People like Owen Jones

Owen Peter Jones (born 8 August 1984) is a British newspaper columnist, political commentator, journalist, and Labour Party activist. He writes a column for The Guardian and contributes to the New Statesman and Tribune. He previously contributed to The Independent.

Jones was born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England and grew up in Stockport, Greater Manchester, and briefly in Falkirk, Scotland. His father was a local authority worker and trade union shop steward, and his mother, Ruth Aylett, was an IT lecturer at the University of Salford. He describes himself as a 'fourth-generation socialist'; his grandfather was involved with the Communist Party and his parents met as members of the Trotskyist Militant group. In an article Jones wrote following his father's death in 2018, he discussed his childhood in more detail, writing that his mother was a "lifelong passionate feminist", that his parents "rejected ‘blue’ and ‘pink’ stereotyped clothing for (the children)... and that kind of thing," and that the family also worked out a "rota system" for sharing domestic chores. Jones also said that their parents taught him and his siblings a "passionate hatred of injustice and bigotry".