Bullingdon Club


The Bullingdon Club is a private all-male dining club for Oxford University students. It is known for its wealthy members, grand banquets, and bad behaviour, including vandalism of restaurants and students' rooms. The club selects its members not only on the grounds of wealth and willingness to participate but also by reference to their education.
The Bullingdon was originally a sporting club, dedicated to cricket and horse-racing, although club dinners gradually became its principal activity. Membership is expensive, with tailor-made uniforms, regular gourmet hospitality, and a tradition of on-the-spot payment for damage. Some members have gone on to become leading figures within British society and the political establishment. Former members include two kings of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, three prime ministers, and two chancellors of the Exchequer.
The Bullingdon is often featured in fiction and drama.

History

The Bullingdon Club was founded more than 200 years ago. Petre Mais claims it was founded in 1780 and was limited to 30 men, and Viscount Long, who was a member in 1875, described it as "an old Oxford institution, with many good traditions". Originally it was a fox hunting and cricket club, and Thomas Assheton Smith the Younger is recorded as having batted for the Bullingdon against Marylebone Cricket Club in 1796. In 1805 cricket at Oxford University "was confined to the old Bullingdon Club, which was expensive and exclusive". This foundational sporting purpose is attested to in the club's symbol. Harry Mount suggests that the name itself derives from this sporting background, proposing that the club is named after the Bullingdon Hundred, a past location of the annual Bullingdon Club point-to-point race. This origin of the club is marked by an annual breakfast at the Bullingdon point to point.
The Wisden Cricketer reports that the Bullingdon is "ostensibly one of the two original Oxford University cricket teams but it actually used cricket merely as a respectable front for the mischievous, destructive or self-indulgent tendencies of its members". By the late 19th century, the present emphasis on dining within the club began to emerge. Long attested that in 1875 "Bullingdon Club matches were also of frequent occurrence, and many a good game was played there with visiting clubs. 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".
A report of 1876 relates that "cricket there was secondary to the dinners, and the men were chiefly of an expensive class". The New York Times told its readers in 1913 that "The Bullingdon represents the acme of exclusiveness at Oxford; it is the club of the sons of nobility, the sons of great wealth; its membership represents the 'young bloods' of the university". During the Second World War, an extension of the club was founded at Colditz Castle for imprisoned officers who had been members of the club while at Oxford.
Former pupils of public schools such as Eton, Harrow, St. Paul's, Stowe, Radley, Oundle, Shrewsbury, Rugby and Winchester form the bulk of its membership.

2000s

In the 21st century the Bullingdon is primarily a dining club, although a vestige of the club's sporting links survives in its support of an annual point to point race. The Club President, known as the "General", presents the winner's cup, and the club members meet at the race for a champagne breakfast. The club also meets for an annual Club dinner. Guests may be invited to either of these events. There may also be smaller dinners during the year to mark the initiation of new members or in celebration of other occasions. The club often books private dining rooms under an assumed name, as most restaurateurs are cautious of the club's reputation as being the cause of considerable drunken damage during the course of their dinners.
In 2007, a photograph of the Bullingdon Club taken in 1987 was discovered. It made British headlines because two of the posing members, Boris Johnson and David Cameron, had gone on to careers in politics and at the time were, respectively, Conservative candidate for Mayor of London and Leader of the Conservative party. The copyright owners have since declined to grant permission to use the picture.
Following negative media attention and the club's apparent depiction in the play Posh and its film adaptation The Riot Club—membership has supposedly dwindled. In 2016 it was claimed that only between four and six members were left, all of them postgraduates, and that no new undergraduate members joined the previous year. Many Oxford students cited an unwillingness to be associated with "ostentatious wealth celebration".
In June 2017, members of the club attempting to shoot their annual Club Photo on the steps of Christ Church were escorted out by college porters for not securing permission for the shoot. Nearby non-member students heckled the club as they left, with one even playing "Yakety Sax".

Reputation

The club has always been noted for its wealthy members, grand banquets, and boisterous rituals, including the vandalisation of restaurants, public houses, and college rooms, complemented by a tradition of on-the-spot payment for damage. Its ostentatious displays of wealth attract controversy, since some former members have subsequently achieved high political positions, notably the former British Prime Minister David Cameron, former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
A number of episodes over many decades have provided anecdotal evidence of the club's behaviour. Infamously on 12 May 1894, after dinner, Bullingdon members smashed almost all the glass of the lights and 468 windows in Peckwater Quad of Christ Church, along with the blinds and doors of the building, and again on 20 February 1927. As a result of such events, the club was banned from convening within of Oxford.
While still Prince of Wales, Edward VIII had a certain amount of difficulty in getting his parents' permission to join the Bullingdon on account of the club's reputation. He eventually obtained it only on the understanding that he would never join in what was then known as a "Bullingdon blind", a euphemistic phrase for an evening of drink and song. On hearing of his eventual attendance at one such evening, Queen Mary sent him a telegram requesting that he remove his name from the club.
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. 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."
In December 2005, Bullingdon Club members smashed 17 bottles of wine, "every piece of crockery," and a window at the 15th-century White Hart pub in Fyfield, Oxfordshire. The dinner was organised by Alexander Fellowes, son of Baron Fellowes and nephew to Diana, Princess of Wales; four members of the party were arrested. A further dinner was reported in 2010 after damage to Hartwell House, a country house in Buckinghamshire.
The Bullingdon has been mentioned in the debates of the House of Commons in order to draw attention to excessive behaviour across the British class spectrum, and to embarrass prominent Conservative Party politicians who are former members of the Bullingdon. Johnson has since tried to distance himself from the club, calling it "a truly shameful vignette of almost superhuman undergraduate arrogance, toffishness and twittishness."

Dress

The club's colours are sky blue and ivory. Members dress for their annual Club dinner in bespoke tailored tailcoats in dark navy blue, with a matching velvet collar, offset with ivory silk lapel revers, brass monogrammed buttons, a mustard waistcoat, and a sky blue bow tie. There is also a Club tie, which is sky blue striped with ivory. These are all provided by the Oxford branch of court tailors Ede and Ravenscroft. In 2007 the full uniform was estimated to cost £3,500. Traditionally when they played cricket, members "were identified by a ribbon of blue and white on their straw hats, and by stripes of the same colours down their flannel trousers".

Relationship with the University

The Bullingdon is not currently registered with the University of Oxford, but members are drawn from among the members of the University. On several occasions in the past, when the club was registered, the University proctors suspended it on account of the rowdiness of members' activities, including suspensions in 1927 and 1956. John Betjeman wrote in 1938 that "quite often the Club is suspended for some years after each meeting". While under suspension, the club has met in relative secrecy.
The club was active in Oxford in 2008/9, although not registered with the University. In his retirement speech as proctor, Professor of Geology Donald Fraser noted an incident which, not being on University premises, was outside their jurisdiction: "some students had taken habitually to the drunken braying of 'We are the Bullingdon' at 3 a.m. from a house not far from the Phoenix Cinema. But the transcript of what they called the wife of the neighbour who went to ask them to be quiet was written in language that is not usually printed".
In October 2018, the Oxford University Conservative Association banned members of the Bullingdon Club from holding office within the Association. OUCA president Ben Etty stated that the club's "values and activities had no place in the modern Conservative Party'". This decision was overturned several weeks later "on a constitutional technicality", although Etty was confident that "that ban will be re-proposed very soon". The ban was later re-implemented on appeal to OUCA's Senior Member and remains in effect.