APRIVATE EYE

their journalistic out-pourings.

One 'Guardian' report compares the atmosphere in the 'Private Eye' office to the prefect's study just before a beating. It continues:

'The traditions of the public school undeniably linger in the "Private Eye" There a tendency to refer to everyone on the paper by nickname and there is a constant search for raspberry to blow at one of their political masters.' The language of the magazine is still ladened with the upperclass imagery of the public school. Men are 'beasts" , 'swots' 'loonies', "frogs', 'wops, "little shits'.

But the connection goes deeper.

A study of the writings of the 'Eye' men and their attitudes to personalities and politicians reveals an approach to the world that IS essentially a product of public school ideology.

This institution gives the offspring of the ruling and upper middle class their training for life.

They try to teach the young gentlemen to be honest, upstanding and tolerant of the masses they were born to rule. The 'lads' are encouraged to worship the key image of the English gent. This mythical figure is a compendium of Socrates and the Duke of Wellington-a kind of warrior, philosopher king.

This myth--which has been developed by the ruling class to perpetuate its power—is particularly potent for Ingrams and Booker.

Beneath the Eye's' outrage and nose-thumbing there keen disappointment that members of the ruling class and politicians do _not match the image so dear to their hearts. Their so-called savagery is born out of a sense of betrayal that the modern leaders of the Tory establishment are not like the legendary characters who inhabit the public-school dream. 'whiz-kids of the Tent Ministe. Hence most ment like Environment Minister Peter Walker and feel a nostalgic regret for patricians like Harold Macmillan who cultivated the gentleman's art of amateurism.

John Wells, a major contributor to 'Private Eye', laid this bare when he made this comment on the magazine: Underneath the wreckage of good intention there

PAUL FOOT

is a core of seriousness and fundamental decency. Ours is a different sart of decency. Perhaps a better word is goodness, what it tries to stand for is individual honesty' Ingrams characterized himself as: • • • upper class. People expect me to be ghastly and embittered. I'm not. I'm a great patriot. I'm terribly British.

This ingrained réspect for the values of Tory England reveals itself time and again in the magazine.

For example they have the minor public schoolboy's fear of big finance and social climbers who amass great fortunesoccasionally this almost lapses into traditional anti-Semitism and mistrust of foreigners.

The figure of Lord Gnome created by Ingrams, represents all they hate in the world of cash and monopoly. Gnome is transparently corrupt; venal, a meglomaniac and sexually depraved.

The suggestion is that, though money and profit must be made, it should be made in a clean and honest fashion. Capitalism is not a corrupt and bankrupt system in itself—only the one or two 'greedy Jews' and foreigners spoil the show.

Hence their emphasis on their coverage of the Savundra case on the swindler's Asian origins. After the prosecution of the washing machine tycoon . John Bloom, the 'Eye' continually spotlighted East-End Jewish origins.

Bloom in fact touched another nerve of prejudice nursed by the 'Eye' team—-he was a poor boy made good.

True to their training, Ingram's and Booker have a contempt for 'individuals' who rise above their 'station' in life. Booker is quite specific about his dislike of social change and this will be examined in tomorrow's article but Ingrams had this to say about David Frost, the TV impressario of middle-class origins:

'There was something ungentlemanly about a man who was so obviously on the make. His astonishing industry ran counter to the public school amateurism which characterized ... "Private Eye"!

To the working class the 'Eye' plays the amused patrician.

When workers do appear in journal they are portrayed as I work for Private Eye ignorant, xenophobic - a mob easily manipulated by the media or the politicians (shades of the Greek 'polis').

Thus they lampooned the working-class hero of one of the best films of the British realist school, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning':

"Twenty-five bloody quid a week and what have you got to show for it at the bloody end but a cupboard full of filthy shirts and a hangover from Saturday night. Being alive these days you might as well be bloody dead, what with the government and the price of beer' Their attitude towards the is consistently hostile.

11968 they passed their verdict on the May-June days in France, when workers and students almost brought down the reactionary de Gaulle regime.

Claud Cockburn: Cocobrings poinice % Stalinist who brings 'polltics' to the 'Eye'.

These events were, according to 'Private Eye': "A lot of Frogs running about as per usual' and 'A lot of Frogs are setting fire to cars and ripping up sheets.' The humour is weak and juvenile, but the contempt for revolutionary developments quite obvious.

'The Observer' commented in 1962 after one year of 'Private Eye': 'They are against "social nonsense" attached to marches and plan to attack CND in the next issue.' In Oxford, Ingrams made position quite clear. He had no interest in contributing to