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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: What are your earliest political memories?
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
I realize politics isn't the most Heavenly of topics, but I am definitely NOT asking for debate here. I'm just curious about what people remember and from when.
Anyway...
I was born in the late 1960s, so have no memories, political or otherwise, of "the 60s". My earliest memory of Canadian politics, in fact my earliest memory that there was such a thing as politics at all, must be from the 1974 Canadian election. My parents came back from somewhere, and I asked them where they had gone, and they told me that they'd been to vote. They subseuently explained to me what that meant, and reported that they'd voted for Pierre Trudeau. In retrospect, it seems odd that my father would have voted that way, but I guess Trudeau wasn't as unpopular with western Canadians as he was later on.
I have no memories of Watergate, though I remember my parents talking about it shortly after it had all happened. The earliest president I can remember is Gerald Ford(he served as the model for the president on the Saturday-morning Superfriends cartoon). I clearly recall watching him concede to Jimmy Carter in 1976. My mom observed that he was crying.
By 1980, I was paying more consistent attention to politics, but didn't have a clear conception of ideology, beyond that there was such a thing as Communism, and it was supposed to be bad. But I remember my dad predicting that, if Reagan becomes president, "it's gonna be back to mom and apple pie down there". Don't think I fully understood the symbolism, but the next eight rather clarified things on that score.
I'm pretty sure I remember Jim Callaghan being PM of the UK. Definitely remember Thatcher being elected, but no specific visuals, just that everyone was talking about it. I do remember that people seemed more interested in the fact that she was a woman, rather than any ideological trends she may have represented.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
The US presidential election of 1960 - my papa, in particular, took a keen interest in politics, both domestic and foreign. Coupled with that, he appreciated satire - I think our newsagent never got over delivering in one bundle The Times, The Church Times and Private Eye ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
I was born in 1965. Growing up at that era in Canada I remember Trudeau being Prime Minister in the same way Joey Smallwood was premier of Newfoundland, the Queen of England was queen, and God was in His heaven -- these were the unalterable facts of the universe. I have very vague, unformed memories of some of the upheaval from 71/72 when Smallwood was finally voted out of office -- the sort of thing where you know the grownups are talking about something but don't quite know what or why.
I was also dimly aware of Watergate because my mother believed in me being informed about world affairs so she used to occasionally spring pop quizzes on me to see if I was really listening to the news which was always on in the car when we were driving. I remember she once asked me did I know why US president Nixon was in so much trouble and I didn't. I asked my aunt if she knew and she said, "Because he's a sleeveen!" -- lovely local word we don't hear enough these days, and not because the population of sleeveens has declined any.
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Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
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la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688
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Posted
I'm fairly sure the first time I really took notice of politics was the day Margaret Thatcher resigned. I was in the last year of Junior School and our teacher decided this was a momentous educational event and put the TV in our classroom so we could follow it on the news.
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Rent my holiday home in the South of France
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
The king dying on 6th February 1952.
I've also an undatable memory from somewhere around the same time of being told our soldiers were fighting in a place called Korea. I still, even now, over sixty years later, and having studied, don't understand what they were doing there, or what it had to do with us.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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The Midge
Shipmate
# 2398
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
I'm fairly sure the first time I really took notice of politics was the day Margaret Thatcher resigned. I was in the last year of Junior School and our teacher decided this was a momentous educational event and put the TV in our classroom so we could follow it on the news.
By contrast I remember running the road in 1979 cheering about the election of Thatcher. I picked up the vibes of how good it must be from the adults. I am almost a contemporary of Adrian Mole when aged 13 & 3/4.
On the day that Thatcher resigned I was working in an office. The daily shout of "TROLLY" (for sandwiches was followed by "THATCHER'S GONE!"
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Some days you are the fly.
On other days you are the windscreen.
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
I actually remember quite a bit about the Moscone-Milk assasinations-- my mother was the Admin. Asst. for one Comissioner Botinovitch at the time, and both of them were in and out of City Hall all the time. My mother came home the day of the killings and related how someone came in to tell the commissioner what happened, and the commissioner burst into sobs. (he was a good Friend of Mayor Moscone.)
