I've been a witness to unfairness in society all my life. To the conditions under which my mother worked all her life, working in an industrial weaving shed in the north of England. And it has been this feature of unfairness that has motivated me in all of my political thinking.

I've been in politics all my life. In 1945, I committed my first act of civil disobedience during the election campaign for the first post-World War II general election, when the Labour Party, to everyone's amazement, ousted the Conservatives. I refused to obey the instructions of a policeman, and as a result, almost got a belt around the ear, because those were the days when policemen could hit children and nobody cared, they thought it was probably good for them.

I wouldn't know a space-time continuum or warp core breach if they got into bed with me.

I am told that there have been over the years a number of experiments taking place in places like Massachusetts Institute of Technology that have been entirely based on concepts raised by Star Trek.

I always have been optimistic about humanity's future. Always. Even at the most dismaying of times.

I do what I do in my mother's name because I couldn't help her then. Now I can.

It still frightens me a little bit to think that so much of my life was totally devoted to Star Trek and almost nothing else.