Ship of Fools: What are your earliest political memories?

Thread: What are your earliest political memories? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

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.

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

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]

Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :

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.

Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :

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.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

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.

Posted by The Midge (# 2398) on :

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!"

Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :

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 ]

Posted by Bob Two-Owls (# 9680) on :

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.

Posted by Galloping Granny (# 13814) on :

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

Posted by Sparrow (# 2458) on :

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.

Posted by Mili (# 3254) on :

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.

Posted by Caissa (# 16710) on :

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.

Posted by BessHiggs (# 15176) on :

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.

Posted by roybart (# 17357) on :

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.

Posted by MrsBeaky (# 17663) on :

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.

Posted by Jante (# 9163) on :

Sermon preached on why we should vote yes to the Common market. I was 15 at the time.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

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".

Posted by PeteC (# 10422) on :

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.

Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on :

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.

Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

The 1952 presidential campaign (I was seven years old) between Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, and seemingly everyone wearing an I Like Ike button.

Posted by Yam-pk (# 12791) on :

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]

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

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.

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

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.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

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.

Posted by Nenya (# 16427) on :

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]

Nen - scarred for life.

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

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.

Posted by cheesymarzipan (# 9442) on :

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)

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

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.

Posted by PD (# 12436) on :

The Lib-Lab Pact and perpetual strikes. In other word he death of Old Labour in the late-70s

PD

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

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.

Posted by Pine Marten (# 11068) on :

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.

Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :

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!

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

Mine is probably Brian Hanrahan counting them out and counting them back. Does that count as political?

Posted by Signaller (# 17495) on :

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.

Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :

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.

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

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.

Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :

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.

Posted by Jack the Lass (# 3415) on :

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).

Posted by Graven Image (# 8755) on :

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.

Posted by OddJob (# 17591) on :

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.

Posted by Trisagion (# 5235) on :

Born August 1965: TV coverage of Harold Wilson leaving Downing Street in June 1970.

Posted by Dogwalker (# 14135) on :

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.

Posted by Mamacita (# 3659) on :

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. [Big Grin]

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.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

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 ]

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

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.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

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.

Posted by basso (# 4228) on :

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.

Posted by Welease Woderwick (# 10424) on :

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.

Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :

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.

Posted by Edith (# 16978) on :

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!

Posted by comet (# 10353) on :

I remember riding along in the car as my mom was listening to the radio and she completely lost her shit yelling at it and bashing on the dash board. She then went on to tell me how she was sorry, but that idiot made her so angry and the country was going to fall to pieces if he was elected president, and how she'd happily vote for a canned beet before voting for him.

His name was Reagan.

[ 11. June 2013, 05:08: Message edited by: comet ]

Posted by comet (# 10353) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
I also recall their approval of Richard Nixon, and feeling he's been treated very unfairly when he resigned.

Nixon resigned not long after I was born. in the family lore, my arrival terrified him into resigning. [Big Grin]

Posted by chive (# 208) on :

My first political memory is the Brighton bombing and the picture of Norman Tebbit being carried out in his pyjamas.

I also vividly remember the miner's strike but I think that was because my uncle was very involved. In fact when Thatcher died, his partner was one of the people interviewed on the news as coming from the position of striking miners.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
... I recall my parents fulminating over a local official who got elected while serving time in jail. ...

That's some achievement. How did he (I assume he) manage that? And what was he in for - corruption? You don't even have a vote here if you're in jail. It's an issue at the moment.

Posted by deano (# 12063) on :

I was born in 1967 and I think the first truly political event I remember was being taken on a May day Trades Union march by my father and uncle when I was three or four.

But in terms of national politics, I can remember the power cuts of the early 1970's and Ford losing the US General Election to Jimmy Carter in 1976.

But I suppose my earliest detailed memories of politics and politicians, when I was able to understand what was going on, would be the day Mrs Thatcher won her first General Election in 1979.

