The spectacle of British young men expressing solidarity with a national enemy is not quite so unprecendented as John Parry maintains (The Argus, December 7).

But one has to go back to the 1790s for a parallel.

At that time, many young people favoured the French Revolution and opposed the reactionary British establishment.

In 1793, the words "Liberty and Fraternity" were burnt into the lawns of Cambridge colleges.

In 1794, William Wordsworth, fresh from France, experienced a conflict of allegiance when Britain and France declared war.

In The Prelude, he describes sitting in church while the congregation prayed for victory, secretly longing for "the day of vengeance".

Many others felt the same, he says.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who also opposed the war, protests in Fears In Solitude (1798) that he has been called an enemy of his country, although he considers himself the purest patriot.

Not unlike those who claim the US "deserved" the attacks of September 11, Coleridge blames his country's woes - defeats and the threat of invasion - on its imperialist behaviour.

The British had "gone forth/And borne to distant tribes slavery and pangs", while at home they had succumbed to atheism and "the brimming cup of wealth".

Just as many see recent events as a wake-up call to society, so Coleridge asserted: "We have been too long/Dupes of a deep delusion!"

The turmoil of British youth at that time, supporting a foreign regime that sought by bloodshed and terror to overthrow existing governments, resembles that of those British Muslims who support al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

The difference is that I doubt whether any Britons actually fought against their country in the 1790s.

And the underlying patriotism of people such as Wordworth and Coleridge could not be doubted.

They loved Britain and were proud to be British. Can the same be said of the fanatics described by Mr Parry?

-Graham Chainey, Marine Parade, Brighton