Like his grandfather, Bertrand Russell, he was an active member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, from his teenage years until his death.
[2][3] Russell was the disability rights campaigner for the Labour Party and was campaigns officer for the Royal National Institute of the Blind as well as co-chairman and later sole chairman of DANDA:Developmental Adult Neurodiversity Association, an entirely user-led and user-run organisation, two of whose members and trustee-directors successfully asked the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) to set up a Neurodiversity Group, which was succeeded by the DRC Neurodiversity and Autism Action Group (NAAG), the only systematic human rights examination of Neurodivergent Rights in the world to date by an official human rights body of national or international standing, reporting in 2007.
He was also a longstanding national executive member of the Socialist Educational Association.
On 7 May 2010, Russell was elected as Labour councillor for the Cann Hall ward of Waltham Forest London Borough Council, a position he held for a four-year term until May 2014.
[2][4] He lived with his fiancée Georgina Farrer in Leytonstone, until his sudden death from a presumed heart attack on 17 August 2014, aged 45.