Posted by Heavenly Anarchist (# 13313) on :

I can remember when I was primary school age my grandmother telling me about my great great great grandfather who was George Loveless, the leader of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, - small group of farm workers who were deported to Australia in 1834 for forming a trade union (not actually illegal at the time, they were charged with swearing an oath other than to the King). They were later pardoned and returned after a public campaign. That's when I first became aware of protest movements and political campaigning, at the time one of my brothers was a shop steward and I became one later when I was a nurse.
I remember some of the protest songs of my early teens, by UB40 and Elvis Costello among others, and then the inevitable Spitting Image. I was always a fan of political satire, I used to read Punch in the public library every week, and I still read Private Eye now and listen to radio 4 political satire.
The Cold War was also in the background, I lay awake at night scared that nuclear war would break out and I even wrote an essay in my English o'level exam themed around nuclear war.

Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :

@ Comet:

Ah, this thread is sharpening up my memory.

How appropriate that your mother would have voted for a canned beet rather than Reagan. Reagan was the president who, in downfunding school lunches (along with pretty much everything else) opined that ketchup was a vegetable.

I tell you, what Nixon failed to dismantle, Reagan managed to shred.

Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:

quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
... I recall my parents fulminating over a local official who got elected while serving time in jail. ...
That's some achievement. How did he (I assume he) manage that? And what was he in for - corruption? You don't even have a vote here if you're in jail. It's an issue at the moment.

I was too little to take in details like names, dates, and serial numbers. First, though, this probably happened before I was born (my parents held long political grudges).

Second, it had something to do with Boston politics at a time when some sort of (according to my very conservative parents) corrupt Democratic political mob basically "ran" both city and state (Massachusetts) government.

Third, it's entirely possible that what happened is something like this: the candidate might have been arrested for some crime, put in jail to await trial when it was too late to take him off the ballot, and managed to win the election.

I hasten to emphasize I don't know that's what happened; but I do know that's a possible explanation.

Posted by GordonThePenguin (# 2106) on :

Public sector strikes in the UK in the late 1970s and Margaret Thatcher being elected.

Posted by Ferdzy (# 8702) on :

quote:
Originally posted by PeteC:
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.

My earliest memory must be from 1967 or 1968, when I would have been 6 or 7. My parents, both artists, volunteered in the local NDP campaign, and designed the lawn signs - bright orange. I remember that they were so visible and liked, that the NDP then adopted orange as its official colour.

My memory is quite clear about that, and yet it sounds so improbable! Pete, do you have any memory of when orange showed up as the colour for the NDP?

Posted by PeteC (# 10422) on :

About that time Ferdzy, I think the first signs were a rather dull green and brown. I could be mistaken though. Given how small the Dippers were in those days, I think your memory might be quite correct. I certainly planted a few orange signs in London North in the 1971 provincial.

Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

Born in 1949. Earliest memories: the coronation of the Queen; Eisenhower was president; the burial of the Korean War Unknown Soldier.

Posted by Off Centre View (# 4254) on :

As a British child of the 80s, my earliest vivid political memories were of the end of the Cold War.

I remember something happening to Gorbachev (arrested or kept under house arrest or something?) because my parents talked about it when we were on holiday. I also remember seeing the fall of the Berlin Wall on TV; I didn't understand it fully at the time, but I knew that the world was never going to be quite the same again.

Posted by Eigon (# 4917) on :

Back in the early 1980s, Bobby Sands was elected as an MP, even though he was in jail, and he later died on hunger strike, I think, so it is possible in the UK to be in jail and be elected.
That's not my first political memory, though. That would be a very grainy, black and white memory of Churchill's funeral. I had very little idea of what was going on, except that this had been a very important person.
When I got to junior school (ages 7 - 11), morning school assembly often included a little play. We would march into the hall to a classical music recording of the week, sing a hymn and have a prayer, and be given something to think about as well. On one occasion the little play was of US soldiers killing the inhabitants of a Vietnamese village. I think it was probably supposed to be the My Lai massacre. Pretty strong stuff for an ordinary English junior school.

