OTUNDA
Sixty-fourth year
October <*i>
Longwood College Farmville, Virginia '
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The Rotunda Interviews: Sally Shreir Editor's Note: In the second of The Rotunda interviews, Sally Shreir comments on her own views of U.S. politics and feminism, as well as issues relating to her Wednesday evening speet h, entitled Totalitarianism: Marx's Legacy Or The Kremlin's Heresy". Sheir is managing editor of The Salisbury Review, a lending British journal of
political opinion. She was at Longwood last week on a speaking tour. Rotunda: There is a polarization of views in the political field in the U.S. anyway of the neo-left and the neo-conservatives -What do you think of the conservative trend here? Is it a positive force in the country? Shreir: Yes. I have to say
yes.. . I'm going to get into my role now and play it. As far as I can see it, it's quite different from in Britain. In Britain conservatism as an intellectual force is only just taking off now whereas here it seems to be something that's been going on maybe since the Fifties . . . it's been quite respectable to call yourself an intellectual
conservative. Whereas in Britain, that's only now the case. Up until the last few years the intellectual establishment was entirely dominated by the left, and there was a left wing consensus in all spheres of
left really whereas to be a liberal in Britain is quite a lot in common in some spheres anyway between conservatives and liberals as opposed to the labor party or the socialist party - - a lot of variants would be
Search For A New Director Of Student Activities by Barrett Baker The search for the new Director of Student Activities, which is in the process of beginning, is geared to involve as much student participation as possible. "We want to get as much input on the applicants as we can." says Phillis Mable. VicePresident of Student Affairs, "and we want the applicants to get a lot of student exposure - it's a two way thing. After all," she continues, "these people will be working for the students and if the students aren't happy with woever gets hired, then the effort won't be much of a success." Barb Gorski, who is currently the Interim Director of Student Activities and involved with screening applicants for the job, feels very good about the way the project is being handled. "This is one of the most organized projects around," she states, "and we've got a good bunch of candidates to choose from. We are in the position to be very picky about the person we choose." The process, which begins with a screening committee consisting of Colleen Brenan, S-UN President. Moffett Evans.
Technical Director of the Speech and Dramatic Arts Department. Ann White, Lankford Building Manager. Randy Chittum. President of Student Government, and Sophia Pollet. Chair of the Series for the Performing Arts, along with Gorski. is designed to eliminate those applicants who don't meet the minimum requirements of candidacy. As soon as this process is completed, the remaining applicants will be invited to come to Longwood for interviews. The interviews, which are expected to run for about 1V4 days per applicant, are to be conducted by various committees representing Student Activities, Employees of Student Union, and Student Leaders directly involved with S-UN. "A lot of work has gone into this project in order to control the element of bias and to get ' as many students involved as we can," adds Gorski. "I think this is a great opportunity for students to discuss what they want in the new director and to gain interviewing skills that can be used after they graduate." Upon the completion of the interviews, the screening committee will then review the remaining applicants to make recom-
mendations to Phyllis Mabel, who will make the final decision on who will be hired. The new director will be expected to begin operations by January 1. 1985. Among other things, the Student Activities Program supports students in their academic preparation and achievement through educational, social, cultural, and leadership programming for the college community; registration and coordination of student organizations; and development of policies affecting the Student Union and Activities Program. With the addition of a new director, the Student Union itself will begin to expand. Defined committees will be formed dealing with different activities (lectures, films, concerts, mixers, etc.). This is designed to get more people involved in the S-UN and to give more power adn authority to those people. "The students at Longwood have not been given enough credit as to their ability," states Gorski. "I've had to put a lot of trust in them and they never let me down. Whoever the new director is will have a real talented and great team of people to work with "
Sally Shreir talks to an English class of Miss Camilla Tinnell. education and culture. That's beginning to change now, partly because we've got a very distinctively conservative government and partly because I think people do think the left is subverting some of our institutions and that education is no longer the sort of liberal humane kind that conservatives and indeed liberals in Britain would like to see. You have to make the distinction you see between here, where to be a liberal is to be on the
the same - not by any means all. So, although the liberal party never gets into power in Britain all politics is built on a foundation of liberalism and so to be a liberal isn't to be left. You might not agree with them. You might not agree with their philosophy of the human nature of instituions. But it's far less one side of a polarized situation as it is here, where nobody as far as I can see calls themself I
Inside This Week Oktoberfest Montage, p. 4& 5
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THE ROTUNDA/Tuesday, October 16, 1984
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ROTUNDA
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Longwood College Editor-in-Chief Jeff Abemathy Special Selections Editor Eric Houseknecht Copy Editor Alicia Ashton Fine Arts Editor Jerry Dagenhart Campaign Editor Frank Raio Sports Editor Kelly Sickler Business Manager Mike Harris Advertising Manager Tony Crute Ad Assistant Joan Dolinger Distribution Manager Lori Foster Staff Barrett Baker Tracy Coleman Vince Decker Pablo Duke Fred Edson Mark Holland Curt Walker Published weekly during the College year with the exception of Holidays and examinations periods by the students of Longwood College. Farmville, Virginia. Opinions expressed are those of the weekly Editorial Board and its columnists, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the student body or the administration. Letters to the Editor are welcomed. They must be typed, signed and sumitted to the Editor by the Friday preceding publication date. All letters are subject to editing. Send letters to: THE ROTUNDA
Box 1133
We, the People . . . anny Ross hollered a few times at eleven o'clock last Friday night. He was standing about twenty-five feet form the tall concrete walls of the State Penitentiary in Richmond. Danny waved his rebel flag, screamed some more, and slapped his buddy on the back. His eyes were sparkling, and a smile was poking out from the sides of a can as he guzzled his last Budweiser. Linwood Briley was dead. Across the street, and closer to the Penitentiary, Susan Jackson crossed herself as tears fell down her dark brown cheeks. Sobbing, she felt a hand on her shoulder as she kneeled to the sidewalk. Voices surrounded her in support. They were singing "Amazing Grace". Linwood Briley was dead. An hour earlier at 10:15 on Friday, October 12, 1984, a Richmond reporter walked up and down Belvedere Street, some two hundred feet from the cell where Briley waited to die. The crowd on Belvedere was swelling, a thousand strong already. At the corner of Belvedere and Spring Street, Susan Jackson and others from the black community gathered, praying silently. Further down Belvedere, protestors of the death penalty burned white candles. Some carried signs proclaiming their protest: "To execute a murderer is simply to adopt his point of view", "Thou shalt not kill" and others. On the opposite side of Belvedere, David Ross stood drinking beer with other white residents of Richmond's Oregon Hill subdivision. The signs they carried were different: "Have pity on Linwood Briley. Reduce the voltage to 220", "An Eye for an Eye". An elderly white woman stood silten under a lamp post holding a sign which read "Kill the Negroe". She told the reporter that she'd received two death threats. The reporter, a Richmond native, walked through the crowd talking to both supporters and protestors. A friend of David Ross' said "I'd kill him myself . . . they ought to hang him by the balls." He was wearing patched Levi's, a black Molly Hatchett T-shirt and a jean jack with a skull and crossbones embroidered on the back. "I'd kill him myself," he repeated. People around him nodded in agreement, "Anybody
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against the Death Penalty should go in there and hold Linwood's hand when they throw the switch," said a woman with long brown hair and a beautiful smile. She was about thirty years old, the same age as Briley. It was 10:35. On the other side of the street, as the clock raced on, protestors held hands, sang the gospel and talked everso-quietly among themselves, as if the slightest noise would disturb the last-minute efforts of Briley's lawyers. At 10:50, the reporter asked one protestor what he thought of Briley's chances for a reprival. "It's good to dream," he replied, "but not likely." A small group stood holding hands nearby; one of them was holding a sign that read "Victim's Families Against the Death Penalty." At 10:55, the waiting crowd was tense. There was no way of knowing whether Briley was on his way to the electric chair or if, perhaps, the lawyers had succeeded. Both sides of Belvedere were getting restless. The supporters anxiously sucked down more Budweisers; the protestors crossed themselves over and over... and at 11:05 word passed through the crowd quickly. It was done. The reporter talked to many protestors after the execution. There were few supporters available for interviewing. Most had already left. "It just seems like we failed," said one tearful protestor, "as a society, we just failed, plain gave up. Instead of having confidence in human beings, we give up on them. Instead of believing we could do the job of rehabilitating the man, we kill him. Instead of showing love, we hate." At 11:05 last Friday, it was done. Linwood Briley was a murderer. And we, the people ...? At 11:05 p.m. last Friday, Linwood Earl Briley was dead. --MJA
Explaining The Seasons by Eric T. Houseknecht, III This weekend while driving to Richmond on a sunny Sunday afternoon, I was struck by a rather disconcerting revelation. Autumn was upon us and had been for several weeks now. And while anyone who owns a calendar may have been well aware of this fact, it seems that living in the collegiate environment often leaves one without a sense of what's occuring in the world around them. More specifically, some of us have become so engrossed in our own concerns that we don't even know what time of year it is. Our own fair city of Farmville is by no means a metropolis, and it should be apparent to all that trees, in this town, are in abundance. But those who spent their formative years in less rural environments are frequently troubled by their inability to spot seasonal change. Deprived of such conventional signs as caterpillars, yellow leaves, and the frost on the pumpkin, these bewildered citizens are quarterly confronted with the problem of ascertaining just exactly when it is what time of
year. In an attempt to dispel this sort of confusion I offer the following guide: AUTUMN Autumn refers to the period beginning in late September and ending right before January. Its most salient visual characteristic is that white people all over town begin to lose their tans. Another marked feature of this season is that there are white people all over town, a fact worth noting in this context as it signals a mass return from the beaches. Nubbier, more textured fabrics start to make an appearance and shoes become more bootlike. Politicians begin to spout brightly hued wild promises, but it is unwise to pick them, particularly early in the season, and on the whole, one is far safer in sticking to the cultivated varieties. WINTER Rumored to be a season separating autumn and spring, winter is, in this particular region of the temperate zone, a rather mythical figure. This quicksilver season has ml
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THE ROTUNDA/Tuesday, October 16. 1984
The Art Of Pessimism by Frank Raio It has been a rough week. I am not in a very good mood. I sprained my ankle and I got dumped by one of Longwood's many blondes. The professors of this fine institution have done their part to shave my buzz this week and I am hungover. Now I shall write this week's column. You can read it if you want to, I don't care. I hate when two politicians face each other and the nation, each armed with completely opposite statistics about the same issue.. I hate all the trash that accompanies political campaigns; this trash comes from journalists as well as politicians. Who cares about Vicepresidential nominee Ferraro's husband? I don't care, but if the press feeds me enough of his tax records and the like, I'm sure that I will hate him too. I dislike all federal programs that do not directly help me or somebody whom I do no hate. I abhor the federal government when it withholds transportation funds from states who do not raise their drinking age to twenty-one. National governmentpressured fifty-five mile per hour speed limits similarly piss me off. I despise the constant attempts at passing legislation that is antiabortion, anti-birth control, anti-homosexuality or proprayer in public schools. The interest groups who are making our representatives take these actions and the representative who bend under this pressure make me vomit. May the fleas of one thousand camels infest the bodies of all involved in this "legislation of morality." I bum out on the federal deficit. I am sick of hearing all the complaints about the debt and the nonaction of the entire country in dealing with this future crushing problem. I loathe the Soviet leadership. The amount of money being spent on arts by the superpowers stinks. History has made the Russians paranoid and ideaology makes the Soviets aggressive. Thus they race militarily. Nature has given Americans brains to figure this out. Thus we race. This I hate.
I still hate England for blowing us off and going to the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. I will always hate Japan for earning billions in the U.S. (on cars, stereos, computers, and floppy discs) and still refusing to pay their share towards the NATO defense budget. I hate Romania for giving Nadia Comaniche steriods, thereby causing her to become a moose
when she grew up. There, I feel much better now. I used by alloted Rotunda space to get out all of my frustrations. It saved me from having to write about political campaigns and postponed the inevitable visit from the men in the white jackets. I am now ready to face another week in the cruel world of Longwood and beyond.