She was one of the many state employees who gathered in City Hall to listen to Diane Feinstein announce the murders.
I remember my grandmother practically spitting with disgust about the "Twinkie defense" and I vaguely remember whispers about the "White Night " riots. (They scared the hell out of people.)And I remember seeing on TV, over and over again, that iconic shot of the whole of Castro Street lit up at night with thousands of candles held by thousands of mourners. it is still jaw-dropping to me-- the line of people just went on forever.
Over the years my grandmother would point down a specific street in her neighborhood as we waited for the bus and say "that's where Dan White's house is." Turned out he lived right across the street from a guy in my youth group.
[ 10. June 2013, 10:17: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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Bob Two-Owls
Shipmate
# 9680
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Posted
I remember a very political multicultural theatre group coming to my Primary School. They performed a series of small plays around a theme of "British soldiers executing Indian/African/Chinese children in horrific ways". The British soldiers were played more or less as ugly, evil, nazi pantomime baddies and the Indian/African/Chinese people were beautiful, erudite, peaceful socialists. I was living in the People's Republic of South Yorkshire at the time and indoctrination was pretty heavy handed during this era. When I found out that the plays were an exaggeration (which is probably being way too charitable) I disengaged from politics for several decades...
Which is probably a good thing.
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Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
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Posted
The voting age was 21 and I was a student when I trotted down to the polling booth at the end of the street in sandals and sun dress and cast my first vote. I was regaling the rest of the gang with my observation of the ladies with their best dresses, hats and handbags, when one of the guys exclaimed 'You're not 21 are you?' I was actually just 22; I always looked much younger than my age.
The point, though, is that my dad had always voted National (conservative) so on that occasion so did I, for the first and last time. I had an idea that in those days teachers tended to be National supporters.
But my earliest recollection of political awareness is of a meeting hosted by our church and addressed by a much respected senior member of Cabinet and an elder of the city congregation at the time of the Vietnam War, when he was no doubt justifying our involvement in the war. I threw a small spanner in the works by asking if there was any truth in the rumour that we were supporting the US in Vietnam in return for concessions for our national airline wanting to expand its routes into North America.
GG
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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Sparrow
Shipmate
# 2458
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Posted
I remember the Cuban Missile crisis - chiefly because of the idiotic actions of my Sunday School Teacher. She called us all together and told us very solemnly that we must all pray very hard for peace, because "the world is on the brink of another war".
I was about 10. I went home terrified.
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For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life,nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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Mili
Shipmate
# 3254
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Posted
The first I remember of Australian politics was Bob Hawke as Prime Minister - he came to power when I was 4 years old in 1983 and was PM for the next 8 years (but I had to look up the dates!) I think I have very vague memories of Charles and Diana's wedding, although I only would have been two at the time, and Prince William being born. I remember being really confused as to why we had a Queen and why she lived in such a far away country, so my parents explained all of that to me early on. Before that I thought Queen Elizabeth II actually ruled us like a fairy tale Queen.
We lived around the corner from a migrant hostel so I soon learnt about the Vietnam war and the violence in Cambodia - not in detail, just that people came to live in Australia, because of wars. I think I first asked Mum about that when she was on fruit duty at the Kindergarten. It was my older sister's kinder year, but I was there with Mum. A Chinese dragon was visiting that day and I wanted to know why it had come to live in Australia - I thought it was an actual animal not a puppet!
I was also apparently traumatised by TV news coverage of the Falklands war which turned me into a life long pacifist and also by an episode of 'The Goodies' where the world ended due to a nuclear bomb. I had nightmares about bombs and soldiers a lot after that! I was also very upset by famine footage from Ethiopia, especially as my Dad was born and grew up there.
I remember Reagan and Thatcher and Gorbachev. Mum and Dad are left leaning but used to watch the TV show with rubber puppets of politicians, which went right over my head, but I felt rather fondly towards Reagan and Thatcher as their puppets looked funny. I remember watching a program where kids tried to convince Ronald Reagan to reduce nuclear weapons.