Posted by Ferdzy (# 8702) on :

quote:
Originally posted by PeteC:
About that time Ferdzy, I think the first signs were a rather dull green and brown. I could be mistaken though. Given how small the Dippers were in those days, I think your memory might be quite correct. I certainly planted a few orange signs in London North in the 1971 provincial.

I ask my parents about this, and I get a vague, "Oh, maybe." I guess it was a decision made in consultation with other people, so they don't see it as "we invented NDP orange". As a little kid though, I was impressed that they made orange signs, and lo! Orange signs henceforth.

Posted by Keren-Happuch (# 9818) on :

I was born in the late 70s and remember that "the war" (ie the Falklands) always seemed to be on the TV news to the extent that I thought it was a permanent state of affairs.

It must have been the 1987 election where one of our teachers asked all our class who we'd vote for with the only piece of information to go on being that the Tories were pro nuclear weapons while Labour were against them. I remember being sure that it must be a lot more complicated than that.

I always knew that there was an East and West Germany, but it wasn't until Honecker's resignation just before the Wall came down that I realised that the East one was Communist.

Posted by Dogwalker (# 14135) on :

Porridge,

I suspect your parents were on about James Michael Curley, Governor of Massachusetts, Mayor of Boston and Congressman, and three-time felon, according to the linked Wikipedia article.

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

I remember the miners' work to rule and the three-day week in 1973-4. I remember NOT BEING ALLOWED TO READ WHEN THE POWER WAS OFF - because my mother thought it would hurt my eyes. I had a grudge against the NUM for years as a result. I think that's my earliest political memory, though I also remember going to the polling booth with my mother (in the days when children got a day off school if their school was used as a polling station) so perhaps it's just the earliest dateable memory.

Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :

The rule here (and I think in the UK) was that a person convicted of felony could not stand or vote for Parliament. I have a recollection that that has changed here recently under some human rights legislation.

My earliest political memory is of soldiers going off to Korea, then of George VI dying. There are vague memories of the Labour Party loss in the Federal election at about the same time. The memory I have is the pleasure a great-uncle had in the victory, as he had some role in the state organisation of the Liberal Party. I also have a very strong memory of the shelling of the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu, and the fears of the consequences. An earlier version of the 1962 Cuban crisis.

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Off Centre View:
I remember something happening to Gorbachev (arrested or kept under house arrest or something?) because my parents talked about it when we were on holiday.

I was at my first week long sleep away church camp when that went down. We were only 45 minutes from my parents house, but my mother still wrote to me every day, and I still have the letters detailing the world's confusion over what was going to happen.

Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dogwalker:
Porridge,

I suspect your parents were on about James Michael Curley, Governor of Massachusetts, Mayor of Boston and Congressman, and three-time felon, according to the linked Wikipedia article.

Aha! That's the guy. And from the dates in the article, it appears the political grudges must have begun early, or been inherited from my grandparents.

(Though I suspect my maternal grandmother was an FDR Democrat. She had a cat named Eleanor Roosevelt.)

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

The presidential election of 1960. Kennedy and Nixon both made whistle-stops in Ann Arbor, and we were excused from school to see them. I went to both, though I don't remember (and surely wouldn't have understood) anything they said (I was 6 going on 7). Most of the people I knew were for Kennedy, though my father was a Republican (he got over it). He now says that when he got into the voting booth, he started to push the lever for Nixon, and found he just couldn't do it.

I had a friend a year or so younger who made "Nixon for President" signs just because his family were all for Kennedy, and generally made a pest of himself about it.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:

quote:
Originally posted by Dogwalker:
Porridge,

I suspect your parents were on about James Michael Curley, Governor of Massachusetts, Mayor of Boston and Congressman, and three-time felon, according to the linked Wikipedia article.
Aha! That's the guy. And from the dates in the article, it appears the political grudges must have begun early, or been inherited from my grandparents.

