Nick Cohen in the introduction to his "What's Left: how liberals lost their way" (review to come) remembers his childhood in a political family in the 1970s. For political reasons, his mother would not buy oranges from Spain, Portugal, South Africa, Israel or the USA. "When Franco fell ill in 1975, we were in a race to the death. Either he died of Parkinson's disease or we died of scurvy…." I also remember growing up in a political household – in the 1940s and early 50s. With rationing in force and few "exotic" fruits available, food boycotts were not an option, but debate was free – in particular between my parents, my father's brother and my mother's brother and sister and brother in law. [For full text see Extended Entry]
MY POLITICAL UPBRINGING
Nick Cohen in the introduction to his "What's Left: how liberals lost their way" (review to come) remembers his childhood in a political family in the 1970s. For political reasons, his mother would not buy oranges from Spain, Portugal, South Africa, Israel or the USA. "When Franco fell ill in 1975, we were in a race to the death. Either he died of Parkinson's disease or we died of scurvy…." I also remember growing up in a political household – in the 1940s and early 50s. With rationing in force and few "exotic" fruits available, food boycotts were not an option, but debate was free – in particular between my parents, my father's brother and my mother's brother and sister and brother in law.
My Grandad, Mum's father, was born in Abertillery, Monmouthshire. He started working life as a coalminer, but ill health forced him out of the pits and he found work – and my Grandma - in Frome in Somerset, before moving to Slough. He was a railway linesman and a loyal member of the NUR. I remember some bits of the tale of a strike not long before he retired when the union branch walked quite a few miles to a rally and then on the way back his legs gave out and his comrades carried him home. Stan, his son, was very like him in looks and character. He worked on Slough Trading Estate as an engineering fitter. He was an active member of the AEU and the Labour Party. He died – at work - of a heart attack in his forties, leaving his wife, Vi, with two young children. His fiercely independent widow, spurned help and rather cut herself off from the rest of the family.
Mum and her sister, Olive, influenced by the Peace Pledge Union and Methodist Minister Reg Brighton were earnest pacifists. Olive's husband, Ted, and Vi, but none of the others, went to the Secondary School until they were 16. (Mum left school at 12, the others at 14). Ted was the intellectual of the family – and a declared communist (though whether actually a Party Member is open to doubt). Like Stan, he worked in engineering, as a toolmaker. He left a job with Fairy Aviation shortly before the war because of its concentration on military work.
My paternal grandfather, who died when dad was only 10, was a painter and decorator. His widow remarried and then, widowed a second time, worked as an insurance agent. She died before I was born. Dad was a convinced Liberal. He remembered celebrating the election of the last Liberal MP for Slough (then part of the High Wycombe constituency), I guess in the early 1920s. The MP, Lady Terrington (or Torrington), appeared before a crowd on the balcony of the old town hall in the High Street (near where the Town Square is today) and was kissed by the Methodist Minister. No separation of religion and politics then then. Dad's brother, also Stan, was not very politically aware, but in politics as in most other things relied on his big brother for guidance. He was a plumber and worked for the Water Board. Dad began work as a general assistant in a builder's merchant's yard. The owner, WG Naish, had to dismiss a corrupt office manager, noticed that dad was numerate and had a good writing hand, and took him into the office. He did well there and was eventually appointed manager of this small firm. In the 1930s he was able to buy a house, a car and a television set. Nevertheless, I submit, we were a Working Class family.
There was not much disagreement among these family members about the 1930s (when they were all in their twenties and thirties. Everything bad was because of the Conservatives (and the Labour traitor, Ramsey McDonald). Liberals, Labour, Communists – they were all on the left, the only place for a decent person with any intelligence to be. I don't know what their attitude was to Chamberlain's "peace in our time" piece of paper after his 1938 meeting with Hitler. But I guess even the pacifists were sceptical. Dad subscribed to the "Left Book Club" from which came Guilty Men by Michael Foot and others exposing the shame of Appeasement. (Also in that series was Tory MP listing the compromising financial and other links of Conservative MPs that I used as source material in a mock election at school in 1951.)
