I have been ‘tagged’ by Clwyd West MP and well-regarded blogger David Jones to share my earliest ‘political memories’.
These are most surely clouded by the passing time.
Some are in black and white, while others are tinged with sepia tone.
Overall they bear a striking resemblance to Life on Mars.
But I do recall joining my uncle on the election campaign trail, delivering his leaflets, when he first stood for the then Flint Borough Council in the 1960s. (He won, beating I believe a former mayor, who was, I'm sorry David, a Conservative.)
There was an air of excitement because the Labour MP for East Flint at the time Eirene White (later Baroness White) was also knocking doors in our street as an entourage of eager party workers swept through seeking a commitment to vote.
Beyond that I can remember an overwhelmingly sense of injustice at TV images of the Soviet (Warsaw Pact) invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
I was appalled at the pictures of the Red Army tanks on the streets of what must have been Prague.
So much so I had to leave the house to warn friends who, I thought at the time, were unashamedly under-whelmed at the momentous news I was reporting. (No change there, then).
There were the power cuts and the candle-lit homework in front of the fire at home caused by industrial unrest when I was studying for GCE ‘O’ Levels.
And again during the early 70s – the era of pay caps, oil crises and rampant inflation during the Heath government, when we had the Three Day Week.
As a young reporter, the closure of Shotton steelworks on Deeside left a lasting perspective on the impact on people’s lives of macro-economic events, and the ability of politicians to affect them.
Up to 13,000 families were once supported by the works and 6,500 workers were made redundant when it closed in 1980 after an impassioned local battle to try to save it.
I remember going into a local pub in Flint around that time.
The town was also suffering from Courtaulds textile factory rundowns and closures and was inflicted by a male unemployment rate running at more than one in three.
That lunchtime only the barman and myself among the gathered group were actually in a job, the rest having been made redundant or unemployed.
“You’ve never had it so good.”
“Crisis, what crisis?”
I am duty bound by blogging convention to tag others: Daniel Davies, Editor Rob Irvine, Sandy Mewies, and any readers can add theirs to the comments section.
