Meme: Political Firsts

I was gonna post up a review of the Naomi Klein based documentary last night, but I've left it on my laptop at hom :( So instead, I'll do this meme I've been tagged in.

First political experience: Would have to be the 1997 General Election. Unlike the other versions of this meme I read, we had no mock polls and my parents aren't of any particular political persuasion (in fact as far as I can tell they vote for whichever candidate of the main 3 parties lives nearest to them). I do remember the children of our local Labour councillors who lived round the corner from me going out chanting Vote Labour!, but I kinda didn't see any difference between either Labour or the Tories.

First vote: 2004 European and council elections, given this was not long too long after the invasion of Iraq, I voted for the parties standing that appeared to be most against the war. So I voted for RESPECT in the European Elections and the Lib Dems in the council elections. By the time of the following general election I'd found my political way a bit more and voted Socialist Alternative.

First demo: To my shame rather than participate in the walkout on Day X i stayed in college cos I was screwing up so much in Maths. However, I did go to an anti-war gig on my birthday in early March 2003 and then went on a later and much smaller protest in Huddersfield where I did a little rant on a megaphone about the invasion of Iraq being all about oil.

Last vote: Would have been the European elections where I voted for No2EU: Yes to Democracy and contributed to us winning 1.1% of the vote. This was the first time that Socialist Party members in North West Wales have ever campaigned in an election - if you exclude student union ones.

Last political activity: I've just come back from a Troops Out of Afghanistan demo which we called off halway through cos it was raining. Apart from Socialist Party stuff, I guess the last other stuff has been selling papers outside Billy Bragg and Mark Steel gigs in Caenarfon (including to the artists themselves!).