Etonocracy

[seventh bullet]

He is also mentioned in The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, as was the w/c trade unionist, radical activist interaction with him and his research for Wigan Pier.

They felt aggrieved that their experience, as much a part of w/c life as the things Smokeandsteam mentions, that disgusted them as they did Orwell, although from a different vantage point, were omitted. They welcomed him, with their own class unease, and were left with a portrayal of their lives and communities which wasn't the whole picture. They were pissed off.

For more about Orwell and working class socialist circles, the obscure writer Jack Common was a lifelong friend and colleague of his, which also had its sharp class differences in outlook.

 

[Sasaferrato]

Thinking about Orwell allows us to reflect on the nature of the questions of ownership, leadership and the historical development of the left over the last 100 odd years or so.

As Bahnhof Strasse rightly says (and given that none of us on here have gone to war against fascists or got involved with armed stand offs with counter revolutionary Stalinists the point is especially pertinent) his track record speaks for itself. His work on class, cultural development and poverty resonates today and quality of the writing is brilliant. In an imagined top ten books that have shook me and linger within me 'Homage to Catalonia' would always be on the list.

But, and there is no getting around it, Orwell didn't actually like the working class much. His class disgust at their manners, habitus and philistinism is never far away. And, as others have said, trade union activists at the sharp end didn't rate him much either.

The important thing to take from this is this: Orwell is broadly representative in terms of class, manners, education and social and cultural capital of most of the key thinkers and leaders of the left in Britain over the last century going back to the Webbs. In simple terms this reality is akin to the leadership of the black liberation movement in South Africa being handed over to well meaning white liberals directing an army of the black working class and doing the thinking for them. In both cases the outcome would be/is predictable in terms of results, buy in, embeddedness and credibility.

The middle class - like Orwell - can be and are good allies and supporters. But until the working class leads, is a class for itself as well as of itself and until middle class support is placed at the back and not the front - then the future leaders at Eaton can sleep soundly in their dorms.

That depends on whether you consider the Argentine government under Galtieri to be fascist. It was certainly strongly right wing.

 

[Proper Tidy]

Must have been conflicting

 

[Pickman's model]

Make state schools so good that people won’t waste money on private. That was Labour’s pledge in the 70’s.

Their next prime minister was that murderous cunt Blair, Fettes College. We will now have foisted upon us either the 21st Etonian or the first cunt from Charterhouse a cunt. Whoppee.

c4u

 

[Poi E]

In simple terms this reality is akin to the leadership of the black liberation movement in South Africa being handed over to well meaning white liberals directing an army of the black working class and doing the thinking for them. .

handed over to black and white neo-liberals instead. Not so well-meaning.

 

[Sasaferrato]

Must have been conflicting

What do you mean by that? If you are suggesting that I am a fascist you can go and fuck yourself.

 

[Poi E]

<deckchair and spliff>

 

[Fez909]

Always worth a repost of this article butchers shared a while ago....

State of despair as public schools get the cream

 

[Poi E]

If enclosure worked on the land why not in the schools?

 

[JuanTwoThree]

If enclosure worked on the land why not in the schools?

It worked only too well. Landowners fencing off common land was much like the same people excluding poorer people from the Edward VI and Elizabethan Free Grammars.

 

[chilango]

Make state schools so good that people won’t waste money on private. That was Labour’s pledge in the 70’s.

Their next prime minister was that murderous cunt Blair, Fettes College. We will now have foisted upon us either the 21st Etonian or the first cunt from Charterhouse. Whoppee.

2nd from Charterhouse as it happens.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

2nd from Charterhouse as it happens.

Oh, who was the first? Their alumni page is so lacking of anyone of note, I gave up half way through.

 

[chilango]

Oh, who was the first? Their alumni page is so lacking of anyone of note, I gave up half way through.

Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool - Wikipedia

PM during Peterloo.

Sadly escaped the fate of his predecessor

 

[Poi E]

"Liverpool was the first British Prime Minister to regularly wear long trousers instead of knee breeches."

Cripes! A dandy in charge!

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool - Wikipedia

PM during Peterloo.