The men of the family were either in "reserved" occupations (necessary for the war effort) or too old to be called up for military service. At the start of the war and the Hitler-Stalin Pact the Communist newspaper The Daily Worker was banned. As a Liberal – we had the Manchester Guardian and the News Chronicle delivered daily and Reynolds News on Sundays - Dad thought this a gross breach of civil liberties. Thus when Germany invaded Russia, which became our ally and the ban on the Worker was lifted, Dad became a subscriber as a point of principle. But reading it so angered him that after a few months Mum persuaded him that he had made his point but should now stop taking it for the state of his health. I read it too. It didn't upset me and became part of my infant political education (I was seven or eight). I remember the campaign "Second Front Now" urging an allied assault in Western Europe to support the gallant Russians in the East. There were also two cartoon characters (one called Ernie?) urging the faithful to send money to keep the paper going. Each month there was a target that was desperately hard to meet, but somehow it always was.
The main arena for discussion was at our home after the evening service at the Methodist Central Hall. (In those days the main service was in the evening; there was Sunday School in the afternoon; the morning service was for the especially pious or elderly.) I went with Mum and Dad from aged about eight and joined Uncle Ted, Auntie Olive and my cousin Geoff (three years my senior.) Discussion was not all about politics but soon after the War the agenda was often set by the TV weekly debate between Labour MP Michael Foot and the historian AJP Taylor (both very much on the left) and WJ Brown, an independent MP, and Conservative MP Quentin Hogg (later to inherit the title Lord Hailsham and become one of Margaret Thatcher's despised dinosaurs) - both very much on the right. Unlike today's "Question Time", when I suspect party managers have a say in who's in the panel, it was the same four every week. Of course, however clever were the arguments from the right, they were faulty, kowtowing to the powers of wealth and privilege. The Labour Government elected in 1945 had its faults but it did introduce the Welfare State; it did plan for full employment; it did represent ordinary people; it was everything the Conservative Governments of the 1930s were not. And Nationalisation of the coalmines, gas, electricity and the railways, while in the main leaving manufacturing industry and commercial services to competitive private enterprise, seemed a fair socialist compromise.
None of the family, or their friends I met, was Conservative. Those who voted Conservative were either wicked or, like our neighbours, stupid. Gradually, however, I learnt the distinctions on the left. Dad worked hard for the generally forlorn Liberal candidates for the new Eton and Slough constituency and for the local council. There was one great success when Doris Smallbone was elected as Liberal councillor for Langley. But the Liberals were not far enough left for me. Indeed Mum's brother Stan's TU Labourism was not radical enough. I remember, however, when I told him I wanted to study economics, he was sure that would keep me on the left. But Uncle Ted's communism didn't appeal even if I thought the party had some good points. One of my favourite memories is of election night in 1951. Mum, Dad and I went to hear the result declared at the Town Hall (the same one as we have today). The Conservatives were very confident that their candidate Cobb would overturn the Labour majority, which had shrunk between 1945 and 1950. He didn't, but the small Liberal vote was greater than the Labour majority. The space in front of the Town Hall was packed, mostly by Conservatives. Several tall young men by were chanting "We Want Cobb". Mum, all of five foot tall, looked up at them and with all the vehemence she could muster shouted "WELL YOU CAN'T HAVE HIM". They were struck dumb.
Gradually also I learnt that not all Conservatives were either wicked or stupid. Some were just misguided. A friend in the sixth form was Terry Groome, a very good athlete – and a Conservative. He was shocked when I, a bass in the school choir, kept my lips closed during the National Anthem at Speech Day. Terry applied to the London School of Economics and encouraged me to apply too. In the event he went there at 18 while I did National Service first. So I met up with him again in my first year and his third in 1954. He was still a Conservative and still a promising athlete (400 metres). Sadly he died the next year during his National Service. By this time my socialism was waning. The study of economics, as my uncle prophesied, didn't shift me from the left, but it did turn me towards liberalism – at the low point for the Liberal Party. I recall a small group of us at LSE hearing the news in 1956 that a seat had been lost in a Welsh by-election, reducing the number of MPs to five. It was not until some years later that I actually joined the Liberal Party, but I have stayed ever since, becoming a Liberal Democrat when the Liberals and Social Democrats merged.
24th May 2007