Etonocracy
June 30th, 2007 admin Posted in euro socialist |
When I was undergrad a few years ago, I attended a private talk with Michael Heseltine - supposedly one of the leaders of the Tory party's liberal wing. These were talks held under the Chatham House Rule - that is, the entire speech is held off-the-record to allow the speaker to be as candid as possible and therefore cannot be quoted by any of the attendees. Whoops.Heseltine gave one of the best Marxist analyses of the Tory party that I have ever heard. He explained that the Tories were a coalition of privileged interests. Indeed, the main purpose of the party was to preserve and defend privilege. The way that the Tories won elections, he explained, was by giving just enough to the rest of society. To someone like myself who - like millions of others - had attended a Northern comp, this was one of the most shocking things that I'd ever heard and remains seared on my memory. However, practically everyone else in the room were from Southern public schools. No-one even blinked.
Today's Tory leadership is a stark illustration of Heseltine's analysis. 14 members of Cameron's front bench are Old Etonians. Others, such as George Osborne (the artist formerly known as 'Gideon') went to equally privileged schools such as St Paul's School. Many are connected to the landed gentry and can trace their family lineage back centuries. As the insert photo shows, many of these Tories have known each other for decades - often by being members of exclusive upper-class drinking societies and gentlemen's clubs.
Many of today's leading Tories are former members of the Oxford University Conservative Association. OUCA is not so much a political association as a rightwing public school drinking society. Members of today's OUCA (and we can take for granted that it is no worse than it was twenty years ago) have to be seen to be believed. Their members waltz around in tweed jackets that were probably out of fashion in the late 19th Century. One of the many songs sung by OUCA (and no, this is not a joke) is "We hate the working class." These people don't just have contempot for ordinary people (who, these days, they tend to call "chavs" or even "peasants"). Hatred is a better word.
Now, in my opinion, whoever wins elections, the same people tend to remain in power - bankers, big businessmen, bureaucrats, multinational companies, the corporate media, and the White House. However, with the potential return to power of the Tory party, we face the prospect of the direct political rule of the most reactionary elements in British society.
Be afraid. Be very afraid...
