Since the development of modern mass spectator sport, the phrases used to describe the games we watch, listen to and play have fallen into use outside those games. Many common sayings have their origins in sporting terminology. Who hasn’t found themselves ‘behind the eight ball’ or ‘playing on a sticky wicket’. Who hasn’t admired a person for ‘not pulling any punches’ whilst ‘stepping up to the plate’ and being ‘in a league of their own’. Who would always want to see themselves as a ‘team player’ or would always want to be ‘given one last shot’ at something. Clichés, when we hear them, act as a sort of shorthand for situations we are confronted with. The annoyance they can provoke never seems to prevent many of us relying on their aptness.
So perhaps it should come as no surprise when the father of our Prime Minister should turn to a sporting metaphor to describe his son’s experience of catching the Coronavirus. On the day Boris Johnson came out of intensive care, his father, the ebullient Stanley Johnson, was quoted as saying:
‘To use that American expression, (Boris) almost took one for the team. We have got to make sure we play the game properly now.’
The lack of emotional intelligence of these words, given the numbers of people who had already died from the virus, comes as no surprise to those familiar with the Johnson family. The comment is, however, no accident but rather an example of an outlook which has its roots in the development of sport in Britain.
The notion of sport as a metaphor for life and our roles in it goes back to the early Victorian era and, in particular, the history of the elite independent and fee paying schools to which the rich and powerful sent their offspring. The ideas that permeated these schools still find strong echoes in those same institutions today. Stanley Johnson (Sherborne School and Oxford) and Boris (Eton and Oxford) will have received an education which, in its essence, will not have altered fundamentally from the 1840s.
These schools were shaped to provide the men who would rule the country and run the empire. The dominant narrative in them was the development of ‘gentlemen’; a group who would be different to the idle dandy’s and arrogant bullies that the aristocratic families seemed so good at producing. These gentlemen were needed to fill the mushrooming professional jobs at home and the expanding bureaucracies of Britain’s Empire.
Although sport was not immediately a central activity in these schools it fitted their developing concern with promoting a philosophy of clean healthy living and responsible reliable behaviour. This ‘Muscular Christianity’, as it became known, went beyond just the following of rules; it became a philosophy whose tenets were seen as part of British National character. Mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body) became one of those tenets and was regarded as a national trait. Regular team sport became the foundation on which that tenet relied.
So strong was this emphasis on sport that it became both the subject of and the catalyst for an abundance of literary output. Tom Brown’s School Days, written by Thomas Hughes (Rugby School and Oxford) and published in 1857 was just one in a long line of books about the supposed joys of boarding schools. Hughes’ story leapt into popularity. This was an age of huge expansion in fee paying schools of all kinds. The book became as important as any religious text and acted as an instructional manual for the public schools being opened all over the country. Both rugby and cricket were given an immense boost in their popularity through its pages and, indeed, the book went as far as calling cricket more of an institution than a sport.
In a period of less than 30 years British sport was codified and national bodies organised that were run with the public school philosophy of sport, defining a gentleman at its core, and by those that had attended such schools. The Football Association (1863), the Rugby Football Union (1871), The Amateur Athletics Association (1880) and cricket’s county championship (1890) were all born with a distinct thread of the amateur’s ‘gentlemen’ code of sporting practise running through them.
This moral philosophy of ‘games playing’ was elevated to a national myth as a result of the pressure to win and sustain an empire. It was assisted in this task, again, by an outpouring of poorly disguised cultural cyphers. The most important of these was a poem written by Sir Henry Newbolt (Clifton College and Oxford). His Vitae Lampada or ‘the Torch of Life’ is worth reading in full:
There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night—
Ten to make and the match to win—
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his captain's hand on his shoulder smote
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"
The sand of the desert is sodden red,—
Red with the wreck of a square that broke;—
The Gatling's jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"
This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the school is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind—
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"
The poem’s popularity across the whole of the United Kingdom was at odds with the fact that it made reference only to England in its point of view. With its reference to ‘a ribboned coat’ it seemed to narrow its appeal further to those who attended a public school and who were aware of its hierarchies underlined by a range of different attire. It was an appeal to the elite and the responsibility it had not just to act in accordance with the gentlemen’s code but also to ensure that this was passed on to the elite of tomorrow. It makes solid the link between the pursuit of sporting excellence at school with the acquisition of the attributes of bravery and steadfastness in adult life. Strangely, it is a poem that deals with military defeat, but in so doing raises the values of being a good sportsman to that of a national trait. This, in the poem’s estimation, is far more important than any deficiencies on the battlefield. When all is lost the plucky British soldier will find hope in the remembered words on the First XI pitch of his school.
Here were the words of a ruling class so confident of their purpose that they could paint defeat as victory. Priding itself on how good it was and how its victory was assured because its cause was noble and its adherents true. This was the reification of Britishness which, in turn, was a term that substituted for Englishness.
