An English norm?

By Grahame Woods
Northumberland Today
July 26, 2017

http://www.northumberlandtoday.com/2017/07/26/an-english-norm

Grahame Woods

What happened was ... the boy told his father, who talked to another father. The two of them talked to the vicar – and the curate left for another parish. It was never talked about again. By anyone.

Which was how it was done in 1940s England – for, in those days, sexual abuse never happened. The priest ‘interfered’ with young boys and was quietly sent somewhere else. And that, shush/shush, was that. Fast forward to 2017 – same country. 560 (reported) young soccer players sexually assaulted and over 250 team managers, so far, have been charged. A welcome change in the wording from ‘abuse’ to assault. And then, in the hallowed halls of the BBC there was .... but, wait. Hasn’t sexual assault and physical abuse, especially of boys by men, something of the norm in England?

Recently, drawn by a review in an American magazine, and having grown up in England, I have just finished reading Alex Renton’s Stiff Upper Lip, subtitled, Secrets and Crimes and the Schooling of a Ruling Class, a book that exposes the truth and perversions of private, all-boys boarding schools in that country. Fee paying, unregulated schools perfectly designed to lure innocent children, some as young as six years of age, into the waiting, welcoming clutches of predatory, sadistic teachers – well, Masters, as they are called over there – facing a life of ‘beating, bullying, fagging, cold baths, vile food and paedophile teachers.’  

Renton adds; ‘Just some of the elements of the potion the British elite has applied to its sons and daughters to prepare them for a role in the ruling class.’ It is difficult to imagine any parent sending their six-year-old child off to boarding school for the rest of its schooling life, many of the parents having been through the system themselves, knowing, perpetuating (co-conspirators?) what goes on.

What is interesting, and missing from the book, is that it doesn’t seek to explain what it is in British society that created these perverted, violent teachers, allowing them unquestioned, free-range access to helpless students. And not just in private schools. In my own experience, attending state schools, sadistic teachers were my norm. Not only sadistic in their violence – using very pliable, bamboo canes (purchased in any hardware store) - but verbally humiliating students in front of the entire school during assembly, before slashing their hands, six-of-the-best, until they bled, while other teachers and 200 or so students looked on. Cry? God, never. But, at least the students weren’t naked and helpless as in some private schools.

‘Six-of-the-best’ was more than just an expression. It was accepted an condoned violence. In the 1940s/50s, even the judicial system sentenced wayward youth to so many strokes of the birch – literally, a multi-branched weapon – and in my own home a bamboo cane hung behind the kitchen door. And was used. I don’t have enough space to explore how this sadism became part of the English psyche. Fallout from its violent history, its colonial past; wars and its insular, insidious class system?  All of the above?  Yes, violence and sexual assault is a huge part of Canadian life as well (see the recent, excellent and timely series in the Globe and Mail) with police and the judiciary stuck in another century. But nothing like that which is revealed in Stiff Upper Lip.  Innocents offered on a platter in England’s green and pleasant land. But, of course, better not to talk about it.

If you’re interested in reading it, I’ve donated the book to the Cobourg Library.  It’s a chilling read.