The year was 1968 and, worldwide, there was revolution in the air. But when John Hoyland attacked John Lennon's politics in a radical paper, he didn't expect the fiery Beatle to rise to the bait.I'm not sure what it is about this Guardian piece from John Hoyland concerning his correspondence with John Lennon that gets my goat. It's not because I'm a Lennon fan - yes, I like his music but he was, in many ways, politically naive and he gave his support to a number of causes I find objectionable - Angela Davis being a case in point. So no, it's not that.
And it's not that Hoyland sounds so pompously self-important about his role in the events of 1968 - though he does.
I think maybe it's because, forty years on, Hoyland shows absolutely no insight - he's obviously still inordinately proud of having been a useful idiot all those years ago.
Here's the then student John Hoyland writing in a Keele University magazine:
In order to change the world, we've got to understand what's wrong with the world. And then - destroy it. Ruthlessly. This is not cruelty or madness. It is one of the most passionate forms of love. Because what we're fighting is suffering, oppression, humiliation - the immense toll of unhappiness caused by capitalism.Since then, Hoyland says "I like to think I shifted my position as well to one that was a little less naively and narrowly political."
A "little"? Really?
