Although no aristocrat, Andrew Mitchell, the Government chief whip, is renowned for his haughty, arrogant, and rude manner. Those that he takes a dislike to or he considers his social inferiors, are dismissed as 'plebs' or 'morons'. At Rugby public school, - which he attended like the notorious bully 'Flashman', the scoundrel who appears in the novel 'Tom Brown's Schooldays', by Thomas Hughes - he was known as 'Thrasher' Mitchell, for his stern disciplinarian approach.
Since the 'Pleb' scandal hit the headlines, the newspapers have been full of reports and anecdotes about Mitchell's arrogance and meaness. It seems that the incident at Downing Street, where Mitchell is alleged to have called an armed police officer a "fucking pleb" and a "moron" because the officer would not open the main gates of Downing Street to let him through with his bike, is not an isolated incident. The police log which was published in the Daily Telegraph, says that Mitchell said: "Best learn your f...... place ... you don't run this f...... government... you're f....... plebs." Indignant at the impudence of these servants, who would not answer his summons, Mitchell, tried to ride his bike through the main gates at Downing Street the following day.
The Labour MP Grahame Morris, told one newspaper that Mitchell " has 'form' for this sort of thing and has had to apologise to 'two or three' Parliamentary staff " for his behaviour. A neighbour of Mitchell's who lived next door to him for 30 years, told the Daily Mail that living next door to him had been a 'nightmare' and that "He is a very rude and arrogant man." An unnamed Tory source, told the same newspaper : "It is characteristic behaviour. He is a nasty piece of work...it's about bloody time he got his comeuppance."
Snobbishness, is of course something that is knocked into English public school boys and their parents pay a great deal of money for it. Many just can't help but throw their intellectual weight around or pull rank on the vulgar rabble who they believe to be beneath them.
Brian Howard (the model for Anthony Blanche in Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited) who was at Eton with George Orwell and Harold Acton, was arrested in 1920. When asked by a policeman where he lived, he replied: "I live in Mayfair, I expect you live in some dreary suburb." In Thackeray's novel 'Vanity Fair', the cad, George Osborne, a former pupil of Dr. Swishtail's school for young gentlemen, is described as "generally overbearing and isolent to all those he considered his social inferiors." Fortunately, he gets shot dead at the Battle of Waterloo. Even that socialist stalwart George Orwell, was not immune from snobbery. In his book 'The Road to Wigan Pier', Orwell says:
"When I was fourteen or fifteen I was an odious little snob, but no worse than the other boys of my own age and class. I suppose there is no place in the world where snobbery is quite so ever-present or where it is cultivated in such refined and subtle forms as in the English public school. Here at least one cannot say that English 'education' fails to do its job. You forget your Latin and Greek within a few months of leaving school...but your snobishness, unless you persistently root it out like the bindweed it is, sticks by you till your grave...looking back upon that period, I seem to have spent half the time in denouncing the capitalist system and the other half in raging over the insolence of bus-conductors."
There are some who believe that Mitchell should have been arrested as using foul and abusive language to a police officer is an arrestable offence. Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, has called for a 'zero tolerance' towards swearing at police officers. Ricky Gemmel, from Gorton, has called for Mitchell to be 'locked up.' Last year, 19-year-old Ricky, was sent to a young offenders institute for 16 weeks after he told the police to 'fuck-off' during the riots in Manchester. He believes that anyone else other than Mitchell, would have been arrested.
But while Mitchell admits to using the F-word in his altercation with armed police officers at the main gates of Downing Street, he says that he used the word 'adjectively' and didn't use any of the words reported by the police including the word 'Pleb'. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, says that he believes that Mitchell didn't use the word 'Pleb' but refused to be drawn on the question as to whether he believes the police are lying. John Tully, Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation told the press that Mitchell's remarks were 'outrageous' and called on him to resign.
There will of course be some people who will say that Mitchell's arrogance and snobbishness is typical behaviour for the foul-mouthed Tory yobs who are now running this country. Paul Mckeever, the Police Federation Chairman, believes that Mitchell's behaviour is yet "another example of the contempt some in government hold the police in." However, what the 'Pleb' scandal does show is that even in these mealy-mouthed and politically correct times in which we live, where it is fashionable to talk about classlessness, English middle-class snobbery is always lurking beneath the surface and itching to get out. But as that dreadful English snob Evelyn Waugh says in his novel 'Scoop', even the cleverest man in Fleet Street, the communist and university educated Pappenhacker, - who was so rude to waiters that many restaurants wouldn't have him - believed that every time you were polite to a proletarian, you were helping to bolster up the capitalist system. I doubt that Pappenhacker, would have had much difficulty in crossing the threshold of El Vino, the Fleet Street wine bar which is owned by the Mitchell family.
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