Correlli Barnett Lays The Smackdown On Britannia

So, at an 80th birthday celebratory seminar the historian lays out some home truths on our not so ‘Great’ Britain, bring the noise-

“Politicians, civil servants and military chiefs remained mental prisoners of Britain’s past as a world and imperial power,”

Discussing why the elite retain such nostalgic delusions, he said: “In my belief the elite remained prisoners of their indoctrination at public school and Oxbridge. There they had been programmed to be house prefects to the world. But given Britain’s postwar problems, these Victorian or Edwardian reflexes were simply obsolete mental kit overdue for scrapping.”

He argued in his address: “Such exaggeration has remained the besetting sin of British total strategy right up to the present day and also remained a sure recipe for a discordance between military commitments and financial resources. At the present time, the British army and its air support are just too small to fight simultaneous large-scale guerrilla wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan,” Mr Barnett added.

“In other words, a case of true overstretch. It is why our commitment in Iraq is being gradually cut back – simply to enable us to concentrate our limited strength on Afghanistan.”

He castigated the prime minister who took Britain to war over Suez in 1956, Anthony Eden. “He could no more imagine Britain giving up her inheritance as a great power because she was hard-up than, for a similar reason, having to exchange his Savile Row suits for ready-made reach-me-downs… In Eden’s view, ‘our world-wide commitments are inescapable.’ Gordon Brown and David Cameron would probably say the same today. Tony Blair certainly did.”

Of course the assembled elite hrumph and ignore him and the BBC report sides with the military expansionist delusions as post-Hutton normal. I remember two things said about change or revolution in Britain- John le Carré said it would be necessary to abolish the public school system (here ‘public schools’ actually mean expensive private elite schools full of chinless idiots), Billy Bragg said it would be necessary to close all the pubs for a while, beer being our opium of the masses. I second both. Mark Steel wrote a fantastic piece about watching a cricket game hosted at a private school which had its own zoo, you heard me-

Every time someone repeats how there’s no point in referring to antiquated tribal notions of class, they should be forced to visit the Whitgift private school in Croydon, where I went last week to see Surrey play Kent at cricket. To start with, how likely is it that a comprehensive school would have the facilities to put on a professional sports match? So kids in an inner city school would say: “I got in bear trouble man, for disturbing Roger Federer you get me. I tripped him during his semi-final against Rafael Nadal up against the wall of the science block init.”

So I knew this school had a few bob, but what I didn’t realise until I walked round the grounds was it had its own zoo. Which is worth repeating. It had its own fucking zoo. There are peacocks, flamingoes, some sort of rare Central American duck, and two wallabies. Presumably at some stage the school governors complained “It occurs to us that our aim of ultimate excellence in all fields cannot be pursued in the absence of a wallaby.”

And they’re not just any wallabies, they’re special rare white wallabies. Because it wouldn’t do to have common council estate wallabies, they might go on a rampage across the zoo and take the flamingo end. No, these are appropriate posh wallabies, with a Prada pouch.

Maybe I’m naive and this is normal now in private education. Parents peruse the prospectus of each school, making comments such as, “I really don’t feel St Dunstans would be suitable, its hippo looks rather threadbare.”

At normal schools, parents are urged to donate to sponsored bounces and summer fairs to raise money for books and computers. Rarely is a school so well provided for that it holds a cake sale to provide a wallaby. Or is so spoilt that the parents hold a meeting and shout: “This place is a disgrace – last week my daughter’s class was sharing one wallaby between two.” I didn’t even see the whole school, so I’ve no idea what else they’ve got. Maybe, to help the kids with geography they’ve got their own desert.

A little way in the other direction is the majestic tranquil building that is Dulwich College. The grounds there cover 60 acres, and include 12 rugby pitches, 10 football pitches, and eight cricket squares, all of which are in constantly immaculate condition. Why do they need 12 rugby pitches? Was there a point when they only had 11, and the headmaster thought: “But what if 22 teams are playing at once, then the All Blacks pop in and challenge Catfish House to a quick scrum? We’d best get another – it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

It could be argued this is all harmless, but these schools seem to own everything for miles. Dulwich College appears to own every bit of land there is, and must soon be considering whether it can apply to become a country, with its own entry in the Eurovision Song Contest. It even owns a major road, and charges people a pound to go down it, through a tollgate. I suppose their next move will be to take control of the air space. Every plane passing overhead will have to throw a pound into a bucket, or be considered a legitimate target for the school anti-aircraft missile launching team, who are practising for their quarter-final against the Kashmir Tribesmen Old Boys.

And they still get classified as charities, with all the tax benefits that brings. How can these places be charities? Imagine how much they’d raise if a headmaster came on Comic Relief to compete with a kid with no kidneys, and said: “That was all very touching. But I’m afraid poor Bartholomew here is in an even worse predicament. He’s 12, and has never yet been in close proximity to a wallaby.”

All of this is humble of course, compared to the Nero-esque opulence of Eton. This place has just had installed, at public expense, its own Olympic rowing lake. And there’s the bloody Thames up the road. But that probably wasn’t big enough, so they’ve built this lake. I suppose they also have their own Olympic commentators, and every time they go for a row, they get Des Lynam to introduce a panel of experts to discuss who to look out for.

Far from having no effect, half of all company directors went to public school, most commonly to Eton. Seventy-seven per cent of High Court judges, and 83 per cent of senior ambassadors went to Oxford or Cambridge, and 45 per cent of Oxbridge students come from public school. Half of Cameron’s front bench went to Eton.

But Jonathon Shepherd, the general secretary of the Independent Schools Council, defends the charitable status of these schools, and said in any case that they aren’t privileged as “many independent schools look with envy at the facilities at the state school down the road”. Really? Why pay all that money then? Maybe parents notice their kids come out in blotches, so they take them for tests to see if they react to peanuts or pollen, and it turns out they’re allergic to the working class. It all comes out when they say: “I bumped into Nathan from the estate and it was awful, Mummy, he smelt of fish fingers and buses and ITV and I started hyper-ventilating.”

And they never cease to shock. During the cricket match, students from the school wandered through the crowd asking if they’d like to make a donation to a fund for sending the Whitgift hockey team to Malaysia. See, even begging is divided by class. Working-class beggars ask for 20p for a cup of tea with a scraggy dog. Posh beggars ask for 50 quid for a trip to Malaysia with a wallaby.