I’m very much the odd one out in our family. The others are
pretty conventional while I’m the fiery radical.
My parents were conservative as are my sister and brother in
law. How I came to be the exception is interesting.
When I was at boarding school one of the boys lent me the
Communist Manifesto. I read it and thought, this makes a lot of sense, why are some
people horrified by it? After I left school London was in the grip of hippyism
and everyone was questioning everything left, right and centre. So naturally I
started questioning everything I had been brought up to believe.
I questioned a lot of the things my father believed, which
he hated. He actually stopped speaking to me.
Later on I spent several years in a left-wing bookshop in
London (now closed unfortunately) and picked up more progressive ideas.
It’s commonplace for people to become more conservative as
they grow older, but I’ve done the opposite and grown more radical. I suppose I’m
acutely aware of all the misery and horror in the world and I just want everyone
to have a decent life. Is that too much to ask?
