Sir: Defending The Tattooed Jungle, Tony Parsons claims that 'someone
from Living Marxism . . . called Channel 4 to denounce the film as "a capitalist plot".' I was the `someone' who telephoned Right to Reply, and the words 'a capitalist plot' never passed my lips. The quote which Parsons has attributed to me is entirely fictitious.
For the record, here is a summary of the remarks I made on Right to Reply.
The Tattooed Jungle was an old-fashioned sermon delivered in a post-modern accent. Parsons repeated the oldest saying in the book of Victorian values: drink is the curse of the working classes; work is the curse of the drinking classes. Laced with moralism, anti-working-class prejudice is as tradition- al as passing the port. Whereas such poison used to be confined to the privacy of one's dining-room, suddenly it's fashionable to spit it out in public, as Parsons has done.
The Tattooed Jungle bears witness to the decline of liberalism and the new respectability of explicitly conservative ideas. This is why Parsons repeats the ser- mons of Malthus while sounding like a right Burke. He is Auberon Waugh without the irony.
Andrew Calcutt
Living Marxism, Junius Publications Limited, BCM JPLTD, London WC1
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