The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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Policies
come to mature as a result of formal and informal gatherings like
conferences, membership of the London
clubs, and social rounds of dinners and
parties that take place among the former and present politicians,
economic and
social leaders and civil servants. This social cohesion will naturally develop
into
kinship. “This is due to the fact that those who interact frequently with one
another in the
elite circles and other formal context are more likely to choose
marriage partners from among families of
those with whom they interact than
they are to choose from other social circles.”29

As a
result of education and public school it could be said that the social
structure seems condemned to perpetual
immobility. This is basically because
“careers depend partly on education and partly on family contacts.
Incomes
depend on careers, at least in broad terms. Meanwhile, large incomes enable
parents to send
their children to better schools and therefore to give them better
career prospects.”30

This
network of dominant status groups which has stemmed from family
and education is termed ‘an
establishment’. It is a group of people centred around
the Curch of England, public schools, ancient
universities, government, the legal
profession, the City and the Guards regiments. As it has been seen
“political
power in Britain is concentrated in the hands of a dominant social class; a class
which
has carried into the present the traditional outlook and values of the landed
class.”31 W. L. Guttsman, the author of ‘the English Ruling Class’ and
‘British
Political Elite’, has argued that: “in so far as the establishment continues
to
monopolise positions at the higher levels of the political system and assist their
children to reach
similar positions they constitute the core of a ‘ruling class’.”32

However,
although the fundamental pattern of elite power has not altered
as a result of various changes in the
economy, such as the growth of institutional
share-holding and the increased level of economic concentration,
the informal
mode of the establishment’s operation has increasingly been supplemented by

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