Published: 29 July, 2010

SIXTY years ago I was an angry young man. Now, I am a very grumpy and unpleasant old one. 

As I wake, the trumpet calls me to battle – activated by the duplicity of Cameron and his floundering deputy Nick Clegg. Come back Spitting Image.

In April, Cameron expressed synthetic anger – “In spite of Labour lies the bus pass is safe in our hands,” he said.

Clegg, a political huzzy if their ever was one, also began to go back on one of his sincere election promises – “We, David and I, must keep all our options open” – a shameful, shorthand for an attack on the weak. 

As the author of the senior citizen pass in greater London I am used to these antiquated and irrelevant quotes. I have heard them all before in the county hall council chamber, during 1975 and 1976. 

They ranged from the dire threat of municipal bankruptcy to a memorable one from a Conservative lady living in a handsome Town House in Kensington. 

In ringing tone worthy of Lady Bracknell, she declaimed: “This wicked socialist proposal is a bitter insult to the dignity and privacy of the old-age pensioners I represent.”

Without facing any further charges of personal vanity, I can prove that the pass released a social revolution in the London of the 1970s. People could escape from domestic incarceration and boredom – exploring for the first time the limits of their great city, visiting distant families and friends, going window shopping or, indeed, simply shopping.

Dylan Thomas wrote of his father: “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.” That was in 1952, and the light is staying on longer, causing our longevity to be an embarrassment and confusion to our rulers. 

To hell with them. 

This obnoxious idea that is taking shape must be strangled at birth. 

Be advised that it will arise in some form or another, delivered in sanctimonious tones. They will argue for a means test, or a change in age eligibility. 

Boris Johnson, I hate to admit, is a sharp politician, who has calculated the end of the pass would cause a 25 per cent reduction in red buses. 

I don’t mind being an ill-tempered old-age pensioner, gazing affectionately at my 35-year-old legacy to London. But it is vulnerable and exposed – crying out for protection – which requires organisation and a belligerent stance in the face of a callous enemy. 

They can stuff their condescension and parsonic plentitudes. The old do not need them. We have a former Czar for the elderly living in Primrose Hill. 

It’s up to us not to let one politician, locally or nationally, to escape into the becalmed period of recess. Raise the banner: “No Compromise.” 

We have the lowest weekly state pension in Europe. The Republic of Ireland showed the way in 1964, believe it or not, when the government of Jack Lynch gave free transport to all pensioners. I am proud he came from the same part of Cork as my mother. 

Grey Power can learn and act and follow the example of their grandchildren, who have powerful media weapons at their hands – internet, email, Facebook and Twitter.

We are all capable of reaching out to the phone. The majority of us are mobile and splendidly articulate. Mine is not the comfort of moderation but a battlecry based on our just cause, covered by the shield of truth. 

We have wisdom, determination and outrage of our side. In my case, the genes of my great-great-grandfather, a bare-wristed knuckle fighter from Limerick, are egging me on. 

And I don’t feel the least like a gentleman. 

• Illtyd Harringon is former deputy leader of the GLC and the New Journal’s literary editor