At what age did you become aware of political differences?

[Banderill]

For me it was a particular incident. I was about 14 at the time and we were having one of the usual family birthday parties. They didn't run to disco-limo-buses, or £150 cakes, or £15 per-kid present bags in those days, just everyone piling round to our house or another relative or neighbour and a few buns and, rare for us kids then, fizzy drinks, and some homemade sponge cake.

The grown-ups were huddled in the living room over their drinks and fags and I remember starting to hear slightly raised voices. Nothing too loud at first, but over the course of the next half hour I could make out my dad and a neighbour starting to argue quite forcefully over something. Other people were pleading for them to calm down, and then all of a sudden dad burst through the kitchen door with the neighbour by the back of his shirt and jumper, and marched him out of the back door and told him to piss off. Very memorable because dad never swore in front of kids.

I found out later, from mum, that the argument was over the striking miners. Dad never spoke to the neighbour again and we moved away a year later.

What's your earliest memory of awareness of political differences? Was it at home, amongst friends, at school or university, work, cycling club perhaps?

 

[Deleted member 28]

For me it was a particular incident. I was about 14 at the time and we were having one of the usual family birthday parties. They didn't run to disco-limo-buses, or £150 cakes, or £15 per-kid present bags in those days, just everyone piling round to our house or another relative or neighbour and a few buns and, rare for us kids then, fizzy drinks, and some homemade sponge cake.

The grown-ups were huddled in the living room over their drinks and fags and I remember starting to hear slightly raised voices. Nothing too loud at first, but over the course of the next half hour I could make out my dad and a neighbour starting to argue quite forcefully over something. Other people were pleading for them to calm down, and then all of a sudden dad burst through the kitchen door with the neighbour by the back of his shirt and jumper, and marched him out of the back door and told him to piss off. Very memorable because dad never swore in front of kids.

I found out later, from mum, that the argument was over the striking miners. Dad never spoke to the neighbour again and we moved away a year later.

What's your earliest memory of awareness of political differences? Was it at home, amongst friends, at school or university, work, cycling club perhaps?

Which side was your father on, just curious.

 

[BoldonLad]

For me it was a particular incident. I was about 14 at the time and we were having one of the usual family birthday parties. They didn't run to disco-limo-buses, or £150 cakes, or £15 per-kid present bags in those days, just everyone piling round to our house or another relative or neighbour and a few buns and, rare for us kids then, fizzy drinks, and some homemade sponge cake.

The grown-ups were huddled in the living room over their drinks and fags and I remember starting to hear slightly raised voices. Nothing too loud at first, but over the course of the next half hour I could make out my dad and a neighbour starting to argue quite forcefully over something. Other people were pleading for them to calm down, and then all of a sudden dad burst through the kitchen door with the neighbour by the back of his shirt and jumper, and marched him out of the back door and told him to piss off. Very memorable because dad never swore in front of kids.

I found out later, from mum, that the argument was over the striking miners. Dad never spoke to the neighbour again and we moved away a year later.

What's your earliest memory of awareness of political differences? Was it at home, amongst friends, at school or university, work, cycling club perhaps?

Was this the strike in the early 70's, or, the one in the early 80's?

At. senior school (1958-1963), we were encouraged to read Newspapers and take an interest in "current affairs'.

My reading became my Dad's Daily Mirror. That, plus, sometimes heated, discussions between my Dad and one of his elder brothers, made me aware of "Political differences".

So, for me, it was in the 11-14 year old period of my life, I suppose.

 

[Bromptonaut]

Politics and current affairs in the world outside was part of daily discussion around the dining table etc. so I was aware of differences from as far back as I can remember.

I was aware of the elections in 64 and 66 in so far as asking questions of my parents about the blue posters with white crosses all along the road were about - I grew up in area that was fairly solidly conservative - and being told it was about choosing our government. By the GE's in 1970 and 74 I was beginning to be aware of the policy differences. The 3 day week with the TV shutting down in mid evening and the big stores in Leeds with generator powered lights up the staircases is a clear memory.

