Roy's delightful memoir reminds me of my own political education a year or two earlier.
One morning at school, early in the summer term of 1945, I was asked a rather testing question.
VE Day had occurred a short time previously and had been celebrated with quiet joy and relief by my parents and in a far noisier and less restrained manner by my friends and me. I was not aware at that moment that, just as the German political situation had completely changed, so our own was about to change as well: our Prime Minister, true to his democratic principles, would shortly decide to dissolve the wartime coalition and call an early General Election
Very soon afterwards I arrived one morning at my Junior School in Sutton, garbed as usual in the school uniform: black blazer, matching peaked cap pulled down over the forehead, short grey trousers and long woollen socks, at that early stage in the day pulled up tidily to just below the knee; and with my brown leather satchel firmly strapped to my back. As I approached the tall, early-Victorian building in which my classroom was located, I was immediately surrounded by a group of my contemporaries comprising both friends, and, more worryingly, others. By some earlier freak of circumstance, I had entered this school when I was at an age, and therefore of a size, which was at least a year less than the class average. The group which surrounded me was, in both respects and at the very least, definitely “average”. They were all demanding to know whether I was “Conservative” or “Labour.”
It was clear that not only was an answer required but also there was only one which would be acceptable. From time to time in life one faces a question which tends rather to put one on the back foot since there is a supposition of background knowledge which in fact does not exist: this was my first experience of such an event and I was finding it far from comfortable. In fact, I didn't have the foggiest notion what they were talking about. In the absence of any knowledge whatsoever to draw upon, I indulged in some rapid thought processes which with hindsight I view as not unimpressive for a just-about nine-year-old in some considerable social difficulty. My reasoning was that my father worked in a Birmingham metal-bashing factory. I knew that he had responsibility for a number of people who actually made things. Such people were generally described, in newspapers and elsewhere, as labour. And so I reasoned that the truthful answer, on the balance of probability, was therefore that one supported “Labour”.
Unfortunately this was not the correct answer. My response, the result of so much rapid and ingenious calculation, was greeted with howls of derision. To my surprise and considerable relief, however, this was the limit of my interrogators’ reaction to my error and no attempt was made to further my political education by physical means. Instead they rushed off excitedly to seek another political innocent with whom to pursue their enquiries. I made sure on my return home that afternoon that I would seek urgent guidance. My mother’s gentle answer to my enquiry was: “Well, dear, we support Mr. Churchill and therefore we vote Conservative”.
I returned to school the following morning, confident in being ready with the right answer to any repetition of yesterday’s enquiry. But I do not recall ever being asked that question again at school, either that morning or at any time in the future, since obviously some other enthusiasm had rapidly superseded the keen, but very temporary interest in politics in the mind of my peers: perhaps the making of paper aeroplanes or the playing of soldiers or the delights of the imminent cricket season. And so I never had the satisfaction of giving the politically correct reply. But my mother’s guidance stayed with me and comfortably outlived my time at the Junior School....and perhaps even beyond, by which time I really ought to have been making my own decisions.
Chris
thanks Jayell
