Lee Eli Harris is the only Jewish candidate in the running to be the next Mayor of London.

At the age of 79, he is also the oldest among the 12 candidates. And he is certainly the only candidate calling for greater freedom to smoke dope as a major part of his platform.

South African-born Mr Harris is standing for the Cannabis is Safer Than Alcohol (Cista) party. If elected, he plans to fight racism, improve public transport and, of course, push for the legalisation of marijuana for medical and recreational purposes.

Speaking from his shop, Alchemy on Portobello Road,(London's oldest emporium specialising in equipment for the consumption of cannabis and tobacco, which he has run for 45 years), Mr Harris revealed that he was not always so liberal in his views on drugs. By his own admission, he was a "political puritan" before moving to London in 1955.

He only drank wine on a Friday night and did not try his first joint until he turned 27.

I grew up in a very Jewish culture. We did not drink except wine on Friday night

Born in Johannesburg, Mr Harris grew up with Lithuanian grandparents and parents who only spoke Yiddish. He spent three years living in the local Jewish orphanage after his father, a commercial traveller for a clothing company, died when he was nine years old.

He recalled: "At the orphanage, I had to go to the Orthodox synagogue every Friday night and sing Ma Tovu. I learnt to speak Hebrew there. The family advised my mother to get a job and to put us three children in the orphanage after my father died, but we did see her on Sundays."

After school, he joined the same clothing factory his father worked for, as an apprentice tailor. But his real passion came from his role in the Jewish socialist movement, which he joined when he was 17, spending weekends campaigning against apartheid.

He distributed pamphlets and remembers being surrounded by 200 armed police during one rally.

He also recalls using his hand to stop blood escaping from the body of an African who had been stabbed in the shoulder. Close friends were blown up by parcel bombs as they campaigned at universities.

He said: "I would go campaigning with my left-wing Jewish friends and the South African Special Branch would say: 'Here are the f***ing Jews'."

Ultimately he came to the UK to escape the oppressive regime. "My mother did not want me to go to England, but I had to," he said. "I just wanted to escape all the racism and try something new."

Living in Earls Court in west London, he trained to be an actor, studying with Steven Berkoff and Dame Penelope Keith at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He was nominated for an arts council bursary after being given an award by the Association of Jewish Youth.

After a chance meeting with beat poet Allen Ginsberg, Mr Harris became a key figure in the underground arts movement of the 1960s, writing plays that received critical acclaim before founding a magazine called Home Grown, celebrating drug culture.

He said: "I grew up in a very Jewish environment in South Africa. We did not drink alcohol except for wine on a Friday night for the blessing. I was very puritanical, I didn't know anything about marijuana.

"The first time I tried it was when I was 27 - and by then I was a humanist, an atheist. I was in the West End with all the Mods. I had my first puff and got high."

He became a campaigner when he saw police drug raids. They reminded him of the raids under apartheid.

"In South Africa, I saw all these black people being taken into the police station. And, in Brixton, I saw the same thing happening."

His activism has led to three charges for drug offences - but only one conviction - and a raid on his shop by plain-clothes policemen.

He decided to run for mayor for Cista, which was set up in 2015 and has called for a Royal Commission review into the UK's cannabis laws, because he believes London would benefit from removing the black market in drugs by legalisation.

While his campaigning continues - he claims that legalisation will remove the criminal element from the drug trade - his smoking days are over. Approaching 80, he feels he is too old even for the odd spliff, even though he admires Israel "as a pioneer of the use of cannabis for medical purposes - it is at the forefront of the cannabis movement".

Mr Harris is committed to combatting antisemitism veiled as anti-Zionism. "I do not mind people criticising a government in Israel, but it is often veiled [antisemitism]," he said.

And "as a lifelong socialist", he said he is "disappointed that an element in the Labour Party does not mind Jews [in Israel] being blown up by some suicide bomber but if it happens in Europe then they do."