(Though I suspect my maternal grandmother was an FDR Democrat. She had a cat named Eleanor Roosevelt.)

Thanks for the link. What a truly dreadful example. Would make a great film, but horrible in life.

Posted by Off Centre View (# 4254) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:

quote:
Originally posted by Off Centre View:
I remember something happening to Gorbachev (arrested or kept under house arrest or something?) because my parents talked about it when we were on holiday.
I was at my first week long sleep away church camp when that went down. We were only 45 minutes from my parents house, but my mother still wrote to me every day, and I still have the letters detailing the world's confusion over what was going to happen.

Thanks Og; it was a really confusing time - I don't think even the CIA predicted the old Soviet Union would fall!

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

Good Lord! The Ship is full of children! - was my first thought on reading this. Then I started counting and I realised that this all happened 22 years ago.
Me (born 1967): the power cuts of the Three-Day week period (we had a gas cooker and were better off than our neighbours who had electric ones, and for that reason for years I thought a gas cooker was a wiser choice), cartoons by I think Gibberd in the Guardian of Edward Heath and the TUC (always symbolised by a bloke in a donkey jacket with TUC across the shoulders), and for some reason the first politician, other than Heath, I remember is Alec Douglas-Hume, who was Foreign Secretary. I've no idea why, except perhaps that he looked a bit different from all the others.

Posted by The Rogue (# 2275) on :

I was born about a month before JFK was killed so I don't remember that. My earliest political memories are of Mike Yarwood (British impressionist) doing Ted Heath and Harold Wilson. Also, I remember the power cuts of the 70s. My Mum and Dad made it fun and exciting and we gathered in one room and played word games by candlelight. In other words (although I didn't think of it like this at the time) when someone decided to make a political point by stuffing up everybody else we just got on with it.

I still prefer gas and I suspect that's why.

[ 12. June 2013, 09:19: Message edited by: The Rogue ]

Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on :

I can just remember Watergate, certainly remember the powercuts and the battle between Wilson and Heath. Actually as a teenager was taken to hear Heath at a political meeting, but that was in the 1980s. My Dad referred to him as the sort of old fashioned Tory you could respect. Actually I suspect my first memory is attending a political march. It was a Trades Unions and their banners were out and each group was marching behind the appropriate one maybe even a few brass bands. I do not think they were protesting at anything, rather it was a sort of solidarity parade, it had a bit of the feel of a Lord Mayor's procession. Certainly it was the sort of things that the crowds stood along the route to cheer the marchers on.

Jengie

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

Albertus:

quote:
...we had a gas cooker and were better off than our neighbours who had electric ones, and for that reason for years I thought a gas cooker was a wiser choice...

We thought so too. We had an electric cooker and were reduced to cooking over our open fire. My mother's favourite saucepan was never the same again. After that experience we always had gas cookers, which involved knocking a hole in the outside wall and having Calor gas cylinders in the garden because our village didn't have mains gas.

[ 12. June 2013, 12:29: Message edited by: Jane R ]

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

Rhodesia declared UDI. The lesson after break at school was suspended so that the deputy head could tell us.

I hadn't a clue, nor any interest, in what she was talking about.

I later discovered its importance because we had relatives living there.

Posted by Kyzyl (# 374) on :

Being sent home early from kindergarten and finding my mom and a few other moms gathered in our house around our color tv - President Kennedy had been killed. My next full political memory also included an assassinated Kennedy. I came down early one morning and found my father and sister sadly conversing. My sister was going to be voting in her presidential election and was an RFK backer. She and Dad had stayed up to watch the primary returns from California. Saw it all happen live. I also spent a very hot Houston summer gladly watching the Watergate hearings in the AC.

Posted by Sir Kevin (# 3492) on :

My first political memory was the Kitchen debates/discussions with Nikita Kruschev.

