The Leftist, Without Adjectives

In the early winter of 1956, when Ben Anderson was aged 20, something happenedsomething that changed the course of his life.

That day, on the campus of the University of Cambridge, a group of Indian and Sri Lankan students were voicing impassioned protest. Ben, who was in his last year in the Classics Department, went to listen. But suddenly some English youths started singing God Save the Queen and assaulted them. They smashed and beat up the thin dark-skinned students who were demonstrating. Ben, a short-sighted and puny young Irishman, tried to break things up. But he got punched himself. "I had never been so angry in my life," he later said.

December 22, 2015