I’d like to offer a word of caution. Don’t peek inside grandpa’s shopping trolley next time you visit, because handcuffs, superglue, and a pamphlet explaining your rights if you are arrested may be hidden behind the bingo card. While boomers are an increasingly horny demographic, it’s unlikely that great uncle Ronnie is driving down the road to an orgy on his mobility scooter. No, the silver-haired are participating in something considerably more harmful to their health: left-wing activism.

A strange thing is taking place in the world of politics. There is a paradigm shift, one which defies established trends. We are often told that the young are idealistic – age and reality impress upon us and we naturally shift to the right as we mature. It’s not the case anymore. Across the Western world, Zoomer males are becoming more right-wing than previous generations. At the other end of the scale, It appears that the elderly are being radicalised.

While this is a magazine focused primarily on Australian politics, I have noticed something quite revealing about Western protests – the number of elderly people getting arrested. In 2019, I noticed this during the Extinction Rebellion ‘uprising’ when middle-class activists descended on western cities to shout at petrol and annoy everyone with a job by blocking motorways with ridiculous performative stunts. Four Tasmanians in their late seventies were among nine activists arrested in Launceston for gluing themselves to roads and ‘locking on’ which is activist slang for chaining yourself to objects. Of the remaining protesters, four were in their sixties. Over in London, activists aged 56 and over made up 25 per cent of those charged with an offence, according to one academic study.

To climate groups, the elderly are as disposable as a fruit bonbon. Last year, Just Stop Oil enlisted two octogenarian women, who looked like they were straight out of a life insurance advert to vandalise the glass case housing the Magna Carta at the British Library. The British Library Two as the press called them, were not your average Bonnie and Clyde bandits. The Revered Sue Parfitt, an 82-year-old Church of England vicar, along with Judy Bruce, an 85-year-old retired biology teacher carried out the stunt to draw attention to the government’s failure to adhere to legal obligations regarding climate commitments. One held a chisel while the other a lump hammer.

The advanced age of many of today’s perma-protesters is not unique to radical environmental groups. Just in case you thought I had forgotten the left’s biggest nemesis, think again. The emergence of a new faction demonstrates that Trump Derangement Syndrome is not limited to teenage shrieking. The ‘raging grannies’ as they are called, are a group of elderly American women who organise anti-Trump demonstrations across the country. This group, consisting largely of senior citizens, operates as a decentralised movement, coordinating nationwide protests via Reddit.

The latest Palestine Action demonstrations in London show that these grey-haired Guevaras are just as committed to the omnicause as the youth. According to the Metropolitan Police, half of the 532 activists who were arrested were above the age of sixty. Ninety-seven of them were in their seventies. Fifteen of them were in their eighties. If the elderly continue to be nicked, lawn bowls will never recover.

However, Australians are the masters of age-defying radicalism. The Reverend Alan Stuart, at the age of 97, was arrested in 2023 after attempting to blockade a coal port in Newcastle with 100 others. In a video, Stuart is seen being led out of a pink boat; the oldest person in Australia to be arrested for climate activism. He died last month, at the age of 99.

Why do they do it? Left-leaning protest has long been a playground for the middle class and those with plenty of free time. Retired boomers want to recapture the hedonistic rebellious golden days of the 1960s and 1970s, so what better way to bond with your intersectional, Murray Bookchin-loving grandchildren than to spend the day waving banners and eating organic falafel pita at your local ethnic food market, because diversity, etc.

This was disclosed when Jean, an old woman called into a London radio station. ‘I have 18 grandchildren, and I have a Whats-App group with them, and as a gift to them this year I joined Just Stop Oil,’ the 80-year-old caller explained to the radio host. ‘I said it’s really important that we, my age group, get active and take some responsibility, and demonstrate.’

There’s a hefty dose of generational guilt in the environmental movement, which is fuelled by the simplistic, alarmist narrative that blames boomers for carbon emissions. Decades of climate propaganda and hysteria appear to have convinced our more credulous pensioners that the planet is on the verge of heat death.

The aforementioned Judy Bruce justified her actions regarding the Magna Carta stunt in an interview with The I newspaper. ‘The facts are incontrovertible: humans, especially Westerners, are living a lifestyle which has led to greenhouse gas emissions and the destruction of living systems. We are heading for disaster, literally wiping out four billion years of evolution by 100 years of carelessness.’ Yikes! I assumed that elderly people were occupied with gardening or swapping keys during sex parties.

Boomers often cop a lot of stick for their political views – being seen as dinosaurs who vote for causes that have helped them out financially, while facing the wrath of younger, spirited Zoomers who will never become part of the property-owning class. Or supporting issues that aren’t popular with the elites, like Brexit, or sensible political parties who know what a woman is. Progressive pensioners who chain themselves to railings, spray-paint banks or support proscribed terrorist groups do not represent your average retiree.

But it serves as a potent reminder that wisdom does not always come with age.