Biteback is delighted to announce it will be publishing the autobiography of former Cabinet Minister Peter Hain in January 2012. Hain held an array of glittering posts in the British political firmament under both Blair and Brown, including key roles in the Foreign Office, Europe, Wales and Energy, the leadership of the Commons and, most notably, brokering the 2007 devolution settlement in Northern Ireland. However, Outside In traces Hain’s extraordinary career back to his campaigning roots in apartheid South Africa.
As he was growing up as the child of activist parents in Pretoria, life was made unbearably difficult for Peter and his family under the apartheid regime. At one point his parents were taken away in the middle of the night by the security police, leaving the young Hain to look after his younger brother and two small sisters. Later, a close family friend was hanged, Hain was sent a letter bomb and framed on a bank theft charge committed by his double. The values he has always brought to the table in British politics spring directly from the apartheid injustices he witnessed and then fought against as a British anti-apartheid leader from the late 1960s to 1980s.
Peter Hain says of the book, ‘As a boy living under apartheid and then as a protest leader exiled in Britain, I never imagined becoming an MP, let alone a Cabinet Minister. This is my story of an outsider turned insider, of trying to combine my values with the pragmatic necessities of government and frontline politics.’
Biteback MD Iain Dale comments, ‘We are thrilled to be publishing Peter’s story. Far from the dusty compendia of life in the Westminster Village you sometimes get from the memoirs of former ministers, Outside In is the story of a courageous, campaigning life.’