I had heard of communism and knew it was bad, but also knew there were good people in communist countries so never hated any countries or saw them as enemies.
Posts: 1015 | From: Melbourne, Australia | Registered: Aug 2002
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Caissa
Shipmate
# 16710
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Posted
I saw the Queen Mother in Moncton, NB in 1967 for Canada's Centennial clebration. I'm sure there were some elected political hacks there as well. I was 3.5 years old.
Posts: 972 | From: Saint John, N.B. | Registered: Oct 2011
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BessLane
Shipmate
# 15176
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Posted
I was in kindergarten or first grade when Nixon reisgned. I remember being very happy because my father had gotten so mad about something Tricky Dick had done that he (dad) has smashed the TV and I hoped that now we could get another one since we'd get a new president.
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It's all on me and I won't tell it.
formerly BessHiggs
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roybart
Shipmate
# 17357
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Posted
infant memories of my parents' reactions to the death of President Roosevelt -- and picking up the feeling that this was both very important and very sad.
Advance several years to the televised Army-McCarthy hearings. By then I was old enough to understand more of the significance and implications of what was happening.
It is strange to think that my parents were Republicans, though admirers of FDR and disgusted by McCarthyism. It was a less partisan time, I guess. There actually were moderate Republicans -- in the Northeast, anyway, which was the only part of the US I knew.
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"The consolations of the imaginary are not imaginary consolations."
-- Roger Scruton
Posts: 547 | From: here | Registered: Sep 2012
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MrsBeaky
Shipmate
# 17663
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Posted
As a young child of dual nationality and living abroad I clearly remember the assassination of JFK and the funeral of Winston Churchill and was deeply affected by both.
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"It is better to be kind than right."
http://davidandlizacooke.wordpress.com
Posts: 693 | From: UK/ Kenya | Registered: Apr 2013
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
Kelly Alves wrote:
quote:
I actually remember quite a bit about the Moscone-Milk assasinations-- my mother was the Admin. Asst. for one Comissioner Botinovitch at the time, and both of them were in and out of City Hall all the time. My mother came home the day of the killings and related how someone came in to tell the commissioner what happened, and the commissioner burst into sobs. (he was a good Friend of Mayor Moscone.)
Odd thing: I knew about Jonestown the day after it happened, but didn't know about the Milk/Moscone murders until(I think) a few months later, even though the murders happened right after Jonestown, and Jonestown probably had some impact on the fateful actions of Moscone, Milk and White.
Despite knowing about it right away, Jonestown was something I really didn't quite comprehend, since there wasn't a lot of media discussion about "cults" prior to that time(at least not that I was aware of). So it wasn't exactly clear to me what people were referring to when they talked about the "Jonestown cult".
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Uncle Pete
Loyaute me lie
# 10422
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Posted
My aunt and uncle were visiting us in small-town Ontario during the 1953 Canadian federal election and they packed us (Mother, Dad, 3 kids and Granny as well as their daughter) in the car (pre-seatbelts and pre- everything else) and drove to the local train station where a campaign train was making a whistle-stop.
I remember being very impressed and asked my Dad Is it Bob Hope, daddy? Mr Saint-Laurent, the Prime Minister, heard me and paused in his speech to smile at me. My Uncle, a civil servant in Ottawa, laughed all the way home. Another notch in Pete's additions to family lore. I was nearly 5. And I do remember that time. I loved trains which is the only reason I agreed to go.
I also remember the election of 1957 when the government was defeated in what was called the Pipeline election. (My parents were ecstatic and my Granny was sure the country was going to hell in a hand basket).
Fast forward to 1960/61 and I recall the formation of the New Democratic Party. I was off to a lifetime of political junkie-ism.
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Even more so than I was before
Posts: 20466 | From: No longer where I was | Registered: Sep 2005
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
I used to think that my earliest political memory was that of JFK's funeral -- the image of the riderless horse with the empty boots in the funeral procession seemed burned into my memory at a very young age -- although in retrospect I wonder if that memory was from the actual funeral date (when I would have just been a tiny toddler) or from re-played film footage later on in my childhood.