My most vivid memory was being in my fourth grade classroom when the principal burst in and she was crying. It was 22 November 1963...

Posted by georgiaboy (# 11294) on :

Like Kyzyl above, I too watched the Watergate hearings -- I remember Barbara Jordan particularly. (But I was working nights and dragged the TV out by the pool!)

My earliest political memories are (very vaguely) the radio broadcast of FDR's funeral procession, and being asked to a neighbor's house to watch the Coronation of E2 on their brand-new TV (we didn't yet have one) -- I guess that counts a political?

My first presidential vote was for John Kennedy.

(All of which, I guess, puts me in the geezer class.)

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

I was born in early 60s and often used to be sat in front of a TV at 6 O'Clock with 2 of my brothers while our parents were out working their farm.

I recall the news read by grey-haired robert dougal with it's grey goo of the Vietnam war/Soviet threat , problems in Northern Ireland, Harold Wilson etc.

My first real awareness of what politics actually meant was when Ted Heath got the boot after the power-cuts and 3-day week in 73-4 .

Posted by Huia (# 3473) on :

One of the earliest memories I have (aged about 4) was shopping for some pineapple with my mother who refused to buy anything South African. She only changer her buying habits when Nelson Mandela came to power)

Then, in 1959 the "No Maoris, no Tour" movement to stop a planned rugby tour of SA by The All Blacks because the South African Government was refusing to allow Maori players to enter the country.

Huia

Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:

quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:
... I recall my parents fulminating over a local official who got elected while serving time in jail. ...
That's some achievement. How did he (I assume he) manage that? And what was he in for - corruption? You don't even have a vote here if you're in jail. It's an issue at the moment.

It was probably James Michael Curley Mayor of Boston and Governor of Massachusetts in the days when the Irish Machine ran politics.

His first of two convictions was for taking the civil service exam for postman for a constituent.

Posted by The Phantom Flan Flinger (# 8891) on :

My earliest memory is Margaret Thatcher coming to power in 1979 - I remember it being a big deal that the PM was a woman for the first time. Being 4 years old at the time, I didn't realise that it was a distinct possibility, I thought it had taken everybody by surprise.

Posted by Sir Kevin (# 3492) on :

quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:

I recall the news....Harold Wilson etc.

I was in London when he became Prime Minister and Barber was Chancellor of the Exchequer. As a young adult, I bought his book,
The Governance of Britain.

Posted by vw man (# 13951) on :

The time J F K was shot.
It was the night my parents went out for yhe night and left my sister who is a few years older than me our own ,the tv programs for the night stoped to have non stop news coverage ,I did not fully understand but I knew it was serious

Posted by ArachnidinElmet (# 17346) on :

I've been racking my brains for a particular first memory, but can't come up with one. It seems more like a gradual progression. A drip feed of mentions of the IRA on news bulletins, Spitting Image, things said by adults around me (grandmother really not a fan of Thatcher) and charity singles (Band Aid etc). The individual things didn't necessary link up till much later though.

Weirdly, I don't remember much about the miner's strike. I was very young, but living in the heart of mining country with a close relative working as a pit electrician, you'd have thought it would have been memorable.

It's amazing how much you pick up when you're young. It makes me wonder what children now pick up and where from.

Posted by The5thMary (# 12953) on :

I was born in 1967 and remained clueless about any political stuff until Jimmy Carter, mostly. I do remember some of the neighborhood boys were off, fighting in Vietnam. I guess I lived a rather oblivious life or I just wasn't interested. I wasn't even all that aware of the Carter administration except some of the kids I hung out with taught me a (stupid) song that we all thought was clever and hilarious. It was sung to the Oscar Mayer hot dog t.v. theme. I do remember my mother crying as she watched some political funeral broadcast on t.v. Hoover, somebody, because when she told me, I looked at our Hoover vacuum cleaner and said, "He made our vacuum cleaner?" and she told me to be quiet, she wanted to watch the funeral. I was all of four years old, I think.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
I do remember my mother crying as she watched some political funeral broadcast on t.v. Hoover, somebody, because when she told me, I looked at our Hoover vacuum cleaner and said, "He made our vacuum cleaner?" and she told me to be quiet, she wanted to watch the funeral. I was all of four years old, I think.

