My father was a factory worker. I grew up in a narrow-minded, conservative, evangelical household, similar to the one depicted byJeanette Winterson in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Life revolved around the family and church. I left school at 16 with limited horizons and no prospects of anything.

 

My 20s, which spanned 1972-82, were a decade of escape to freedom, to experience things beyond my limited background and to forge my own identity and life. They were challenging, often anxiety-provoking, years – but also exciting and transformative.

 

Aged 20, I ditched my superstitious Christian upbringing in favour of a rational scientific understanding of the world; embracing atheism, humanism and secularism. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights replaced the Bible as my moral compass. I transposed the positive exhortations of Christianity – “love thy neighbour” and “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” – into a non-religious humanitarianism. This break with Christianity at times strained relations with some family members, which was very distressing.

 

To make up for my sheltered childhood, I became an explorer of all things new and different. I devoured books on philosophy, politics and psychology. I went to night school to get my A-levels and later, as a mature student, to the Polytechnic of North London to do a degree in sociology. I experimented with LSD, finding it a profoundly consciousness-expanding experience. My cultural milieu was a mix of leftwing politics and youth counter-culture.

 

I hitchhiked around Morocco, east Africa and the south Pacific islands; mostly sleeping rough in trees and cemeteries, and on roadside verges and beaches. I was poor. It was tough. I often didn’t eat well and got dysentery in the Sahara, which nearly killed me. I had two other narrow escapes: falling when climbing cliffs in Hawaii and being dragged out to sea while surfing in the Solomon Islands. Nevertheless, these were thrilling adventures for someone like me, who had never travelled far and long been stifled by family and church.

 

Trekking in developing countries educated me about other cultures and global poverty. It strengthened my internationalist outlook and I developed a commitment to social justice, which led me to revolutionary socialism. I didn’t join any party at that time. The far left was sectarian, dogmatic and unrealistic. I was too independent-minded. I saw through the totalitarianism of orthodox communism and embraced a radical leftism imbued with democratic, humanitarian and pluralistic values. At the same time, as I campaigned against the US war in Vietnam I also campaigned against the pro-Soviet tyrannies in eastern Europe.

Having witnessed the flaws and failings of the revolutionary left, in my late 20s I succumbed and joined the Labour party. It was far from perfect. But inspired by the rise of the left within it, I saw Labour as the most likely practical means to secure political power and effect radical social change. 

 

I accepted my sexuality and came out, becoming an activist in the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in London. After campaigning so long for others, this was my chance to campaign against a persecution that affected me. GLF was the watershed movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) liberation. It changed the queer mindset for ever, from victims to victors, and moved the LGBT agenda beyond law reform to a wider social transformation. Adapting the civil disobedience tactics of the US black civil rights movement, we did protests such as staging sit-ins at pubs that refused to serve “poofs” – overturning that discrimination.

 

Our idealism envisaged a new sexual democracy, without homophobia, misogyny, racism and class privilege. Erotic shame and guilt would be banished. There would be sexual freedom and human rights for everyone – LGBT and straight. Our message was “innovate, don’t assimilate”.

 

At the end of my 20s, in 1981, I was selected as the Labour candidate to fight what became the notorious Bermondsey byelection – one of the dirtiest and most violent UK elections in the 20th century. It was my political baptism of fire; being denounced by the then Labour leader, Michael Foot, for my leftwing politics and advocacy of extra-parliamentary action against heartless Thatcherite policies. The tabloids slaughtered me with an almost daily avalanche of smears and fabrications. Labour’s national executive banned me as a candidate for 15 months, before finally allowing me to stand. Despite losing the election in 1983, it made me a public figure and gave me a platform, which I have used ever since to champion human rights.