Other than that, I think what I remember most are my Republican father's angry dinnertime/evening news diatribes against LBJ and especially against Hubert Humprhey, a politician he hated with a special passion, and the fact that my mother and I had to remain silent while he watched the news and held forth with his editorial comments.
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
The 1952 presidential campaign (I was seven years old) between Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, and seemingly everyone wearing an I Like Ike button.
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
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Yam-pk
Shipmate
# 12791
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Posted
I remember Thatcher being the PM for the first 10 3/4 years of my life and just a general sense of people not liking her very much. I was off school sick when my mum bounded upstairs to tell me she'd resigned and I was delighted.
Also remember my playgroup being closed for reasons which didn't make sense during the miners strike. Years later I learnt that we lived in Nigel Lawson's (the UK Chancellor/Finance Minister) constituency, some miners wanted to burn a effigy of Maggie in front of his house which backed on to my playgroup and the police wanted to take it over as a command post! ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Posts: 472 | From: The Grim North | Registered: Jul 2007
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
I remember the general election of 1964, when I was seven years old. Dennis Hobden was elected MP for Brighton Kemp Town (by seven votes after three recounts - or was it three votes after seven recounts?) The first Labour MP in Sussex, ever.
Dennis was a frequent vistor to our house, he'd known my Dad since they were kids (well he was a few years older than Dad) I think they were brought up on the same street (not that I was around then) and he'd been on the borough council for years. Another three or four of their friends from that street were also local councillors, and Dad got elected a few years later. Some of them often came round to our house on a Friday might and sat up late talking politics and smoking (and no doubt drinking and playing cards as well). Of course they had all spent the evening in the pub but I didn't pay much attention to that back then!
Anyway, in the general election our house was used as the committee room for our ward, so people were in and out of the place for weeks organising canvassing and so on, and on election day it was the local HQ for the neighbourhood. We were trying out the then new system of "Reading Pads" or "Mikardo Pads" (named after then then-famous politican Ian Mikardo who had apparently visited our house himself but that wasn't somethingI remember or woudl likley have noticed - from my point of view as a child it was about our friends and neighbors, not the people you see on TV in boring programmes like the News whch I probably didn't even watch. Me and my brother were volunteered to run round to the nearest polling station and collect some of the sheets with the numbers on. Or maybe not so much volunteered as sent off to get us out of the way for a bit.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
We had a Children's dictionary which had a list of the Presidents with their pictures in the back. Under each President, it also listed the Vice President. My brother and I both independently noticed a string of Vice Presidents becoming President, and predicted that this George Bush fellow was probably going to at least run in the next election.
I remember at some point asking my mother who she was going to vote for or who she had voted for in an election, and being told that you should never directly ask someone that question. That is a lesson that stuck with me, and I am always taken aback when someone directly asks me who I voted for.
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
The 1952 presidential campaign (I was seven years old) between Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, and seemingly everyone wearing an I Like Ike button.
You(and others) may find this an interesting website.
It has American presidential TV ads going all the way back to 1952. My personal favorite, purely on aesthetic grounds, is the Nixon '68 ad called "Convention". I'm surprised it's not more well-known, since it is visually and audially rather startling, and was apparently quite effective in its purpose.
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Nenya
Shipmate
# 16427
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Posted
I remember watching Churchill's funeral on the TV. I was only five and it led to a discussion with my mum about what dying meant. Then she got cross with me for crying. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
Nen - scarred for life.
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They told me I was delusional. I nearly fell off my unicorn.
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
I think it was the appearance on TV of That Was The Week That Was first made me aware there was something interesting about politics - satirising it.
Northern Ireland was hardly an apolitical place - but I was going up to university by the time that pot boiled over.
I hit my 20s therefore with a fair bit of political disinclination. But once I realised that my outcomes in life depended fairly heavily on what I price I could command in the labour market, I decided pretty sharpish for free collective bargaining and the welfare state.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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marzipan
Shipmate
# 9442
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Posted
I remember my older sister teaching me playground rhymes about getting rid of Margaret Thatcher (that would be about 1988 or 1989).
