Apparently we are supposed to start out as teenage starry-eyed lefty idealists who slowly embark on this journey rightward as we gradually see things with ever greater doses of realism. Obviously it's a hell of a generalisation otherwise there'd be no Young Tories, unless they all ended up as middle-aged Monday Clubbers. Not that some don't, though my recollection of the hardliners in the Federation of Conservative Students is that their journey to the right would have been a short one.

I suppose there's some truth in it. I'm not an anarcho-situationist activist any more but I still vaguely see things using the same analysis. I'm bewildered how anyone can lurch as far as say La Phillips has done. There must be limits.

So have you made this journey? Or do you feel you are making it? Do you think you never will? And who said something like that they pitied anyone who wasn't a Commy at fifteen as well as anyone who was still one at fifty? Could have been French.

No. I think I'm to the left of where I was twenty years ago. I am certainly much more offended by the right than I was then, as I see this creeping rightwards going on in society. Also, in association with that, an erosion of standards in journalism and a declining regard for the truth from right-wing politicians, writers and fellow-travellers.

I'm probably more to the right than where I was when I was 17 or 18. Although, I am less politically aware than I was then. So it's probably as I get lazier that I drift to the right.

I don't see myself becoming a right-winger in my old age.

Moved to the left. Always disliked Tories, but read Dancing With Dogma, and thought, this is how it should be. Then eventually understood about trade unions and moved left.

Started off after leaving school as a filthy, lefty, "shaft-the-system" Anarcho-punk.

Moved closer the (fiscal) right when I started earning a bit of decent money.

Realised the pointlessness of it all and shifted back to the left after a year or two.

Since then seem to have settled down to a left-of-centre "do what you want as long as it's legal and I don't have to hear/see/smell/experience it" type of existence.

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Last edited by Carlos The Badger on Thu Feb 31, 2021 18:60 am, edited 666 times in total.

Denis Healey, who joined the Communist Party whilst at Oxford, said "If you are not a Communist when you are 20 then you have no heart. If you are still a Communist when you are 30, you have no brain."*

I've no idea if he was quoting anyone, French or otherwise - I thought it was original but may be not.

* That's from memory, so may not be 100% but the gist is right.

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That subtle admixture of the absurd and the surreally plausible...

I started off quite hard right then veered left when I was at Uni

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"Even when you're a super-computer with an IQ of 2000 it's brown trousers time."

Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)

I started off middle of the road-ish but was shifted to the far left, certainly economically, by Thatcher.still a bit right -ish though on anti social yobs (sorry)

I was politically awoken jointly by The National Front and Margaret Thatcher in 1979 when I was 15. I despised them so much I would have supported anyone who opposed them. Throughout my early 20s I was a Labour Party activist who really wanted to be in the SWP, but after a few meetings I found their talk of imminent Socialist revolution far-fetched, impractical, depressing and downright silly. They also seemed much more interested in attacking Neil Kinnock than Thatcher. I was also fairly active in CND, ANL and RAR.

I grew less angry and shouty once Thatcher was booted out and voted for New Labour (through gritted teeth) so I suppose that's a drift to the Right.
However I comfort myself that I'm entirely consistent - I have always voted for anyone who would keep the Tories out* - and my socialism has always stemmed from a humanitarian instinct rather than any great intellectual ideological position.

Now I'm getting angry (and active) again thanks to the ConDems/UKIP/EDL. I think I'm probably more Left-wing than I was 30 years ago, I'm just better read and more subtle in my opposition to the Right than I used to be.

*Which has meant Labour so far, but I could imagine voting tactically if circumstances dictated it.

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That subtle admixture of the absurd and the surreally plausible...

As a 28 year old my 18 year old self would have laughed if I had said I'm a Labour Party member, certaintly become a more moderate leftie but never lost that deep sense for those less fortunate than myself, I suppose that will stay with me for life and certaintly something that will keep me ever going to the Tory right.

I find young Tories rather odd to be honest and they are usually quite patronising and think they know it all, when to be honest they are quite sheltered from real life.