Career Night Set For October 23 by Lisa Jessup Career Night in Business, sponsored by the Office of Career Planning and Placement, Delta Sigma Pi, and Phi Beta Lambda, will be held October 23 at 6:10 in Jeffers Auditorium. The seven speakers slated to talk about field of accounting, finance, management, marketing,
management information systems, and personnel are Reese Lukei, a CPA from the Norfolk based firm of McGladrey, Hendrickson and Pullen, CPA's; Marshall Womack, Vice-President and Manager of the Farmville Central Fidelity Bank; Kathleen McKaig, Executive Assistant for the nt. pfl
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THE ROTUNDA/Tuesday, October 16, 198
Lancer's Kersey Has Bright Future With NBA
IAA Update The Intramural Athletic Association continues onward this week with such sports as flag football, bowling, indoor soccer, and volleyball. Last week, the finals of men's flag football took place with Encore being crowned as the champions. Encore defeated theZuchinni's(PIKAPPS) for the second time in three tough matches tow in the title. Women's flag football continues this week with 20 teams competing for the title. The finals of men's bowling took place onMonday with the Strikers and Pinheads playing for the championship. There will also be a match for third place between the Keggess (SPE) and the Crows (AXP). Men's Indoor Soccer gets underway Monday, 10/15 with 9 teams signed up. Entry blanks for women's volleyball will be due on Thursday 10/18, and a mandatory captains meeting will be held at 6:30 in the IAA room in Lankford on the same evening. The next weekend tournament will be held on 10/20-21 with competition in coed pool and coed badminton (mixed doubles). Entry blanks will be due on 10/17 with a meeting at 6:30 inthe IIA room in Lankford.
Impressed by three solid performances in exhibition contests, Portland head coach Jack Ramsey said
Jerome Kersey Thursday night that it appears former Longwood eager Jerome Kersey has a future in the National Basketball Association. In Thursday's 139-97 victory by Portland over the Los Angeles Lakers Kersey scored 16 points, grabbed six rebounds, handed out four assists and made three steals in just 28 minutes of action. After the contest Ramsey predicted success for the 67", 215-pound rookie, whom the Blazers chose in the second round of the NBA draft. "On a day-to-day basis Kersey had made tremendous progress," said Ramsey. "He plays with great ability and instinct. Right now it looks like he has a future in the NBA."
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Laker coach Pat Riley also praised Kersey and Portland rookies Steve Colter and Bernard Thompson. "That's as good a set of rookies as you'll see play in a game like this," said Riley. They all come from solid programs." Kersey had also played well in Portland's first two exhibition contests against the Utah Jazz, with totals of 14 points and 6 rebounds in one game and 20 points and nine rebounds in the other. "Jerome is looking very good," Portland Publicity Director John White said earlier last week. "He has really impressed the Portland coaches." Kersey is one of 14 players battling for a spot on the Blazers 12-man regular season roster. Longwood's all-time scoring and rebounding leader has signed a four-year contract with Portland, with the pact being contingent on him making the team.
Lady Lancers Rank Fourth In Golf; Play Resumes Oct. 22 Sophomore Kimbra Peterson and freshman Tina Barrett led Longwood's women's golf team to a fourth place finish out of 12 teams in the 8th Duke University Invitational Friday through Sunday. The finish, Longwood's best ever at Duke, reversed last year's 12th place showing. Duke came out on top with a 299-301-300-900 while Longwood notched a 320-318-310-948, beating teams from NC State, Penn State. James Madison, William & Mary, North Carolina-Wilmington and Appalachian State. All six of the aforementioned colleges are Division I. Patterson, an up and down golfer previously, turned in the top performance of her career with a 78-79-77-234 to tie for 13th out of over 60 golfers. The sophomore was just 12 strokes over par and displayed the consistency she had lacked before. Barrett also tied for 13th
with an 82-78-74-234. Her final round score was evenpar. Barrett now has a stroke average of 77.4 for 11 rounds of college golf. Should she continue that pace, Tina will set a new Longwood record for stroke average. Also contributing to Longwood's strong showing were senior Lanie Gerken 79-80-82-241, freshman Marcia Melone cont pg 7. col 5
MM Kimbra Patterson
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SEASUNo cont. from page 2
