Radicals and Rebels

None of us were born to be rebels and radicals; so why are some of us inclined towards radical, revolutionary and rebel politics? What happened that made us become and in many cases stay that way?

For me, turning radical goes back a very long way; to my childhood in fact.

As a young child born and growing up in Toronto, Canada, I was just like every other child who wanted and needed love and to fit in with things. It was a bit traumatic when our family had to up sticks and move to England, but I was still a fairly happy, healthy and normal child. I was liked at school, did well in reading, writing, music, art and PE.

Things changed for me in 1974, I was seven years old and the miners were on strike. We loved the candlelit nights with lemonade and crisps, but the thing that really changed me was a girl in my class with whom I became very close friends, she had recently arrived from South Africa and there was a great deal of curiosity and interest in her from fellow class mates. What she told me about the reality of apartheid South Africa really shocked me, I thought it unfair that black people were mistreated so badly.

The other significant thing about 1974 was the General Election, my political South African friend asked me who I would vote for. I had never considered that question at all, she said she would vote conservative because her Dad did and for other reasons which I cannot remember, but at first I said that it sounded cool! Off I went home to my mother ( we were and still are very close ) I asked her who should I vote for and that I was considering voting conservative.

My dear mother took time to talk to me about this. Her brother (my uncle) who she loved very much had set up the young communists group sometime in the 1950's and she herself and my Dad were more inclined to the left. To a seven year old she explained it very very well; Labour is more for the people she said, it is more about caring for one another. Well, on that note I was sold.

My friend and I proceeded to argue about politics day in day out. We would go to our local park, the Rec, sit on the swings and argue until we both felt sick (not from arguing, but from the motion of the swings that we had forgotten we were on as we were too engrossed in our arguing). Well there you have it, therein started my lifelong commitment to radical politics.

At fourteen, I had come across racist and nazi graffiti at school, I would purposely sit on the back desks where i knew it would be so that I could very carefully scribble it out, one of our books in the library; 'Cry the Beloved Country' had an NF mark on a picture of a young black boy. This really sickened me, but living out in the sticks, I had not come across the anti - nazi league.

Also in 1982, the Falklands war was on and a group of us started to become very anti and vocal about it, and some of the teachers got involved as they were concerned about our interest and our anti tones.

I was starting to long to be involved in something, CND maybe, but how to get involved? I sent off for more information about CND and received some wishy washy things written by Bruce Kent which frustrated me rather than lead me to more involvement. Then a stroke of luck, one of my friends at school, her younger sister had started to go to Labour Party Young Socialists meetings in Nye Bevan Hall in Twydall, Gillingham, and thought that I would like it. Well I jumped at the chance and I kept dragging everyone there who I could think of; my sister, friends from school, anyone, it didn't matter.

Then there were demonstrations to go on, my first being a local CND demonstration, it was at night and we walked with big candle things, I remember the hot wax dripping onto my hand, but that whole experience fired us ( me and my mates) up. The next one and my first national demonstration in London was against Pinochet, the Chilian dictator, it was the tenth anniversary of the military coup in Chile (1983).

Again another really positive experience; I went up with my lovely sister, she is great, basically she was really there for me as she is not politically inclined in the same way I am, so I will never forget how she stood and still stands by me.

During the miners strike of 1984 - 1985, I was aged between 16, 17 and 18, was supportive of the miners and watched the strike closely, I got very depressed when it looked almost certain that it was heading for defeat, my main political activity turned to the many pubs in and around the Medway towns, where we combined politics with booze and fags (those were the days) and we had such great fun.

Then things started to get serious for me as I went off to university and I was starting to suffer from depression ( might have been all that booze), but it affected my political outlook and I turned more towards the frustrated and dead end politics of radical feminism and post modernism (whatever that was, but my friends from Medway fell about laughing when I returned home from college after a year and announced that I was a proud post-modernist!)

However, I stuck to my right ward leaning guns until as luck would have it SWSS ( the Socialist Worker Student Society) arrived on our college campus. I could not win any arguments with them nor persuade them to be post modernists like me, so in the end it was like; if you can't beat them join them. But I was also very impressed with the socialist politics that I was hearing, it had future and they were not just talkers, they acted too, and they were mixed, young and old.

The Socialist Workers Party has now been my political home for nearly twenty five years. The story doesn't end there, at my joining the SWP, there has been lots and lots of goings on, maybe I will chart my history in the SWP in my next blog, until then, Ciao.