Peter Tatchell occupies the same modest Herbert Morrison-era London County Council flat, a stone’s throw from the Elephant and Castle, where he lived during the Bermondsey by-election campaign that brought him national recognition 35 years ago. It was the dirtiest by-election in living memory.

“I never expected the scale of violence and intimidation that I was subjected to,” he tells me as we sit facing each other in his sitting room, barely able to fit in because of the piles of posters, leaflets and papers that occupy most of the space.

“All the others used really dirty, underhand tactics. There was a leaflet put round the constituency entitled ‘Which Queen would you vote for?’,” an allusion to Tatchell’s homosexuality. “I have since been told by a Liberal Democrat that it was the Liberals who did that.”

“And it said ‘If you feel angry, tell Peter Tatchell what you think’, and gave my home address and phone number. Between my selection as a candidate until the by-election 15 months later, I was violently assaulted in the constituency over 150 times. I was punched in the face while canvassing, there were two attempts to run me down in a car, I was attacked with bricks and bottles. Some of it was far-Right organisations, some were just members of the public.