Born in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales and raised in Penywaun near Aberdare in the Cynon Valley, he is a former pupil of Mountain Ash Grammar School.

Howells went to Hornsey College of Art where he was active in the May 1968 student occupation, and was the first protester to breach the Metropolitan Police cordon at the demonstration against the Vietnam War outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square in 1968.

[1] Howells featured as a student leader at Hornsey College of Art in director John Goldschmidt's film Our Live Experiment is worth more than 3,000 Textbooks, made for Granada Television and shown on the ITV network.

Howells later obtained a PhD from the University of Warwick in 1979 for a thesis entitled A view from below: tradition, experience and nationalism in the South Wales coalfield, 1937–1957.

On being told of the incident in a telephone call from a reporter of the South Wales Echo, Howells rode his bicycle to the NUM offices.

After the miners' strike and the closure of 29 of the 30 National Coal Board pits in South Wales, Howells became a writer and presenter for television and radio, and a college lecturer.

[14] In February 2006, he was the subject of a complaint from Paul Flynn MP after he mocked Mr Flynn's attitude towards the UK's Afghan drug policy: It is not enough to assume that if people eat the right kind of muesli, go to first nights of Harold Pinter revivals and read The Independent occasionally, the drug barons of Afghanistan will go away.

[15]On 22 November 2006, it was announced that on a recent visit to Iraq his helicopter was involved in an incident as it left the city of Basra with witnesses claiming shots were fired at the aircraft.

The attempts at contextualisation are particularly pathetic and symptomatic of a lack of conviction.Throughout his Parliamentary career he was unafraid to speak his mind and often sparked strong criticism from those he criticised or offended.

During a House of Commons debate on licensing laws he said that the idea of "listening to three Somerset folk singers sounds like hell".

[17]On 22 July 2006, Howell criticised Israel's bombardment of Lebanon while on a visit to Beirut, breaking with the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary's less critical line, saying: The destruction of the infrastructure, the death of so many children and so many people.

[19] Howells said in 2013 that Labour had to change its relationship with the unions or face damaging its reputation and risk losing the next general election.