much less staying power than its hearty antecedent and is often difficult to identify. A few hints of winter's impending arrival may be seen by travelling north to a more metropolitan environment where the popular outdoor fashion shootings of the fall will become sparce and will invariably be replaced by illegal aliens selling oversized pretzels and cold chestnuts. Along about February, local citizens will grow tired of watching the daily rainstorms and will, almost as one, fly to Florida for some relief. Shortly after their return they will begin to lose their tans, but this is merely an example of the exception proving the rule and should not be taken by the novice as a sign of autumn. It is still winter, so try to regain your bearings by going to Winn-Dixie and determining which out-ofseason fruits are the most expensive. PSPRING Spring is a season whose reputation precedes it and is often found attractive by a more rarefied crowd. Around April, art majors and aesthetic realists begin shedding their sweaters, while in the cities, very constructed young men start to plan next autumn's colors. Property values at the beach rise sharply while the level of reason and good will recedes from the banks. Newsstands become more delicately tinged as magazine covers once again sport their seasonal pastel look and the word "relationship" is in the air, although fortunately not in the water. SUMMER Although the most hardnosed element maintains that summer is that time which is not winter, it technically describes the interval between spring and autumn, and most quickly manifests itself by a luxuriant growth in VEPCO bills. A great many adults, stunned by the bountiful harvest of roving street gangs, forget that they look terrible in shorts. Daylight savings time blossoms once more and is welcomed heartily be insomniacs who now have less night to be up all of. -, Wits thicken, urban flesh turns a vivid gray, and the word "relationship" is in the water, but not, fortunately, in Farmville.
LANCERS 4 4
Pygmalion" Shows Tonight
The film "Pygmalion" will be shown on Tuesday, October 16 at 7:30 p.m. in Bedford Auditorium as part of the Women in Literature Film Series. The film series is free and open to the public. Released in 1938, this first film version of George Bernard Shaw's play stars Wendy Hiller as Eliza Doolittle and Leslie Howard as Henry Higgins. Shaw's popular play was later filmed in a musical version entitled "My Fair Lady". Approximately thirty people from the Farmville community and local high schools and colleges attended the first film in this series, a 1967 version of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew," on October 3. The final film in the series, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," starring Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, and Richard Burton, will be shown on Thursday, November 1, at 7:30 p.m. The Women in Literature Film Series is funded by a grant from Duke University, University of North Carolina Womens Studies Research Center. Dr. Martha E. Cook, Associate Professor of English at Longwood, received a Curriculum Development Award from the Center to develop a course which is being taught for the Senior Seminar in English in the fall semester, 1984. The course focuses on the portrayal of women in British
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and American poetry, fiction, and drama, by both male and female authors. Students in the course are reading William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair in assignments approximating the novel's original publication in monthly installments, in connection with the focus on the study of long novels in the English curriculum at Longwood. According to Dr. Cook, "The stories by authors CAREER NIGHT cont from page 3
Richmond based Robert E. Pogue General Agency with Northwestern Mutual Life; Alice Clarke, President of Rennie's Advertising Ideas located in Midlothian; Wayne McWee, Associate Professor in the Department of Business and Economics at Longwood College; Loring Lyford, of the Richmond Division of Interbake Foods, Inc.; and Russell Harris, Regional Personnel Manager of Macke Company of Richmond. The program will be divided into two sessions. Session one will be a choice between the accounting and finance speakers or the management and marketing speakers. In session two, management information systems and what employers look for in employees will be discussed. A reception will follow the program.
COnl from page 6
such as Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer have to date served as the basis for our most exciting class discussions." Faculty and staff members from Longwood College received three of the ten grants of this type awarded in 1984: Dr. Cook; Dr. Sandra Cross, Assistant Professor of Health and Physical Education, "Women's Health Issues Workshop"; and Meredith L. Strohm, Director of Student Services,and Chester C. Ballard, Assistant Professor of Sociology, "An Across-the Curriculum Examination of Women's Studies Issues." No other single institution received more than one such award.
