Children of the Revolution:

Remembering Writing Children of the Revolution

By Angela Phillips

Re-reading this article was like visiting a long-lost friend.  I remembered it instantly, but the details were hazy. I had been living through a golden age of freelance journalism. Newspapers were filled with ads; there was masses of space to be filled and money to pay for it.  The Guardian was eager to reflect on the social changes that their staff not only wrote about but lived.

My own children were ten and five, I was relatively new to being a single parent and journalism gave me license to research and write about things I cared about. Many of my articles were concerned with how to help children flourish in a changing world. I poured over emerging research into changing lifestyles, attended abstruse sociological conferences and looked for ways of illustrating what I was beginning to understand.

The headline ‘The kids are all right’ was chosen by the sub-editor. It reflected what I am sure was his own fervent hope.  My text told a rather more nuanced story. Indeed, it was the lessons I learned here, particularly from talking to the young men, that I think set me on the path to writing my book The Trouble with Boys which was published four years later. But that is a story for another time.

Reflections 36 Years Later

By Abigail Thaw

The first thing that strikes me on reading this article 36 years on (apart from the misspelling of my and my father’s surname!) is how complicated it was for us so-called ‘Children of the Revolution’. We were growing up in a bubble of politically conscious communal living, surrounded by a society that was wary of accepting it as the norm. I appear manically positive about it – ‘confident and breezy’ – but my experience probably had more in common with some of the other ambivalent young people in the interview. Of course, we were ‘articulate and well spoken’; we were exposed to a vast array of adult life. To this day I can talk to pretty much anyone and that’s a product of my being brought up among various personalities, negotiating chores, rooms, social and political events.  We were included in discussions and decisions that maybe were a little over our heads. We were precocious because we were exposed to more and that was exciting. I was aware of sexual relationships fairly young, as well as sexual politics and gender. That’s not to say sex was open but mine was a household of young people in their twenties and thirties experimenting and testing social boundaries.

At school, however, and on the streets, we had to be regular kids. I lived in central London and went to Pimlico, one of the larger comprehensives in the city, since knocked down. It was an almost daily challenge to get through the day without someone threatening to beat you up because of your accent or your clothes. I suspect some of the others had similar experience; you had to be wily and quick to assess a situation. It was years before I could use the school toilets unaccompanied.

I didn’t know any of my fellow ‘Children of the Revolution’, I met them once on the day of the photograph, and I vaguely remember feeling self-conscious. The perm for my new job didn’t help. I don’t remember anything about the interview either. I wonder if I was asked the same questions as the others, we seem to focus on different things. I’d love to meet them now. I’m not sure what was meant by ‘movement aristocrat’. ‘Movement’ as in travelling back and forth to family members and friends, or being the child of political aristocrats? If the latter, I was speaking in hindsight and not even sure it was true, certainly unaware of it growing up. If it was the former meaning of the phrase, then the slightly chaotic existence served to form loving connections which I enjoy to this day.

I recognise the sentiment of my interview; I was proud of my unusual upbringing at that point in my life. I had lived in a co-operative where everyone shared the chores and cooking and cleaning, something I remind my own kids if the need arises. I relished focusing on the glamour of it, perhaps as a slight prod at mum’s rather puritan attitude at that time to ‘clothes, gossip, popular music’. I had cultivated a story of beautiful and culturally diverse women – devoted men (and women) in tow – in the middle of a fairly conservative, working-class neighbourhood. And indeed, that’s what it was; a source of fascination to a lot of locals. But perhaps it was not as glamorous as I made it sound. It was also pedestrian and confusing. Relationships were complex, people argued a lot. My mother used to resist the term ’commune’ and I can see she meant we were all just house sharing.

I was an anomaly in my community. I ‘spoke posh’ but we didn’t have money. My mother didn’t have a regular job. In fact, no one did, they were all artists and academics. Some dressed unusually, didn’t wear shoes (or bras!), there were no grandparents living in like some school-friends had, making their meals daily when not their mothers. I lived in a large, terraced house, not a council flat, but it was crumbling and tatty. Men were around but none were my father or married to the women living there. We had Indian throws over a mattress instead of a sofa. My clothes were ethnic and my hair long and tangled. These seemingly small things matter to children. You’re so desperate to be accepted, you’re not thinking about the progress of equal opportunities, sexual politics or true socialism. Television was considered brainrot so I couldn’t join in at the playground about what was on the night before. I didn’t see my father’s popular tv series until I was well into my teens. But I knew the theme tune because kids would sing it at me on the streets, ‘Oy, Sweeney Girl!’ (someone had spotted my father visiting and word had spread) ‘If your dad’s famous, how come you look like a tramp?!’

I appreciate how whiny this sounds from a white, middle-class woman and I know you can’t win as a parent. I was aware mum was doing something important, but I didn’t see as much of her as I would have liked. Then again, what child does? One of the main advantages of a commune was there was always someone around, so who needed a television set?

