His childhood was mired by abuse he could never divulge. But he went on to countless triumphs

In many people’s minds, Michael Cashman – actor, activist, MEP, co-founder of Stonewall and member of the House of Lords – will always be associated with a kiss. In 1985, he had been approached by the creators of EastEnders, Julia Smith and Tony Holland, to play Colin Russell – the British soap’s first gay character. Cashman was nervous at the thought of the press scrutiny that could follow, but agreed. Even before his character was announced, the Sun ran a story about the role under the headline “Eastbenders”.

“What made it worse,” says Cashman, now 69 and sitting in his fourth-floor Limehouse apartment overlooking the Thames, “was the information was leaked from inside.” The Sunday Mirror, meanwhile, claimed that he had had an HIV test in the US and was dying. The News of the World ran a double-page spread, headlined “Secret Gay Love of Aids Scare EastEnder”, which outed his partner and printed the couple’s photos and address.

There was even an attempt to orchestrate “sinister” stories about him. One afternoon, two teenagers knocked on his front door asking for money; when he declined, they told him they had been given a tenner to do it by two men sitting in a car opposite Cashman’s house.

“They wanted a photograph of me giving money to kids,” says Cashman. “Then you don’t have to write a nasty story. You say: ‘Why is Colin giving money to young boys?’ That was how we were portrayed then. We were predatory paedophiles. We weren’t in consenting relationships.”

Thirty-five years later, he has detailed all this in his memoir, One of Them: From Albert Square to Parliament Square. Through his varied, high-profile career and life-changing relationship with his husband, Paul Cottingham (an actor and campaigner who died of cancer in 2014), it tells not just the story of his life, but also the battle for LGBT equality in the UK.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest How the Sun covered the story of the EastEnders gay kiss in 1989

When news broke that Cashman’s character would share the first gay kiss in a British soap (a peck on the forehead), the backlash only intensified. Campaigners such as Mary Whitehouse railed against it; the BBC was besieged by angry letters and phone calls; on more than one occasion a brick was thrown through Cashman’s window. But the kiss went ahead (Cashman says Smith threatened to resign if it was edited out) and the furore died down. By comparison, his next on-screen kiss – British soap’s first gay kiss on the lips – passed unremarkably.

Was it worth it? Cashman says he is still approached by grateful fans today. “Somebody said to me: ‘When you were on I used to watch it from behind the sofa because I didn’t want my parents to know I was gay.’ He was 10 years old.”

Cashman was born in 1950 in Mile End, east London. His mother was an office cleaner and his father was a docker, and he was one of four brothers. He loved performing and would sing and dance at home, in the local pub and in school shows, to the bafflement of his father. “He thought: ‘Oh my God, I’ve got a son, who spends his time getting dressed up in makeup and tights,’” says Cashman, who knew he was “different” from a very young age.

Talentspotters saw him perform at school and encouraged him to audition for a role in the musical Oliver!. Aged 12, he got a part as one of Fagin’s gang members and as understudy to Oliver. His father told him the West End was full of queers – which a closeted Cashman took solace in. “He certainly didn’t know the comfort that it gave me, that I was going to a world that was full of them,” says Cashman. “My ears pricked up.”

The comfort would be short-lived, however. In rehearsals, he was introduced to a director and manager in his late 20s who wanted Cashman for one of his shows. He convinced Cashman’s parents to let the boy stay overnight with his wife and children the night before the show. But when Cashman met him, there was no wife or children. Instead there was a boarding house, in which the man requested a twin room for him and his “son”. At night, he climbed into Cashman’s bed and sexually assaulted him. It was a pattern of behaviour that would continue for years.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Michael Cashman, aged 12, in a publicity shot from 1963

“I wanted my mother to rescue me,” Cashman says. “But when you are being abused, it’s first of all [about] trying to find the words to describe how you feel, then the words that describe what’s being done to you, then the confidence that people will believe you. After the second time, I just found a way of switching myself off, so that I remembered the days when he would take me off to Kew Gardens, the river or the cinema.”

It wasn’t the first time Cashman had been abused. When he was eight years old, he was stopped on his way home one evening by a young docker. The man asked him if he wanted to earn a shilling, pinned him down and sexually assaulted him. When Cashman returned home, he told no one about the attack and kept this silence for years.

“I’ve had to face these demons that I’ve buried, that have played around with me,” he says now. The alley where the docker sexually assaulted him 60 years ago is just streets away. “I didn’t feel I could be loved; I felt I couldn’t belong, I would try and [self-] sabotage,” he says. Writing his memoir has helped him deal with the trauma, he says. “Once you look back and you own all that happened to you, you’re in control. If you’re honest about what’s happened to you, you grow. If you don’t, then it will own you.”

He had similar experiences aged about 14 while filming I’ve Gotta Horse. One night, an older friend took him away to the bedroom of the film’s director, Kenneth Hume. Hume gave Cashman whisky, chatted to him on the bed and then sexually assaulted him. This happened multiple times throughout the film’s production. Cashman dealt with it in the only way he had learned to: by doing what he could to forget it ever happened, by staying silent.

