My earliest political memory was formed when I was 6 years old, over breakfast. My parents – then paid up PLP members – owned a ceramic egg cup in the shape of Margaret Thatcher’s head; it had the look of the Spitting Image puppet based on her. As my father cracked Thatcher’s ‘head’ that morning, I asked him who she was. He and my mother replied – in unison – that she was ‘a terrible woman, who had done terrible things to society’. It was years before I learnt how the closure of the mines had affected my mother’s family, in Yorkshire, and how my parents had both stood in solidarity with striking miners on the picket lines. Mum and Dad still have that eggcup, and I – now myself a paid up PLP member – can see the dismal legacy of Thatcher everywhere.
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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"
I remember accompanying my Mum into a voting booth, I think it was for the 1987 general election but it may have been a local election a year or two later than that. She explained the process of casting her vote to me. On the walk to the polling station…
In "earliest political memories"
My earliest political memory was formed when I was 6 years old, over breakfast. My parents – then paid up PLP members – owned a ceramic egg cup in the shape of Margaret Thatcher’s head; it had the look of the Spitting Image puppet based on her. As my father cracked Thatcher’s ‘head’ that morning, I asked him who she was. He and my mother replied – in unison – that she was ‘a terrible woman, who had done terrible things to society’. It was years before I learnt how the closure of the mines had affected my mother’s family, in Yorkshire, and how my parents had both stood in solidarity with striking miners on the picket lines. Mum and Dad still have that eggcup, and I – now myself a paid up PLP member – can see the dismal legacy of Thatcher everywhere.