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Peter Hain has long been a believer in direct political action - and is now one of a clutch of cabinet ministers who in younger days had the security services monitoring their activities. He first came to national prominence as a radical Young Liberal in the forefront of the campaign against apartheid in South Africa, where he lived until he was 16 and his activist family fled to Britain.

Once here, he led the 1969/70 Stop the Seventy campaign to disrupt the South African cricket tour of the UK, and helped found the Anti-Nazi League in 1977 - the same year he moved over to Labour. He spent 15 years working as a political researcher for a trade union, entering the Commons at the 1991 Neath by-election.

In opposition, he was a whip and then shadow employment minister. But his Welsh seat meant that when Labour won office in 1997, his first government job was at the Welsh Office. From there, however, he moved on to the Foreign Office and then the Department for Trade & Industry.

After the 2001 election he was appointed Europe minister, in which role he sounded a pro-euro note that was a change from the more euro-wary tone of his earlier pronouncements on the issue.