And having different people doing my school run was not only convenient for my mother: on a day Roberta – a household member – was due to collect me, I was kept in after school for some minor offence. Roberta marched in, gave the teacher short shrift for not providing due warning, dismissed the legitimacy for it anyway, and walked me out. I clutched Roberta’s hand all the way home in awe and gratitude. Now, mum wouldn’t have done that…

Political meetings were frequent and intense affairs crammed in mum’s study with women sitting on every available space. or, if they involved men – like the History Workshop Journal meetings – they’d be in the basement kitchen and more rowdy. I enjoyed sidling into either, as a small child, where I might get to sit on someone’s lap or draw while animated discussions flew across my head. It was years before I realised this type of activity was unusual for most households – Spare Rib and The Morning Star on the kitchen table was a different ballgame from my friends’ Daily Mirror.

I would announce my Feminism at school proudly in the early 70s, uncertain of the details of that premise but owning it, nonetheless. I once went in chanting ‘Franco Assassino! Franco Assassino is dead!’ on the day the Fascist General died. No idea what it meant, except that my mother and Gareth were happy that morning on listening to the news. A teacher at school gave me an encouraging smile and that kept me going for the rest of the day.

Feminist and Socialist demonstrations were many – the Women’s Liberation march, the Night Cleaners movement and I loved going on them, proudly holding my mother’s hand and chanting. It undoubtedly contributed to my own political activism in the 1980s. The highest currency of all in my household was to be politically articulate. I was taught that if I didn’t understand something to ask and if I didn’t agree with something, to question. Two maxims I still live by.

As I grew older Feminism became indistinguishable from being a woman. It was only reasonable to assume – indeed, stating the bleeding obvious – that women were as capable as men, albeit different biologically. And that we deserved the same opportunities, pay, education and human rights. My mother, her friends and the men in our lives (we were never ‘anti-men’, they were allies in the struggle) were full of love and encouragement. There was nothing I could not do that would be hindered by gender. And about the time I was interviewed in 1990, that is what I truly believed; you can hear it in my exuberance.

Then I got older and life happened, careers and children happen and micro-misogyny happens. We are still living in a man’s world, it’s just that the axis has shifted and the argument has moved. I am a beneficiary of second wave feminism and exceedingly grateful, as are my girlfriends, to the brave choices my mother and her colleagues made. For them relationships and perhaps easier living were sacrificed along the way.

I sometimes despair of the younger generation of women; don’t they realise what it was like not so very long ago? When you weren’t allowed a bank account, had no access to certain jobs or education, let alone wage? But maybe that’s being sixty and a little bewildered by what’s around me. I’m old enough to know that you actually can’t ‘have it all’ as a woman. And if they’re living their lives thoroughly, neither can men. But you can have each thing at different times in your life. And, with the risk of sounding Pollyanna about it, we have more similarities than differences if we’d just stop and listen.

Society is still biased. There are many insidious traps and blockades. Andrew Tate exists, the Dominique Pelicots of this world exist, Trump exists, lip-fillers exist… My mother and her colleagues’ ideals seem almost quaint in this new age of social media, as do mine. My 23 and 28-year-old daughters remind me of this frequently, but they continue to educate me. My youngest is the age I am in those photos, and I thought I knew it all. The days of stopping America’s nuclear weapons occupy our land by holding hands around Greenham Common and singing our lungs out seem the stuff of dreams. It’s a different fight now.

By Emma Young

My mother, Sheila Ernst, made the choice to live communally. She believed that the personal is political, that we learn by doing and teach by being. We lived in the East End in a communal house and everything was shared and shaped by the politics of the 1970s: marching against the National Front, and community organising, living without traditional gender roles. I love coming from this heritage. There were so many gifts it gave me.

I think about it a lot. Living communally taught me that it is normal to collaborate, to work together. I think a collective is always more than the sum of its parts and that is how I approach my work as a doctor. I feel comfortable in a team. I feel at home.

It was always important to talk about feelings and that is also something I bring into my work. When I talk to medical students, I talk about difficult feelings, and the way in which people take up different roles in a group. That understanding is part of everything I do.

Living in a communal setting there were always other adults around – it wasn’t just you and your parents locked in battle – you could row with anyone if you wanted to and we had a lot of freedom.

I have a long-term partner and three children but the only time we live communally is in the summer when we go on holiday with old friends. My partner was brought up in a more conventional family setting, and we struggle a bit with the difference in culture. For me collaborating is a way of living, he finds that harder.  We agree that it is important to sit at the table together for meals but find it harder to cook together.   I don’t feel I should organise the children all the time – I believe in giving them some of the freedom that I had.

I lived communally until I was sixteen when we moved into a separate family home with my mother’s partner, Jonathon, and my two sisters.  It was weird when the house split up and the people I had lived with were no longer an integral part of my life. There is something unresolved about being so close – and then not being close – but my mother created an amazing sense of security. She made us feel safe in a profound way. I feel incredibly lucky.

Emma Young is a Consultant in Emergency Medicine and Dean of Bart’s Health NHS Trust. Her mother, Sheila, was a radical psychoanalyst. Her obituary is here.

Thanks to David Sillitoe for the two wonderful large formal photographs. We tried, but unfortunately we couldn’t contact you, so do please get in touch if you see this.