Government to be chosen by others – however you vote!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

It was the strangest of sights. My father, a man of great manners and decorum, was leaving the house at dawn, singing, shirtless, walking along the middle of the Uxbridge Road, sharing his joy with the neighbourhood.

My uncle, his brother Robert, had just been elected as a Conservative MP for Bristol North East. He’d scraped in with a tiny majority of 462 votes.

Even though I was only ten years old at the time, this was far from my first political memory. Years before, as a toddler, I‘d been lifted above my father’s head outside 10 Downing Street, as the crowd chanted:

“Wilson OUT! Wilson OUT!”

During General Elections our house became Tory HQ, and on election day I was given the job of running up the road to collect the latest sheets from tellers outside the polling station, who were asking people how they had voted.

Back home, rulers were used to cross names off huge boards, so that towards the end of the day they could go and ‘knock up’ supporters who hadn’t yet voted.

Often the source of inspiration throughout my childhood, it was my brother who liberated me from Tory indoctrination. Four years older than me, he left his austere Public School to attend a local Community College, where that he discovered Socialism.

He grew his hair long, changed his name from James to Jim and put up ‘that’ poster of Che Guevara in his bedroom.

Much to my delight, Bob Dylan lyrics suddenly appeared, sellotaped to his bedroom door:

‘Mothers and fathers throughout the land

Don’t criticise what you can’t understand.’

Adley family dinner table conversations were always fairly explosive, but with the introduction of lefty politics into that Tory home, furious rows broke out nightly. Doors were slammed and huffs were puffed.

My father used to have the last word, partly because he deserved such respect, but also because his use of rhetoric was way more advanced than ours.

“That’s not my opinion – that’s a fact!” was one of his favourite closing statements.

As a teenager in seventies London there was no ignoring politics. When Ted Heath took on the miners all hell let loose. He imposed the three-day week, while electricity blackouts came and went at random. All the TV channels stopped at 10pm. National Anthem, that’s your lot.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.