Vaguely remember John Major getting re elected (1992) - I would have been seven at the time.
I don't think I paid much attention to politics in other countries (I still don't really)
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formerly cheesymarzipan.
Now containing 50% less cheese
Posts: 917 | From: nowhere in particular | Registered: May 2005
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Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
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Posted
1960: I have a vague memory of kids in my school looking out the window at a fancy car and a man shaking hands with a small gathering of locals. Someone said it was John Kennedy and he was running for president. Sounded boring to me so I went back to the gothic romance I had propped up inside my history book.
Posts: 6817 | Registered: May 2002
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PD
Shipmate
# 12436
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Posted
The Lib-Lab Pact and perpetual strikes. In other word he death of Old Labour in the late-70s
PD
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Roadkill on the Information Super Highway!
My Assorted Rantings - http://www.theoldhighchurchman.blogspot.com
Posts: 4431 | From: Between a Rock and a Hard Place | Registered: Mar 2007
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
I was camping with my family. My father and went for a walk along the lake. There was a small crowd around some man, who turned out to be John Diefenbaker (prime minister of Canada into the early 1960s). He gave me a card with his name on it, and told me to write him a letter and he would send me a signed picture of himself with his wife and his dog Happy. I did not write the letter.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Pine Marten
Shipmate
# 11068
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sparrow:
I remember the Cuban Missile crisis - chiefly because of the idiotic actions of my Sunday School Teacher. She called us all together and told us very solemnly that we must all pray very hard for peace, because "the world is on the brink of another war".
I was about 10. I went home terrified.
I remember this too, and I was 12. I did have a dread of what might-have-been.
I have a hazy recollection of hearing about the 1960 presidential election on the news, and when Nixon lost, thinking oh, he'll have to be vice president now...
Much more vivid though is the memory of JFK's assassination. We were playing records on my parents' radiogram so didn't see the early news. I remember that at school we had to write an essay about it.
Other than that I don't remember much, except my parents staunchly voting Labour at each election.
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Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. - Oscar Wilde
Posts: 1731 | From: Isle of Albion | Registered: Feb 2006
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
I was born in 1989 and my first political memory is my parents getting hammered (in delight) at Labour winning the 1997 election, followed shortly by Diana's death. I was 8 years old!
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
Mine is probably Brian Hanrahan counting them out and counting them back. Does that count as political?
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Signaller
Shipmate
# 17495
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Posted
I remember hearing about the state of the parties, and wondering where the jelly and ice creams were.
That would be the '64 general election, I suppose, when I was four.
Posts: 113 | From: Metroland | Registered: Jan 2013
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Kelly Alves wrote:
quote:
I actually remember quite a bit about the Moscone-Milk assasinations-- my mother was the Admin. Asst. for one Comissioner Botinovitch at the time, and both of them were in and out of City Hall all the time. My mother came home the day of the killings and related how someone came in to tell the commissioner what happened, and the commissioner burst into sobs. (he was a good Friend of Mayor Moscone.)
Odd thing: I knew about Jonestown the day after it happened, but didn't know about the Milk/Moscone murders until(I think) a few months later, even though the murders happened right after Jonestown, and Jonestown probably had some impact on the fateful actions of Moscone, Milk and White.
Despite knowing about it right away, Jonestown was something I really didn't quite comprehend, since there wasn't a lot of media discussion about "cults" prior to that time(at least not that I was aware of). So it wasn't exactly clear to me what people were referring to when they talked about the "Jonestown cult".
I think my folks-- well, my mom at the time-- tried to protect me from the Jonestown stuff(I was very little at the time.Mom must have held back quite a bit-- she knew Leo Ryan, and later talked about how devastated the SF political community was by his death. I do remember when my mom started dating my stepfather, that I associated the name "Jim Jones" with his general look. There was a scary resemblance.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
I was born in 1989 and my first political memory is my parents getting hammered (in delight) at Labour winning the 1997 election,
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, and to be bevvied was very heaven.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I was camping with my family. My father and went for a walk along the lake. There was a small crowd around some man, who turned out to be John Diefenbaker (prime minister of Canada into the early 1960s). He gave me a card with his name on it, and told me to write him a letter and he would send me a signed picture of himself with his wife and his dog Happy. I did not write the letter.
