| Return to
opening page |
. |
|
Cameron: An upmarket yob?Or
does Cameron replace the House of Lords
How and why has the aristocracy survived? Cameron in part provides the answer. He has chameleon traits and an ability to hide his real beliefs. Noblisse oblige is the key to understanding his arrogance – he retains a class conviction that he is right – he seeks to manipulate the electorate in the manner of a computer player with the role game of ‘Sim City’. In law, omission can be a crime. Omission in politics is deceit. If the electorate truly knew what Cameron thought and has done would it allow him to sit in Parliament? The articles below help to provide an insight into the workings of this inner Cameron. Cameron: does the emperor have any clothes? The David Cameron story Bullingdon Club How young Cameron wined and dined with the right sort Oxford hellraisers politely trash a pub Bullingdon brawl ringleader is Princess Diana's nephew Smashing job chaps: Exclusive inside look at Bullingdon club The decline and fall of the hooray Henry See also David Cameron had a lovely honeymoon, said The Independent - but it's over now. It has been four months since he was elected leader; he's had masses of media coverage, yet made little impact on the polls. The party is keeping pace with New Labour on about 35%, but has never advanced into a big lead. A few thousand members have joined - but not enough to transform the parry's overall profile. A growing sense of disillusion was reflected at the Tories' spring forum in Manchester where one activist accused Cameron of "Blairite presentationalism", and even Oliver Letwin was forced to acknowledge the "huge task" ahead of the party. This week the news that Cameron was planning a trip to Norway in the middle of the local election campaign, to look at a shrinking glacier, caused further outrage. "I'm afraid he's missing the target," one shadow minister told The Daily Telegraph. "It just has the feel of a gimmick." To think that Cameron started with so much, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer: Labour divided, the Lib Dems embarrassed, a supportive press - "his wife even provided him with a new baby to kiss". He has had numerous chances to score points: the PM is barely speaking to his Chancellor, is facing a police investigation into the "loans for peerages" scandal, and has had to rely on Tory support to pass his Education Bill. Hospitals are being forced to sack staff despite record investment, "which should play perfectly to the Tory claim that Labour mismanages public services". Yet the public is still not "swooning into the arms of the Tory pretender". It's not entirely Cameron's fault. Labour, for all its troubles, retains a "brute strength" based on years of prosperity. People may become very irritated by the Government, but until the economy falters, they are unlikely to get "absolutely furious". It would help if Cameron did his job and actually opposed the Government, said Peter McKay in the Daily Mail. His "aren't-we-nice" approach is wearing very thin. And he is taking his party in a very strange direction, said the Sunday Express. In Manchester, he spoke about the environment, education and housing - hut barely mentioned the issues that have traditionally set the Tories apart from Labour, such as lower taxes and law and order. As if that wasn't odd enough, he then described members of the UK Independence party as "fruit cakes, loons and closet racists", even though the central plank of UKIP policy - that Britain should quit the EU -is supported by a vast swathe of the public, and is a sentiment shared by many Tories. If he really thinks UKIP are such loons, said the FT, it is very odd that he is planning to put his MEPs into a more Euro-sceptical grouping in Brussels. Cameron's UKIP comment was not premeditated, said Matthew D'Ancona in the Sunday Telegraph - but it did fall into his broader strategy. Previous Tor;' leaders have wooed UKIP members by blowing the "dog whistle" on immigration issues. "These nudge-nudge tactics reflected the belief that there was a huge tranche of white working-class Tories who were abstaining but would flock back to the Conservative parry if only it presented a tough enough face." Cameron, by contrast, believes the Tories' best hope is in "scooping up" Lib Dem voters - hence his emphasis on the environment and social justice. He is on the right lines, said Bruce Anderson in The Independent: the search for the "silent majority" of working-class voters is a wild goose chase. Instead, he wants to rebrand the parry, to appeal to the centre. The word "change" appeared 27 times in his conference speech for a good reason: unless he first convinces the public that the Tories are no longer the "nasty parry", when he reveals his policies, they'll assume the worst and close their ears. Cameron's circle does contain radicals who believe in the economic benefits of lower taxes and a smaller state, but they know they must "win the battle for trust before they can fight the battle of ideas". In the meantime, said Peter Preston in The Guardian, all this talk about education and social justice is putting the Tories in a good position to appeal to the Lib Dem leadership, should coalitions need to be built. The only trouble with this strategy, said Peter Riddell in The Times, is that the Tories and the Lib Dems aren't natural bedfellows. For instance, well over half Lib Dem voters support increasing the cost of motoring to discourage people from driving -- a policy that two-thirds of Tories oppose. There's not much point winning everyone over, if you only alienate them all again when you finally get round to saying what you really mean.  They are not meant to make Conservative leaders
like David Cameron any
more. After 40 years in which the party has chosen state-school educated leaders of relatively humble origins, Mr Cameron is straight out of the Establishment top drawer. Examination of the huge amounts of column inches devoted to him during the campaign shows his Conservative bloodline is impeccable, including three prominent Conservative MPs of the late 19th and early 20th Century. He is the first Eton-educated Conservative leader since Sir Alec Douglas-Home in the early 1960s and is a member, along with Prince Charles and his sons, of exclusive Mayfair gentleman's club White's. He is even, it turns out according to reports this week, distantly-related to the Queen. Yet with his mountain bike and fondness for indie rock music Mr Cameron also likes to be seen as a man of the people. Recently, in a bid to dispel his "toff" image, he told the Sun newspaper he enjoys a pint of real ale, rather than champagne, and that he smokes Marlboro Lights cigarettes (a habit he has repeatedly vowed to quit). He launched his leadership campaign at a community radio station, where he felt comfortable telling listeners to "keep it real". He describes his current favourite music as The Killers, and his favourite album of all time as the Queen is Dead, by The Smiths - hardly the choice of a port-swilling Tory grandee. So who is the real David