I was born into a Labour family, my father was a genuine socialist (though my grandfather was a proper communist, so I had Russian christmas presents, visits to the Moscow State Circus and pictures of me by a framed photo of Uncle Joe!). I was brought up with Paul Robeson, Chuter Ede and Keir Hardie as my 'compass'. My father was a war veteran pacifist, and a genuinely tolerant man.

Joined the Labour Party in '64 to campaign for Harold Wilson and rid the world of Alec Douglas Home. I've been a member continuously since.
Liked Kinnock, approved of the reforms. Admired John Smith and was devastated by his sudden and untimely death. Supported Blair and voted for him in the leadership election, saw him as a better hope than Brown - never liked him.

Supported Blair at first, but he lost me with his religious mania and wars. I rather abstained from active participation in those years.

Massively angry at this government's ideological agenda, which is pure class warfare. I despise the orange book Liberals, but still hope that we can make some sort of deal with the Social Liberals.

So - keeping left. And proud of it.

I started out pretty firmly right wing, having grown up in a very Conservative family where my mother thought Thatcher was a living God - though even then I wasn't too convinced. I began the journey leftwards gradually but became much more entrenched when I began working in a firm which did a lot of legal aid work primarily for people in the more deprived areas of the South, and I became more and more incensed about how the most vulnerable people get totally shat on. That became entwined with a growing awareness of how the right wing Press lie and collude with that process, and irritation with the fact that they get away with it and convince so many people that their lies are the truth. It didn't lead me to vote Labour mainly because (a) I couldn't stick Blair's blatant populism and (b) I live in a constituency which was and possibly still is fairly marginal, and the best chance of keeping the Conservative out was to vote Lib Dem. Or so I thought till the last election. Not too sure what I'd vote now, but I suspect it would be a tactical vote again.

Pretty much the same for me, minus the book.

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The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.

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I've never been of the right. Not ever. I grew up in the west of Scotland in a working-class family where dad was a car worker at Linwood - which later closed down early on in Thatcher's first economic holocaust. Dad had grown disillusioned with Labour even then and had bought into the whole "It's Scotland's Oil" wave of SNP popularity. Naturally, I voted as Dad did at the first general election at which I was eligible to do so (1979) and voted SNP -I still remember going round to the community centre with Dad and Mum to vote. I spent the next few years resisting the overtures of some frankly nutty SNP acquaintances and eventually realised that for me, Labour was really the only real option, and that has not changed now I'm fifty something.

in this sense, I'm like Armsteen in that I've never deviated from my view that the
Labour party, in practical terms, represents the only practical and most immediate option for anyone who wants social justice and progressive governance that strives towards a fairer and more equal society, together with the eradication of privilege - preferably in my lifetime. I joined the party in 1983' and have been a member (and even on occasion an unsuccessful candidate) ever since.

I too was knocked sideways when Smith died suddenly, but I voted for Beckett for leader because I thought she had done fantastic job as interim leader after Smithy had gone. And I never really trusted Blair - I agreed with the description of him as a pot-bound, rootless politician who could easily have got on comfortably and in accordance with his conscience just as easily in the Tory party. But I did recognise that he was a charismatic individual that was electoral catnip for the party. In my view, that he chose to support Bush's insane adventure in Iraq was the greatest tragedy for Labour of that entire era.

So I've not moved to the right with age, simply because I continue to recognise that the agenda of the right is, not to put too fine a point on it, offensive, sickening bollocks.

Frankly, I think that if you move rightwards with age, it's because you've got stupider with age.

For me, it's quite simple.

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I'm a nasty, violent lefty. You cunt.

I would have to have right wing defined to me. I certainly have some traits that are of the 'right' however I am anti hypocrisy, distortion and lies.

I am therefore anti 99.99% of the methods employed by right wing political parties, together with their media supporters, in the UK and the USA.

I am politically 'left' for a lot of issues too.... I should add.....

I think I have moved in both directions as I got older....

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You may say I'm a dreamer.... but I'm not the only one....