Lewis Nicholson writes that a key challenge facing us today is “the age problem”.¹ As a young trade unionist, I sympathise. Positions of power in the labour movement are often held by an older cohort, and I have experienced many frustrations when expressing ideas or trying to drive forward activity. However, to frame this as an “age problem” leads us astray. The comrade opens with Fanon: “each generation must… discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.” We might better think of the subject of these tasks as a political generation rather than one defined by age. 

Stuart Hall wrote that the shockwaves of 1956 – Hungary and Suez – were what defined his own political generation, the “First New Left”.² However, 1956 didn’t represent a temporal break between the old and young. History opened up the space for distinct political currents to be brought together, one emerging from the student movement of the ‘50s, the other rooted in the humanist traditions that defined the thinking of EP Thompson and others. Hall’s experience shows that the formation of political generations isn’t a smooth passing of the baton from old to young, but a dialogical process of political and social composition.

I’m sure Nicholson’s intention to not disparage older comrades is genuine, but his disclaimer instructing them not to take it personally is undermined when he consigns our “old guard” to their armchairs to dispense worldly wisdom. This doesn’t strike me as constructive or respectful of their experience and ongoing contributions, especially as there are plenty of young fogies willing to prop up stagnant structures. Nicholson’s proposal would seem to reproduce his age problem in reverse.

Neither does Nicholson’s frustration that an older generation “refuses to hand over the infrastructure and democratic bodies” of our institutions seem very democratic. By what right can youth, by virtue of youth alone, claim the institutions of the workers’ movement? If the young are being drawn into irrelevant ideological debates, perhaps that says as much about our political immaturity as about the “domination of the old”. Whichever side you land on, framing the problem as one of age brings us to an impasse. 

In 1968, Ernest Mandel, by then middle-aged, on seeing his own car go up in flames while marching alongside student militants, blinded by tear gas in the middle of the night, apparently reacted, “how beautiful the revolution!”.³ I don’t think Mandel was ready to put his slippers on to proffer “advice and guidance” about his past “mistakes”. Youth is fleeting, and when I am old, I have no desire to see my political life be reduced to “living history” like an inert museum piece. To return to Fanon, the process of discovering “our mission” is shared by the entire movement and defined by the circumstances we, young and old, collectively face. There are many obstacles to socialist renewal, but the stagnation of our institutions is a product of history, not age. Put politics in command, young man, time comes for us all! 

RL

1.  Lewis Nicholson, The task of left renewal: age and stagnation, Prometheus, https://prometheus-mag.com/2026/08/05/the-task-of-left-renewal-age-and-stagnation/  ↩︎
2.  Stuart Hall, Life and Times of the First New Left, New Left Review https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii61/articles/stuart-hall-life-and-times-of-the-first-new-left ↩︎
3.  Jan Willem Stutje, Just Short of the “Conscious Leap”: Ernest Manedl in 1968, Verso Books, https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/3825-just-short-of-,the-conscious-leap-ernest-mandel-in-1968  ↩︎