Cameron? Ancestral home David William Duncan Cameron was born on 9 October 1966 in London. The son of a stockbroker, he spent the first three years of his life in Kensington and Chelsea before the family moved to an old rectory near Newbury, in Berkshire. He had what he describes as a "happy childhood", with his brother Alec and sisters Tania and Clare. His father Ian is a former director of estate agent John D Wood and stockbrokers Panmure, where Mr Cameron's grandfather and great grandfather worked. But the new Tory leader gains his political lineage from his mother's side of the family, whose ancestral home was Wasing, in Berkshire. Fate His great, great, great grandfather, William Mount, was Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight in the 19th Century. Mr Cameron's great, great grandfather also called William Mount, sat for Newbury, before passing the seat on to his son Sir William Mount, the first baronet and David Cameron's great grandfather. After prep school, young Dave, as he was then called, followed in the family tradition and went to Eton. In a strange twist of fate his headmaster, Eric Anderson, had been Tony Blair's housemaster at Fettes public school, sometimes dubbed the Scottish Eton. School friends say Mr Cameron was never seen as a great academic - or noted for his interest in politics, beyond the "mainstream Conservative" views held by most of his class mates. 'Good time' He has described his 12 O-levels as "not very good", but he gained three As at A-level, in history, history of art and economics with politics. His biggest mention in the Eton school magazine came when he sprained his ankle dancing to bagpipes on a school trip to Rome. Before going up to Oxford to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics he took a gap year, working initially for Sussex MP Tim Rathbone, before spending three months in Hong Kong, working for a shipping agent, and then returning by rail via the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. At Oxford, he avoided student politics because, according to one friend from the time, Steve Rathbone, "he wanted to have a good time". He was captain of Brasenose college's tennis team and a member of the Bullingdon dining club, famed for its hard drinking and bad behaviour, an episode Mr Cameron has always refused to talk about. First class degree He has also consistently dodged the question of whether he took drugs at university. But he evidently did not let his extra-curricular activities get in the way of his studies. His tutor at Oxford, Professor Vernon Bogdanor, describes him as "one of the ablest" students he has taught, whose political views were "moderate and sensible Conservative". After gaining a first class degree, Mr Cameron answered an advertisement for a job in the Conservative Research Department. He progressed quickly through the ranks and was soon briefing ministers for media appearances. TV job He worked with David Davis on the team briefing John Major for Prime Minister's Questions, and also hooked up with George Osborne, who would go on to be shadow chancellor and his leadership campaign manager. He was poached by then Chancellor Norman Lamont as a political adviser, and was at Mr Lamont's side throughout Black Wednesday, which saw the pound crash out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. By the early 1990s, Mr Cameron had decided he wanted to be an MP himself, but he also knew it was vital to gain experience outside of politics. So after a brief spell as an adviser to then home secretary Michael Howard, he took a job in public relations with ITV television company Carlton. 'Board material' Mr Cameron spent seven years at Carlton, as head of corporate communications, travelling the world with the firm's boss Michael Green, who has described him as "board material". "I tried to persuade him that he could have a really good career in industry, but he was completely resolute about going back to politics, and I respected him for that. He's good, he's the real McCoy," Mr Green told The Independent. But Mr Cameron's period at Carlton is not remembered so fondly by some of the journalists who had to deal with him. Jeff Randall, writing in The Daily Telegraph where he is a senior executive, said he would not trust Mr Cameron "with my daughter's pocket money". "To describe Cameron's approach to corporate PR as unhelpful and evasive overstates by a widish margin the clarity and plain-speaking that he brought to the job of being Michael Green's mouthpiece," wrote the ex-BBC business editor. "In my experience, Cameron never gave a straight answer when dissemblance was a plausible alternative, which probably makes him perfectly suited for the role he now seeks: the next Tony Blair," Mr Randall wrote. Sun business editor Ian King, recalling the same era, described Mr Cameron as a "poisonous, slippery individual". 'Tory boy' Mr Cameron went part-time from his job at Carlton in 1997 to unsuccessfully contest Stafford at that year's general election. In 2001, he won the safe Conservative seat of Witney, in Oxfordshire, recently vacated by Sean Woodward, who defected to Labour. Mr Cameron was by now a married man with a family. His wife, Samantha, is the daughter of landowner Sir Reginald Sheffield, she grew up on the 300 acre Normanby Hall estate, near Scunthorpe. Her step father, Viscount Astor was a minister in John Major's government, with responsibility for broadcasting. Until recently Mr Cameron sat on the board of late night bar operator Urbium with Viscount Astor. Mrs Cameron, who works as the creative director of upmarket stationery firm Smythson's of Bond Street, which counts Stella McCartney, Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell among its clients, has been credited with transforming her husband's staid "Tory boy" image. Disabled son She has a tattoo on her ankle and went to art school in Bristol, where she says she was taught to play pool by rap star Tricky. The couple were introduced by Mr Cameron's sister Clare, Samantha's best friend and were married in 1996. Their first child, Ivan, was born severely disabled and needs round-the-clock care. They also have a daughter, Nancy, 23 months, and Samantha is pregnant with their third child. They divide their time between their London home in North Kensington and a cottage in Witney, Oxfordshire. On entering Parliament, Mr Cameron rose rapidly through the ranks, serving first on the Home Affairs Select, which recommended the liberalisation of drug laws. Presentation He was taken under the wing of Michael Howard, who put him in charge of policy coordination and then, in May, shadow education secretary. He also served as shadow deputy leader of the house and deputy party chairman. In his spare time, Mr Cameron plays tennis, often with former leadership rival Liam Fox, and enjoys dinner parties with his close-knit circle of friends, dubbed the Notting Hill set. Among the inner circle are former central office colleague George Osborne and Rachel Whetstone, who served with him as an adviser to Mr Howard. Ms Whetstone's partner, ex-adman Steve Hilton, advises