Sadly escaped the fate of his predecessor

In about an hour I shall be swimming in Charthouse's pool, I shall dedicate my piss to this tossrag

 

[Poi E]

Der Spiegel picking up on this How Eton College Perpetuates Problems in the UK - SPIEGEL ONLINE

 

[Gaia]

I was, I'm ashamed to say, privately educated. That school, along with my parents, fucked me up so bad I now literally cannot function. It totally and utterly broke me and I left with fuck all by way of exams. This family doesn't do state education. My father's nephew has a 6-month-old and my cousin has already put his name on the waiting list for Sherborne Prep. My grandparents were mortified when my Leeds cousin had offers from both Oxford and Cambridge (they didn't really like northerners, they speak funny). I am ashamed to come from where I come from, all that matters is money, status and power. My grandparents were well-known to the royal family and they never missed an opportunity to name-drop, and everyone who came to the house, who wasn't family, was forced to take a tour of the 'royal gallery'.

My sister and paternal cousins are well into it, attending Henley and Ascot every year, but it's all fake, isn't it, there's nothing remotely real about it, is there and, frankly, I find it abhorrent, getting smashed out your skull on £1,000 bottles of Bolly or Verve Cliquot or whatever, when that money could feed a family for at least 6 months, and you just know that most of 'em own companies and treat their staff like slaves.

I might have been born middle-class, but that doesn't mean I AM middle-class.

 

[mx wcfc]

I was, I'm ashamed to say, privately educated. That school, along with my parents, fucked me up so bad I now literally cannot function. It totally and utterly broke me and I left with fuck all by way of exams. This family doesn't do state education. My father's nephew has a 6-month-old and my cousin has already put his name on the waiting list for Sherborne Prep. My grandparents were mortified when my Leeds cousin had offers from both Oxford and Cambridge (they didn't really like northerners, they speak funny). I am ashamed to come from where I come from, all that matters is money, status and power. My grandparents were well-known to the royal family and they never missed an opportunity to name-drop, and everyone who came to the house, who wasn't family, was forced to take a tour of the 'royal gallery'.

My sister and paternal cousins are well into it, attending Henley and Ascot every year, but it's all fake, isn't it, there's nothing remotely real about it, is there and, frankly, I find it abhorrent, getting smashed out your skull on £1,000 bottles of Bolly or Verve Cliquot or whatever, when that money could feed a family for at least 6 months, and you just know that most of 'em own companies and treat their staff like slaves.

I might have been born middle-class, but that doesn't mean I AM middle-class.

Likewise, and I have coughed about this on here before, I was private school educated. It fucked me in many ways, except that I can say that I played rugby for my school's 2nd 15 and stuffed Eton's first's. They didn't play us again. (sorry - illustrative of just how public schools can screw your perspectives).

We were never in the financial sphere that Etonians were, but were taught the same shit about privilage, and how we were better than everyone else.

Unlike you, I did very well at A levels, and got into a good uni, thanks to being spoon fed, and coached for (carefully selected) exams. As soon as I got to uni, I fell to pieces and left without a degree, as I had no idea how to cope without being spoon fed. An acquaintance of mine is an educationalist and it is apparently a recognised "thing". My own failing, in my view.

Clearly, I have rebelled against the whole private school thing, as have you. It ain't where you came from that matters it's where you are going to, which is a bit of a cliche, but hey ho.

A lot of private school kids have been really screwed over by the experience - whether that be by the sense of abandonment when dumped by parents, or by being subjected to corporal punishment by sadistic teachers (I'm talking about a 11 year old being spanked with a hairbrush and then it moving on to canings).

Most though come through it with the sense of entitlement, and the contacts to go on to be wealthy and successful. I didn't. Doesn't sound like you did either. Fwiw, I have a job which most would consider middle class now, and I can't claim to be struggling financially, though if I lose my job, I'm fucked.

At the end of they day though, there's a lot of people out there, and in here, who had a damned sight tougher childhood than those of us that had private educations, and have a worse experience and start in life than we did.

I'm not putting your view down, believe me, I'm just putting my own perspective.

 

[Poi E]

I was, I'm ashamed to say, privately educated. That school, along with my parents, fucked me up so bad I now literally cannot function. It totally and utterly broke me and I left with fuck all by way of exams. This family doesn't do state education. My father's nephew has a 6-month-old and my cousin has already put his name on the waiting list for Sherborne Prep. My grandparents were mortified when my Leeds cousin had offers from both Oxford and Cambridge (they didn't really like northerners, they speak funny). I am ashamed to come from where I come from, all that matters is money, status and power. My grandparents were well-known to the royal family and they never missed an opportunity to name-drop, and everyone who came to the house, who wasn't family, was forced to take a tour of the 'royal gallery'.

