Jan Myrdal – Confessions of a Disloyal European

Watching the recent UK student demonstrations on TV I was struck how selfish many students have become. There was a time  – certainly back in the 1960s – when they would have demonstrated against the Vietnam War, or world poverty, or religion, or racism, or capital punishment, women’s rights, or the right to smoke pot and chill-out.  Now all they seem to be interested in is themselves, and the the cost of a university education, costs that are, for the most part, met by their parents anyway. It is also obvious they have never read any books by the Glaswegian historian Arthur Marwick, Christopher Hitchens, or perhaps more importantly, the Swedish writer and academic Jan Myrdal. If they had they would be ashamed of themselves for appearing to be so damned selfish and empty headed.

In 1968 I read Jan’s Confessions of a Disloyal European, which at the time fitted pretty well with my own left-wing feelings. Yet Jan is one of the most contradictory of writers in as much as supports free speech in its totality – equally for Nazis and Islamic Fundamentalists – but strangely (or so it seemed) supported China when it cracked down hard after Tiananmen Square saying it was necessary for far eastern stability, which was probably true. Jan is also an atheist, yet a man who believes it right and just to align with ‘conservative religions’ if they are supported by a majority of a population. In other words he thinks about the world around him and seldom about himself, although his beautifully written Confessions of a Disloyal European is about himself, but an abstract self, that has the feel of a Steinbeck memoir about it:

“When I have been to the bathroom, washed, shaved and dressed, I go down to the kitchen. I pour coffee from the thermos bottle and make a sandwich. Still the night is heavy outside the windows. Whirls of snow slowly turning. The kitchen lamp lights up the snow and as I sit at the table I can hear the snow grinding on the other side of the black windowpane to my left. When I turn towards the sound I can see myself, the cup of coffee, the table, the kitchen lamp, and through this a grinding white whorl of snow in the night.”

That’s good writing, and a key to how Jan Myrdal saw the complexities of life forty-two years ago, complexities he tried to come to terms with, complexities he riles and revolted against, not once complaining about what it might cost him.

I would say to all those students who think only about themselves - and breaking other people’s windows because they feel hard done by - read Jan Myrdal’s Confessions of a Disloyal European and get a reality check on life.