Mr Cameron on presentation. Another friend, Times journalist and newly-elected MP Michael Gove was a key member of his campaign team. With his influential friends and blue-blooded heritage, Mr Cameron has been criticised for not being in touch with ordinary people. But his easy manner and confidence in front of the television cameras allows him to appear - if not exactly classless - then certainly not the upper-crust figure his background might suggest. The Bullingdon Club is a socially exclusive student dining society at Oxford University, without any permanent rooms, famous for its members' wealth and destructive binges. Membership is by invitation only, and prohibitively expensive for most. The Bullingdon Club was founded over 150 years ago, originally as a hunting and cricket club, as the club's crest shows. It now exists primarily as a dining club with a vestige of hunting in the support of the point to point. The club traditionally meets for an annual breakfast at the Bullingdon point to point, and a club dinner, as well as smaller initiation dinners, before which the rooms of new members are wrecked. Members traditionally dress for their annual dinner in specially made tailcoats in royal blue with ivory silk lapel facings, brass monogrammed buttons, and a mustard waistcoat. Previous members have included Alan Clark MP, Boris Johnson MP, David Dimbleby, Darius Guppy, leader of the opposition David Cameron MP and the 7th Marquess of Bath. The Bullingdon is satirised in Evelyn Waugh's novel Decline and Fall (1928), where it has a pivotal role in the plot: the mild-mannered hero gets the blame for the Bollinger Club's destructive rampage through his college and is sent down (expelled). Tom Driberg claimed that the description of the Bollinger Club was a "mild account of the night of any Bullingdon Club dinner in Christ Church. Such a profusion of glass I never saw until the height of the Blitz. On such nights, any undergraduate who was believed to have 'artistic' talents was an automatic target." (Humphrey Carpenter, The Brideshead Generation: Evelyn Waugh and his Friends, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989). No doubt Waugh also had the Bullingdon in mind in the meeting of the two principal characters in Brideshead Revisited, when after a drunken society dinner Sebastian Flyte vomits through the window of Charles Ryder's college room. The director of the TV series certainly did, as Anthony Andrews who played the part of Lord Sebastian Flyte and his group were all dressed in the famous Bullingdon tails. The Times January 28,
2006
Patrick Foster
David Cameron has said that he had a “normal university experience”, a
phrase that conjures up one-night stands in barely carpeted halls of
residence with an aroma of economy baked beans and that hints at
experimentation with drugs. It was not quite like that. Documents
discovered by The Times show that the young Mr Cameron was
experimenting with far more exotic substances. They chart his entry
into an exclusive club whose members dressed in brown tail coats with
yellow lapels and yellow bow-ties and who took turtle and sherry soup
and Marguerite Christel Champagne in some of Oxford’s finest eating
establishments. He has previously admitted to being a member of the Bullingdon Club, notorious for the drunken vandalism of its predominantly aristocratic members. His spokesman confirmed that Mr Cameron had also been a member of the Octagon, a dining club for the sportsmen of Brasenose College, Oxford, where he was a student in the 1980s. The minutes of the Octagon, in an octagonal leather-bound volume, show that he attended at least 11 events during his time as one of the eight members of the all-male club. His initiation into the brotherhood was on December 6, 1986, at the Randolph Hotel, a four-star neo-Gothic pile in the centre of the city. It is not a common student hangout. The club was founded in 1866 as a rival to the other dining society at the college, the Phoenix Common Room, thought to be the oldest dining club at Oxford. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig joined the Octagon in 1881. In 1970 it was still going strong. One member wrote: “We dine well, we drink well, we have the ‘right sort’ of guests; we have no excuse for our get-togethers but no one so far has asked us for one. We simply pretend to be gourmets and end up as gastronomes.” Records of Mr Cameron’s 18 months in the Octagon are broken by a gap of nine months, after which there is the following entry: “This book, placed in Mr Cameron’s safe-keeping, was subsequently lost for a term and a half!” Next to that Mr Cameron defended his book-keeping skills: “It was not lost, it was looked after”, signing his initials. In time, Mr Cameron would host club meetings, which a contemporary described as having “quite a public school veneer”. On February 19, 1987, the club “met for dinner in Mr Cameron’s rooms in celebration of St Valentine’s day’s massacre”. Alongside a list of female guests is written “You sexy things” and “There have never been sexier waitresses; methinks my mind doth split at the thought”. Close to Mr Cameron’s signature is the name Fran Ferguson. Ms Ferguson said last week that she had been his long-term university girlfriend. One club dinner was held at the Luna Caprese, an Italian restaurant in north Oxford. “Preprandial drinks were taken in Mr Cameron’s rooms”, then the members embarked on a seven-course meal, including turtle and sherry soup. There was a five-course wine list, beginning with Corvo Duca di Salaparuta, passing through Marguerite Christel Champagne and ending with the club’s stable tipple, Graham’s 1977 port. After 18 months in the Octagon, Mr Cameron bowed out. Participation in these aristocratic rituals had had a strange effect on the young student of politics, philosophy and economics. He had arrived as David William Donald Cameron; he left as Dave. In what is believed to be the first recorded use of his man-of-the-people moniker, the minutes note: “It is with regret that the club says farewell to . . . Dave Cameron.” Former members of the Octagon tracked down by The Times refused to talk about the club or Mr Cameron. But a former Brasenose student who dined with the Cameron-era Octagon said: “Cameron was a great socialiser. He was great company, always articulate and witty. He could handle his drink and still conduct great conversation. “The order of the day in the Octagon was to impress each other and make other people laugh. There was some quite acerbic banter, but it was very erudite. People wanted to show what they’d read. My memory of Cameron is of someone who could very much handle the cut and thrust of the debate.” In spite of such abilities, Mr Cameron did not scale the ranks of the club, which appointed a president and a secretary. His spokesman said: “He never held any form of office.” Richard Alleyne :
03/12/2004
When landlord Ian Rogers welcomed the well-spoken and immaculately
dressed young men to his 15th century inn, he felt he could not have
asked for more impressive clientele. All wore expensive suits and ties.
