Early Life and Career
Born to Ray and Naomi Salter in Hampton, Middlesex, Martin received a grammar school education before attending the University of Sussex, though he left before gaining a degree, saying 'academic life was not for him - "I wanted to do politics, not study it"'. Both his parents were active trade unionists, and grandfather George Baker was sent to Wormwood Scrubs prison for his opposition to the First World War. He cites his politics teacher from the age of 14 for developing his political interest, when he took him to the Politics Society in Kingston to hear Tony Benn speak, saying that his teacher 'spotted something in me, a real interest'.
Starting in 1975, Salter began employment in the construction and transport industries, holding various jobs from a labourer to a cargo handler. During this time, he was an active member in the Transport and General Workers' Union and the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, and served as a shop steward tasked with 'negotiating working conditions and wages'. He moved to Reading in 1980, and in 1982 he switched his employment focus by being hired by Reading Borough Council to organize community-based playschemes for children, followed by a move in 1984 to become the co-ordinator of Reading Centre for the Unemployed. Dropping that role in 1987, Salter would thereafter work for Co-op Home Services until 1996, first becoming the development officer then the regional manager.
Read more about this topic: Martin Salter
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or career:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.
He knew that he heard it,
A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The vast silence of Buddha overtakes
and overrules the oncoming roar
of tragic life that fills alleys and avenues;
it blocks the way of pedicabs, police, convoys.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.”
—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)