Twenty years ago he came out as the first openly gay MP. Last month he revealed
he also has HIV. Martin Flynn speaks to Chris Smith 
Chris Smith will step down as an MP at the next general election after representing
the Islington South and Finsbury for 22 years. But what made him choose this
moment to come out as positive?
“I’ve been HIV positive for 17 years,” Smith explains: “I’ve
always regarded it as something which is entirely a personal matter. I’ve
been perfectly fit and well so saw no need to say anything to anyone.
“I was particularly worried about the impact on my family if the news
did emerge. I never told my parents. My father died last year, my mother’s
still alive and I was very worried that I’d cause a lot of anxiety to
her. I thought that this was something I’d cope with, something I’d
live with and I wasn’t going to broadcast it to the world.”
The trigger was Nelson Mandela’s taboo-breaking stand in telling the
world his son had died from Aids. But Smith had already been in friendly talks
with the Sunday Times about disclosing for almost a year.
“After Mandela’s statement, with the 20th anniversary of my coming
out as gay, I thought now’s the time.” He dismisses Private Eye’s
recent claim that he only came out because the Mail on Sunday was poised to
‘out’ him.
“That’s not true and they would say that wouldn’t they?”
As Minister for Culture, Smith held a high profile cabinet job. How did he
keep one of the best kept secrets at Westminster with press hounds on his
tail, especially during the fuss over the Dome and the Lottery fund?
“I drove myself to meetings with my doctor. It used to cross my mind
that there might be some journalist waiting outside the hospital but fortunately
that didn’t happen.”
“Press coverage comes and goes and you get used to it. And there were
a lot of things that the press found very difficult to criticise like free
museums, the Eden Project, Tate Modern, a boost for British films and more
money for school sport. I was saddled with providing money for the Dome which
I’d argued against in the first place.
“Any minister is going to get bad press. They concentrate on something
for a while and then move onto something else.”
Coming out is hard to do
Twenty years ago Smith, who is now 53, came out saying: ‘I’m gay,
so what?’ Did he think coming out as HIV positive would help others?
“I hope so. I’ve been deluged with letters and emails from around
the country. They said things like: ‘This has given me encouragement
and confidence’, ‘This has given me some hope for the future’
and: ‘It makes me feel much better about myself’.
“I got an email from someone who’d been an intravenous drug user
and he’s never tested because he’s too scared. He said: ‘Now
I’ve read what you said I think I’m going to get tested’.
With a bit of luck he won’t be HIV positive but if he is he will get
the advice, care and treatment he needs.”
Some in the sector have criticised Smith for not coming out as HIV positive
earlier. But he says coming out as positive was a “pretty major step”
for anyone living with the virus.
“You don’t go around sharing it with the world without a good
reason. For a number of family and other reasons I decided it was something
I didn’t want to talk about but now I feel that by saying something
I might be able to do a small amount of good. I wouldn’t want to criticise
anyone for not saying anything.”
Living with HIV, living with uncertainty
He describes his diagnosis in the 1980s as a “hammer blow” because
so little was known about the virus and there was no effective medical response.
“You heard you had HIV and you assumed you were going to die very soon.”
But Smith vividly recalls the words of one doctor who told him that he now
faced uncertainty; that things might go terribly wrong quickly, or that things
might go well for some time to come. No-one knew.
“That was at a time when there was no combination therapy. But once
you get your mind round living with uncertainty you learn to cope with it.
I suppose it helped that I coped with the ups and downs of a political career.
“But for the last 10 years I’ve been on combination therapy with
very good results and things have looked up remarkably.
“For someone diagnosed now with HIV there are a number of different
combinations available and the prognosis is much better than when I was first
diagnosed.”
But what about coping with such a high powered cabinet job while secretly
living with HIV?
“You just live through it. If you live your life on the assumption that
terrorists are going to blow you up tomorrow then there’s no point in
living. You have to live your life on the assumption that you’re going
to carry on and that you’re going to try and do some good.
“I got together with my partner about three months after my diagnosis
and he’s always been very supportive. I also told a very small number
of very close friends. Their encouragement, friendship and support has been
one of the things which has helped me through it all.
“To those newly diagnosed I’d say: hang on in there, don’t
let this defeat you for heaven’s sake and choose a small number of people
you can tell and they’ll be a real rock for you in the years ahead.”
Smith thinks the level of ignorance and prejudice around in the 1980s or 1990s
would have made it much harder for him to disclose. “There’s still
a lot of prejudice around but it’s not quite at the level of 15 or 20
years ago.”
He went on early treatment with AZT within a year or so of being diagnosed
and was on monotherapy for four or five years. He has been on the same combo
now for well over nine years. He has never tried alternative or complementary
therapies, and despite his privileged job, he never resorted to private prescriptions.
