Leo Abse

Abse, a Labour MP for Pontypool and a Cardiff solicitor, took the Wolfenden recommendation into the Commons as a private member's bill, while the Earl of Arran carried a parallel bill in the Lords. Home Secretary Roy Jenkins gave the bill government time, without which it would have died. Abse made concessions to get it through, including the higher age of consent and exclusions for the armed forces and merchant navy, and defended the result as what Parliament would accept. The 1967 act's mix of real change and hard compromise is the clearest example on this list of how legislative reform is actually bargained.