The Establishment are a loose combination of all those who have wealth, status and power.
They include the royalty, aristocracy, wealthy landowners and businessmen (plus a few women), Bishops, Generals Politicians and Top Civil Servants.
They are conservative in that they have a vested interest in maintaining the system as it stands – ie. they want the wealth and power to reside with them and not allow the rank and file to usurp them.
They use their power, influence and privilege to buy, coerce or provide them with advantage.
They form a club. To be part of that club you either have to be born into the club or buy your way in.
The badges of their club include privileged schooling (at public schools such as Eton and Harrow and on to Oxford and Cambridge) and membership of other clubs or professions – hence the Generals, Judges, Civil Servants, and CEOs of big companies. You can join the club by invitation through great success at sport, in the arts or business world – or even a rebellious Rock Star like Mick Jagger. You could become a Lord.
There is an ‘Old Boy’ network which operates to give benefits to other members – we’ve seen that in operation during Brexit and the Coronavirus – the inside knowledge and contacts, meant that lucrative contracts and huge profits were generously given out to the few. These establishment profiteers – like Rees-Mogg and Baroness Dido Harding – made a fortune. We see it with the 44 members of Cameron’s cabinet that were shuffled into lucrative jobs. We see it with the revolving door into the world of huge opportunity. We see it with the likes of Cameron and Osborne leaving politics and going on to make countless millions.
This club called the establishment controls everything. It has the money to control markets. It controls the media. It controls jobs.
If an antiestablishment political group forms – such as the original Labour Party – the media create a shitstorm of lies and scare stories. The money markets are carefully directed to create economic failure. The political figures are either worn down or bought off and the threat is removed.
The only way for a party, such as the Labour Party, to become elected is to become an establishment party – as happened with Blair.
Antiestablishment figures such as Corbyn, with their antiestablishment policies of nationalisation, are vilified and ridiculed.
Conservative statesman Lord Salisbury told parliament in 1866, in response to plans to extend the suffrage. Giving working-class people the vote would, he stated, tempt them to pass “laws with respect to taxation and property especially favourable to them, and therefore dangerous to all other classes”.
They feared that the people might want a fairer country and take away their wealth and privilege.
When working-class people forced the establishment to give them the vote the establishment set about controlling them.
Through the media they spread propaganda, lies and scaremongering. The idea being that they could prevent the working people from electing people who would represent their interests at the expense of the establishment elite.
They set about controlling the markets to safeguard their wealth – hence we have tax loopholes that are never blocked off – and to use this control to undermine any attempt to create more equality.
The establishment regard themselves as superior. They see the rest of the country working to create wealth for the elite. They give them as little in terms of money and work conditions as they can get away with.
Hence the land, wealth and power reside with a small group of people – the establishment.
They have proved very cunning and successful.
Apart from a few blips – such as the post-war Labour Atlee government sneaking in unexpectedly and bringing in huge social change – such as the NHS and Welfare State – the establishment have ruled consistently.
The Conservative party were set up by the establishment to rule for the establishment – which they have consistently done. One only has to look at today – The Johnson government has given huge tax cuts and handouts to the wealthy while cutting public services and bringing in cuts and austerity for the poor.
The Labour Party in order to become elected effectively become watered-down Tories presenting Tory policies and supporting the establishment.
So the Tories represent the wealthy establishment.
The Labour Party ostensibly represent the working-class (but in fact are still establishment).
I’m middle-class. Nobody really represents me and never have!
The working class have been successfully conned. They have been distracted with soaps and gameshows, drink, drugs and gambling, or deceived with propaganda.
They have been controlled with poverty and threats of job losses.
The establishment have been amazingly successful.
Why I am opposed to the establishment
In actual fact it makes very little difference to me or my life anymore. Whoever gets in power (Labour or Tory) my pension is secure. Prices might go up a bit. Taxes might go up a bit. But my lot is secure.
When I worked as a teacher it did make a lot of difference. When the Tories got in there were cuts and pay was poor. When Labour got in there were pay rises and schools had more money.
So I can see a difference. But Labour never disturbed the Tories much after that Atless government. They lost their antiestablishment credentials.
So why am I opposed to the establishment?
a. I believe in fairness. I believe in equality. We live in a society where the bulk of the wealth is siphoned off into the pockets of a few. I think that is wrong.
b. I despise the class system with all its arrogance, privilege and ‘Old Boys’ Network’.
c. I despise the game of privilege.
d. I believe in a meritocracy. I believe the best people should rise to the top. We see all too clearly in this pandemic and Brexit the way that cronyism, nepotism and the establishment network has put incompetent people in charge. The result has been disastrous. Boris Johnson is a clear example of someone who is incompetent and has risen to his position, not through merit, but through privilege.
What I want
The country/world I want to see is one not ruled by a greedy, selfish, arrogant ruthless establishment – an establishment that uses repression and war in order to gain more for itself, who exploits the majority and firmly believes that it is better than everybody else. The establishment believes they deserve it.
My fears
I’ve watched this naked greed throughout my life as it destroys other cultures, starts wars, uses economic warfare to castrate opposition and is destroying nature in the process. It is relentless and immoral.
The end point of all this is too frightening to imagine. The end of the planet??
The other frightening thought is this:
The establishment have needed the workforce in order to create their wealth. They have used and exploited us in their armies, factories, mines and fields.
They no longer need a workforce. A/I and automation have removed the need for a workforce.
We are surplus to requirements.