Letters to my sons.

Dear Boys,

after my last post things have moved on. Gordon Brown resigned and David Cameron become Prime Minister.

The first change of Prime Minister I remember was when Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979. Mr Robinson, the head teacher at South Parade Middle school, told us in the morning assembly that we now had the first woman Prime Minister in the UK although she wasn’t the first woman Premier in the world as there had been others. I remember the election being called, the front page of the Telegraph had a picture of a calendar showing the date of the election. In those days at home we used to have tea while listening to “P.M.” on Radio 4 and they used to broadcast a lot of the debates in Parliament. I remember something about the Liberal’s not being allowed to use a dispatch box because some MP’s put their feet up and wouldn’t let him past.

Parliament wasn’t televised in those days and as a child I had no idea what it looked like inside. I had this idea that all the MP’s were all in a large hall like the church hall at the Haven Methodist Church, were Grandpa John was the Minister. The church hall had a large set of both brown and blue chairs made from tubular steel. When we had boys brigade in the hall we used to get out blue chairs – the colour of the Boys Brigade uniform and not brown – the colour of the Brownies uniform. In my minds eye the rows of chairs were put out and angry men would stand up and try and shout down the man speaking at the front. The rows neat rows of chairs that would have been put out in the morning but with the all the anger and shouting they would have been higgledy piggledy. I would love get some tapes of parliament from that time so you could hear them – the shouting and the anger. As a young child during the winter, when it was already dark, I found it quite frighting. The shouting was hateful, loud and constant – well the stuff they broadcast anyway.

In the morning we also had Radio 4 on and the time I needed to leave to for school was when the “Yesterday In Parliament” segment started with an “Order Order” from the Speaker. When I eventually did get to see the inside of Parliament with it’s green seats I was very surprised as it looked nothing like the image in my mind. For a start there were benches, not tubular steel chairs covered with cloth and the benches were set out in rows facing each other.

When I listen to you William talk about how you image things work I think about my ideas of parliament and how wrong I was but it was fun to imagine.