My Radical History part 1 - The 1980s

Daisy Deadhead:

I will also be focusing more on my own radical history. I find there is a dearth of radical history on the net; political demonstrations I recall as enormous and eventful are not mentioned ANYWHERE, AT ALL. This is horrifying. History, as we know, is written by the victors, and the fact that large-scale, near-constant computer-interaction basically came of age during the Bush era, has been an unmitigated disaster for lefty history. I will take a few small steps in rectifying this, but I would encourage all baby-boomer lefties to get involved in history-recovery.

Obviously, I'm not a baby-boomer, but I feel strongly about the importance of folk history and personal recollections. The phrase "the personal is political" can be used in many ways, and I think personal and individual experiences of political movements and events are important to record as a part of our history. So I feel like I should record my personal experiences of being involved in political radicalism, protest and activism.

I was born in 1978, just a few months before Margaret Thatcher swept to power with a new brand of free-market theory Conservative thinking at her back. This was probably the final death-knell for the Left as a parliamentary political force in the UK. A year later, Ronald Reagan - figurehead for the USAian free-market theorists - won the US Presidential election, and so for pretty much my entire childhood, that was the political background for my life: an endless war on leftwing principles and hopes.

My parents were socialists, radicalised by the collapse of the first and second Harold Wilson Labour governments, and by the ineptitude of the Edward Heath Conservative government - the tale of the 1960s and 1970s in Parliament. They were both members of the International Socialists for a while (although the traditional infighting of such groups made them rethink their membership). Their socialist principles remained intact and formed a huge part of the upbringing that I and my siblings received.

This, then, is the background for my personal history of activism, radical politics and protest.

For the Miners' Strike of 1984-85, I was 6 years old. I remember vaguely seeing news stories about the violence meted out by the police against the picketers, and not really understanding what was going on. My father tried to explain it, and even then I knew that somehow the police were standing for something "wrong", while the miners were standing up for themselves against that wrong. I have never entirely trusted the police since then (although I always cheered when they put Teacher in handcuffs on school visits!)

During the 1980s, my father became involved in the local Peace Campaign and branch of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament - the two groups being closely affiliated with each other in our town, since they basically comprised of the same members anyway! Consequently, my first clear memories are all related to these campaigns.

Local activities centred around raising awareness in the community of the issues that we felt strongly about. I remember poetry writing competitions (for which I won a prize one time), public events that often involved singing protest songs - "The Strangest Dream", "Down By The Riverside", "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?", "Blowin' In The Wind" and all the rest; it's probably here that my first tastes in music were shaped, although they've come a fair distance since then as well. I still have a lot of fondness for those songs.

One thing that I remember particularly was that just down the road from where I live, a Regional General HQ - from which our part of post-nuclear war Britain would have been governed - was set up at the site of the Aspidistra transmitter; the CND branch decided to mount a protest outside. It was all very peaceful, no cops or anything (although I learned later that a couple of the protesters cut their way in through the fence and were then arrested for trespassing on government property). The protest was ultimately uneventful, but the fact of this base existing within a few miles of my home was quite alarming. This was about the same time as the Protect and Survive leaflet was going about, and being heavily criticised by opponents of nuclear weapons; the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction was having a new round - and being undermined by the first suggestions of missile shields and the like, making nuclear war seem more (not less) likely; the developm,ent of early-warning systems that meant that a computer might inadvertently start World War 3. I didn't learn of Queen's music until I was older, but Hammer To Fall captures for me a lot of what it felt like as a young child with that going on, especially (as I say) with a clear target so near to my home.

There were also a few protest marches in London, and excursions to participate were organised by the local group a couple of times. These felt very big to me, still just about 10 years old, and were memorable because of the "simulated deaths" in which all the protesters would simultaneously lie down as if dead, to symbolise the massive casualities that a nuclear war would inflict. I remember the marches being moderately policed, but the policing mevels were nothing like what I had seen on television for the Miners' Strike, and nothing like what I would see for myself on later protests.

Contemporary with all of this was the Greenham Common protest camps, which I vaguely knew were only for women, but couldn't understand why that was (and was vaguely upset that I couldn't go and join in). I am unsure still of the significance of Greenham Common in the development of feminism and feminist awareness in the UK, although I do know that a lot of radfem "cultural feminism" beliefs seem to have fermented there (yes, I do mean that - I do not mean "fomented"). I am very sceptical of Ben Elton's characterisation of a stereotypical teenager protester calling herself "Sacred Cycle of Moon and Womb", but I am aware that around that time there was a lot of "women are naturally peace-loving, whereas men are naturally warmongering" stuff that seemed to get associated with it; the whole thing of missiles as phallic symbols first and foremost also seems to have developed around that time. Peggy Seeger's spoken-word piece "You Men Out There" ties in to some of these ideas too. But all of that belongs in a different debate and a different post (which I am not in a position to write)

I do know that Greenham Common was a beacon for a lot of anti-war and anti-nuclear campaigners, though, and its significance in those terms should not be forgotten. But that was the obvious, the visible, the major protest. It is well-documented and well-recorded. It has been used in religious studies classes in this country (I remember reading in those lessons a story about a nun who participated, who told of her first arrest being very gentle because of her status, but gradually the police became more and more brutal in their dealings).

To get back to me, and my personal experiences of protest (that's what this post is supposed to about, remember?) the other active protest that I remember most strongly from my youth is the campaign to end apartheid in South Africa.

In many ways, this was a much more "invisible" protest as far as I was concerned. There were occasional high-visibility events, such as the rebel cricket tour of SA led by Mike Gatting and the Free Nelson Mandela concert. More often though, it was a time of observing boycotts of South African produce (and also anything labelled "produce of more than one country", because we were told by boycott organisers that South Africa would use that as a way to get past the boycotts), and of listening to news happening elsewhere. It was frustrating in many ways, because the traditional British position remained in place, maintaining relations with South Africa ostensibly to be able to nudge the authorities there into less racist positions but more likely to be involved in maintaining trading links as well. However, the anti-apartheid movement was one that had a lot of support in the UK, so it is worth recording that it happened and what I remember of it.

As the 1980s drew to a close, I was approaching my 12th birthday. The Berlin Wall was broken, Mikhail Gorbachev's twin doctrines of perestroika and glasnost were changing the world of Eastern Europe, and a new era of politics seemed to be dawning. Nelson Mandela was freed in 1990. I was becoming more and more aware of the world around me, politically and socially as well as physically, and was ready to start choosing my own causes...