Forty years ago, in the autumn of 1979, I was 20 years old and a new graduate from the Polytechnic of Central London (PCL). I was active in the Anti-Nazi League and the Socialist Workers party, joining demonstrations and picket lines and attending earnest meetings in dingy pubs. I’d just started my first job as a trainee journalist. I was living with my boyfriend on the notorious North Peckham estate in south London.
Bet she was a barrel of laughs… Most students I knew were down the pub or out on our bikes. But, then, none of us were planning on a career as a serial liar. Oh, sorry, journalist.
The boyfriend was also a member of the SWP and a dominant figure in PCL’s student union, first as the editor of the student paper, and then – twice – as president. Alaric Bamping had a reputation as a leftwing firebrand, leading sit-ins and protests and conducting long, fierce arguments with anyone who disagreed with him.
Well, clearly a match made in Heaven. Or maybe not…
So how the hell, 40 years on, has he ended up as a parliamentary candidate for the Brexit party?
Because he grew up and you didn’t? Because, if you were prepared to look, Brexit crosses traditional party lines.
Nearly everyone shifts over the years: I ceased parroting ultra-left rhetoric in the early 1980s, and I’m more inclined to gentle reform than revolution these days. But Brexit and the fracturing of traditional tribes and loyalties has exposed and exacerbated our political journeys, sometimes causing acrimonious or painful rifts within families and testing friendships to destruction.
Oh, you did look. Answered your own question then. Or are you going to try to suggest that Nigel Farage is “far right” or a fascist? Go on, you know you want to…
Another friend from my student days alerted me to Alaric’s news. “What happened to swing him from the far left in PCL days to far right now?” he asked in a text. It’s a good question; I went to find out.
Baboom tish! At this point, it’s best to stop reading as the woman in a cretin. Nigel Farage is not far right and neither is the Brexit Party.
If the EU was in any way inclined to “gentle reform” then Remain would probably have won. The way they treated David Cameron in his attempt at reform illustrated that the EU is only going to get worse, faster. The sooner we get out of this car crash the better.
She says she’s ‘inclined’ to gentle reform. Yeah. Sure.
Until the first time she’s thwarted, then the gloves come off.
How did the Labour Party of Tony Benn and Peter Shore become the party of ‘remain’?
Socialist Worker? – an oxymoron, surely?
That’s a very old joke.
I was a commie briefly in my mid-teens but had grown out of it by the time I went to uni in the late seventies to study mining. Mining students were notorious for not supporting left wing causes, we’d often attend Student Union meetings, as we were entitled to do as membership was compulsory, and heckle the lefty speakers. When I was studying for my PhD, we had a picture of Arthur Scargill in the PhD common room above the caption “Know your enemy”. I’ve been fairly consistent in my libertarian views throughout my adult life.
We are observing here that lefties either become less lefty as they become older and wiser or abandon socialism altogether. I wonder if there are many examples of people who start out believing in low taxes, small government and free market economies, who convert to socialist ideas later in life?
I suspect that self interest might be an influence here as people tend to gradually improve their lot in life. Wealth distribution seems like a great idea when other people’s wealth is being distributed in your direction. Not so great when the government is nicking your hard earned cash and giving it to other people.
I’m one. As I’ve got older I have become more left wing, but at the same time I have also come to realise that left wing doesn’t mean more government. The things I would like to see in this country can be done very easily without the need for more government, civil servants etc and this is where the left go wrong. Seeing people die because of too few pieces of paper while others are born into a life most cannot comprehend that shields that person from any of lifes ills….all because of an accident of birth is intolerable to me. Surely the way the most vulnerable in society are treated is a huge pointer as to whether that society is truly civilised or not…
So, not so much “left wing” as somewhere on the anarchist/minarchist spectrum. I have no problem with that. What people do among themselves voluntarily without infringing on others is their own affair. Provided the externalities are included in that (i.e. any impact on 3rd parties)