Political memories...

Jock — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 18:04:12 +0000

Since I haven't posted in a while, here's this quickie, courtesy of Iain Dale, about our first political memories.

Well, born in '67, I do remember alternately by season frozen and rancid milk in third pint (returnable) bottles. Does that count? It wasn't political at the time! I do remember our first winter in Aberdeen freezing in a rented farmhouse and having to use a mangle to wring out the washing when there was no electricity!

We lived in Africa for a couple of spells. I remember when I was three, living in southern Tanzania, being scared of the Mau Mau though I didn't know what they were at the time, nor that they were in pre-independence Kenya, but they were the stock answer to questions about the bars on all the windows of the white peoples' homes.

Then, when we were in Kenya a few years later I remember "Fast as Lightning" being number one in the Voice of Kenya chart, and several British mercenaries being sentenced to death for fighting in Angola - and I remember thinking "wow, they still execute people". That would have been around Christmas 1974.

We used to go to the Methodist church in Lavington, Nairobi, and my mother used to help organise a scheme for unemployed urban Kenyan women to make all those bead jewelry items you buy now in fashionable "ethic" shops. I remember being appalled at the conditions our servants' families were enduring in the city slums - miniscule to today's in Nairobi - and thinking how lucky they were to work for us!

While there, I remember being pointed out the Kirk where a certain Revd David Steel preached and a bloke called Paisley made waves being manhandled out of a World Council of Churches plenary session in the new Jomo Kenyatta conference centre for yelling something about "papists".

When in 1978 I was sent off to boarding school (having done 11 schools in as many years up till then) I remember they proudly displayed a letter in a display case outside the headmaster's study from someone that looked as if they signed themselves "Sargeant something...". It was of course from the previous education secretary, who has, it appears, made such an impact on some other bloggers' first political memories when she arrived at number 10 the following year.

And here's the laugh - I also remember at the same prep school, aged 11, the whole year was punished for something by a teacher called Mrs Bignell who I am sure was a lovely lady but a right old bag to a bunch of 7-12 year olds. And I wrote to Sargeant Thatcher's successor, a lady called Williams, demanding that she do something about these private children's prisons who were trampling all over our human rights.

So I see Shirl and I ended up in roughly the same place - I've even converted to Catholicism since...:)

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Political memories...