Bullingdon Club Britain: The Ransacking of a Nation

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But Dad was violent, and things had become so bad there were panic buttons in the house connected to the police station to protect us should he try to visit. Pictured in the photograph are Michael Marks, Cassius Nicholas Green, Timothy Aldersly, Charles Clegg and George Farmer – the son of the former treasurer of the Conservative Party, Michael Farmer, Baron Farmer. With a slightly open shirt, and a scraggly beard, he says he doesn’t want to be named because “honestly, I regret it deeply. On several occasions in the past, when the club was registered, the University proctors suspended it on account of the rowdiness of members' activities, [2] including suspensions in 1927 and 1956. They walked in here as if they were the Royal Family”, John Wood, one of the waiters that served them, told The Daily Beast.

However, it is important to put the often unsubstantiated tales of Bullingdon debauchery in perspective. Assisted by social media, which amplifies gripping myths over sombre facts to create a whirlwind of distortion, expedient politicians have been able to plant ‘fake news’ and watch it spread like Japanese knotweed, with fact checkers straining to pull these falsehoods out of public discourse. Now new light has been shed on the outrageous antics of the Bullingdon Club – the Oxford University group that may be about to produce its second British prime minister – by someone intimately connected to it during Boris Johnson’s membership.Strewn across the Tudor room at the luxury Manor hotel in north Oxfordshire was proof that Oxford University’s notorious Bullingdon Club is still raising hell in 2015, despite claims that their excesses had been checked by negative publicity and mortified former members. This is the Bullingdon Club’s secret photo archive, which stretches back 80 years, showing dozens of images of young men posing in tie and tailcoat on the stone steps of Christ Church’s Canterbury Quad including many of hitherto unknown members. In February, an alleged member of the club walked into The Bridge nightclub and, according to the police report, set off ‘large fireworks’. Two Bullingdon members appeared in Nazi uniforms and “goose-stepped back and forth in the upstairs galleried area”.

It was dealt a further blow last year, when members were banned from holding positions in the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA). She told them that the club formed a negative aspect of Oxford’s social scene ‘but you can live life here without ever coming into contact with them’. Every piece of furniture that could have been broken was broken, every liquid sprayed around the room, the panelling was cracked, and everything was piled in a heap in the middle of the room. I saw the look of disgust on her face, as well as the smug grin on his, and decided that I’d had enough. A photograph of club members in their Bullingdon tailcoats taken in 1987 has been repeatedly republished since Cameron became Tory leader.A further dinner was reported in 2010 after damage to Hartwell House, a country house in Buckinghamshire. One of the last incidents involving members to make the headlines was a brawl in an historic Oxfordshire pub in 2004 in which crockery and wine bottles were smashed. The Bullingdon Club dinners were the occasion of a great display of exuberant spirits, accompanied by a considerable consumption of the good things of life, which often made the drive back to Oxford an experience of exceptional nature". Andrew Gimson, biographer of Boris Johnson, reported about the club in the 1980s: "I don't think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash.