Julian Knowles (Good to meet you, 9 April) says: “As I’ve got older, strangely, I seem to have become more leftwing rather than less.” I see nothing strange about this, since the same is true of me, and I am 91. The reason is simple: the abuses of capitalism have become ever more flagrant down the years; governments have become ever more helpless in confronting them (even if they wanted to, which most of them don’t, since their members and financial supporters often have a vested interest in the system); the cruelties of the Tories towards the poor have become ever more monstrous; the defenders of the working class, the trade unions, have become ever more emasculated.
What I find strange is the passivity of the public in view of all these iniquities, which the Guardian exposes almost every day.
Ralph Blumenau
London
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