Possibly J. Edgar, because he died in 1972.

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

quote:
posted by Sir Kevin
I was in London when he became Prime Minister and Barber was Chancellor of the Exchequer. As a young adult, I bought his book, The Governance of Britain.

Think you're getting a bit confused Sir K:
Harold Wilson's Chancellor after the 1964 election was James Callaghan, and it was Denis Healey in 1974.

Anthony Barber was Chancellor for Ted Heath.

Posted by Deputy Verger (# 15876) on :

22nd November 1963. No debate, that's my first political memory – and evidently I'm not alone. It was also the first time I remember seeing grown-ups cry.

It was only recently I realised that nearly five years passed between the funerals of JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. In my childish memory they seemed very close together – but they were definitely my first funeral “experiences” - both on the same small black-and-white television. So my sense of politics had a lot to do with assassination.

Later, I was in England and I have very clear memories of the three-day week, working by gaslight (on a manual typewriter) and shopping by candlelight in Spar – the so-called “supermarket”.

In the Thatcher/Reagan years, when the Nuclear Clock, or whatever they call it, was almost at midnight, I was also scared of nuclear annihilation. I thought the “leaders of the free world” were both pretty evil warmongers.

(Who knew I was so close in age to Ken and Sir Kevin? This has been a very revealing thread in terms of the ages of our Shipmates!)

Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :

I know I am dating myself here, but I remember the break-up of the Soviet Union. I would have been between 6 and 8. I remember my mother getting a National Geographic about it and saying maybe it would really happen. It was definitely still up in the air then, so I'm guessing this was well before it was all final in late '91. Her excitement that the Cold War was finally ending, maybe, was contagious and I remember a deep sense of awe. I looked at the colors on the map in the Nat Geo, and saw the gigantic'normous country that was maybe going to become so many countries. She mentioned something about the Iron Curtain coming down and I confused it with a literal curtain--I think I was picturing the Berlin Wall*, basically. I remember being fascinated by the August coup too and was seriously disappointed when Gorbachev turned out not to be a simple hero. I loved the drama of his escape from danger in the coup--at least the way I understood the coup at the time--and wanted him to be a simple white knight.

*Actually, I remember the Berlin Wall coming down too, which was probably before my USSR-related memories, but I didn't really understand the implications. I mean I was glad people could go see their family now, but it wasn't real.

Posted by Zappa (# 8433) on :

My parents being apoplectic because some dude called Harold Wilson had become Something Important™. I was a child living in Ghana at the time. It was soon followed by unrelated riots when some dude called Kwame Nkrumah was couped d'etated (or whatever the verb might be).

By the time I became interested in politics I was living on small and shaky islands far, far away, and the Prime Minister, a man named Norman Kirk, suddenly died [Tear]

. I still thought Labour (later I would move countries again and it would become Labor) were The Enemies of Common Sense and Decency (he was a Labour PM). Now I know that phrase refers to all politicians.

Posted by Oscar P. (# 10412) on :

Like several who have posted, my earliest memory is of President Kennedy's assassination in 1963. I was in first grade and remember my teachers being upset and telling us to sit quietly in our seats because something bad had happened. A few days later I remember being irritated with my parents because my sisters and I were made to sit and watch the funeral on TV when we wanted to go play.

Posted by The5thMary (# 12953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:

quote:
I do remember my mother crying as she watched some political funeral broadcast on t.v. Hoover, somebody, because when she told me, I looked at our Hoover vacuum cleaner and said, "He made our vacuum cleaner?" and she told me to be quiet, she wanted to watch the funeral. I was all of four years old, I think.

