The news article that inspired The Jam song ‘Eton Rifles’
In the unlikely surroundings of a Selsey caravan, The Jam frontman Paul Weller sat down to write his magnum opus. It was 1979, and Britain was going through a fairly tumultuous time; the winter of discontent was still fresh in the public consciousness, and the first few months of Margaret Thatcher’s government were already proving disastrous for the country’s working classes. The resulting track from Weller’s seaside getaway was the seminal hit ‘The Eton Rifles’.
Arguably The Jam’s defining track, ‘Eton Rifles’ captured the zeitgeist of the late 1970s. In essence, the song is about class war, with the upper-class students of the prestigious Eton College pitted against the surrounding working classes. The title refers to Eton College Rifle Corps, the military cadet programme at the private school.
While the nature of the track harks back to Weller’s early involvement in the punk scene, inspiration for ‘The Eton Rifles’ came to the songwriter in the form of a newspaper article. In response to high levels of unemployment and very little in the way of government aid, the Socialist Workers Party organised many ‘right to work’ marches during the 1970s. Once such march, in 1978, passed by Eton College, resulting in mockery from the upper-class schoolboys. The resulting newspaper article had found its way to The Jam singer, who found it so outrageous that he had a moral obligation to respond.
The image of extreme wealth and power contrasted with desolation and unemployment encapsulated the frustrations felt by many during that period. Although the song adheres more towards a mod revivalist sound than anything else, the punk attitude of protest and rebellion is more substantial here than in the majority of songs that arose from the earlier punk scene. This class war – and the perceived hopelessness of attempting to fight the system – was perfectly summarised by the lyric, “What chance have you got against a tie and a crest?”
Weller, who had attended the nearby Sheerwater Comprehensive School, had become increasingly political in his songwriting throughout The Jam’s reign. An avid supporter of the Labour Party during the 1980s, the frontman was dismayed to find that ‘Eton Rifles’ was a favourite of former Prime Minister and Etonian David Cameron. In 2008, the Conservative leader said of the track, “I don’t see why the left should be the only ones allowed to listen to protest songs”, something that caused incredible frustration for Jam fans, and Weller in particular.
Responding to Cameron’s confused love for ‘Eton Rifles’, Weller told the Daily Mirror, “Which part of the song didn’t he get? […] It’s a shame really that someone didn’t listen to that song and get something else from it and become a socialist leader instead. I was a bit disappointed really.”
The Jam explored class consciousness and inequality throughout much of their material, but it rarely felt as impactful as it did on ‘The Eton Rifles’. The football terrace chanting contrasted with tales of rugby, rifle corps, and the House of Commons, which remain as effective and depressingly relevant in the modern day as it did back in the 1970s.
