A generation with no passion for justice

last updated 8 January 2015

United Kingdom

Max Hastings

Britain’s youth are a complacent herd, said Max Hastings in the London Guardian. While their professors go to antiwar marches or protest the ban on fox hunting, university students rarely march “farther than the pub.” They would far rather “drink than demonstrate.” Those few who do care about something outside themselves are generally “more passionate about sport than the fate of Iraq.” This would seem, perhaps, an odd criticism to come from a noted curmudgeon who disdained the “long-haired weirdos” when I myself was a student in the 1960s. “I was a cross little conservative” even then. Now, though, I can appreciate the protesters of that era. “The young are supposed to cherish vain hopes and go to the barricades for foolish causes.” They should be full of the “intolerant conviction” that the old folk have messed everything up. Society will stagnate otherwise. The next generation will be our age soon. Before they take over, it’s simply vital that they get “angry about something—it does not much matter what.”