Bulldoze Private Schools
We Should Bulldoze Private Schools. Do I need to convince you?
Labour’s plans to introduce VAT on private schools have got white SUV-driving, coke-snorting, penny-pinching rich Tarquins and Tallulas frothing at the mouth. Its supporters argue that it will effectively make private schooling impossible to pursue. The smaller, less well-known schools, perhaps: this bill won’t kill the private-school-of-all-private-schools, Eton. But even if that was true, it’s not enough. It’s nowhere near enough. We should be burning the ivory towers down.
Most private schools get tax breaks because they’ve succeeded in convincing the tax system they’re “charitable organisations”. I think we can assume that, with alumni in all the right places, this wasn’t very hard to do. But they’re not charities, are they? We know that private schools really exist for the purpose of the rich people’s class war on the rest of us. They take children and produce societal managers like a social hierarchy factory: the next generation of journalists, politicians, armed forces officers, city bankers, barristers, judges, lobbyists, think tank policy knobs, and Bullingdon Club members churned out year by year. Our social betters. Separated from us from birth by a system that means that their little angels don’t have to interact with those from a lower social rung. Ultimately producing the kind of individual who believes themselves to be better than everyone else, and then proceeds to act like that throughout the rest of their life.
The private school system in this country is part of a broader social architecture designed to protect the interests of the establishment. To protect capital. To prevent political unrest. To oppress the working class at home and abroad. Ultimately, to make vast swathes of the planet uninhabitable while billionaires watch their personal wealth soar. We should be making their lives intolerable. Devastate the avenues where the wealthy live. Stop the rot. Bulldoze the cloisters. Bulldoze the banqueting halls. Tear up the cricket pitches. Burn the tailcoats and gowns.
We know that private school families' luxurious lifestyles are built on the backs of the working class. Their school fees are paid by parents made rich by centuries of battles in the class war. And the rich have been winning for far too long. Do you care if someone’s gone to Harrow on full fees or a scholarship? Or is as nice and friendly person? You shouldn’t. Whoever they are, they’re being moulded into a class warrior. To steal from the working class and give to the rich. In 2018, the artist Jeremy Deller made a banner with the words “Come friendly bombs and fall on Eton”, a reworking of John Betjeman’s poem ‘Slough’ from 1937. This is a message we can all get behind.
We know the toffs who attend these places aren’t better than us. Or cleverer than us, despite the potential 50 grand a year bestowed upon their education. They’re educated beyond their intelligence, as Dennis Skinner correctly said of Tory Prime Minister David Cameron. They’ve been taught how to network, how to take charge of other people and how to ski in Verbier. But they don’t know anything. They just exploit us. They don’t care about any of us; they only care about enriching themselves and their friends.
Nigel Farage MP went to a private school. Rupert Lowe MP went to a private school. The crypto-billionaire Christopher Harborne, who donated £5 million to Farage (and a further £12 million to Reform), went to a private school. Richard Tice MP, Zia Yusuf, Sarah Pochin MP, Laila Cunningham (Reform’s candidate for London mayor), Robert Jenrick MP and Suella Braverman MP all went to private school. Danny Kruger MP (son of Tory baker, Prue Leith) went to Eton. Reform UK Ltd want to destroy the NHS and replace it with private healthcare, give further tax breaks to private schools, and slash disability and unemployment support. Not to mention the state violence they want to deploy against refugees.
They create divisions to distract us, manufacturing political campaigns to make us hate our fellow members of the working-class: the homeless, Muslims, refugees, trans people, disabled people, striking workers, people on universal credit… scapegoats who can be hurried out and revolved when necessary. This class violence against us, our friends, our neighbours, our fellow human beings, is rapidly increasing. It’s time the elites felt the pain instead. It's the rich and powerful who are to blame! This is class war!
No more riots outside hotels housing refugees. This is against our class interests. Refugees are not our enemies. Our enemies are stockbrokers and hedge fund managers and tech billionaires: we should be destroying the mansions of the rich! We should be demolishing the boats at the Henley Regatta. We should be tearing up the tennis courts at Wimbledon. We should be marching on the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. We should be destroying the London Stock Exchange. And we should be bulldozing Eton.
We know that private schools breed plum-cheeked Little Lord Fauntleroy children who sing nasty Nazi songs, and see themselves catapulted, failure and after failure, closer to the halls of power. In a system forged by capitalism and class war. By a media class obsessed with clicks and maintaining clientele relationships with the highest echelons of power. Old boys' networks and old school ties. Private members' clubs and crony deals for their old university chums. But this isn’t just about corruption. We’re in the midst of institutional capture: the ruling class are openly promoting fascist ideas in the public mainstream. We need to make them scared again.
We should be BULLDOZING private schools. Eton (the fetid origin of David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Darius Guppy, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Rory Stewart, and Kwasi Kwarteng, alongside a thousand others) has got to be the first to go. Then Harrow, Winchester, Westminster, Marlborough, Dulwich College… the whole lot.
We could take it back and expropriate the land. Do something socially useful with it, something that benefits us all, instead of making us all poorer. Turn Eton into council flats, Harrow into a social centre, Winchester into a community youth club, Westminster and Dulwich into council libraries. Flatten Cheltenham Ladies’ College, dig it up and plant potatoes. This isn’t some hippie dream of allotments and community; we know that we, the working-class, need to demolish the private school system. We need to smash the lot beyond any recognition if we want any hope of gaining freedom.
Amiee Whitley works in the libary sector in London. She is involved in the renters movement and has met too many people that went to private school.
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