The establishment is a term that has existed for some time now (1955 to be precise). But what is the purpose of the term and where does it come from? Has this definition changed over time? How can the establishment been defined in today’s political arena? Chapter One: The Establishment: What It Is, and What It Was. The Establishment as a term didn’t first appear until a 1955 Spectator news article by Henry Fairle. Here he suggested that the establishment wasn’t just; “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” (1955). He described the establishment as an entire network of powerful figures and associates, an upper echelon of society that controls society. The article was met with fury by those it cited as part of the establishment, yet all it did was echo the thinking of influential left winger theorists such as Karl Marx and Fredrich Eagles. In their Communist Manifesto, originally entitled; ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’ (1848) they discuss the establishment, albeit by a different name - the bourgeois. They cite the idea of class segregation as nothing new, “freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed”. These are several of the comparative terms they use to describe what could now be called ‘the establishment and working class’. Marx and Fredrich go on to discuss the segregations of social class throughout history; “we find almost everywhere… a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guildmasters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations” (1848). It could be argued that these classes still exist today, albeit in differing terms; the establishment; consisting of the political class, the monarchy, big business etc; followed by the upper class, those who do extremely well financially, but without the long history of family money; the middle class, consisting of doctors, teachers, police officers, people with qualifications; and finally, the working class, formed by those with no qualifications, low income jobs etc. Marx and Fredrich suggest that “the modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones”. Marx and Fredrich believe that the bourgeois or ‘the establishment’ as Fairle described it is still in power, it has merely changed it’s form to suit the modern socio-climate. In his book ‘The Establishment and How They Got Away With It’ left wing columnist Owen Jones agrees, describing the Establishment as “a shape-shifter, evolving and adapting as needs must” (2014). However he suggests, “one thing that distinguishes today’s Establishment from earlier incarnations is it’s sense of triumphalism. The powerful once faced significant threats that kept them in check. But the opponents to our current Establishment have, apparently, ceased to exist in any meaningful organised way” (2014). For a time the Catholic Church, an embodiment of the Establishment (or rather bourgeois) had to respond to the Monarchy and for a time the Monarchy, a different iteration of this hierarchal power matrix, had to answer to Parliament. But who does Parliament answer to now? It could be argued that the Establishment is about to undergo another change, with Parliament now beginning to be manipulated and controlled by (parochial Ford - mill owners new money) strength of capitalist interests is higher than ever before - global force. Capitalist interests via lobbying. In an article for his Independent column Mark Leftly examples a lunch between then Conservative Transport Minister and a university friend