Dear Editor
Re: Dr Fudge’s excellent article yesterday, ‘Pathological narcissists have taken over the political left’.
It started in the late 1960s. This strange brew in the youth of the upper middle-classes of a narcissistic, political mindset which imagines itself to be left-wing, but genuinely despises the lower middle-classes, together with the working classes en masse, but is prepared to promote a select-few working class individuals to hero status, as long that is, as they stay ‘on message’.
In 1969, I was at art college in Gloucester. A number of my fellow students had been to Cheltenham College, an expensive public school which was, at that time, boys only. The morbid, nihilistic film fantasy If was filmed at the college. It ends with the ‘hero’ played by Malcom McDowell and his gang using guns stolen from the school’s cadet-force armoury to massacre parents and staff at an open-day event, in a violent climax filled with hatred for adulthood and the school which serves as a very obvious metaphor for the country and its heritage.
Needless to say, British film critics, left-wing almost to a man, regard this film as one of the greatest British films of the 20th century, since it heavily titillates their fantasies of a revolution here in the image of the creation of the Soviet Union in the years following the violence of October 1917, a date which has passed into myth and legend in the hearts and minds of the smug, comfortable middle-class lefties of this country.
As some of my fellow students were themselves ex-pupils of the college, I was invited to join them on the first night’s showing of the film in Cheltenham. The whole cinema was filled with pupils, both present and past, from the school. They were quite a noisy crowd, alternately booing and cheering throughout the film, which is fairly understandable for teenage boys, but when the final scenes showing innocent adults being gunned down, I was shocked to see the sheer, vicious level of almost hysterical enthusiasm they showed for this atrocity. Standing on their seats, waving their arms and cheering like a Millwall football crowd celebrating a late winning goal.
Later that night, I went to a party for old boys and sixth-formers to celebrate this cultural landmark and was again shocked to witness the sheer depth of contempt for this country and its heritage shown by these privileged sons of wealthy, successful parents. Equally shocking was the level of personal narcissism which accompanied this vulgar display of shallow self-regard as they each tried to outdo each other. These were the very people who would almost certainly go on to university and ultimately to all the key roles in the law, civil-service, broadcasting, publishing, the armed forces etc, and I remember thinking at the time, ‘What on earth will this country be like when this lot occupy all the top jobs?’
Well, sadly the last half-century has shown us only too clearly what has happened to this country with that generation of spoilt brats in charge of all the important areas. They will all be retired by now. of course, no doubt lavishly provided for with pensions and many with second homes abroad, but perhaps saddest of all, I feel that their destructive legacy to this country is quite irreversible.
Brian Meredith
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