I'm not even a Diefenbaker fan and I kind of wish you'd written the letter ... if only for the sake of a picture of Happy.
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Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
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Jack the Lass
Ship's airhead
# 3415
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Posted
I was born in the late 60s; I think the first prime minister I really remember is Jim Callaghan (although I was vaguely aware of Ted Heath, I think). I definitely remember Maggie Thatcher getting in in 1979, but although I remember some things from the earlier 70s (eg the drought of 1976, and Jimmy Carter becoming US President) I have absolutely no memory at all of the winter of discontent. On reflection I suspect my parents were shielding us quite a lot, but there was no way we were going to miss their devastation and misery when That Woman got in.
I also remember the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1980, and the general Cold War posturing throughout the 80s - I was genuinely afraid (as lots of us were) that nuclear annihilation was a real possibility. 20 years later I was teaching about the Cold War at university and talked about that, and all the students (who were born late 80s so missed all that) looked at me like I was mad - I was really grateful for the mature student who was able to tell it like it was (plus he was older than me so had some really interesting anecdotes, such as remembering the Cuban Missile Crisis).
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Posts: 5767 | From: the land of the deep-fried Mars Bar | Registered: Oct 2002
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Graven Image
Shipmate
# 8755
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Posted
Going with my Mother to watch Franklin Roosevelt's Funeral Procession. I was 7 years old. I knew that he was the president but had no idea what the process of election was all about. I remember seeing a lot of people crying, so I knew they were sad.
Posts: 2641 | From: Third planet from the sun. USA | Registered: Nov 2004
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OddJob
Shipmate
# 17591
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Posted
The black and white early 1970s, when most folk held a strong political allegiance, seeing their party as infallible and the other one as always wrong. Secrecy about one's views probably meant discomfort with the herd view for one's class or neighbourhood. As for voting Liberal - well, real men just couldn't, could they?
Formal, high church folk always dressed up for Sunday morning and voted Conservative, whilst lively, younger members had beards, wore bright jumpers and voted Labour.
In spite of different ideologies, what folk actually wanted at a practical level, or their response to any given political debate of the day differed as little as two matchsticks.
Posts: 97 | From: West Midlands | Registered: Mar 2013
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Trisagion
Shipmate
# 5235
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Posted
Born August 1965: TV coverage of Harold Wilson leaving Downing Street in June 1970.
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ceterum autem censeo tabula delenda esse
Posts: 3923 | Registered: Nov 2003
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Dogwalker
Shipmate
# 14135
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Posted
Born in 1950. I clearly remember the 1956 election -- I was six, in first grade. But almost everybody in Vermont was for Ike, so no excitement there.
I had to check the date of the Little Rock Central High desegregation (1957); that's really the first "crisis" I remember.
I looked through lists of events in 1955 - nothing memorable seems to have happened, at least to the five-year-old me.
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If God had meant for us to fly, he wouldn't have given us the railways. - Unknown
Posts: 155 | From: Milford, MA, USA | Registered: Sep 2008
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Mamacita
Lakefront liberal
# 3659
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Posted
At age 6 I didn't understand the presidential election of 1956 but I knew the "I Like Ike" slogan. My uncle had a parrot who could say that.
I have clearer memories of the 1960 election, especially how much my father, a small-town midwestern Republican, detested JFK. I remember him yelling "You tell him, Dick!" at the TV screen during the infamous televised debate where JFK came across as smoother and more telegenic than Nixon. And I remember how virulently anti-Catholic some of the opposition to JFK was. My dad came home from work one day and showed my mom a quarter and said it was the "new money if Kennedy becomes President." The image of George Washington had been painted with red nail polish to look like he was wearing a zucchetto and mozzetta.