These ideas were intoxicating and encouraged bold, audacious, and sadly, sacrificial acts from the aristocracy and upper middle classes who were influenced by them. The great period of British exploration was led by men who insisted on ‘playing the game’ at the cost of their own lives. Scott of the Antarctic (Stubbington House School and Naval Academy) became a national icon after his failed attempt to reach the South Pole. His death was followed by the mass slaughter of the First World War in which the officer corps was filled with the sons of the aristocracy. The 1923 expedition to Everest read almost like a Who’s Who of England’s great public schools. Howard Somerville (Gonville and Cambridge) Edward Norton (Charterhouse and the Royal Military Academy) and Noel Odell (Brighton College and Cambridge) were all part of the climbing team that lost George Mallory (Winchester and Cambridge) and Sandy Irvine (Shrewsbury and Oxford) on their failed attempt to reach the summit.
But there was something else these ideas contained that was darker and more true to its nature. Arthur Hinks (Whitgift school and Cambridge), the secretary of the 1924 Everest expedition committee, refused to countenance having the impeccably qualified mountaineer George Finch in the climbing party because he was an Australian. This sort of ‘Britain (or England as what was normally meant) must come first’ attitude was part of an exclusivity that believed there were natural or, indeed, racial characteristics that meant this was inevitable.
This view was given its domestic expression by Theodore Cook (Radley College and Oxford) editor of the Country Gentlemen’s Newspaper The Field. Writing in his Character and Sportsmanship in 1927 he asserted that public schools were vital in transmitting this ‘code of honour.’ He went on to claim that ‘the chief purpose of this type of education is the formation of an elite, not for its own sake, but for the advancement and benefit of society at large.’ So there you have it. We need to be governed by those whose sense of justice and fair play will help us to progress.
The stiff upper lip that went along with this responsibility for delivering progress had another darker side effect. Alex Renton, in his book of the same name, has exposed the perverse and criminal world that has lurked inside the walls of England’s fee paying schools. Physical abuse, highlighted as far back as Tom Brown’s School Days in the 1850s, existed alongside a reputed culture of sexual abuse.
Both Johnsons, Stanley and Boris, attended preparatory schools that have been mired in controversy in recent years. Robin Lindsay, the Headteacher at Stanley’s old school, Sherborne House Prep, was described as a ‘fixated paedophile and a ‘serious risk to children’ who escaped prosecution during a forty year career of alleged abuse at the school. Boris was a pupil at Ashdown House Prep in 1975 when Martin Haigh, jailed for sex offences in 2017, was leaving under a cloud of accusations of abuse. Accusations that were never followed up, never catalogued or prosecuted Most disturbing of all was the response of parents to the allegations against Lindsay. Speaking on an ITV documentary made by Renton in 2018, Chief Superintendent Gill Donnell of the Dorset Police claimed that ‘“It was said to me on more than one occasion that the most important thing for the parents was that their children went to the required public school and that anything that was done to endanger that, they weren’t terribly supportive of at all.’ Imagine the thousands of children of the rich and powerful condemned to a lifetime of anger and resentment as a result of childhood trauma. Imagine a group of parents who had similar experiences dismissing them with a cursory ‘it never did me any harm’ or ‘this will ruin the reputation of the school’. Imagine what those parents, who have provided the ruling elite of the United Kingdom for the past 200 years, would do to others given what they were prepared to allow to happen to their own offspring.
Which brings us back to Stanley Johnson. Playing the game, for him, is shot through with the national preoccupations of a ruling class elite. The framing of his son as a hero, bravely sacrificing himself to shield the country from the enemy that threatens us all, is summoning those noble virtues of bravery and self-sacrifice implied in Newbolt’s poem. His appeal is a veiled demonstration of how rulers rule. In the eyes of our Prime Minister’s father, playing the game is not the collegial enterprise implied in his use of the word’ we.’ It is a myth riddled with the reality of class privilege and the enduring myths of national and social hierarchy.
As we struggle on through the National Emergency of coping with the Coronavirus and steel ourselves for the economic Winter that will arrive in its wake, be sure that when the Johnson’s and their ilk (16 out of the 22 current members of Boris Johnson’s cabinet attended a fee paying school as part of their education) talk about ‘we’, what they really mean is them and us. It is a game in which they are true believers. They have played it for a very long time and they always believe that they are its true winners. Playing the game may involve a degree of paternalism but in the end its about everyone fulfilling their prescribed role. In that game, they believe that they will always be the winners and we will always be the losers.
For those interested, the following books were either an inspiration or used as reference material:
Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School by J.A. Mangan, The Falmer Press, 1981
The Willow Wand by Derek Birley, Aurum Press, 2000
Stiff Upper lip by Alex Renton, Weidenfield and Nicolson, 2017