“I’ve been with the NHS throughout and I wouldn’t have it
any other way. It has been the very highest standard of treatment and care.
Not just that but the advice as well. We have doctors who specialise in HIV
who discuss everything with you and you work through the treatment options
as a joint decision making process.”
He is a non-smoker and drinks alcohol moderately, walks when he can and tries
to stay fit.
A scapegoat for Tony Blair in 2001?
How did he manage the stress of politics and still stay optimistic?
“The intensity and strangeness of a political life takes your mind off
HIV. Because you’ve got so many other things to worry about and you’ve
got problems to solve and things to achieve, you can’t afford time worrying
about yourself.”
After the 2001 election, Smith was dropped from the Cabinet, but he dismisses
any suggestion that Blair made him a scapegoat for problems with the Dome
and the Lottery.
“Some of the tabloid press said that, but it’s nonsense. I was
actually right on both these issues and they weren’t the reason the
PM decide to move me on. It was because he wanted to bring other people into
the Cabinet. He wanted some change and I was a suitable victim. You feel a
bit angry when it happens but then very rapidly you learn to move on.”
Life after Westminster
Smith is big in the Arts and this is how he plans to spend his time after
standing down at the next election. He runs the Clore Leadership Programme
which is developing a new generation of leaders for the cultural sector. He
also chairs Classic FM’s listeners’ panel and is visiting professor
at the University for the Arts. If that wasn’t enough, Ken Livingstone
has just appointed him as chair of the London Consortium which brings together
London’s major cultural bodies.
“I also chaired the judges for the Mann Booker prize this year which
was a real bind because I had to read 130 books.”
But he still expects to be “engaged and interested” in politics.
“It’s in my blood but I thought after 22 years as an MP that it
was time to move on and do other things.”
A maturing media?
I wondered how he had found the media’s response to his disclosure?
“I’ve been called courageous. I’ve been called all kind
of nice things this week. It’s very strange. Before I decided to say
what I did I was really worried what the response was going to be.”
But even then, some journalists just could not resist getting the boot in.
“The Mail ran a spread: on one side a factual piece and on the other
a rather snide piece by a right wing columnist which won’t have advanced
human knowledge or happiness at all.
“There was a rant in The Times about how HIV arises because of ‘life
choices’ and they said it was a ‘lifestyle disease’. It
was an ignorant and nasty piece. But the rest have been fine.”
Getting the safe message over
As you would expect from a patron of THT, Smith thinks their prevention campaigns
and those run by GMFA, are necessarily punchy and effective at getting the
message out to gay men. But he feels more could be done.
“We need to redouble the efforts at getting the message over to protect
yourself and others. Particularly among younger gay men the issue of safer
sex has fallen below the parapet a bit recently and we need to keep the message
very much up there in lights.
“We need to make sure that the messages which gay men have been absorbing
for the last 20 years or so are also made available to the African community
in this country.
“But the important messages need to be given to people who are not HIV
positive themselves. I think that most people with HIV act responsibly.
“There is a much greater need to give information to the young, unaffected
population to makes sure they don’t put themselves in harms way. There
should be more and better sex education presented in a factual and undramatic
way. But young people are going take much more notice of what their peers
and role models tell them about sex. That’s why we need to be a bit
more intelligent about the ways we put sex education across to teenagers.”
Efforts behind the scenes
“The simple truth is that for someone diagnosed with HIV now in the
UK, in virtually every case, the best advice, treatment and medication is
readily available. The same is not true for people diagnosed with HIV in Africa
or the developing world. The inequity in access to treatment across the world
is terrible and we need to do much more than we’re doing.
“We also need to redouble the efforts to find an HIV vaccine which,
in the long term, will have to be the principle answer. The research needs
to be done and needs to be properly funded.
“I’ve already talked to both Gordon Brown and Tony Blair about
it and I’ll carry on doing what I can behind the scenes. We have to
take a lead across the world in waking everyone up to HIV and Aids.”
Climb every mountain
How do you relax?
“I climb mountains. There are 284 mountains in Scotland over 3,000 feet
and they’re known as the Munros. I had a long-standing ambition to climb
them all. It was the one thing when I was diagnosed in 1988 that I felt I
must do. And by May 1989 I had climbed the last one.
“I also read, listen to music, go to the theatre and watch movies. And
I also spend time with my partner and our dog - who completely rules the house.”
“I think you have to have a sense of calm if you’re going to survive
a life in politics. There’re bound to be ups and downs, wonderful and
terrible moments. And learning to ride that rollercoaster is a bit like learning
to ride the rollercoaster of living with HIV. You just have to try and come
through it all with a bit of equanimity.”
And his advice to other HIV positive people?
“Be strong; don’t think that this is going to be a disaster. Decide
you’re going to cope with it, that you’re going to live life to
the full, be busy and you’re going to enjoy yourself. And to your surprise
perhaps you will.”
