Growing up Communist in post-War Britain must have been a strange experience. David Aaronovitch, now a columnist for The Times and soft-left supporter of Britain’s recent foreign military interventions, was immersed in Communism from his birth in 1954.

David’s father Sam was a full-time organiser for the party and his mother Lavender an ardent member. His childhood friends were children of fellow Communists. He went to socialist Sunday school. His babysitter, dentist and doctor were all party members. When his parents needed work done to their home they would turn to a party builder or architect. This reliance on party members led to work being done cheaply — they always offered a discount to fellow Communists — but not necessarily well. The party builder, when repairing the garden shed, killed off Mrs Aaronovitch’s beloved honeysuckle. Only when there was a falling out with the party dentist did David discover that other practitioners used local anesthetic.

David’s parents followed very different paths to Communism. Sam’s own parents were Jews from near Vilnius, then in the Russian empire, who came to Britain in the early years of the 20th century. Like many others, they settled in east London and lived a life of grinding poverty. When David’s grandmother died in Dalston in 1969 she still spoke very little English, conversing almost entirely in Yiddish. Sam rejected his parents’ Judaism, seeing it as mere superstition, and gravitated towards the Communist Party. In 1934, aged 14, he joined the Young Communist League. A year later he left school with very little in the way of qualifications. Work eventually took him to Glasgow. He laboured there in the Rolls-Royce engine works until leaving in 1942 to take up a full-time party position, propaganda secretary for the Scottish Communists. He would remain in the party’s employ until 1967.

Read the article “Growing up Communist” on standpointmag.co.uk.