ABSTRACT
I was born in 1959, on the eve of the sixties, a last echo of the baby boomer generation. I grew up in the north London suburb of Barnet and I have three brothers. I am son number three. I suppose my parents could be described as being upper-working to lower middle-class. My mother’s parents came from an impoverished background in inner north London. My grandfather once told me of how he had lied (as many did) about his age in order to get into the army at fifteen during the First World War and had found life more comfortable in the trenches than at home because at least he had a bed to himself. My maternal grandparents were determined to ‘better’ themselves. My grandmother did not go out to work but my grandfather worked at a number of jobs after the war; as a steward on passenger liners, as a warehouseman on the London docks and finally talking his way into a job ‘on the print’ in the days when the print workers’ unions ruled the printing shops. My grandfather eventually became ‘Father of the Chapel’ in his union. So my mother grew up in a politically active family dominated by my grandfather, part of what used to be called the ‘working-class aristocracy’.
