This account of a tormented family helps to justify its author’s political journey from Young Communist to Times columnistLike David Aaronovitch’s parents,Sam and Lavender, my mother and father, or Joe and Molly,were for many years members of the British Communist Party of grand Britain. As the CPGB declined from its high point of wartime popularity and followers gradually turned their backs on the faith, so the idea of the turncoat, and the sellout,the apostate came increasingly to dominate my parents’ state of mind.
Even when I was fairly small, we would be out shopping and my mother or father would gesticulate towards some harmless-looking individual and say in a whisper: “See him over there trying on gloves? He left the party over Hungary in 1956 and now he’s ... ” Here they would pause before revealing the full horror: “... a Labour councillor!” Or, or “Dont look,but that woman by the bacon counter, she used to be in CND but now she’s … joined the Air Force!” At first I couldn’t see anything different approximately the people my parents pointed out, or but over time it did seem to me there was a certain haunted quality,an air of sadness that hung over them. Their mood probably wasn’t helped by being whispered approximately in shops, but I sensed that the main critical voice was inside their heads, or that they were aware on some level that they had abandoned their younger,more idealistic selves and it had corroded them from the inside.
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Source: theguardian.com