Alaric Bamping was a student SWP firebrand – now he’s standing for the Brexit party. Forty years on, his ex – now a Guardian and Observer writer – asks him what happened

How did my far left ex-boyfriend swing so far that he’s now in Farage’s party?

How did my far left ex-boyfriend swing so far that he’s now in Farage’s party?

Forty years ago, in the autumn of 1979, I was 20 years old and a new graduate from the Polytechnic of Central London (PCL). I was active in the Anti-Nazi League and the Socialist Workers party, joining demonstrations and picket lines and attending earnest meetings in dingy pubs. I’d just started my first job as a trainee journalist. I was living with my boyfriend on the notorious North Peckham estate in south London.

The boyfriend was also a member of the SWP and a dominant figure in PCL’s student union, first as the editor of the student paper, and then – twice – as president. Alaric Bamping had a reputation as a leftwing firebrand, leading sit-ins and protests and conducting long, fierce arguments with anyone who disagreed with him.

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So how the hell, 40 years on, has he ended up as a parliamentary candidate for the Brexit party?

Nearly everyone shifts over the years: I ceased parroting ultra-left rhetoric in the early 1980s, and I’m more inclined to gentle reform than revolution these days. But Brexit and the fracturing of traditional tribes and loyalties has exposed and exacerbated our political journeys, sometimes causing acrimonious or painful rifts within families and testing friendships to destruction.

Another friend from my student days alerted me to Alaric’s news. “What happened to swing him from the far left in PCL days to far right now?” he asked in a text. It’s a good question; I went to find out.

Alaric and I parted in early 1982; neither of us could recall the exact date or circumstances. Last week, at the kitchen table of the north London house he shares with his wife, Julia Hobsbawm, the daughter of the acclaimed Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, we first caught up on the personal stuff.

Alaric Bamping as president of the PCL union, 1982-83

The 1980s and 1990s were “all a bit messy”, he said. For a while, he maintained two simultaneous relationships, producing two children with one partner, before finally settling down with Julia – also a former PCL student – with whom he had three more children. Throughout, he ran “a couple of businesses” – antiquarian books and student property rentals – but mainly shouldered responsibility for childcare while his partners pursued their careers.

In 1985, five years after he “fell out” with the SWP, he joined the Labour party and became a constituency political officer in east London. It didn’t last; he “drifted away” a few years later.

By 1997, he was back with Julia, whose PR company Hobsbawm Macaulay Communications was then at the heart of the New Labour project. She founded the company with her old school friend, Sarah Macaulay, who married Gordon Brown in 2000. In Alaric and Julia’s downstairs loo, along with a photograph of Brown and another of Julia receiving an OBE at Buckingham Palace a few years ago, hangs a framed graphic from the Guardian in May 1997. Headlined The In-crowd, it shows the “intricate amalgam of friends and advisers of Tony Blair”. Julia Hobsbawm and Sarah Macaulay are at the centre of the web.

The old school friends have long since fallen out. “I didn’t help,” said Alaric. “I avoided Gordon Brown like the plague. I was around them, but I was considered awkward squad. I didn’t really like the Blairites at all, they didn’t appeal to me. I was on the edge of the Stop The War campaign, but not to a significant degree.” There must have been some uncomfortable dinner parties.

Alaric stayed away from political party membership until David Cameron was elected leader of the Conservatives in 2005. “I quite liked Cameron.” He joined the party. Why? “I don’t know. Because I’m unorthodox? I used to describe myself as a Tory Trot. I just thought Labour was irredeemably awful. And I always got on with Tories – they’re able to think for themselves, whereas in Labour just follow the line. But I was never active.”

When the MPs’ expenses scandal erupted in 2009, Alaric left party politics again. “I thought, Christ, these people – all of them – are awful. It was back to stasis.”

But three years ago, the issue of Europe focused his mind. “For most of my life, I’ve tried to avoid single-issue politics. You get tunnel vision. But I didn’t like the European Commission behaving like a nation state in its own right. There was no ambiguity in my mind that we should leave, and leave on World Trade rules.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Harriet Sherwood during her time as a student at PCL.

