By Graham Vanbergen – originally posted 30th September 2015:
The term “the establishment” refers to leading politicians, senior
civil servants, senior barristers and judges, aristocrats, Oxbridge
academics, senior clergy, the most important financiers and
industrialists, governors of the BBC, members of and top aides to the
royal family to mention most, but not all.
The term in this sense is
sometimes mistakenly believed to have been coined by the British
journalist Henry Fairlie, who in September 1955 in the London magazine
‘The Spectator’ defined that network of prominent, well-connected people
as “the Establishment”, explaining: “By the Establishment, I do not
only mean the centres of official power—though they are certainly part
of it—but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations
within which power is exercised”.
Following that, the term, the Establishment, was quickly picked up in
newspapers and magazines all over London, making Fairlie famous.
Today, the term ‘the establishment’ is used generally in a negative
sense and it’s easy to understand why.
“The British public has become deeply cynical about the political class at Westminster”, states a recent Financial Times editorial.
