Radek was asleep in his bed, when the door burst open. A native of Poland, he had been granted political asylum in Britain, in 1982, after his own country was declared to be under martial law. He was taking the opportunity to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics, at Oxford University; and he was in student accommodation on campus that night.
With loud screams and cries, a group of fellow students, dressed in long tail tuxedos, trashed his room. He later recalled that they 'smashed up my furniture, my books, my everything.' Then the ring-leader leapt onto the bed, where Radek lay cowering and vigorously shook his hand. "Congratulations man!" He was told. "You have become a member!"
The young man speaking was Boris Johnson, now Lord Mayor of London. Radek's full name is Radoslaw Sikorski. He became Poland's Foreign Minister and he is hotly tipped to become his country's next prime minister. The raid was an initiation and Radek was being welcomed into the Bullingdon Club.
Oxford University's Exclusive Bullingdon Club
A famous photograph exists of the 1987 Bullingdon Club, but its owners no longer give permission for the media to show it. Posed upon the steps of Oxford University are its ten aristocratic members, including amongst them a juvenile David Cameron, now Britain's Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party, as well as Boris Johnson and Radek Sikorski.
By 1992, the membership included George Osborne, now Britain's Chancellor, and Nat Rothschild, who was to become an international businessman and financier. On October 1st 2011, details of their Bullingdon Club cocaine fuelled exploits became public, complete with photographs of the students with a high society dominatrix. Mr Rothschild served a legal complaint against the Guardian newspaper for their reporting of the story.
Admission into the club was by invitation only. It was socially exclusive, favouring old Etonians and titled heirs to the nobility. There was also an emphasis on personal wealth. The Bullingdon Club had a uniform and the tail-coat alone cost £2000. They needed their money to pay damages.
The Bullingdon Club's 'Right to Violence and Vandalism'
Lloyd Evans, a contemporary student, was not asked to become a member. He could observe them from afar; and what he saw became the basis of a Channel 4 drama-documentary, aired in 2009, entitled When Boris Met Dave. He described the members of the Bullingdon Club as 'dressing like toffs in the middle of the Miners' Strike'. They were ostensibly a dining society, getting drunk on expensive champagne, while eating in fine restaurants.
However, the decadence generally turned to disruption and criminal damage. The club delighted in taking over a restaurant, being obnoxious to other diners and smashing up the property. On a notable occasion, the Radio DJ Tony Blackburn was at one of the other tables. The students besieged him and attempted to pull down his trousers.
Mr Evans commented that it was like they had 'a right to violence and vandalism', because they could pay for the repairs. After each mini riot, the drunken members of the Bullingdon Club would peel off wads of cash and just throw it into the debris.
Boris Johnson's biographer Andrew Gimson agreed, "I don't think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash.
"A night in the cells would be regarded as being par for a Buller man and so would debagging anyone who really attracted the irritation of the Buller men."
How Their Bullingdon Past has Haunted David Cameron and Boris Johnson
In November 2010, an anti-tuition fee protest took place in London, attracting thousands of university students from across Britain. As events unfolded, some property was damaged, soliciting an angry rebuke from the Coalition government's Prime Minister, David Cameron. He told both the media and the House of Commons that riotous behaviour amongst students was 'completely unacceptable'; any student damaging property would feel the 'full force of the law'.
Amongst those noting these comments with raised eyebrows was punk-protest singer Grace Petrie. Her song Tonne of Bricks was about the student protests. It contains the lyric, 'this kind of violence is not tolerated outside the Bullingdon Club.' However, David Cameron is unlikely to publicly make nor dismiss the link. Lloyd Evans commented that the prime minister refuses to discuss his youth as a 'Buller'. The closest that Mr Cameron has come to mentioning it was in The Independent. He stated, "Like many people, I did things when I was young that I should not have done, and that I regret."
After riots tore through Britain, in August 2011, The Guardian newspaper similarly met Boris Johnson's indignant condemnation of property damage with reference to the Bullingdon Club. It is evidently a past that both the Prime Minister and the Lord Mayor of London wish would just go away.
Jo Harrington - Jo has a BA (Hons) in History and Philosophy and a MA in History. She has a book published on the history of Wicca.
