I grew up in [REDACTED], Wales. Historically it was one of the country's handful of hotbeds of communist activity. The local communist movement had been extinguished for some time before I was born, but my folks weren't willing to let that flame die.

Some of my strongest childhood memories were of being taken on protests. My parents had a wall in the house dedicated to shelves of whatever communist literature they could get their hands on. Growing up, they tried their best to try to instill Marxist ideology into me, and encouraged me to read up as much theory as possible. When I was in my early teens I had a brief rebellious period where I was a Blairite lib but I moved on from that very quickly 'cos all Blair's most ardent defenders are the least cool people on earth.