Plans to scrap the compulsory retirement age of 65 will come too late for many retirees

The government's plan to scrap the default retirement age of 65 from October 2011 will come too late for many retirees who wanted or needed to work longer.

Tommy Atkins, now 67, spent many years in Zimbabwe but was forced to return to the UK in 1999 when political turmoil made it unsafe. "My Zimbabwe pension was worthless so, at the age of 56, I had to start all over again."

Atkins settled in Northamptonshire and found a job as an accountant at a medium-sized company in Bicester and worked without fault for the next decade.

"In September 2009 I was sent a form that asked if I wanted to continue working," Atkins says. "The firm had pencilled in a retirement date of 31 December 2009 so I ticked the box that stated I wanted to continue beyond this date and added that I was happy to continue indefinitely."

His employer told Atkins he would be able to work on for another three months until 31 March this year. Atkins appealed against this decision, but it was rejected by his employer. "I have no idea why. One person told me I was to be replaced with technology, but a senior member of the company later told me they were looking for a replacement member of staff for me."

The decision devastated Atkins, not least because he had paid little in national insurance contributions to his state pension and had debts that needed servicing. "I've had to realign my whole lifestyle," he explains. "I had to sell my home to get some cash to pay off debts, and here I am, a burden on the state because I've not saved enough for my retirement."

Atkins is "pleased" that many others will benefit from being able to work longer in the future, but remains bewildered at the treatment he received from his employer.

"There is nothing wrong with me. I'm 67 and I am more familiar with accounting practices now than I have ever been. There is no reason why I cannot work longer. I wanted to, but the opportunity was denied to me."

It is far too simplistic to describe a whole generation as selfish

Francis Beckett attempts to tar a whole generation with the sins of social and economic selfishness (The grasping generation, 6 July). The thrust of his analysis is that "we", the baby boom generation, "trashed" the "wonderful inheritance" provided after the second world war – in which "pretty well everyone could read and write fairly fluently" and for the first time there was a welfare state to fall back on – and "created a far harsher world for our children to grow up in".

He portrays those born between the mid-1940s and mid-1950s as "stingy" about paying for generalised welfare, and having "formed a government" under Tony Blair to send the young to die in Middle Eastern wars.

Our book, on the long-term fate of the boomers' initial radicalism, contradicts this picture in three main respects. Firstly, the idealism of the boomer generation has by no means been dominated by individualistic materialism or lifestyle conservatism. Swaths of 60s radicals became campaigners for sexual, gender and ethnic liberation. Tens of thousands joined and energised the radical labour movement campaigns to defend and advance the welfare state during the 70s and 80s. Blair's first cabinet was, of course, largely boomers and did send young British soldiers to war by deceitful means. Yet their culpability was probably exceptional. How many boomers were either anti-war organisers, or participants amongst the millions in the biggest anti-war demonstration Britain has ever seen?

Secondly, blaming the boomers for corrupting paradise – from warping the NHS to no longer seeing education "as a good in itself" – assumes a fantastical uniformity. In the 1960s, perhaps more than now, age cohorts were divided by class, gender and race. As minority "escapees" from male-dominated industrial areas, we can both verify that the "ladder of opportunity" which Beckett accuses the 60s generation of "pulling up", was non-existent for most.

Thirdly, even if we reduce the malign group to the educated and career elites, the characterisation would still be too homogenous. Political diversity typified the development of the boomers' post-60s consciousness. Where there is consistency it is in the continuity between many radical boomers' youthful and more mature values. For feminists in particular, open, supportive and non-hierarchical networking has sustained them throughout their lives. Sixties activists can also claim to have spearheaded, by protest and example, major changes in race relations.

It was an older generation of politicians in the Thatcher/Major governments which set the anti-welfare, pro-market political mould which Beckett associates with the boomers. He does progressive thinking a disservice by repeating the hackneyed mantra of the "selfish 60s" generation. By following the Conservative higher education minister David Willetts in this respect he distracts attention from the real architects of increasing economic inequality, and from the more fundamental solutions which many maligned boomers have consistently advocated.