Letters
Yobbish tendencies
Sir: I don't think that Mr Kavanagh's explanation of the hard-line attitude of Young middle-class people to workers (Postscript, 19 January) is the correct one. As an old conscript, I don't think National Service was a class leveller. The public schoolboys were soon drawn off into OCTUs, which tended, if anything, to reinforce elitist attitudes. My own experi- ence of the 1948-49 conscript army is that it Was riddled with class feeling and pre- judice, albeit most of it was good-natured and harmless enough.
I think the reason for the new antagon- ism is a mild version of the very much fiercer feelings aroused during the French Revolution, when the jeunesse doree gathered in bands to attack, beat up, and sometimes kill the sans culottes in Paris. The emergence of semi-official yobbism is breeding a counter movement — and I suspect that young fogeydom is just another manifestation of this. C. A. Latimer 3 The Street, Melton, Woodbridge, Suffolk
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