After the recent general election, and the resulting freeing up of the Conservative government to follow their preferred agenda unfettered by being a parliamentary minority reliant upon Lib-Dem support, we are beginning to see what was wholly predictable beforehand. The government is systematically abandoning its manifesto commitments that might have alleviated some of the worst effects of the austerity programme, and are pushing through all those parts of their neo-liberal economic agenda as quickly as possible before they start losing some of their slim majority in the inevitable by-elections to come. Thus we are seeing the rapid increase in removal of state benefits to those who are struggling to survive; the selling off of state assets to the capital owning class at knock-down prices to reduce the size of the state and to concentrate power and profits in the hands of this group; the further deregulation of the market by removing even those small remaining controls on the worst excesses of capital accumulation - increased poverty and environmental degradation - and the outright assault on the Trade Unions, already a diminished force in our society, and now ready to be effectively eliminated. There will be no allowable opposition to the complete transfer of power and wealth to a single class, the same class that has already received the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor to the super-rich in the history of capitalism in order to prevent the economic system from collapsing completely as a result of their own corrupt pursuit of yet greater wealth in the 2008 banking crisis. Indeed, this whole government programme of state reduction and its consequent ideological shift away from collective provision to that of 'individual responsibility', the erasure of any notion of the 'common good' is all part of the price we will continue to pay for years to come from the profligacy of the very group of people who created the crisis in the first place. That is, if it is not resisted. We are already witnessing the derision and condemnation being heaped on the utterly inoffensive Jeremy Corbyn for having the temerity to challenge this neo-liberal orthodoxy and for having some initial success in doing so. When the top dogs in the Labour Party turn their wrath on one who is offering a pretty orthodox critique of neo-liberalism and its disastrous consequences for ordinary people, you know the party has become a complete irrelevance to addressing the realities of the age. If Alastair Campbell says Labour members should vote for anyone but Corbyn, you should be reassured that,of those on offer, Corbyn's your man.

I have started this section with my view of what has happened recently and over the last thirty-five years for at least one very good reason. My generation is deeply implicated in this profound ideological shift and it affects us all economically, but also psychologically in very profound ways. Just as it seems to me to be foolish to play the generational blame game, the generation during which a seismic ideological change has taken place - a change that is leading toward economic, environmental and human disaster for the vast majority who do not have the economic resources to deflect the worst excesses of this process - has some answering to do.

Our family unit of four continued to live on the ground floor of the council run property until I was around five or maybe six years old. It was a hand to mouth existence with my mother relying on the support of friends and her own mother for support while she worked. I remember that for a time we would meet together at the house after school and then get a bus to my grandmother's house about three miles away to be looked after by her until my mother came home from work and we would all get a bus back home again. Our home - cold, damp, poorly furnished - was all we knew. We children all slept in the same bedroom and were permanently short of clothes and food. Our home was also a place of political activity. As I have said in an earlier section, my mother was a member of the communist party and fellow activists were often at our house for meetings and discussion. This background meant that politics became a completely natural part of my life and political engagement was as natural as breathing. I was taken aback when I found my friend's families, a bit later in my life, either had no interest in politics or felt it was an inappropriate area of discussion, particularly with children.

 Being grammar school educated, my mother was well read and encouraged us to read. Of course, there was no television to distract us and I don't remember us even having a radio at this time, so reading was our main source of entertainment. She would read to us in the evenings, later we would read to each other and I found out the profound joy of being lost in a story on my own at this early phase of my life. I still strongly believe that the emotional and psychological benefits of an early literary education cannot be overestimated and that no other medium can compete for developing insights into understanding the complexities of human behaviour. I still think a familiarity with the works of Shakespeare will stand you in better stead to deal with the vagaries of human behaviour than any degree in Psychology.

As I've said before, I don't remember much of my first year at the local Infant School. I remember I didn't like it, and this was to remain a constant in my life in relation to every school I attended. How ironic that I should end up as a teacher for the whole of my working life. I think my unhappiness at school -all of them - had more to do with a deep fear of institutions than with schools per se (though some I attended were pretty bad) and this may well have its roots in my experience of the isolation hospital. Anyway, around this time my mother was allocated a proper council flat in a relatively new block a few miles from where we were living. I must have been about six, because once we had moved, I found myself in the Infant section of a new Primary School.

 I remember us visiting the flat together for the first time to see what it was like. The block, though only three stories high with two flats on each floor, seemed enormous to me. I looked up at the balconies of the first and second floor flats, disorientingly high it seemed to me -  and down to the large swing doors of the entrance hall, and the building seemed to fulfil all the descriptions I had read of fabulous palaces, And I was to live here. My mother, sister and brother had disappeared through the door of our portion of this wonder while I was gazing upward and when I entered the building I was faced with a door to the left, another to the right and a huge staircase leading upward. Of course, this was the route I took, thrillingly climbing upward to find another two doors and a further set of stairs. Up I climbed to the top floor where yet another two doors, all of an identical dark maroon colour were to be found. So this was to be our new home. All of it. I noticed that each door had  white bell-pushes. So up I marched and pushed each of the bells on the top floor, then down to the bells on the second, where I did the same and finally down to the ground floor again where my mother finally appeared from the left hand door looking for me, only to find me pushing the bell of the flat opposite. She pulled me quickly through this left-hand door as I heard the various doors above being opened and voices calling to each other. I asked my mother who these other people were in our house, and she had to explain to me that just the rooms through the one left-hand door were ours and I must never touch the other doors at all.

Our new home had a dark corridor as you entered, and then a room to the left which was to become, once more, a bedroom for the three of us. Beyond this, a living room with windows on each side looking out on to grass that surrounded the block of flats.The windows had wide, tiled sills which I was later to find perfect for sitting and reading on. There was a small hall area outside this room with an airing cupboard and another bedroom (my mother's) leading off it. A bathroom, with bath and sink, and a separate toilet next to it were also off this space, and to the left , a kitchen that had, to my delight, a hatch opening into the living room. This was, clearly, a big improvement on our current living space, but it was, of course, completely unfurnished and uncarpeted and looked rather bleak. All the floors were bumpy, dark and shiny having been rendered with some institutional coating. All the walls were cream with the kitchen having a painted line running around the centre in an equally institutional dark green. We were, at least, relatively decently housed in an era when local authority housing was not only subject to effective minimum standards, but was seen as a necessity to decent social life, unlike today when it is privatised and, increasingly, non-existent. However, It was also located on a fairly large council estate, and, as I was to discover over the next six years or so, this was to be a learning experience as profound as any I have had in my life.