81-81-80-242, and senior Carol Rhoades 82-87-79-248. Last year the Lady Lancers ended the Duke tournament with a 998. making this year's effort 50 strokes better. Next up for Longwood is the Blue Ridge Mountaineer Invitational at Applachian State next Monday and Tuesday (Oct. 22-23). DUKE INVITATIONAL TEAM SCORES: Duke I 900, Wake Forest 920, Duke II 931, Longwood 948, Penn State 960, NC State 960, NC-Wilmington 966, James Madison 973, William & Mary 980, Appalachian St. 986, NC State II 1006, Meredith 1053.
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Lap For Lancers Raises $2,000 The fourth walk-jog-athon Laps for the Lancers was held Sunday afternoon around a .4 of a mile course in front of the Rotunda at Longwood, raising nearly $2,000 in pledges for Longwood College Athletics. An estimated 75 participants took part. Top male runner was Tim Fitzgerald of the wrestling team who completed 25 laps in an hour (10 miles). Another wrestler David Moffett was second with 23 laps Top female runner was basketball standout Karen Boska with 15 laps (6 miles) completed. Tied with 14 laps were Robin McGowan (cheerleaders), Barbie Burton (basketball) and Sherry Wallace (running for field hockey). Top individual fund raisers were Lancer Clum members Dr. Carolyn Hodges ($427). and Dr. Carolyn Wells ($200). Hodges and Wells paced the Lancer Club to a total of $810.95 in funds raised. Top teams in fundraising were the Longwood cheerleaders ($396). women's golf ($246) and women's basketball ($201). Each team receives onehalf of its pledge total with the other half going to support the general Athletic Program. SHREIR socialist. Rotunda: So the actual conservatives in Britain would be somewhat more liberal than conservatives here? Shreir: They have been up to now, but there is a trend toward a very traditionalist type of conservatism which is trying to go against some of the liberal assumptions and the idea that all thats good in terms of human values can be consigned to the liberal camp. This type of conservative traditionalism also goes against what can be seen as a liberal* economic policy on the part of the government. I mean, monatarism is really, in a sense, just an aspect of laiseez-faire which of course is just nineteenth century liberalism so what this type of conservatism In Britain is saying is that there's more to conser-
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vatism than a particular point of view of all economics although it would certainly prefer a laissez-faire type of economic (system) to one that involved a lot of state intervention. What's involved with that kind of conservatism is traditional values, religion, respect for the family, respect for certain institutions like the monarchy, the House of Lords, all those wonderful British things that make life seem . . . what do they do? . . . they give you a sense of the natural order and they ... dignify power. Rotunda: If the class system is more traditional in Britain, do you see the class system here as being just as traditional in a different way, or is it a totally different thing? Shreir: I don't know that I've been here long enough to say ... I don't know about the working class in America really; I haven't seen as much in terms of the sort of spontaneous inclination to divide people into classes in that way. Or in terms of people thinking of themselves as belonging to a certain class, that might be because a lot of the people I've met have been middle classs because you have to pay for your education, whereas there's much more of a system of state aid for education in Britain. So. I don't know, but I would suspect that more working class kids have higher education in Britain, but I might be totally wrong about that. I seems incredibily expensive (to get an education in the U.S.) whereas if you get any kind of grant at all, and almost everyone in Britain does for a first degree, then you automatically get your tuition fees paid. Rotunda: The student left in the U.S. has been an active force in the country since the mid-sixties; do you see that as a positive force here, and, also, is it an active force in Britain? Shreir: It's certainly a force in Britain, though it's less viciferous than it was, because a lot of the things around which it can unite, certain fundamental rights and all the rest of it - or what would be seen as fundamental rights - have now been fulfilled. Someone was talking to me about the civil rights movement here, and saying that's why the democrats haven't got anything to sort of cohese around. I think it's in-
evitable that students are going to be idealistic in those directions. . . I do think actually that it's very easy to be on the left when you're a student and it's not so easy later on. The idea that anything that's , on the right is callous, and uncaring, and unfeeling is totally wrong, and I do believe that. . . actually. That sort of consensus which tends to exist in student politics is mistaken because there certainly is a type of conservatism which is not by any means uncaring and unfeeling. I think that when you look at some of the things that are happening in Eastern Europe, you see that the left - left wing politics - can lead to a system which is decidedly uncaring and unfeeling and doesn't cater to human needs at all. and I do believe that. Rotunda: How so? Specifically where? Shreir: Checkoslavakia, Russia, the communist world. Rotunda: How about the free left - the greens in West Germany -is that uncaring? Shreir: No. I didn't say that the left was necessarily uncaring; some feel that they might be misguided the left which tends to think that it has a monopoly on morality and on humane attitudes acan turn into a very inhumane system which is precisely what has happened in Central and Eastern Europe. Of course, the Greens and all the rest of it think that they are caring, and most of them are caring. The issue is a pragmatic one, unfortunately; it's not just a moral or an idealistic one. In an ideal world, we wouldn't have nuclear weapons. This isn't an ideal world, and I do think that there are things intrinsic to the communist system which make them belligerent. Essential to communism is the idea of an enemy -communism rests very heavily on that and that's how it galvanizes people into action and that's how it gets them to think that everything that's being done is for the people, when very often, if not always, it's for the state. Rotunda: Is the endpoint of the left totalitarianism? Shreir: I think that there are people in Britain who do genuinely respect democratic institutions and constitutional government and all the rest of it.
