As a child in the 1960s, all I wanted to do was get to London: to be rich and famous, yes, but also to go on demos. As I watched the attractive young adults having seven bells knocked out of them by the boys in blue for protesting outside the American embassy against the Vietnam War, I yearned to join the struggle. But as I was eight years old, this seemed highly unlikely at any time in the immediate future.
Instead I sought out and found images of the American civil rights marches: men in suits, nuns and priests, dignified black and white students. Then the suffragettes: delicate Edwardian women in bonnets and bustles being dragged away by the police to be force-fed. And right back to the Jarrow marches, which I can’t see photographs of to this day without feeling a distinct kick of class-hatred.
When I finally got to London, I threw myself at demos like a girl trying out potential suitors, dallying with being in favour of dolphins one weekend and being against hunting the next.
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