They showed impeccable manners as they were guided through the
restaurant to the private dining area they had booked.Apparently keen to be as little trouble as possible, the 14 mostly Oxford undergraduates, ordered the same starter and main course of salmon salads and fillet steaks. The house wines would be fine, they added in clipped accents. Unfortunately somewhere between the salmon and the steak, all hell broke loose at the White Hart, in Fyfield, a village near Oxford. The apparently perfect diners turned nasty, inexplicably smashing everything within their grasp and grappling with each other until wine and blood were running down the walls of the converted cellar. Mr Rogers, 42, said: "It was totally bizarre. They were extremely well-dressed and well-to-do young men. I assumed they had all gone to Eton or Winchester by the way they spoke. "But they just erupted and smashed everything up, shouting, swearing and attacking each other. It was like a drinking club mixed with a fight club. I called the police and threw them out." The police caught the group nearby trying to rip down road signs. Four were arrested and spent the night in the cells before being released yesterday after paying £80 fixed penalty fines. During the melee the group had claimed they were members of the Bullingdon Club, a notorious secret drinking society made up of some of Oxford University's wealthiest undergraduates. The 100-year-old club, whose previous members have included such hellraisers as Lord Bath, Darius Guppy, Earl Spencer's best man, and the diarist Alan Clark, has a history of drunken vandalism. It was depicted as the "Bollinger Club" in Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall and it is said that the initiation ceremony involves having your university digs "trashed". In his autobiography Lord Bath wrote how members smashed street lights and threw a bicycle through a window in 1956. University sources said the latest incarnation of the club continues the tradition but usually they buy off the restaurant owner. "One of the men who booked the restaurant produced a huge wad of money and said he would sort it out," Mr Rogers said. "He paid the £596 bill in cash and said he would pay for the damage. He wanted to give me hundreds of pounds but I said £100 would do. He then tipped my waitresses £200. "It is just not on. They come and cause problems and then they just get away with it because they have money. I won't put up with it. I am very disappointed that they were let off with a fine." His wife Tracey, 41, said: "They were just so arrogant. I think they probably do it all the time and people take the money and keep quiet. It is outrageous behaviour." The group, who Mr Rogers said included a couple of men in their 40s, arrived at the beamed White Hart restaurant at around 8.20pm on Wednesday but within 50 minutes they had descended into mayhem. Mr Rogers said: "They were impeccably dressed in jackets and ties, tweeds and dinner suits and were very polite. It was all 'that's lovely thank you', and 'thank you so much' as we seated them and brought the wine. "Twenty minutes later they started banging their glasses on the table and we heard some glasses being smashed. I went into the room and saw that one of the boys had a cut to his face. I asked him if he was OK and they all said, 'No, no, no he is absolutely fine. Thank you so much.' "I poured the wine and left. I just thought they were being rowdy. But around 20 minutes later it erupted. They were swearing at each other and smashing bottles and glasses at the walls and punching each other in the face. "It was all so bizarre because each time I pulled one of them out of the melee they apologised to me and were extremely polite but then jumped right back in. It was not just a food fight, they were throwing bottles and attacking each other and ripping clothes. The strange thing is they were never aggressive to me or my waitresses. It seemed like some kind of ritual. "It was like they were on a mission. I am sure that it was all premeditated. It is totally wrong. They scared my other customers and wrecked one of my rooms. Even when I eventually got them out of the door, they smashed a window with a bottle. If this was a group of football yobs they would have had the book thrown at them." Yesterday, one of the group, who claimed he had booked the table under a false name denied that they were members of the Bullingdon Club. The man said it was simply a night out with friends that had got out of control. He said: "We had been drinking too much and we all got far too excited but it was not planned. We had some friends from London. It was not the drinking club and we are very sorry for what happened. "We went out to get drunk but it was not planned to trash the place. It just got very out of hand. I wish you could hold the story for a week. People could get sent down for this." Thames Valley police confirmed that 14 men had been involved in the melee but said only four had been arrested because there were not enough cells to hold them all. "We had reports of them throwing plates and glasses around at the White Hart. The owner said they had quite a lot to drink and were becoming aggressive. "Four people were arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage. They were too drunk at the time to be interviewed and were put in the cells at Abingdon. "They all received an £80 fixed penalty notice and were released. The officer in the case said they had all gone out for a meal and it had all got a little rowdy." Yesterday the university, which said all four arrested men were undergraduates, said it was investigating the incident and that the Proctors might take action against the men. "We take any allegations of criminal behaviour by our students very seriously," a spokesman said. Roger Waite
Secret University drinking society The Bullingdon Club, which caused extensive damage in the dining cellar of a 15th century country pub, was led on the spree of violence by Alexander Fellowes, nephew of Diana, Princess of Wales. Fellowes, 21, a fourth year Classicist at Trinity, is the first son of Lady Cynthia Jane Spencer, the older sister of the Princess of Wales and the Hon. Sir Robert Fellowes, former private secretary to the Queen. The chain of events that led to the carnage in The White Hart in Fyfield, ten miles from Oxford, on 1st December began when a man calling himself Colin McKenzie made a reservation for 14 people in the pub's dining cellar. An investigation by The Oxford Student reveals 'Colin McKenzie' is a pseudonym for Fellowes, who made the reservation on behalf of The Bullingdon Club, Oxford's most exclusive and controversial drinking society, which is made up primarily of old Etonians. When contacted by The Oxford Student on the telephone number given with the reservation, Fellowes admitted his real identity and confessed he had attended the event, but insisted it was not a meeting of the Bullingdon Club. "It was not the Bullingdon Club, just a group of friends on an evening out that got out of control," he said. When he was contacted by The Daily Telegraph in December, on the same number, Fellowes admitted