These constitute an institution which lies at the heart of the
british establishment. The first school was Winchester College, set up by
William of Wykeham in 1382.
Eton College followed somewhat later. They were greatly expanded in
the nineteenth century, when they were substantially changed. With
the advent of a massive Empire, they were transformed to train and
'anglify' the colonial administration. Perfecting techniques used
by the Janissaries, the off-spring of colonial officers, civil and
military, were uprooted from their place of birth, educated in the
mother country and then recycled to run another part of the Empire,
providing a waft and weave to the colonial structure.
With the collapse of the Empire in the 1950s and 1960s, there was
an over production of this middle-class strata, who in many ways
were unfitted to domestic life in England. Many succumbed to drug
addiction and fuelled the so-called Hippy movement in England. Essentially
degenerate, in that their 'socially useful' role had disappeared,
those which did not completely decompose allowed the ruling class
to have a hand in the counter-culture which was developing at the
time. Thus it could be lead onto safe terrain where the
contestation of class power was disipated in lifestylism.
Currently the have modernised themselves, some even establishing on
site mosques so they can more succesfully attract the offspring of
the ruling class in the middle east generally they have abandonned
the outmoded crustiness which permeated the upper classes from the
1930s through to the 1970s, and along with Oxbridge constitute a
cultural asset offered by the English ruling class to the
recomposition of a homogenous world ruling class.
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