Wednesday 20 August 2008

Rest In Peace, Leo Abse

Your excoriating biographies of Thatcher and Blair even moved here to alter her Who's Who entry.

You opposed the ultimate violence that was and is the splitting of the very atom for belligerent purposes.

You saved Wales in the Seventies from that rule by a closed bilingual elite which has since come to pass after your departure from Parliament.

You piloted through the legislation decriminalising male homosexual acts between consenting adults in private, but could write only last year that "simply because something should not be a criminal offence, that does not mean that it is a public good".

You voted for the 1967 Abortion Act, but only after warning against abortion's ever becoming "comparable to having a tooth pulled", than which it is now more common.

Yes, you were behind the 1969 Divorce Reform Act. And yes, you succumbed to a sort of European federalism. But, as occasionally happens both on Old Left and on Old Right, yours was a European federalism such as had no existence in actual fact, never will have, and never can have.

3 comments:

  1. De mortuis nullum nisi...?

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  2. Yes, you were behind the 1969 Divorce Reform Act. And yes, you succumbed to a sort of European federalism. But, as occasionally happens both on Old Left and on Old Right, yours was a European federalism such as had no existence in actual fact, never will have, and never can have.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've seen some advertising strategies in my time...

    ReplyDelete