to making the reservation under a false name but refused to reveal his true identity. Landlord of The White Hart Ian Rogers told this newspaper the man he knows as Colin McKenzie, now proven to be the Trinity College aristocrat, twice admitted to him that the trashing of the pub was an event of The Bullingdon Club, once in the vicinity of two police officers and a second time when the man returned to the pub to pay the balance of the damages, which totalled £490. Rogers also told this newspaper that on challenging Fellowes on the second occasion, asking: "Were you really The Bullingdon Club?" The man responded: "Yes, even though I told The Daily Telegraph we were not." He admitted that the violence was premeditated and then added: "I am not currently in the club, I am a prospective member." The Oxford Student's investigation conclusively reveals the man who booked the restaurant as 'Colin McKenzie' is in fact Fellowes who is the first cousin of Prince William, second in line to the throne. This newspaper has obtained signed statements from Rogers, an employee at the pub and a customer on the night in question stating that the photograph of Fellowes obtained by The Oxford Student was the man who led the group into the pub and who paid the bill after the rest of the group were ejected by Rogers. Rogers recounted the events of 1st December: "The group were impeccably dressed in jackets and ties, tweeds and dinner suits and were very polite." "After filing into the beautiful setting of the underground cellar that had been booked exclusively for their use, the group immediately became boisterous and began to bang their fists on the tables." After about five minutes, Rogers went into the beer cellar after hearing two glasses smash. He found one member of the club with "a deep cut on his cheek, he was bleeding a lot onto his shirt". The injured man refused all offers of help and two other members intervened to reiterate that he did not want a plaster or any assistance. In addition to noting this odd behaviour, Rogers commented that despite being extremely polite to him and his staff, the men's language when addressing each other contained "graphic swear words" and was "very antagonistic". When making their reservation, all the men ordered the same starter and main course; smoked salmon followed by steak. The reservations book at The White Hart shows the party specifically mentioned they would not be requiring dessert. Soon after he and his waitresses had delivered the main courses to the men, Rogers said he heard "an eruption of noise". After running into the cellar he encountered a shocking scene: "All the food and plates had been thrown everywhere and they were jumping on top of each other on the table like kids in a playground." The experience took on a surreal nature as each time Rogers confronted a member "they apologized profusely but offered no explanation". The Club also continued its violence as only two wine bottles out of 20 remained intact as the rest were smashed on the walls and thrown across the room. Rogers shouted at the group and managed to herd them out of the fire exit that leads from the cellar and as they left, one of the group smashed the adjacent window with a wine bottle. However as Fellowes made to leave Rogers "grabbed hold" of him and marched him back to the bar. Fellowes paid the £596 bill in cash and then offered a further £500 in notes for the damages. Rogers only accepted £100 for damages although Fellowes tipped the waitresses a further £200. Rogers, who recently renovated the beamed 15th century pub, added: "At no time did I have fear for the safety of myself, they were almost over-polite when I first served them with the wine." After the police arrived at the scene, the sergeant on duty ordered the arrest of all 14 men before realising that only four cells were available, a situation described by Rogers as "absolutely ridiculous". The four men who were arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage were all interviewed the following morning and released after being given £80 fixed penalty notices. Rogers expressed frustration to The Oxford Student that the students were treated so leniently. "I am furious with Thames Valley Police for the inaccuracies and mistakes they have made that enabled the culprits to escape with fixed penalty fines," he said. "If the police had asked me if I was happy for them to be given fixed penalties, I would have said 'no'." Fellowes was one of the four men on The Bullingdon Club trip to The White Hart who was arrested, kept in cells overnight and given an £80 fine shortly before being released the next morning. Rogers has since informed a Thames Valley Police Inspector that he would like to make an official complaint about the police handling of the matter and he has been told that the force are aware that this is, "a very serious complaint" and will be contacted by a Superintendent sometime today (Thursday). He also told The Oxford Student of his frustration that when he contacted the police, they refused to name the members of the club who were arrested and issued with fines: "I could not understand why the police were being so uncooperative." It is not known whether the University is pursuing any disciplinary action against any of the four who were arrested. The Proctors' Office told this newspaper: "We do not comment on individual students' cases." However it is possible that Trinity College will take disciplinary action. Rogers told this newspaper: "Today [Wednesday] I received a call from the man I know as Colin McKenzie, he informed me that I may receive a call from Trinity as he was 'in trouble' with the college." When The Oxford Student contacted Fellowes, who told The Daily Telegraph in December: "People may get sent down over this," he said "I am in enough trouble as it is." Alexander Fellowes is an Old Etonian who is President of the Claret Club, an Old Etonian Society which counts Trinity President Hon. Michael Beloff QC amongst its members. Fellowes's father was appointed as the Queen's Private Secretary in 1992 and drafted her first speech after the death of Diana in 1997. His mother, Lady Cynthia Jane Spencer, is one of the elder sisters of the late Princess of Wales and gave a reading at her funeral in September 1997. 13th Jan 2005. Sophie McBain
If the words ‘drinking society’ only bring to mind images of faded,
semi-conscious superheroes collapsed in Park End, think again. The
Bullingdon Dining Club, a top secret drinking society, draws its
membership from Oxford’s super-rich, enticing them to a life of
secrecy, champagne drinking and ritualised violence. Their excesses
have cost them thousands of pounds, sparked threats of imprisonment,