My Dad had, in his Uni days, been involved in the sort of left wing politics than made the Communist Party of GB look like a bunch of moderates but 20 years later he was towards the Benn wing of the Labour party. TV and radio news were mandatory at home and in his car and The Guardian was delivered every day. Mum was born in the coal belt to the south of Leeds but her father was management rather than a labouring underground. By the sixties she was a moderate Tory in the one nation sense that hit the buffers after Heath. The Labour candidate for our home seat in 1964 was Bernard Atha who was a school contemporary of Mum's and I remember him coming to our door canvassing.

Mum and Dad entertained their neighbours to dinner now and then and there were also business people from the dye and chemical industry and their customers in the textile mills who stayed until long after my bed time. I can remember ocasional raised voices but I don't recall anyone being told not to darken our doors again.

 

[AuroraSaab]

From a young age. My parents and aunts, uncles etc all had manual jobs. First in my family to do A levels and go to University. Labour were seen as very much the party of the working class in the '70's and it would have been unthinkable to vote any other way.

 

[Banderill]

Which side was your father on, just curious.

I don’t know. I wasn’t given any detail other than it was about the miners strike - 80’s BTW

Politics wasn’t discussed at all in front of us kids, just quietly by mum and dad when we were in bed or not around.

Mum’s a Tory voter and dad’s Labour through-and-through.

 

[Deleted member 28]

Mum’s a Tory voter and dad’s Labour through-and-through.

Probably answered my question.

 

[theclaud]

Could we request a better class of sock-puppet, do you think?

 

[Ian H]

Becoming friends with the sons of Irish nationalists at grammar school was probably what first exposed me to views other than those of my parents - father had rigid, small-c views on politics & jazz; mother had prejudices.

 

[Rusty Nails]

My parents and most of my uncles and aunts were strongly left wing, other than one uncle who had been a prominent member of the local Brownshirts...Saturday nights after the pub were lively when he was present, but every one of them were cynical about local politicians, left or right, and were especially scathing of our local Labour MP who was widely considered to have been a waste of space sitting out his time in the days when a donkey with a red rosette was certain to be voted in in the South Wales valleys. (He was eventually deselected by the LLP when he was in his mid 80s)

I was aware of their views that the Tories, in those days many of whom would make Rees-Mogg feel positively working class, did nothing for working class communities like ours, but it wasn't really until I started mixing with a wider range of people at university and at work that I came to my own views on the political differences in the country, and saw that my family were not wrong.

 

[Bazzer]

Political discussions were never a regular part of our household conversations, although I do recall in my late primary years, my late father seemingly switched allegiance. The household newspaper changed from the Daily Express to the Guardian and he took up studying Russian at night school. - In contrast to his own parents who were staunch Labour supporters.
It was not until my early 20s and I was dating an Irish Catholic girl as "the troubles" raged, that my eyes were opened to just how entrenched and contradictory some of his political, and for that matter social views, were.

 

[Unkraut]

People have political differences?

 

[matticus]

Rick & Neil the Hippie

 

[Once a Wheeler]

Around the age of eight. There was a general election when I was in year three and a number of children in the class expressed a simple 'vote labour' slogan in the same way that they would express support for the local football team or their favourite top-flight club. It felt like an identity statement which fitted them into their families and their social environment. One boy opted for the conservatives and said 'because they have the better policies' and then ran through three or four of their key commitments which he found preferable to the labour ones. Politically, I was unswayed in any direction but, personally, I became suddenly aware of the difference between a mindset that follows the herd and a mindset that thinks for itself. Possibly the most important thing I learnt in year three.

 

[theclaud]

Around the age of eight. There was a general election when I was in year three and a number of children in the class expressed a simple 'vote labour' slogan in the same way that they would express support for the local football team or their favourite top-flight club. It felt like an identity statement which fitted them into their families and their social environment. One boy opted for the conservatives and said 'because they have the better policies' and then ran through three or four of their key commitments which he found preferable to the labour ones. Politically, I was unswayed in any direction but, personally, I became suddenly aware of the difference between a mindset that follows the herd and a mindset that thinks for itself. Possibly the most important thing I learnt in year three.

LOL being the only Tory kid in class doesn't make you some kind of free thinker - it just means your dad is the boss.