As an 80th birthday present, there is probably nothing that Bruce Kent wants less this week than a paean in the public press. Whether as general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament during one of the movement's dynamic and active periods in the 80s or now, as a campaigner on behalf of the wrongly imprisoned at home and abroad, Kent has been an inspiration to many and a comfort to those whose cause he has adopted. Part of his great charm has always been a very active sense of humour and - perhaps the legacy of his years as a young Catholic priest - the firm belief that he was always less important that the campaigns he espoused. His regular presence on a demonstration or at a public meeting is always a reminder that the political activist's work is never done but also that battles need to be fought with camaraderie and hope. Only recently, he was in touch with the Guardian to press the case of a man whom he believes to have been wrongly jailed for murder and to ask why we had not made a greater link between military spending and poverty in a recent supplement on the subject. He has also involved himself on behalf of people detained under terror laws. A couple of years ago, the Daily Telegraph, no great fan of his policies on disarmament, described this former tank officer as "a pillar of our great national tradition of political radicalism, stretching from Wilkes to Hazlitt and from the Chartists to the Suffragettes". Quite right, too - and many happy returns.
www.theguardian.com
) in town for a meeting.