My sister and paternal cousins are well into it, attending Henley and Ascot every year, but it's all fake, isn't it, there's nothing remotely real about it, is there and, frankly, I find it abhorrent, getting smashed out your skull on £1,000 bottles of Bolly or Verve Cliquot or whatever, when that money could feed a family for at least 6 months, and you just know that most of 'em own companies and treat their staff like slaves.

I might have been born middle-class, but that doesn't mean I AM middle-class.

English middle class. Always looking up to ape the aristocracy, and not seeing how its disregard for the working class has dug the ground out under its feet.

 

[stavros]

People who went to private school shouldn't feel shame. They won't have had any say in the matter.

 

[SpineyNorman]

I blame the parents

 

[butchersapron]

People who went to private school shouldn't feel shame. They won't have had any say in the matter.

If they then defend private schools they should be made to feel shame.

This is the lower level, the more damaging level stuff:

‘Easier’ exams offered by private schools smooth pupils’ entry to top universities

Just days after GCSE results day last Thursday, Freedom of Information (FoI) requests by Labour MP Lucy Powell show that almost all Russell Group universities treat the two types of exam – the regulated GCSEs used in the state system, and IGCSEs, which the government admits do not meet the same high standards – as exact equivalents in admission processes.

 

[brogdale]

If they then defend private schools they should be made to feel shame.

This is the lower level, the more damaging level stuff:

‘Easier’ exams offered by private schools smooth pupils’ entry to top universities

Just days after GCSE results day last Thursday, Freedom of Information (FoI) requests by Labour MP Lucy Powell show that almost all Russell Group universities treat the two types of exam – the regulated GCSEs used in the state system, and IGCSEs, which the government admits do not meet the same high standards – as exact equivalents in admission processes.

Biggest scandal of this particular issue is that many private schools had rumbled the enhanced 'coach ability' of IGSCEs well over a decade ago.

 

[Proper Tidy]

Had heard of IGCSE but did not know that they were for posh/fee paying schools only or that they were fucking easier.

Re: people who went fee paying. Obviously children don't choose the school they get sent to but once there they are exposed to and entrenched in that culture. That has an effect, even with those who reject their schooling (and fair play to them for that). Not a blame thing, just the way it is

 

[brogdale]

Had heard of IGCSE but did not know that they were for posh/fee paying schools only or that they were fucking easier.

Re: people who went fee paying. Obviously children don't choose the school they get sent to but once there they are exposed to and entrenched in that culture. That has an effect, even with those who reject their schooling (and fair play to them for that). Not a blame thing, just the way it is

Typically they contain a higher proportion of short-response questions that are easier to 'coach' kids for. One reason why the DfE ditched them from the state sector a couple of years ago. Like I said above, the fee-paying fraternity have been playing this one for at least a decade.

 

[chilango]

I've taught igcses. Will post later about them. Am camping so it might be a few days....

 

[treelover]

He wasn't by the ones he met. And he didn't expose class division. Maybe for middle class readers eager for some voyeurism. The w/c assisting his research were unimpressed with his lack of interest in their efforts and political activism in dealing with unemployment and poverty. Hosted by the Liverpool dock worker and sailor George Garrett, who established links with communists and anarchists in South America on his travels, who was a Shakespeare specialist and playwright who edited a literary journal Blair himself contributed articles to. The view of the w/c is just rough cobbled streets and grubby faces though, isn't it?

Did he mean the the National Unemployed Workers Movement at all?

btw there is little to action on fighting unemployment now, by the left or anyone else.

in some ways 'ten years on the parish'(dole) is worse now as there is less solidarity, a diiferent type of surveillance, and no campaigning organisations, the unemployed(and the disabled and sick) have been left to rot.

 

[stavros]

Forgive me for asking, would Russell Group unis be interested in GCSE results? From memory of applying and attending one, the only conditions were on A Levels, and my college had made the judgement on whether I took those based on my GCSEs.

 

[butchersapron]

Forgive me for asking, would Russell Group unis be interested in GCSE results? From memory of applying and attending one, the only conditions were on A Levels, and my college had made the judgement on whether I took those based on my GCSEs.

Responding to FoIs requests from Powell, only Cambridge University among the 24 Russell Group universities said it did not take exam results at key stage 4 (14-16 years) into account when deciding which students to admit. The other 23 said they did take them into account and made no distinction between the two.

 

[Sue]

It's complete bollocks, as is playing the system by using different exam boards for different subjects, depending on which are considered easier.

In Scotland, there's one exam board. So if you do Higher English* for example, you know you sat exactly the same exam at exactly the same time on exactly the same day whether you're in Lewis or Linlithgow.

* Or whatever it's called these days.