Volume 18, Number 5 · March 23, 1972
Late Starter
By V.S. Pritchett
In the Thirties those who came from the upper middle class and who had been to Public Schools and the old universities were easily drawn toward communism because of the discipline, the training for leadership, the team spirit and elitism at those places. To some Marxism was for a time a scripture, and not having met anyone in the working class up till then, they tried guiltily, masochistically, and idealistically to get in touch with them, often making absurd declarations of feeling inferior. I was brought up very differently. I had been to school with working-class boys and girls. My parents and relations, my grandfather the bricklayer, my eccentric great uncle the cabinetmaker, my mother the shop girl, and my father the errand boy and shop assistant in Kentish Town, had belonged originally to this class.
Feature, 2514 words
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