Learning Curve on the Politic

I often get to wondering why some of us feel as intense we do regarding left and right stances in politics. A post: : aux armes? by al loomis (no capitals - ever), at Open Salon the other day reminded me of reasons for my own strongly left-leaning political ideals.

These lines, from al loomis, regarding his family history, shed light on why some things in my own ancestral memory bank are significant:

...... participants in the great depression are nearly all dead now, but my father grew up in a farm destroyed by the dust bowl, and had to leave home at 14, driven by hunger. his story was quite typical. for half of america, conditions then were vastly worse than now, but still the elite kept control of american society. socialism appeared but was subsumed into the democrat party, and strangled.

compared to the events of the 30's, calling ows a revolutionary movement is self-delusionary. yet it is not useless: this generation of unhappy people have to learn transformational politics the hard way, like everyone else.

In Britain, long before the 1930s, in the late 1800s in fact, my paternal grandfather was born in Suffolk, England, amid the beautiful pastoral landscape beloved of painter John Constable. There, in those days, wealthy landowners paid farm labourers such as those from the family background of my Grandfather, pittances to toil long hours on their estates and farms, with womenfolk as maidservants in their sumptuous households, under serf-like working conditions.

Grandad and his sister, both still very young, with their mother somehow found themselves in a workhouse in a neighbouring county: Essex. Details of how this came about remain unknown to me, as does identity of the children's father. As soon as Grandad was old enough he set off to walk northward to find work. Eventually, after many stops on the way, taking months or even years, picking up temporary farm work wherever he could, he reached Yorkshire, England's biggest county - English version of Texas I always think. He got a job as shepherd on a large farm, met my Grandmother who was then a servant to some branch of local landed gentry. They married, lived in the modest cottage provided for the shepherd. Children came in rapid succession, two daughters, then my father and, eventually, seven more assorted siblings.

1914: World War 1 - it changed the scene. Grandad served in the army, suffered injury to his leg, which though often painful didn't seriously restict his walking. On return home he began work as a postman (mailman), a job he carried out for the rest of his working life. His five daughters, when of age, had to take the only option of work available: domestic servants to the local wealthy. His four older sons, including Dad were obliged to leave school around age 14 to help provide for their siblings. My father had had ambitions of working in the local railway offices, or in the post office, but that wasn't possible without longer schooling. He eventually took apprenticeship to a local baker. Dad met and married my mother who was working as a domestic servant to some local dignitary or other. Once wed, they moved to Brighton in the south of England to seek better opportunities. Dad got a decent job as foreman in a big bakery, while Mum became domestic servant to a journalist on a swanky magazine, sadly only a minor improvement for her. In late 1938, before World War 2 began, my maternal Grandmother persuaded my parents-to-be to "come back home" to Yorkshire. They did, and happily my Dad soon got a job as manager of a big bakery in Hull, with Mum managing one of their shops, which had a house, for us, adjoining.

A few years after World War 2, my parents adventurously struck out in business on their own. They rented a property, previously a house and butchery business in a small market town in East Yorkshire. They equipped a bakery as best they could, using their own handiwork and what capital they had (very little) to buy equipment sufficient to transform the place into a bakery and update the shop, improving and modernising as soon as profits allowed. Through years of hard work and long hours, just the two of them, providing excellent bread and confectionery, they eventually made a comfortable living, and gathered experience to move on to other types of small business. For several years, before they retired, they ran sub-post offices in a variety of locations. My Dad's early wish to work behind a post office counter, had at last come to fruition. They had ridden the "spiral of time" through the worst of times and into a more comfortable era - for a while at least.

For a long time the lives of servitude of my earliest forebears didn't strike me as anything unusual or something to question. Unions and workers' rights had then been unknown in our part of the world. The wealthy were in charge, that was a simple fact of life, it had never been different. Bowing and scraping to those seen as "one's betters" was the done thing.

Thoughts on politics for me, as a teenager, were non-existent, in spite of some hints from a distinctly socialistic history mistress, whose habit it was to wear a bright red overall during lessons, I remained "in the dark" about politics in general.

My parents were mainly apolitical, but, as I recall, voted Conservative (until Maggie Thatcher's reign anyway), probably for the same reason people in that part of the world still vote Conservative; and for the same reason people in this part of rural mid-USA still vote Conservative/Republican. They didn't/don't "get it", in spite of family backgrounds, which in many cases include generations of servitude to the wealthy.

The light of understanding, for me, began to penetrate by degrees, with benefit of input from a well-respected first boss, who hailed originally from the cotton mill-towns of Lancashire. There Friedrich Engels, friend of Karl Marx, had long ago conquered hearts and minds with his efforts to raise awareness of injustices, and improve the conditions of mill-workers. My boss, steeped in Labour politics, influenced his young assistant to think more deeply on things political.

Later, Bill, my well-loved late significant other enlightened me further. His background was very different from my own. His mother had been the daughter of a very conservative, rather snobbish family in Northern Ireland. To the family's utmost chagrin, she had married an engineering blacksmith, one of the leaders of his trade union and activist in the local Labour party: Bill's father. Hearing about his father's ideals and good works, the light flooded in, I realised exactly what I felt about it all. The darkness has never descended again.

As al loomis points out in his post (linked above) things now are quite different from the way things were for our parents and grandparents. Similar patterns do remain though. History is rhyming again! Instead of landed gentry and wealthy industrialists we have corporations and oligarchs ruling the roost. The spiral of time and history has brought us to another point, via some helpful periods during which things seemed to improve for ordinary folk, back again to a pattern that is becoming suspiciously recognisable.

When I write on politics, or discuss politics with my husband, I get an instinctive feeling of a supporting, encouraging presence of those gone before, both loved and unknown, who suffered indignities themselves, or who have understood the crux of poliical problems. (Note: I am not normally given to such fanciful ideas!)

If matters are allowed to slip back, as they appear to be doing, into a 21st century version of serfdom or indentured servitude for the masses, to last for decades, we shall be doing ourselves, and those who will follow when we're gone, the greatest possible disservice. Surely a return to an old darkness, albeit a newer version of it - akin to one of those unfortunate Hollywood re-makes, need not be inevitable? Surely we do not need World War 3 to force us to turn a corner into the light again? Surely we have learned some lessons?

And that is why my political views are as they are!