There are a lot who don't, but once you get to calling yourself a Marxist if you look carefully at what Marx said then the tendency toward totalitarianism is all there, and it isn't just heresy. Rotunda: In regards to the student left, are you saying that they aren't able to see the actual drudgery and financial realities of the world, and as they grow older, they do, and become somewhat more conservative? Shreir: I don't think it's just the drudgery and the financial reality. I think it has much more to do with values, and I think there is a tendency when you're young to reject all sorts of ideas. To say that, I jknow sounds terribly patronizing. But we've all done it. or most of us have done it. in some way. It's not surprising. I think that the type of idealism that seems totally harmless when you're a student - when your're young - can have extremely dangerous consequences especially when it degenerates into dogma and into an ideology and you get a system which, far from being free, is in fact enslaved to an ideology which is far worse than being constrained by certain laws and institutions. Rotunda: Did the socialist system in Britain grow out of a certain liberalism? Shreir: I think not, I think that it would like very much to distinguish itself from liberalism and to be seperate. Because of very different beliefs. Although a lot of them, as I asaid, would respect certain liberal institutions and political processes. It is quite a different view, liberalism is very individualistic, socialism is to do with the corporate body and the general good, supposedly. Also, totally different views of human nature, of historical processes and all the rest of it on it. So it is quite distinct. In many ways, theoretically, there is more in comon in terms of an attitude towards history between socialism and conservatism than between (socialism and) liberalism. Liberals thank that there are these immutable human values and institutions and immutable human nature. That is quite different from conservatism and socialism which would think that human nature and political
processes that are built on it have dtermined in some sense historically. I think certainly the movement whith the socialists in Britain would not want to be called liberals. Rotunda: Would they want to be called Conservatives? Shreir: Certainly not. One of the ironies that is not well-known is that the Soviet Union which is one of the most conservative governments there is. It is incapable of changing and that is one of the problems of being, as I put it, of being ensalved to an ideology. Rotunda: Where does feminism fit into all this? Why is the feminist movement traditionally in the left? Shreir: I have a lot of sympathy with feminism, but not when it becomes an ideology such that women are so worried about being ideologically sound that they are as much trapped as they thought they were being trapped by men. That is what actually happens. Rotunda: So. the feminist force is actually detrimental to the cause? Shreir: No it's not necessarily detrimental, it's the form it often takes that is detrimental. There is nothing wrong with women doing more and seeing themselves as equal, if different from men. There is something wrong with thinking that everytime you put on a dress or talk to a man you might be doing something ideologically unsound. Rotunda: So the extremism is the problem? Shreir: Yes, it is difficult to talk about the extremism because in England you tend to distinguish between socialist feminism and radical feminism. Socialist feminism is feminism that thinks everything will be resolved for women if you have socialism, and radical feminism is feminism in which you think sexual politics are more fundamental. I don't think that I fit into either of these categories. Although, like a conservative, as a conservative ... I think that you won't resolve everything by an economic system ... I think that social life and human relations is far more fundamental than economics and would be changed fundamentally by economics, if you want to change it.