Of course, the internet is going a little crazy over the revelations about David Cameron. But I've been reading a couple of interesting pieces about what the whole thing really reveals about the class system and the mechanisms of power - The Leveller and Rob Fahey are especially good.
The gist is that these kind of viscerally disgusting and obscene acts serve as initiations on the one hand, but also as a kind of shameful cement bonding the relationships between members of the "leadership class" - if you violate the social contract (by, say, passing over someone who's helped you out when it comes time for plum appointments), then you're at risk of being exposed in the most embarrassing way.
There's a kind of subtext here, though, that neither of those commentators dwell on. If this kind of juvenile hazing for secret societies is common practice now, how long has it gone on?
How old is Piers Gaveston or the Bullingdon Club?
Were past PMs up to the same hijinks in their school days?
Someone as widely admired as Winston Churchill... did he... you know... with a pig?
Did Winston Churchill facefuck a pig like our dear old current PM? Probably not. Margaret Thatcher came from a lower middle class background herself, so the weird posh initiation rites which seem to be commonplace amongst the upper class are unlikely to have affected her much.
Winston Churchill was not a member of the scandalous Bullingdon club, as he never went to Oxford, instead attending the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. However, his father did attend the club. At the same time Churchill was alive, the Bullingdon club had long had an interesting reputation. From the very start, when it was a sporting club, it had been very expensive, and by 1805, it was the only club in Oxford where you could play cricket. It would have been filled by posh, wealthy young men with more money than sense, from a privileged background, having their first taste of freedom. Even in the days before it became so well known for the whole vandalizing, initiation ceremonies and so on, it would probably have been filled with drunk, party loving men.
The Bullingdon Club originated in the late 18th century. It very quickly became more than a sporting club- originally it was made for cricket players and hunters- and became a sign of wealth, privilege and class. The Bullingdon club was a status symbol, as well as a network, where you'd meet men from the same background, going into politics, banking and trade, so joining the Bullingdon club would mean meeting people from the same background, probably with similar world views, who would support you throughout your life.
As I said, Churchill was in the military. Doubtless there was minor bullying, teasing, drinking and so on. But he would be living in a much more rigid, controlled system, and he would not have the chance or the peer pressure to get intimate with the head of a dead pig, as far as we know.
What's more likely is a similar initiation ceremony at Harrow. In clubs at Harrow or when he started Harrow. Again, fucking a dead pig...maybe not. We don't know. Doing something incredibly embarrassing or humiliating? Likely.
if you violate the social contract (by, say, passing over someone who's helped you out when it comes time for plum appointments), then you're at risk of being exposed in the most embarrassing way.
Is there any evidence of this actually happening in history?
Might I mention I have projected a similarity to the Yale Club, skull and crossbones. One might note that the involvement of current or retired (Bush) politicians in skull and crossbones was more than 20 years ago.
Well, perversion is hardly rare amongst the British elite. Off the top of my head:
It should be noted that Cameron has an unusually aristocratic background for a modern PM. Blair, Brown, Major, Thatcher, Wilson, Callaghan etc. were largely of Middle-class origins, so most PM's recently lack the very, err, exclusive background that Cameron did in his uni days.
Churchill certainly had access. A herd of pedigree Middle White pigs roamed his family home at Chartwell, and were never slaughtered (he claimed he could never kill an animal he had wished "good morning.")
Churchill maintained a lifelong obsession with pigs, regularly signing off family letters with a pig sketch. His wife's nicknames for him were "Pug" and "Pig", which he used to refer to himself on frequent occasion as well. To Churchill is attributed one of the more famous statements about swine ever to have been made by a national leader:
"Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you. Give me a pig! He looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal."
Source: Sir Anthony Montague Browne (cited in Langworth, Churchill: In His Own Words)