Bullingdon Club

Bullingdon Club
Formation	1780
Headquarters	Oxford University
Type	secret society
Membership	• Edward VII • Edward VIII • Frederick IX of Denmark • Michael Ancram • Gottfried von Bismarck • Tony Blair • David Bowes-Lyon • David Cameron • Raymond Carr • Henry Chaplin • Randolph Churchill • Alan Clark • George Curzon • David Dimbleby • Peter Fleming • George Gibbs • Nick Hurd • Boris Johnson • Jo Johnson • Frederick Johnstone • Ludovic Kennedy • George Osborne • John Profumo • John Rankin Rathbone • Cecil Rhodes • Sebastian Roberts • Nathaniel Rothschild • John Scott • Walter Scott • Radosław Sikorski • Thomas Assheton Smith • Charles Spencer • Alexander Thynn
An Oxford university dining club with a habit for inebriation and subsequent property destruction. A UK equivalent of the US Skull and Bones fraternity, which has had a large number of establishment insiders as members over the years.

The Bullingdon Club is an elite drinking/dining club at Oxford university, which appears to fulfill a somewhat similar function to the Skull and Bones fraternity (in Yale University) with many members keeping the relationships they form in their university days, and reaching senior position in the UK establishment, especially as politicians or journalists.

Official narrative

The Bullingdon Club elite drinking/dining club at Oxford university, with an acknowledged history of property destruction when inebriated. Restaurant/pub owners are paid in full. Nothing sinister should be inferred from the remarkable track record of members in infiltrating establishment positions.

Problems

The Bullingdon Club's members have become notorious over the years for vandalising restaurants and trashing students' rooms. The club members involvement in criminal violence, and their code of omertà - protecting each other - seems like a poor basis for which to select people for public office.

Rituals

Once accepted members must then purchase the uniform at a cost of £3,500. Eating out and them destroying glassware seems to be the main ritual associated with the Bullingdon Club, which is increasingly being frowned upon - leading some would-be members to seek alternative options, such as the Stoics club.

Censorship efforts

The BBC reported in 2007 that "News media have been prevented from showing a photo of David Cameron with fellow Oxford dining club members".

A photo from the 1970s shows that Tony Blair was a member (3rd from right, with notable hand gesture).

2014 Film

A film called The Riot Club was produced in 2014, ostensibly about the behaviour of the Bullingdon Club. In the Daily Mail a report concluded that it was a "woefully weak make-believe vision of a university club".