I too have been on lots of demos and picket lines and I've been threatened not only by the police (also whilst on my bike as it happens) but also by the establishment in my trade union (which was called the NUT in those days). I've been to many a frenetic far-left meeting in an upstairs smoke-filled room. In my somewhat naive yoof I admit to having tended to see things in too much black and white. Just like those party conferences we've just endured, those rooms were bubbles insulated from the outside world. Many of my socialist mates were revolutionaries, but I was never that and I didn't join anything other than the Anti-Nazi League. I like to think I take more of a measured view of things these days, hopefully informed by better understanding of the issues of the day with just a smattering of pragmatism thrown in. I've also been one of those lucky buggers who bought a cheap house with a little mortgage just before the era of house-price booms set in and who has enjoyed a secure-job-for-long-as-I-wanted-it. But I've never shed my leftie predilections and I love to be called a leftie. I won't bother listing what that actually means, but at least I've managed to avoid conspiratorial thoughts to the effect that everyone I see on the telly in a protest is a faux-leftie-ex-student-union-middle-class-showboating-git with a hint of the earth-mother thrown in...