Henry Fairlie (1924-90) was the journalist who defined the Establishment 70 years ago, in 1955. His son, Simon, went in the opposite direction
Whatever happened to the Establishment? And who actually belongs to it nowadays?
Even the origins of the expression are unclear.
Henry Fairlie (1924-90) was the journalist who defined the Establishment.
70 years ago, in the Spectator in 1955, he wrote, ‘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.’
And now Fairlie’s son, Simon Fairlie, has written Going to Seed: A Counterculture Memoir, out this February.
Simon Fairlie began his life in a pretty Establishment way, at Westminster School and Cambridge. But then he dropped out of university to hitchhike to Istanbul, bicycle through India and establish a commune in France. He has been a labourer, stonemason, farmer, fisherman, shepherd, founder of the Land magazine as well as the co-editor of the Ecologist magazine.
He now runs a micro-dairy at Monkton Wyld Court, a charity and co-operative in rural Dorset, and earns a living by selling scythes.
In his memoir, Simon Fairlie writes about his father’s famous article about the Establishment.
‘It is an unexpectedly slight piece,’ Simon Fairlie writes, ‘which does little more than assign a name to the bleedin’ obvious.’
In fact, you could say that, in these green days, Simon Fairlie, scythe salesman, has himself become part of the Eco-Establishment.
