TONY BLAIR : FETTES FAG


Part Nine | 1980-1988


'In the early 1980s, he was involved in Labour politics in Hackney South and Shoreditch.. He put himself forward as a candidate for the Hackney council elections of 1982 in the Queensbridge ward, a safe Labour area, but was not selected.

In 1982, Blair was selected as the Labour Party candidate for the safe Conservative seat of Beaconsfield, where there was a forthcoming by-election. Although Blair lost the.. by-election and Labour's share of the vote fell by 10 percentage points, he acquired a profile within the party...

...at the age of thirty, he was elected as MP for Sedgefield in 1983, despite the party's landslide defeat at the general election...' (Wikipedia)

Tony Blair's maiden speech in the House of Commons was on July 6th 1983.


Fettes Expels Five Over Drug Incidents

THE headmaster of one of Scotland's leading fee-paying schools refused to comment last night on the allegation that five pupils had been expelled for drug-taking.

However, a Lothian and Borders police spokesman said: "We are aware of this having been informed by the headmaster. However, there is no police involvement and the matter is being dealt with by the headmaster under the college's own disciplinary code."

Mr Cameron Cochrane, headmaster of the £4,000-a-year Fettes College in Edinburgh, said he had just returned from a weekend trip to England and was "sick" of press enquiries about the matter.

He said he would comment at the school in the morning.

The report alleges that five pupils - three boys and two girls - were expelled after they admitted smoking cannabis. The incidents are said to have taken place mainly in the school, with one reported incident outwith the college grounds.

It is claimed that both girls and two of the boys involved had one more year to complete at the school but the fifth was leaving at the end of term. The incidents are said to have been reported by staff members and senior pupils.

The 500 students at Fettes are mainly boarders. The school authorities are now said to be reviewing their health education practices.

Glasgow Herald, July 18th 1983


'..Once elected, Blair's political ascent was rapid. He received his first front-bench appointment in 1984 as assistant Treasury spokesman. In May 1985, he appeared on BBC's Question Time...

In 1987, he stood for election to the Shadow Cabinet, receiving 71 votes...' (Wikipedia)


Note: The first name of Sir Samuel Knox Cunningham in the piece that follows is wrong, seemingly due to a confusion with 'Robin Knox-Johnston'...........


AN IMPORTANT name needs to be added to those Illustrious Ones mentioned in the last Eye who clustered around Anthony Blunt and the gay honeypots of Belfast's streets and council homes.

The name is Sir Robin (sic) Knox Cunningham, an MP and private secretary to Harold Macmillan when the latter was Prime Minister. Sir Robin (sic) was an Orangeman of enormous wealth and fabulous connections who, although neither clever nor Left-wing enough to be part of Blunt's set at Cambridge, nevertheless kept cordial relations with him all his life (Knox Cunningham died in 1976). Blunt christened him "The Muscle Queen" for his prodigious boxing exploits at Cambridge.

Meanwhile, there are rumours in Dublin that a Sunday paper may name the top British civil servants whose names were drawn to the attention of the Terry Cover-Up, the so-called "inquiry" into Kincora which was conducted in secret and which established nothing. One of the civil servants is dead but the other (the one mentioned in the Eye last issue who was convicted of a gross indecency in a London railway station soon after his return from Northern Ireland) is alive and suing.

PS: The editor of Community Care has contacted the Eye to say that shortly after writing a recent article on Kincora all the papers, notes and quotes on his desk were mysteriously stolen. Nothing else was taken. He wonders whether any other journalists have had a similar experience.

Private Eye, February 5th 1988 / spotlight on abuse