Twenty years on
Sir: Having thought of myself as an average liberal-minded person I am now forced to the conclusion, having just read Simon Raven's article on students (19 April)--in which he labels his crowd as such--that, at the most moderate. I must be a revolutionary fanatic.
This man, secluded from a disrupt. striving world in his educational backwater at Cam- bridge—education, he- proudly claims. in sport, adultery, alcoholism and clubmanship--criti- cises.a generation which feels bound to act on the impulse of youth and idealism. This man, whose only recollection of anything like a demonstra- tion is of a pointless bout of hooliganism on Guy Fawkes' Night, criticises a generation which risks expulsion, fines and even imprison- ment for that idealism. This man, who sat gorging at his college feasts, criticises a genera- tion which rejects on principle these orgies' in a world where millions die of starvation.
How proudly does' he recall that the great advantage of the 1030 women's rule was that `one coul i get it all over and done with in time for a- good night's sleep.' Never, Mr Raven. How dull we are not to realise the full poten- tial of tb? rule But not surprising, for no one I know of our generation can match his cunning and rank hypocrisy when he states 'rules must be quietly evaded—a challenge to ingenuity ... We regarded the evasion and twisting of rules as one more important part of our education.' Perhaps so that one could, if necessary, resort to a career of crime? But, smug as ever, he goes /on to criticise the generation who wants to do away with the petty rules, who have no time for his childish game of being a clever fellow and getting away with murder.
No, Mr Raven, it is we, not your self-satis- fied mob, who have 'more profitable things to to'do.'
The whole article I could have tolerated from a senile, prejudiced idiot but from a man, presumably an intellectual, and—his foulest crime—claiming to be liberal I find my rage far beyond the scope of a fountain pen in the hands of a mere medical student. It is as well perhaps for Mr Raven that we have not had his experience in 'evasion of rules' or we might resort to more desperate measures.
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