By Paul Bean

While preparing for my upcoming trip to the United Kingdom, VDC editor Guy Page informed me that our Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, has a brother in the UK who has been engaged in politics in Oxfordshire country for decades. 

Few know about his older brother, Larry Sanders, 90, who is a dedicated academic, social worker, and Green Party politician who has carved out his own political legacy across ‘the big pond.’

Born six years apart, the Sanders brothers share a Brooklyn upbringing. They also share a passion for similar political ideology, specifically ideas that are related to social policy surrounding climate and green energy. 

Lawrence “Larry” Sanders, born on April 29, 1935, grew up alongside his younger brother, Bernard, in a modest Brooklyn household. Their parents, Polish-Jewish immigrant Eli Sanders and New York-born Dorothy Glassberg, instilled in them a deep sense of what they believed to be fairness shaped by the ideals of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. 

“Our parents thought a government ought to be working for its people,” Larry told the Guardian back in 2018, a belief that is at the core of both brothers’ political lives.

The Sanders family faced economic challenges, with major purchases like curtains or rugs often out of reach, though they never lacked essentials. The brothers attended James Madison High School, where they were “young postwar Jewish radicals” but not yet leaders, blending into the vibrant Brooklyn scene of baseball and pastrami sandwiches.

Larry’s journey took him quite far from Brooklyn. After studying at Brooklyn College and briefly attending Harvard Law School in the 1950s, he left to care for his ailing mother. He later returned to complete his J.D. at Harvard in 1994, but not before moving to the United Kingdom in 1968 or 1969, following a woman who would become his wife.

Settling in Oxford, Larry earned a master’s degree in social work from the University of Oxford and became a university lecturer, focusing on social and health care policy. This led him to the Green Party of England and Wales, where he served as a county councillor for East Oxford on Oxfordshire County Council from 2005 until his retirement in 2013. Larry resigned from a mental health trust board in 2005 over concerns that service cuts would harm vulnerable patients.

Larry’s political career in the UK absolutely has mirrored his brother’s progressive drive in the US. Initially a member of the Labour Party, he switched to the Greens in 2001, disillusioned by party leader and Prime Minister Tony Blair’s rightward shift. 

Larry ran as a Green Party candidate in several high-profile elections, including the 2015 general election for Oxford West and Abingdon, the 2016 Witney by-election to replace former Prime Minister David Cameron, and the 2017 Oxford East general election, consistently placing fourth. 

In 2019, he was a candidate for the European Parliament. His campaigns, though unsuccessful in securing a seat, amplified Green Party values and were very similar to Bernie’s grassroots approach.

The bond between Larry and Bernie has been a constant in their lives. “We were orphans by the time I was 27,” Larry said in reference to the loss of their parents, which according to them has strengthened their relationship. 

In 2016, as a delegate for Democrats Abroad, Larry cast a vote for Bernie at the Democratic National Convention, tearfully declaring pride in his brother’s vision to renew the New Deal. Bernie, in turn, endorsed Larry’s 2016 Witney by-election bid, a rare cross-Atlantic political gesture.

Larry has been a vocal supporter of Bernie’s campaigns, calling him “an extremely decent person” whose focus on inequality resonates globally. “I owe my brother an enormous amount,” Bernie told CNN, crediting Larry for introducing him to many of his political ideas.

Now in his late 80s, Larry remains a respected figure in Oxford, where he raised his two children, including his son Jacob, a Green Party candidate himself.