grandchildren.
During the Second World War Abse served in the Royal Air Force. He 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. Abse's idealistic left-wing views were fully in tune with the majority opinion among the lower ranks at its meetings, but the existence of the "Parliament" disturbed the senior officers. When Abse moved a motion supporting nationalization of the Bank of England he was arrested and the Forces Parliament was forcibly dissolved.
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