Taking up poll position

Reading the article on the alleged decline in student radicalism and Paul Whiteley's views on the lack of Marxists in his classes these days, I am tempted to suggest that your reporter should get out more and that Whiteley should understand that nostalgia for the 1970s is not the same thing as serious analysis.

Who were the 80,000 or so mainly young people who attended the Love Music Hate Racism Carnival in Hackney in April if not mostly students? And who is it that has been the bedrock of antiwar activism, if not students?

Tories were around when I did my first degree in the 1970s and until capitalism is abolished they always will be among us, but looking at a study of the professed voting intentions of students does not prove that student radicalism is dead. The evidence on the streets suggests the reverse.

Keith Flett, London N17.