Against Folkish and Sectarian Revisionists!

A really quite magnificent letter from Ian Birchall defending his fine appraisal of Elvis in Socialist Worker:

Of course Elvis Presley only went “so far” (» Letters, 25 August). Nobody said he was Lenin.

There is a marvellous photo of him promising to help US president Richard Nixon’s anti-drugs campaign. You can see the black marks round his eyes caused by his own drug abuse.

The point is do socialists relate to movements of rebellion, however confused and limited, or do they sit back and congratulate themselves on their own political superiority?

Pete Seeger’s dismissal of Elvis is typical musical and political sectarianism.

Remember Seeger suppressed his own anti-war songs when Russia entered the Second World War in 1941. There’s only one thing worse than a folk singer, and that’s a Stalinist folk singer.

Ian Birchall, North London