Lisa Mckenzie asks, “Who would be a working-class woman in academia?” (8 October). I am working class and using an alias here because long experience with the vanguardist Left has taught me to avoid people who support violence as a so-called working-class alternative to argument – as seen in the Class War Facebook site that Mckenzie supports.
I have a PhD and have taught in several universities, including Cambridge, which Mckenzie’s comrades in Class War threaten to burn to the ground. I find the language employed by Class War to be vile and disgusting, but I assume that is due to my working-class upbringing in a Welsh mining village. She says that she enjoys argument but never argues, and for years Class War and the group that preceded it have heavily censored and blocked alternative views or disagreements. But worse, her comrades slander as racist and call for no platform anyone whose political opinions dissent from those held by the centralised leadership of Class War.
Mckenzie might look around universities and meet hundreds of PhDs from working-class backgrounds who are capable of presenting rational, evidence-based arguments, which is so very far from the imaginary working class that she appears to represent.
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