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Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
Posts: 20761 | From: where the purple line ends | Registered: Dec 2002
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
Jack The Lass wrote:
quote:
I have absolutely no memory at all of the winter of discontent.
I don't have any direct memories of the Winter Of Discontent, but lost of indirect ones. The reason being that a good number of the labour leaders in Canada in the 70s and 80s came from the UK, and my dad used to complain "They juat want to mess up our country like they messed up their own".
My grandmother also used to opine caustically that the union leaders "all seem to be limeys!" What was interesting was that my grandmother was from the north of Scotland, and I believe many of those labour leaders came from either southern Scotland or northern England. I later wondered if my grandmother meant "Englishmen"(and would include southern Scots in that), or just anyone from the UK.
[ 10. June 2013, 23:45: Message edited by: Stetson ]
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I was camping with my family. My father and went for a walk along the lake. There was a small crowd around some man, who turned out to be John Diefenbaker (prime minister of Canada into the early 1960s). He gave me a card with his name on it, and told me to write him a letter and he would send me a signed picture of himself with his wife and his dog Happy. I did not write the letter.
I'm not even a Diefenbaker fan and I kind of wish you'd written the letter ... if only for the sake of a picture of Happy.
Speaking of the Chief...
Not an early memory, more a perennial one, but I grew up hearing semi-regular lectures, from various individuals, about how "that $#@&% Diefenbaker killed the Arrow". The last time I heard that was actually about two years ago, granted from a rather elderly individual.
I read somewhere that cancelling the Arrow was unpopular in Ontario, but didn't cause that much consternation on the prairies. Possibly Edmonton was an outpost of pro-Arrow sentiment, as a result of some local firms working on the project.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I was camping with my family. My father and went for a walk along the lake. There was a small crowd around some man, who turned out to be John Diefenbaker (prime minister of Canada into the early 1960s). He gave me a card with his name on it, and told me to write him a letter and he would send me a signed picture of himself with his wife and his dog Happy. I did not write the letter.
I'm not even a Diefenbaker fan and I kind of wish you'd written the letter ... if only for the sake of a picture of Happy.
I know. I thought about that for years. I didn't because I was young and was told that he was a "crook". Which at the time did not realize that this was a general statement about the species versus the one politician.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
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Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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basso
Ship’s Crypt Keeper
# 4228
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Posted
Mine was also the 1960 election. My parents were lifelong Roosevelt Democrats, so I became a Kennedy supporter. When he won, I had a feeling that all was right in the universe.
Then came the missile crisis, JFK was shot, and the world went pear-shaped and it's been that way ever since.
Posts: 4358 | From: Bay Area, Calif | Registered: Mar 2003
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Welease Woderwick
Sister Incubus Nightmare
# 10424
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Posted
I remember, as youngish lad, Macmillan resigning and Douglas-Home taking over as PM and then, as a teenager, campaigning for Wilson and the Labour Party in 1964 and 1966 and beyond.
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What part of Matt. 7:1 don't you understand?
Posts: 48139 | From: 1st on the right, straight on 'til morning | Registered: Sep 2005
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
My earliest political memories are pretty inchoate; I recall my parents fulminating over a local official who got elected while serving time in jail. I also recall their approval of Richard Nixon, and feeling he's been treated very unfairly when he resigned.
My first fully-formed memories involve my mother deciding that my father looked like Ronald Reagan, and that they were both voting for him.
My Republican parents lived most of their working lives in an area that was solidly Democratic; I have lived most of my working life as a Democrat in a state which until the last decade or so has been pretty solidly Republican.
Apparently, us Porridges thrive on opposition.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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Edith
Shipmate
# 16978
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Posted
I must have been about five years old. I remember the children on our street marching up and down at a General Election singing:
Vote vote vote for Tom O'Brian
Who's that knocking at the door
For O'Brian is the one
That'll have a bit of fun
And we'll never see the Colonel any more.
I've just looked him up and see that Sir Tom O'Brian was MP for Nottingham East and later became president of the TUC.
He was a Catholic Labour Trade Unionist, no wonder we sang!
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Edith
Posts: 256 | From: UK | Registered: Mar 2012
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