He placed several bets on Leave winning the referendum. “On the morning, the bookies were offering 7-1 against. I couldn’t believe my luck.” He wagered some more money before heading to the Groucho Club for a referendum party, where there were “probably four Leavers among about 200 Remainers”. How did he feel when the result came through? “Vindicated.” And rich? “Richer than I had been in the morning.” He wouldn’t say how much he won.

A brief diversion along his political road came the following year when Jeremy Corbyn faced a challenge to his leadership by mainstream members of the parliamentary Labour party. Alaric rejoined the party in order to back Corbyn in the one-member one-vote contest. “I’m not really a Corbynista – I don’t like all that old statist stuff – but I’m interested in anything that challenges conventional thinking and frees up people’s minds.”

The latest, perhaps final, stop on the road came this summer. Claire Fox, an ex-Revolutionary Communist party libertarian and a friend of Alaric and Julia’s, had won a seat as an MEP for the Brexit party. “I suddenly realised that the nascent Brexit party wasn’t Ukip. And I thought opportunities like this, to change the course of politics, don’t turn up very often. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of it? So I filled in my application form.”

Did he have a copy of the form? “Yes, but I’m not going to show it to you. It’s a long form, asking things like what experience do you bring?” What did he write? “Forty years of campaigning, on and off. A good strategist.” Application successful, he was interviewed by a panel of three. “They put me through the mangle. Then I was made a candidate, 20 days after I joined the party.”

I personally feel as radical as I ever did. I’m not less radical, I’ve just changed direction Alaric Bamping, Brexit party candidate

In his Twitter video pitch to the people of Dartford, whose MP he hopes to become in the coming months, he says he views the European Commission as a “slightly dangerous body in that it behaves like a state in its own right”. His Anti-Nazi League activism gets a mention, but not the SWP.

The Brexit party, he says in the video, is “a diverse and interesting party of people who don’t feel bound to follow the old rules about how we think about the issues of the day. We are free thinkers, prepared to tackle difficult issues without being shackled to the old means of doing it.”

I asked him about the party’s policies, beyond a hard, no-deal Brexit. There weren’t any yet, but “it’s all up for grabs”, he said. In an email after we met, he mentioned tackling regional imbalances, scrapping HS2, putting wifi on public transport, and zero interest on student loans. He favours controlled immigration, with fairer access to Commonwealth citizens, and a “transparent” tax system.

He was “content” with Nigel Farage’s leadership of the party, admiring him for “moving the dial on British politics”. Later, by email, he added: “I have nothing in my archive which suggests that [Farage] is anything more than rather blunt and brash for liberal sensibilities. He speaks truth to power, never comfortable for those on the receiving end.”

At this point in political history, he added, the impetus was with “disruptive, insurgent, grassroots-led politics like the Brexit party … However unpalatable this may be to the liberal left, the Brexit party has real political bite.”

He was “bothered” by my suggestion that his latest incarnation was a game for him, a new guise for a political maverick. “True, I enjoy being disruptive but no one joining the Brexit party or arguing to leave the EU can be under any possible illusions as to the level of hostility bordering on violence that it entails.” He, a Jew, had received emails accusing him of becoming “a fucking fascist”.

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Julia, he said, was “stoic” about his new political incarnation. “She is a Remainer, albeit a leave-means-leave kind. But she is fair and loyal.” Had they argued about it? “No. We discussed it. The question is how many of our friends will disown us.” How many will? “There have been a few.” What would his late father-in-law, Eric Hobsbawm, think? “I don’t think Eric would have been surprised by the Brexit party as he had spent a good portion of his life studying insurgent movements. He might even have been mildly amused that he had one right there at the breakfast table.” And his children? “They don’t express much opinion about it. I don’t tell them what to think.”

Unlike me, he “looked back fondly” at his SWP days. “I personally feel as radical as I ever did. I’m not less radical, I’ve just changed direction. I don’t think I’ve changed very much over the past 40 years.”

After three hours of conversation, this was one thing we could agree on: Alaric always relished being on the outside. He stayed in student politics for so long because he “enjoyed being a big fish in a small pond”. Perhaps the Brexit party gives him the same opportunity. But, whatever his intentions or motives, he is part of a movement that relies on nationalism and rightwing populism, and dismisses liberal values of tolerance and inclusivity. Forty years ago, I admired his provocative nonconformism; now it leaves me bemused and despondent.