and once incurred a ban on entering within 15 miles of Oxford.Eternally romanticised by Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall, permanently enigmatic, these tailcoat wearing drunkards have become the stuff of legend. Now, finally, after almost 150 years of silence, The Oxford Student has got one of its members to talk. Last December, images of snivelling Bullingdon members were splashed all over the tabloids after all 17 members were arrested for wrecking the cellar of the 15th century pub, the White Hart, in Fyfield. 17 bottles of wine were smashed into the walls of the pub after the civility of a gourmet meal descended into a brawl, leaving a trail of debris that was compared by eye-witnesses to a scene from the blitz. The inebriated members started fighting, leaving one with a deep cut to the cheek, and the landlord recalls attempting to pull apart the fighting parties, only to have them set on each other once more, exclaiming, “Sorry old chap, just a bit of high spirits. Four members, including the ringleader, Alexander Fellowes • Princess Diana’s nephew • spent the night in jail. The legal consequences may have been unusual, but the antics were bordering on lame compared to previous incidents. The club was once banned from entering within a 15 mile radius of Oxford after all 550 windows of Christ Church’s Tom quad were smashed in one night. ‘I like the sound of breaking glass’ is one of the society’s mottos and particularly true of one member who, at L’Ortolan in Berkshire, took it upon himself to eat his wine glass rather than his Michelinstarred meal. At another infamous Bullingdon garden party, the club invited a string band to play and proceeded to destroy all of the instruments, including a Stradivarius. If their aristocratic roots don’t bar them from hooliganism, they certainly don’t temper a certain penchant for good, old fashioned toilet humour. At the Bullingdon’s annual meeting at a point-to-point, one member, a Hungarian Count, pushed another, Daily Telegraph journalist Harry Mount, down a hill in a portaloo. George Osborne was watching the scene, as was The Oxford Student’s source: “Fortunately it was quite early in the day and the unsuspecting victim was shaken but not stirred. Once their three years is up, if their university career survives to its natural end, Bullingdon members go on to some of the most powerful and influential positions in the country. Harry Mount, George Osborne, Alan Clark, Lord Bath, David Dimbleby, Boris Johnson and -• it has recently emerged • the Tories’ ‘man of the people’ David Cameron, were trained to the pressures of fame by the champagne quaffing, bellicose Bullingdon. Cameron was member of the club at a time when it was derringer to engage in the ‘man of the people’ pursuits of washing down “a cocktail of drugs with an honest, working class box of chips and a five pound bottle of wine”. Looking at the impressive list of famous members and the impeccably tailored member before me, it seems hard to imagine why any of these last bastions of the British aristocratic classes would participate in activity more suited to British football fan culture. Any member would no doubt be horrified by such a comparison; the Bullingdon is a ‘dining club’ not a ‘drinking society’, regardless of the fact that our source openly admits that they regularly get kicked out of restaurants for rowdiness before the main course arrives. Most Chelsea Headhunters would hold out till after pudding. More at home with a bottle of champagne in their hands than a can of Carlsberg, they are, above all, discerning yobs. My source is quick to impress on me that they tend to leave one-off antique pieces untouched, preferring to inflict more replaceable damage. I wonder how replaceable a Stradivarius is. Or 550 windows for that matter. A large part of the members’ motivation is the feudal idea that its quite alright to inflict damage on peasants’ property, provided one is able to pay for it. That’s why Alexander Fellowes, at the White Hart, tipped the waitress £200, on top of all of the members paying for the damage inflicted. Our source described the White Hart landowner as “unfair” for reporting the matter to the police and as having “no sense of humour”. Most people, he adds, are willing to let such matters slide in exchange for the remuneration on offer. Although the eyewitnesses at the White Hart described the diners’ degeneration as appearing highly ritualised, our source denies that the Bullingdon’s outbursts are intended. He claims that, hard done by members always “intend to have a civilised meal”, but the historical precedent set by former Bullingdon generations means that somehow, after a couple of bottles of Dom Perignon, their expensive primal instincts are released. That is not to say though that they wake up after a night of debauchery, in their vomit stained tailcoats, with intense feelings of regret - according to our source, the night at the White Hart was “objectively funny”. The Bullingdon seems to be guided by various strangely distorted moral ideas. Along with rule number one - ‘it’s quite fine to wreak havoc, provided you can pay for it’ - it seems to currently have a slightly peculiar drugs policy. Super-rich druggies need to go to the Assassins or Piers Gaviston to engage in hallucinogenic pursuits, but our source insists that as far as drugs go, the Bullingdon has decided to become squeaky clean. Allegedly, the Bullingdon has never, even during its most drug-loving days, endorsed the use of marijuana, because it meant members were less likely to get the urge to smash things up. The relatively innocent champagne binging “adds to the Bullingdon’s charm”, our source adds. Cue Bullingdon code number two: ‘passing out face down in your own vomit is quite charming, provided your illness is only alcohol induced’. The Bullingdon usually has between 15 and 70 members, but this year there are only seven. Are financial barriers holding back new membership? The Bullingdon is one of the most expensive of Oxford’s dining clubs. The tailormade blue tailcoats cost at least £1,200 and a formal dinner, of which there are usually one or two a term, costs a flat rate of £100, although once damages are added the cost is far greater than this. Richer members may have to pay an even larger membership fee, sometimes approaching £10,000. Nonetheless, our source claims that there are still plenty of people who are rich enough to join, but claims that it is hard finding “the right kind of people”. Anyone who likes clubbing just doesn’t fit into the Bullingdon mould. It certainly takes a certain kind of person to be willing to face the initiation ceremonies. All members have their rooms completely trashed as a basic initiation, additional requirements may vary. Our source recalls having to, after a whole day of drinking, down half a bottle of whisky in one. He doesn’t recall finishing it. “The Stoics are all about vomiting, the Bullingdon’s about passing out,” he adds with an all-knowing air. Other reports of initiation ceremonies included having to drink five bottles of champagne. Members were each given a black bin-liner to throw up in, but the newcomers’ bin-liners had had the bottom cut out. Why then do members to pay thousands of pounds to vomit, pass out, be ritually humiliated and be at permanent risk of being sent down or arrested? It is here that one might see fit to grant our blue tailcoat wearing friends some grudging pity; invitation is by membership only and perhaps new undergraduates are drawn into this society through some desperation to try and fi t in. Like any