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How being a revolutionary almost completely destroyed actress Vanessa Redgrave's family and career.
Vanessa stood twice as a WRP candidate in general elections, campaigning to smash capitalism, abolish the monarchy and replace the police with a worker’s militia. Inevitably, she began spending longer periods away from home.
Her small daughters, Joely and Natasha, would cling to her as she tried to get out of the front door. When she was six, Natasha asked her mother to spend more time at home. Vanessa tried to explain her political struggle was for the future of her daughter and other children. ‘But I need you now. I won’t need you so much then,’ said Natasha.
Later, Vanessa came to regret spending so much time away. The children ‘certainly suffered’, she admitted. ‘I came to see that was a big mistake.’
On top of that, she gave so much of her money away to the WRP that the family was short of cash. Their house in West London began to look unloved, the garden overgrown. Lynn Redgrave was so angry at Vanessa for putting ‘the people’ ahead of her children that she stopped talking to her. Vanessa’s former husband, the producer-director Tony Richardson, made her sign a legal document promising not to take their daughters to political meetings. (Read Entire Article)
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5 comments:
What a sad memory to have of her daughter Natasha after her untimely death! "I need you now . . ."
I was thinking the same thing....
This is a bit off topic, but I was reminded of a story I once read in National Geographic about a flaming "Red" woman in Finland. (It's strange to think there could still be Communists in Finland, after all the wars with the Soviets, but apparently attraction to revolution never ends...) A Christian revival meeting was being held, and the Bible being read by an earnest group of Finns, often with tears in their eyes. Outside, the Communist woman was proclaiming a different gospel: "Lenin is the light of the world!"
It is easier for some people to relate emotionally to a cause than to their children. A cause takes from you only what you are willing to give, but a child wants (and needs) the reality of a flesh and blood interaction.
I've met the kind of political and religious activists who love everyone in general and nobody in particular. A "cause" demands so much less of a person than a real, live human being.
These people are looking for an escape from normal human relationships and the responsibility toward another person that they entail, and they routinely cheat their mates and children of the love and attention they need and are entitled to.
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