Anyway when we asked where we were going they said something about Parliament. Now in those days kids actually knew about the conncetion between that august institution and Guy Fawkes night even if they were only sure what the latter was. Our reaction was to ask whether this “voting” thing was some sort of “Guy Fawkes night or grown ups!”

Sadly my Grandad died before I became more conversant with politics than fireworks. I really wish I had had the chance to talk politics to him.

1979 – Tanzanian invasion of Uganda, Tanzanian tanks rolling past our house in Kampala.

1980 – Ronald Reagan elected president, big grinning picture of Ronnie on the front page of the Bangladesh Observer, we were back home and living in Chittagong at the time.

1981 – assassination of President Ziaur Rahman in Chittagong Circuit House, a few hundred yards from our house.

I suppose my second memory of an event that others also experianced would be the 71 war. I remember I was six and helping my dad’s driver paint the lights black on his Dodge, so there was only a slit for the light to come out. This was happening all over Delhi as a black out was enforced to prevent Pakistani bombers finding the city. Sounds absurd now but it did happen. More people were probably killed by the increase in road deaths than ever killed by any bombs dropped, if any were ever dropped!

My first memory was being made to get up at night and see Neil Armstrong land on the moon. Wow . I still see the film and when the Eagle lands, the spray of light as the dust rises still gives me goosebumps.

As for actual politics, in India Indira Gandhi and the Congress were pretty much a part of the furniture so it was only in 1976 when the Emergency was declared that I ever had an understanding of politics. We soon left for Zambia as my parents were not happy with how things were going and where she was taking the country.

Kismet – if you were 11 and saw such a horrific act, I hope you have overcome the experience. It is not something that can be brushed off so lighly. I was older when I saw experienced the sheer terror of a riot in India, and I am afraid it has coloured my mind in a similar way since – fuck all religions, they are truely a curse to this world. It was the sheer random nature and senselessness of it that I can never understand and it has alway made me wonder what happens in the mind of someone who can be influenced by religion, the loss of his own personal responsibility to the mumbo jumbo that others pass on. I suppose I just can’t trust that they are capable of thinking, because if they were, how could they act like that. Hope you have found peace.

Justforfun

A few years later but kind of topical -my dad being visited by a man from Special Branch because his cousin (my dad’s not the police officers)had overstayed a tourist visa. We met him a few times in restaurants he worked at over the next year or so + my dad got very paranoid about phones being bugged.
He eventually went back and became well off to send all his kids abroad…

Better memories of both being in Bangladesh during the 1974 famine -and of fundraising events critical of the Awami League’s handling of the famine in Liverpool – re-inforced by the fact (amazing though it may seem now) that Bangladesh was always on the telly at the time – John Craven’s Newsround and Jonathan Dimbeldy for World in Action went big on the story…
Other mainly telly memories would be the February 1974 election and Nixon resignations. Can’t remember 1973 power cuts being traumatic (partly because I was spending 6 months of the year in Dhaka at the time)- and tv news from Vietnam -which thanks to the Stars and Stripes I always associated with astronauts (i figured they did bombing raids when they weren’t going to the moon)

My first autonomous political action was a couple of years later in 1976 – some posh girl gave a talk bragging about ‘my wonderul xmas holiday in South africa’ complete with wildlife pictures and showing off her BOAC Junior Jet Club logbook.

Partly because one of my dad’s magazines had a really effective anti-apartheid poster (it was a mock advert Come and work in South Africa and get ‘three fifths’ pay if your’re Asian/Mixed two fifths if African and so on) – but probably just as much becuase I’d clocked up more miles in my Junior Jet Club book, I took the poster in the very next day – teacher liked it and got quite passionate while posh person went suitably red in the face.

At junior school, “We don’t want no Poll Tax…we don’t want no Poll Tax…la la la la” was still reverberating around the playground, at least a year after it had been abolished.

Also remember a teacher condemning the L.A riots in assembly. I disagreed, though at that time my opinion might have been skewed a little due to watching Oprah.

I followed Tebbit’s advice in that I joined the army, but that was more down to having no work, no home, and sinking into the criminal life than giving a helping hand to the UK economy. If you have to do criminal things, why not learn to do them professionally? Mind, a bigger factor was that Thatcher had just stopped dole for under 18s, so if you’d left home getting on one’s bike was an obligation rather than an option.

*misty eyed reverie*

PS Oh god they are showing the World’s Biggest Penis again. And I am sitting in the same room as the Chairwoman. I am not sure if I can cope with this.

1. Spitting Image
2. The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
3. A Pink Floyd album

Both of my parents were very political and quite left wing. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t loathe Margaret Thatcher, although I suppose you don’t have to be too left wing for that. These days I tend to be quite left on some issues and quite right on others.