society, the Bullingdon must attract members who want to be liked. Forget the fact that the Bullingdon’s behaviour may isolate the rest of the university, as our source admits, as soon as you enter the Bullingdon, other members become your closest friends. Perhaps this is why so many of the members go on to become famous, after all a member of the Bullingdon must be willing to go through almost anything in order to gain approval. I suggest this to my source, who responds rather philosophically. “I suppose there are two theories on this, maybe it is because it attracts people who are resourceful and determined, or maybe,” he adds thoughtfully, but with a hint of glee in his voice, “they are just privileged to start off with.” We may wonder, considering its dwindling membership and Oxford’s changing culture, whether the Bullingdon is coming to the end of its 150 year long existence. With threats from colleges, run-ins with the police and a general lack of acceptance of its decadence, is there any space for such a society in 21st century Oxford? Our source is adamant that the events at the White Hart did not sound the death toll for the society. He admits that all of the members have been “feeling rather paranoid” since last December and that they have had to rein in some of their wildest urges and keep their activities rather low-key but, he adds in defiant tones, “The Bullingdon is in a spirit of recuperation and the controversy will soon rise again.” 12th Jan 2005 The
decline and fall of the hooray Henry
The Spectator Mar 8,
2003
Peter Oborne Peter Oborne on why undergraduates dunked Andrew Marr in a Cambridge pond, and why such an outrage would not be perpetrated today Twenty-five years on, Andrew Marr recollects the episode well but insists that it was all down to mistaken identity. They were after the Jews, he claims, and they got me as second best. Marr's account is at any rate open to challenge. There was plenty about the future political editor of the BBC which a Cambridge University undergraduate dining club on its mettle would have found both appetising and provocative. He affected a little goatee beard at the time. That could easily have done the trick on its own. So might his little flat cap, carefully modelled on photographs of Lenin in exile. The little denim bag he swung jauntily over his shoulders, a fashion statement on the hard Left in the late 1970s, must also be taken into account. If it displayed, as it frequently did, the latest issue of the Socialist Organiser, a Trotskyite rag, then that would have been conclusive. Marr, in short, was a walking target. There is no need to invoke anti-Semitism - no more in evidence in Cambridge undergraduate circles a generation ago than it is today - to explain why one chilly Cambridge evening, with the wind howling straight from Siberia, Marr was thrown head first into the Pembroke College pond The dunking of Andrew Marr was, in short, one of those innocent events that have long been part of English university life. For centuries, earnest students have been debagged, defenestrated, thrown into rivers, and on numerous occasions had the contents of their rooms wrecked by highspirited university bloods. It is a practice that most people, especially women, find silly and baffling; and it is dying. Perhaps it is to do with the gentler temper of the undergraduates; perhaps it is caused by paranoia, during the current Labour-- inspired Kulturkampf over admissions, about anything that smacks of campus elitism. But there seems no place, these days, for the cult of the hoorayish prank. The classic literary account occurs in the opening chapter of Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall, first published in 1928. Indeed, Andrew Marr bears certain mainly ideological resemblances to Paul Pennyfeather, Waugh's pitifully conscientious undergraduate who smoked three ounces of tobacco a week - John Cotton, medium - drank a pint and a half of beer a day, and liked to attend lectures about the League of Nations with his friend Potts. Pennyfeather's misfortune was to encounter the Bollinger on its night out: the resultant debagging set him off on his erratic path from virtue. The Bollinger, like the Bullingdon upon which it was partly modelled, used to have periods of abeyance `because quite often the club was suspended for some years after each meeting'. During one period in the mid 1960s when the Bullingdon was banned from the City of Oxford, the club set up a tent in the neighbouring countryside, going to the lengths of paying an internationally famous string quartet to provide music to accompany dinner. Needless to say, every single one of the musical instruments was smashed to matchwood, including a Stradivarius. Every university generation, until recently, has had comparable stories of undergraduate high spirits. In the 1970s Damian Green, now a member of the shadow Cabinet, tipped by some as future leader of the Conservative party, attended Balliol College, Oxford. He was invited to a guest night at Magdalen. After dinner, Green was deposited, black tie and all, in the river. His assailants included the Tory MP Dominic Grieve and Tim Clarke, now the chief executive of Six Continents and at the centre of a high-profile takeover battle. Though amusing for Green's assailants -- in all there were about a dozen of them Green himself did not immediately get the joke. For one thing he was pushed into a very shallow stretch of water - not more than three inches deep, he now says. For another, he narrowly missed being impaled on a set of sharp iron railings. When sobriety returned, Grieve, normally the most mildmannered of individuals, was distraught, and for days afterwards devoted himself to cosseting and comforting his victim. Political motivation surely played its part in the humiliations of both Marr and Green. Green then, as now, stood on the wet side - metaphorically as well as literally - of the Conservative party. Magdalen enjoyed a hearty reputation. There may well have been a body of opinion, in those far-off Thatcherite days, that Green deserved to be punished for his heterodox opinions. But the case of Damian Green's shadow Cabinet colleague Bernard Jenkin cannot be analysed in this way. It was hard to find anyone at all, not even the college porter, who stood to the right of the young Jenkin - now the staunchest ally of lain Duncan Smith - when he was up at Corpus Christi, Cambridge. The collective decision of Corpus undergraduates to pour a quarter hundredweight of custard over Jenkin was reached without one dissenting voice being raised. Though it is hard to be certain after the lapse of two decades, Jenkin was probably being punished for his incorrigible bumptiousness, a characteristic which has by no means entirely deserted him. Jenkin took it all in good part, and indeed attributed his subsequent success in university election contests to the sympathy vote that he generated. Good humour was also the reaction of Peter Luff, then a svelte undergraduate at Jesus, Cambridge, now a respected member of the Conservative party whips office, when he was set upon and debagged late one night by his college