Nader: a Green radical democrat who is a problem for American left

There's a nice irony in the fact that the money that launched the scourge of corporate America on his 35-year campaign trail came from none other that General Motors itself.

In 1965 an unknown lawyer called Ralph Nader, newly arrived in Washington, published a book attacking the giant car company for its safety record. GM reacted as corporations are wont to do in trying to discredit the upstart who sued it for breach of privacy.

On the proceeds of his settlement he launched a consumer movement and within a few years Nader's Raiders, a group of like-minded lawyers and citizen-rights advocates, would be known across the US.

Unable to change the direction of policy from the inside because of the stultifying dead hand of two conservative parties the Nader movement developed new points of pressure on the system, from the courts to the streets, and has been doing so ever since.

Born in 1934 in Winsted, Connecticut, of Lebanese parents, the young Nader, much influenced by muck-raking journalists like Upton Sinclair, was to train with the best in Princeton and then Harvard Law School. But he abandoned law practice in 1963 to set off for Washington DC. "I had one suitcase and stayed at the YMCA," he says.

With a job in the Department of Labour, moonlighting as a freelance writer for the Nation, he worked on the book that set him up as a full-time consumer advocate. In 1971 he established Public Citizen, a citizen-empowerment organisation involving as many as 150,000 people, which he headed until 1981. It can claim credit for successfully pressurising Congress on a wide range of legislation.

Since then he has devoted more time to global issues like the recent attempts in Seattle to launch a world trade round and writes and lectures ceaselessly on the "imperialism" of the multinational corporations.

A prickly personality who clearly does not enjoy the glad-handing and baby-kissing of politics, he is not, however, the aesthete that many of his supporters would expect. He enjoys the fruits of the consumer society and the wealth he has accumulated through wise investments in technology shares. He is said to be worth $3.8 million. But he is unmarried, has no children, and, for America most remarkably, no car. For the left Nader is problematic. Although a genuine radical democrat, he is criticised by many for being more interested in cars than people and for having nothing to say about such issues as race or gay rights.

"The left has become heavily concentrated on identity politics - gender, race and homophobia," he responds. "It's devolved itself into grievances. Slights are magnified and tend to implode on themselves. It's a real dilemma."

It makes his candidacy for the Presidency on behalf of the Green Party somewhat uncomfortable.