Possibly J. Edgar, because he died in 1972.

I think you may be right and that scares me. Crying about J. Edgar Hoover?! Holy shit, I hope my mother wasn't that right wing! She voted for Jimmy Carter, though... maybe she was just having a bad day or something. Couldn't get to the liquor store or ran out of cigarettes... God, the thought of her crying FOR that vile man... [Eek!]

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
I think you may be right and that scares me. Crying about J. Edgar Hoover?! Holy shit, I hope my mother wasn't that right wing! She voted for Jimmy Carter, though... maybe she was just having a bad day or something. Couldn't get to the liquor store or ran out of cigarettes... God, the thought of her crying FOR that vile man...

Well, obviously, I didn't know your mother, but I'd imagine that a lot of people who mourned Hoover wouldn't have known much about his vile practices, and were merely remembering him by his image of Mr. Competent Law Enforcement.

I know my mother cried for Kennedy, and would still cry for him today. But I don't consider him much better than Hoover, quite frankly. No offense to any Camelot swooners here, but even LBJ referred to Kennedy's meddlings in Latin America as "a goddam Murder Inc.", and felt himself obligated to rein it in.

And I'd be wiliing to bet that Kennedy farmed out at least some of his domestic dirty-work to J. Edgar Hoover.

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

More likely Herbert Hoover, who died in 1964. I doubt J. Edgar's funeral was televised, but an ex-president's would have been.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
More likely Herbert Hoover, who died in 1964. I doubt J. Edgar's funeral was televised, but an ex-president's would have been.

Yeah, but Mary says she was born in 1967. And according to this, J. Edgar Hoover's funeral was carried live by the networks. That's mentioned in the 13th paragraph.

[ 21. June 2013, 19:36: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

Wow. That's kind of freaky. I don't know how I missed it. It would have been a good occasion for a party.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
Wow. That's kind of freaky. I don't know how I missed it. It would have been a good occasion for a party.

My impression, buttressed by the Clint Eastwood biopic, is that J. Edgar Hoover pretty much established a personality-cult around himself. At least according to the film, he was actually called before congress and made to answer questions about why FBI-endorsed comic-books exaggerated his role in the solving of various cases.

So, if there's any American civil-servant who would be granted a televised funeral, it would probably he him.

Posted by Anna B (# 1439) on :

I remember seeing a poster with the Presidents' faces on the wall of my kindergarten classroom. The newest was Gerald Ford.

A later memory: My father was not a fan of Jimmy Carter, and often ranted on this subject. One day we were all sitting at dinner when he started up. I said, "Dad, I know that you don't agree with President Carter, but he is our President and we should respect him." I cannot for the life of me remember how those words came to me, a third-grader. In any case my father turned the color of a beet and the subject was permanently dropped.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
Wow. That's kind of freaky. I don't know how I missed it. It would have been a good occasion for a party.

Apparently some of the footage of that funeral has survived. Possibly NSFW!(You'll see what I mean right after clicking).

It doesn't say if this footage comes from a TV broadcast.

Posted by cygnus (# 3294) on :

I vaguely remember Canada getting its new flag (1965), and a couple of years later remember getting a day off school for the Governor General's funeral (Vanier), although we had no TV at that point so I never saw it.

It was the following year that I remember a lot from- I was old enough to understand more, and 1968 was a momentous year. I remember both the MLK and the RFK assassinations, Trudeaumania, and the Prague spring (followed by the Soviet invasion). This one hit close to home as my father is Slovak Canadian. All of these were discussed at school and in the schoolyard, although I was only in Grade 3/4 at the time. I think that's when I became a news junkie and started reading my parents' Time magazines.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Cygnus wrote:

quote:
I think that's when I became a news junkie and started reading my parents' Time magazines.

Remember the 1970s split editions, with government-endorsed Canadian content? I never quite got the idea of putting CanCon in American newsmagazines. Doesn't that just make them competitive against Canadian-owned publications?

