Paul was brought up in a family of political Liberals, although his Uncle Michael, considered the renegade of the family, was a Labour MP, first in Plymouth and then for Ebbw Vale – Aneurin Bevan’s old seat. Paul’s own political ideas were gradually clarified at Oxford, where he met two people who would have a considerable influence on him. One was Stuart Hall, the first editor of New Left Review. Hall was a Jamaican, so there would have been an immediate interest and affinity when they met. The other was Colywn Williamson, a politics don who ran a Marxist study group, to which he invited anyone he thought might be attracted to socialist ideas. 

His change in political belief might have begun at Oxford but it was forged in Glasgow, where he learned a thing or two about political debate, standing on a soap box on Sauchiehall Street, or seated among the young workers, male and female, in the Govan and Gorbals Young Socialists.