11/18/2023 0 Comments Hey mister postman![]() ![]() If he returned to the fray, Johnson would be a huge asset in an election that is bound to focus on the future of the health service (the "Tory privatisation agenda" was a recurrent theme in the Scottish independence debate) and the viability of the welfare system. This Boy showed that there was at least one "big beast" left in the Labour party who could talk about the struggles of life on the breadline in practical, rather than theoretical, terms. They were lucky to have a council flat – dank, cramped and insecure as it was – or they would have been homeless, too. Similarly, the young Alan and his sister received no family allowance (or its successor, child benefit), and his mother was forced to work long hours as a cleaner despite the deterioration of her heart valves. When Lily died, her son found out that she had worn false teeth for decades – she had seized on the introduction of free dental care to replace her own teeth, rotted and stunted by malnutrition, with far superior falsies. ![]() The attraction of This Boy for left-wing readers was obvious: it showed the quiet horror of life before the NHS and the creation of the welfare state's safety net. It also gave Alan and Judy their own front door – something his mother had longed for all her life. Johnson's next decade was far less turbulent: although the newlyweds were warned on arriving in Slough that the Britwell estate was dangerous, it turned out to be a haven a tightknit circle of houses around a village green. No wonder he had to renounce his dreams of rock stardom in favour of all the overtime he could manage at the Post Office. At 17, Johnson met his first wife Judy, who was already a single mother, and, before he turned 20, the couple had married and had two children of their own. By 18, he was effectively orphaned: his father Steve had deserted his mother Lily (in favour of Vera, the barmaid at the Lads of the Village) before he was in his teens, and his mother died of a heart condition without ever having another serious relationship. This Boy revealed that Johnson had crammed in an enormous amount of living before he had even reached adulthood. Readers of the first book might find the slow pace of the second jarring at first. These are the years during which he left the slums of west London and moved to a council house on the Britwell estate in Slough, where he worked for the Post Office and, later, its trade union. Please, Mister Postman is the sequel, covering Johnson's life from the start of his first marriage, aged 18, to its end in his mid-30s. Since stepping down, he has carved out a successful media career, which includes sharing a tiny sofa with Michael Portillo on This Week and publishing an award-winning memoir of his childhood, This Boy. Unfortunately, their love is so far unrequited: Johnson shows no desire to return to frontline politics, having quit after four unhappy months as shadow chancellor in 2011, citing "personal issues". At both the top and the grassroots of the party, influential figures want him installed as what my former colleague at the New Statesman Rafael Behr calls "shadow secretary of state for working-class authenticity and having lived a bit". ![]() The publication of Alan Johnson's second volume of memoirs is timely: Labour is currently in the grip of AJ fever. ![]()
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