boat club. This imperviousness in the face of adversity was also displayed by Trelawny Williams, now a City fund-manager, after he was stripped naked at his friend James Wellesley-Wesley's Paris stag night. He found his way to his car and made to drive back to the INSEAD business school, where he was studying. Disaster struck when Williams was obliged to stop at a garage to fill up with petrol. Showing great resourcefulness, he converted a copy of the Figaro he found on the back seat into a kilt, and passed everything off in style. Monty Don, now the universally admired presenter of Gardeners' World, showed comparable phlegm when he was carried head first out of a party thrown by a college aesthete. The perpetrators included Nicholas Shakespeare, the distinguished novelist, and the Tory MP Owen Paterson. It cannot be claimed that the disc jockey Tony Blackburn showed the same good temper when accosted by a group of Oxford University hearties at the Notting Hill restaurant La Paesana, West London. According to subsequent newspaper reports, the undergraduates, gathered to celebrate the 20th birthday of Viscount Althorp, ran wild. 'I went into the restaurant with a girlfriend for a quiet meal,' Blackburn complained afterwards to Sun reporter Stuart Higgins. `Then I got the message that Althorp and co. wanted to get my trousers off. I thought it was all very odd, but the waiters stepped in and asked them to return to their tables. There was a lot of shouting and suddenly a rubber plant hurtled across the room and landed in somebody's meal. A few minutes later another little mob of them came up the stairs, apparently after my trousers again.' That was almost 20 years ago. It is hard, frankly, to imagine that today's undergraduates would behave with such discourtesy, even towards a superannuated disc jockey. So far this article has concentrated on the victims of this high-spirited hooliganism. And it has to be said that they emerge, at first glance, as the more attractive characters: punished for all kinds of innocent, even commendable, mistakes - going to the wrong school, not fitting in, being leftwing, etc. By contrast, the perpetrators act in a braying pack, the false bravado failing by a wide margin to conceal a collective moral cowardice. There is in addition every reason to speculate that these rituals contain a subconscious sexual element, something that was exploited by Anthony Blanche in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (Waugh returned again and again to scenes of Oxford exuberance). Blanche baffled his persecutors by telling them: `Dear sweet clodhoppers, if you knew anything of sexual psychology, you would know that nothing would give me keener pleasure than to be manhandled by you meaty boys.' Not quite all the aggressors fall into Waugh's category of hearty. Tony Blair's press adviser, Alastair Campbell, inchoately on the Left while at Cambridge, refused to be intimidated by public-school bullies. He is remembered for launching counter-offensive operations, lying in wait for stray Old Etonians, army officers, or members of the Trinity Foot Beagles, to whom he is said by contemporaries to have felt an especial enmity. Regrettably, in the absence of hard evidence, it is impossible to assert with confidence whether Campbell's one-man guerrilla war met with success. If you want the epitome of all that Campbell railed against, consider Henry Bellingham, now the upright and irreproachable MP for North West Norfolk. How Bellingham failed to be sent down from Cambridge during his spectacular sojourn there in the mid 1970s remains one of life's mysteries. The story of how Bellingham, accompanied by two or three other Magdalene College bloods, entered the room of their college contemporary Christopher Greenwood - who has since risen to become a brilliant silk and Professor of International Law at the LSE - is mild by Bellingham's heroic standards, but nevertheless of relevance here. 'I rather think that we may have gone to his room late one night,' recalls Bellingham today. `And he may well have ended up without his clothes.' Asked to account for this act of aggression, Bellingham pauses for a moment. `He had a beard. That was it.' This incident is made more complicated by the fact that Greenwood emphatically denies it took place. 'I do not remember it. And it is the sort of thing that I would have remembered. Henry must be confusing me with someone else,' he insists. One of the most unremarked social changes of the last 20 years has been the ending of the high jinks that have been an inevitable concomitant of English university life for the last several hundred years. At Cambridge, the Pitt Club has been consumed by the local Pizza Express. At Oxford, the Bullingdon is in sad decline. For much of the last decade it has been abandoned through lack of interest. The Assassins, at Oxford, is thought to have closed. So has the Oscar Wilde - undergraduates would bar their doors and lay in defensive weaponry against the moment this fearsome dining club sallied forth. This week, in another indication of new attitudes, alcohol was banned at St Edmund Hall. The arrival of women, and the moderation of manners, has doubtless helped bring about change. Many will regard the end of boorish activity among undergraduates as unreservedly a good thing. But something has been lost. The revelry which deposited Marr in the Pembroke pond has ancient antecedents. It can be traced back to the Greek rout or komos, when gangs of youths would roam the streets in search of their opponents in love or politics, of which the most famous example was the Mutilation of the Herms, when Alcibiades and his friends went on the rampage in Athens ahead of the Sicilian expedition. Such bands of youths went on to fight together, and it may be that in a post-- militarist age there is no call for this kind of juvenile bonding. In the chippy era of Gordon Brown and the Access Regulator, it may be that universities are cracking down harder on such outrages, on the grounds that they put off applicants from non-hoorayish schools. Perhaps it is just that students are fed up with aping characters from Evelyn Waugh. It is no coincidence that the centre of this kind of riotous behaviour in the second half of the last century was Magdalene College, Cambridge, where the senior tutor was T.E.B. Howarth, who has valid but overlooked claims to be regarded as Britain's greatest postwar educationist. A brave man, Howarth secured an MC during the war, and acted as personal liaison officer to Montgomery. Though academically austere, he envisaged a world which, in the words of his pupil James Stourton, was led by lower seconds, ably assisted by first-class degrees. He fully recognised the need to train a breed of fearless young men, dedicated to the service of their country. In the event of battle, wrote Howarth on the young Henry Bellingham's report, this man will definitely lead the first tank in, and he will be the first to be killed. See also Sex, Drugs and Cameron Samantha Cameron David Cameron Cameron less popular than BNP's Griffin Was David Cameron guilty of male rape? |
||
| meditations |
top |
|