I also recall Jack Davis, of Mad Magazine, illustrating Time covers of that era. He captured the frazzled spirit of the times well.

Swinging across the pond, I think a close second for my earliest memory of British politics would be the trial of Jermey Thorpe, which apparently started right after the 1979 election.

[ 24. June 2013, 16:08: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by The5thMary (# 12953) on :

georgiaboy: (All of which, I guess, puts me in the geezer class.)

Yes, isn't it about time you changed your name to georgiaMAN? Or, georgiaANCIENT? georgiaHASBEEN? Oh, I could go on and on. All this time I've been thinking you were a young whippersnapper, even younger than me (I just turned 46 on June 18). [Smile]

Posted by ChaliceGirl (# 13656) on :

I was about 5 or 6 when I kept hearing the word "Watergate" on TV but I had no clue what it meant.

I was 7 or 8 when I wrote to President Carter and his daughter Amy. The White House send me back lovely booklet that taught children about the president and the White House. I cherished that!

Posted by The5thMary (# 12953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ChaliceGirl:
I was about 5 or 6 when I kept hearing the word "Watergate" on TV but I had no clue what it meant.

I was 7 or 8 when I wrote to President Carter and his daughter Amy. The White House send me back lovely booklet that taught children about the president and the White House. I cherished that!

I remember some relatives sneering about Jimmy Carter being "just a Southern redneck peanut farmer!". Oh, but was that worse than a mediocre actor from "woo woo" California? Boy, they just went on and on about Carter being a peanut farmer. Hey, it worked for George Washington Carver! I love peanuts!
[Biased]

Posted by Zappa (# 8433) on :

We had a political thug in Australia who was a peanut farmer ... he was not worthy to scratch in the dirt that Carter walked (walks) on [Mad]

Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :

I suppose my earliest political memory is of huge US Air Force planes being loaded with Thor missiles that had been operated by the RAF. It was only years later that I found out that this was part of the deal that prevented us all being turned to glass during the Cuba missile crisis.

A year or so later I remember my mum stomping round the house in a bad move because "the Socialists" had got in, at the expense of that nice Mr Heath.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Boy, they just went on and on about Carter being a peanut farmer. Hey, it worked for George Washington Carver! I love peanuts!

It would probably be more accurate to describe Carter as a mid-level agricultural businessman, with training as a nuclear physicist.

But "peanut farmer" made for better jokes. And admittedly, brother Billy did not do much to help with banishing the hick image.

Posted by Chorister (# 473) on :

I had to find out the names of the leaders of each political party for homework when I was about 9 years old. I can remember thinking it was something to do with birthday parties at first. [Hot and Hormonal]

Posted by mark_in_manchester (# 15978) on :

I remember (age 5) asking my mum about the Jeremy Thorpe affair. And, to her credit, emerging with some sense that 'some men like to live with other men' - but that it was somehow odd, hard to talk about...

At only a slightly older age, my oldest had read a poem at a civil partnership ceremony. How times change.

Posted by mark_in_manchester (# 15978) on :

Oops, sorry Stetson, you beat me to it. That'll learn me to read the thread more carefully...

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

quote:
Oops, sorry Stetson

No need to apologize. Your anecdote was an interesting one. It pretty much captures the way I heard homosexuality discussed by adults in the same era.

I think Thorpe might have been the first public figure I ever heard about being discussed as homosexual, though I had learned about homosexuality itself in the mid-70s.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

My earliest political memories include my mom as a block organizer for tricky Dick Nixon in '60, and a rousing playground game of tag we played in '64 that was framed as Democrats v. Republicans.

More seriously I remember the principal coming into my 2nd grade classroom to tell us Pres. Kennedy had been shot, and of course the poignant funeral. I remember watching TV coverage of the looting during the L.A. riots and asking my dad why we didn't go downtown too to get a free TV.

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