“The abuse I suffered hurt me so much; at one point I thought: ‘Have I got an invisible sign on my forehead that says: Abuse me, I won’t tell?’” he says. “You know that if you do [tell someone] you open something that is so terrifying, over which you have no control. So your best way to deal with it is to bury it.”

It was the same when he was raped by a man whose advances he rebuffed. In the 60s, going to the police wasn’t really an option for gay men, he says. So he chose to forget about the ordeal and eventually convinced himself he had provoked his rapist.

“It was the narrative that we lived with,” he says. “That this is what happened to gay men. They got beaten up, they got raped, they asked for it, they deserved it. Growing up in the knowledge that having sex with someone made you a criminal has a psychological impact. When someone mistreats you, your immediate reaction is: ‘Well, I must have asked for it.’”

Yet Cashman would later discover that it didn’t have to be this way. After putting on a play in Scarborough in 1982, he was invited to a soiree hosted by Barbara Windsor at the town’s Grand Hotel. It was there he met Cottingham. The attraction was instant. “What I’m trying to say in the book is that no matter what happens in life, you can become yourself. And I became that man through my relationship with Paul,” he says.

Spending time with Cashman, it is clear that he is still coming to terms with the loss of his husband. Writing his memoir – and recounting their stirring, tumultuous more-than-three-decades-long relationship – was part of that process. The first draft, he says, was more of a eulogy. The published version feels more like a waltz. The book is a wonderful portrayal of the complexities, challenges and numerous encounters (including one they shared with the son of a KGB officer during a trip to Kyiv) that comes with navigating an open relationship.

“It was a central part of our relationship,” says Cashman. “Open relationships that are based on honesty, truth and trust can only do you good.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest With Paul Cottingham on a trip to Moscow in 1985

He brought the same honesty and passion to his campaigning. In May 1988, the Thatcher government had brought in the Local Government Act and its notorious section 28, which prohibited the intentional promotion of homosexuality by local authorities and schools. Cashman found himself at the forefront of the fight thanks to his TV profile. While he says the BBC never pressured him to moderate his views, he noticed the number of meaningful scenes he had in EastEnders dwindled, so he left to throw himself fully into the fight for LGBT equality.

In 1989, he co-founded Stonewall to lobby the government on repealing section 28 and campaign on issues effecting the LGBT community – the most pressing being the HIV crisis. “It was an awful period when there was absolutely no hope, when people just disappeared,” he recalls. “If you didn’t see them on the scene, it was a sign that they either had Kaposi’s sarcoma, which was visible, and didn’t want to be out, or they had started to get that drawn, gaunt look.

“It’s what I will never forgive the Thatcher government for doing,” he continues. “To bring in section 28 against a group of people who should have been supported and nurtured and loved. To do that was viciousness beyond imagining.”

Throughout the 80s and 90s, gay people were often portrayed as predators by media organisations supportive of section 28. Cashman sees similarities in the way the trans community is treated today. And he is concerned that some lesbian, gay and bisexual people are joining in.

“If I don’t stand up for the rights of others, how can my own rights ever be defended?” he says. “The fact that lesbian and gay people are willing to sacrifice trans people …we’re rolling back the clock.”

Cashman’s commitment to fighting for LGBT equality has continued throughout his political career. In 1999, he became the country’s first openly gay Labour MEP and went on to be president of the European Parliament’s intergroup on gay and lesbian issues, while also helping convince Tony Blair’s government to introduce same-sex civil partnerships. He was made a Labour peer in 2014 and has championed issues such as compulsory LGBT-inclusive sex and relationships education.

Last year, he resigned from the Labour party after endorsing the pro-remain Liberal Democrats.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest At a gay rights march in 1988 with Ian McKellen. Photograph: Harold Holborn/Mirrorpix

Cashman’s passion for activism helped heal his turbulent relationship with his father too. Initially dismissive when Cashman came out to him, the more Cashman campaigned, the more supportive his father became. And his father’s love of Cottingham also brought them closer.

Then, in 1991, Cashman made a documentary about that kiss. The morning after it aired, his father rang to tell him that he had just left the pub where the extremely tightfisted landlord had felt so moved he gave him a free pint. After a brief silence, Cashman knew he had finally become his father’s son.

“He said: ‘I just want you to know I’m proud of you … and I want to tell you, I love you.’ I nearly wept, and his voice was quavering. I said: ‘Yeah, I love you, too.’ And I don’t think he had ever said that to any of us.”

Yet for all the success the EastEnders kiss brought him, the one he says that really defined him happened in the crowded station buffet of King’s Cross station.

“That was Paul’s first weekend in London,” says Cashman. He sighs, recalling the memory. “We were sat waiting for the two o’clock train in that silence – two men not being able to show emotional connection. And he just leaned forward and kissed me. I was amazed. Then we walked down to the platform and he kissed me again on the lips and turned and off he went. And I just wished he’d come back.”

One of Them, by Michael Cashman, is published by Bloomsbury (£18.99 rrp). To buy a copy for £15.57 with free UK p&p for online orders, go to guardianbookshop.com or call 020 3176 3837