The first activism about unfairness I can remember was at age 6 having an argument with the Headteacher about which parts of the playground should be in or out of bounds to my year. The earliest political process I can recall is the 1959 UK general election and the contest between Macmillan and Gaitskell. The political issue I remember is the fuss about possible contamination of school milk by testing H bombs and trying to organise a boycott by fellow 10-year olds. Emotional engagement came with opposition to US involvement in Vietnam at about 13…after that I took a more integrated view of activism, issues and process to try and change the status quo.
Related
Last autumn we ran an experimental online public engagement series called 'earliest political memories'. We collected a total of 68 memories that were generously contributed by members of the public. You can read all the contributions here. The series caught the attention of our colleague Rachel O'Connell in the School of English who…
In "earliest political memories"
On Friday morning last week (24/07/2016) the UK woke up to the outcome of the referendum vote on EU membership. The blogosphere, social media and mainstream media are awash with attempts to make sense of what happened, as have my own conversations with others over the last three days. These 'furious' sense…
In "cultural work"
Only after reflecting on your request did I realise that my earliest 'political' memories are all related to gender. May I share two 'proto-political' memories and one which I would term political? My first 'proto-political memory' comes from when I was a young primary school child, perhaps 7 or 8,…
In "earliest political memories"
