of which would determine whether he would be allowed to stay at the school. He had not yet shone academically, so the threat of his Eton career ending in failure was not a remote one. But just six weeks before the exams Cameron came close to being expelled before he could even sit them.
Towards the end of May a number of pupils were found to be both using and distributing cannabis. The affair made the national newspapers, in part because, unusually, the police were involved. Eton generally told the local drugs squad of any illegality the school had uncovered and the drugs squad in turn was content to leave the school to sort it out. On this occasion the police oversaw an investigation by the school, apparently determined, at least at first, to root out all drug-users. The initial culprits were called upon to reveal to whom they had sold drugs, an offence that ensured automatic expulsion. On the first day seven were summarily thrown out and the investigation began to snowball.
‘They called in more the next day, and the day after, but after that everyone just clammed up,’ says one former pupil who left that term. ‘A couple of the guys were going to Slough to buy the stuff, but it wasn’t as if there was real dealing going on in the school.’ He added: ‘We were heavily leaned on to give names. There were a lot of people involved. They tried to accuse me of dealing in it, which was nonsense. I told the headmaster, “If you kick me out, you’ll have to kick an awful lot of people out.” I didn’t like the way it was handled. We weren’t told our rights or anything, and apart from a few confessions from people, they had very little evidence.’ A senior member of staff at the time admits that a ‘nice teacher, nasty teacher’ technique was used, and says: ‘I have no doubt that we wouldn’t be allowed to handle it in the same way nowadays – we would be involved with human rights legislation and so on.’ Estimates vary of how many were questioned, but the school was anxious to send a strong signal, including to those on the fringes who had experimented but otherwise knew little of the drugs world. The school authorities, evidently, were taken aback by what they found. ‘They realised the numbers were much greater than they thought,’ claimed one former pupil. ‘They couldn’t rusticate [temporarily expel] everybody.’ While, in theory at least, the ‘hard nuts’ were thrown out, others received milder punishments.
JF was on the edge of Eton, with views out over the countryside and towards the railway arches, both domains offering handy cover for illicit smoking and drinking. From the house, it was possible on occasion to witness the surreal scene of groups of two or three teenagers in tailcoats trudging back towards the school, their purported interest in the botany of east Berkshire temporarily sated. Cameron’s house was a stone’s throw from the Art Schools, and the drugs purge took a disproportionate toll on those who attended them. (Much later, the headmaster gently pointed out to John Booth that three-quarters of the boys who were expelled did Art; Booth replied jovially that all of them did Divinity, but that proved nothing.) ‘It was a group of pretty naughty characters and they tended to get into trouble,’ said another regular visitor to the railway arches who was expelled. He remembers the drugs clean-up as being ‘like a military operation’ and still resents what he sees as its draconian enforcement and the suspicion (about who gave names to the headmaster) it created.
In the inquisition of May 1982, an acquaintance of David Cameron named him as having smoked cannabis. He was called before the headmaster and confessed. Because he had only smoked and not sold the drugs he was not thrown out. Instead he was fined, gated (refused all leave) and given a Georgic (a classic Eton punishment requiring the offender to copy out 500 lines of Latin). To acute personal embarrassment, he was barred from attending the Fourth of June celebrations. He was also invited to reveal the names of other boys involved but did not do so. Eric Anderson (now Sir Eric, and provost of Eton), who did not become one of Eton’s most popular former headmasters by small-mindedly remembering every misdemeanour he has been called upon to punish, says he does not recall Cameron’s involvement, but makes a general point. ‘There are those who get in on the fringes. It is a matter of excitement and experimentation. We would have said, “Let’s get the ringleaders,” and if there were others involved, we would have scared them off from doing it again. We’re dealing with young boys, and young boys sometimes do silly things. But I would very much resist the idea that we “put the lid back” on anything.’
The incident was all but forgotten when twenty-three years later Cameron stood on the brink of the Tory leadership. A discussion took place about whether to allow a friendly journalist to break the story so that it wouldn’t fester and fall into hostile hands to be revealed at an embarrassing moment, but Cameron decided against answering any questions about his drugs use. It was a decision that has brought enduring innuendo about alleged cocaine use but one that has ensured that, while he may have inhaled cannabis, no ‘drugs lies’ have left his lips.
Typically, he did not allow the drugs episode to get him down. Happy, well adjusted, social but academically average (although he surprised himself by passing twelve O-levels, with moderate grades), Cameron’s Eton career appeared to be pottering into an agreeable obscurity in the summer of 1982. His tastes were not untypical. He had a poster of the American model Cheryl Tiegs on the wall of his room and enjoyed the Jam (whose ‘Eton Rifles’ had come out in his first term), Stiff Little Fingers and XTC and developed an interest in the drums. Like so many schoolchildren with excess energy to burn off, he would tap rhythmically on his desk before classes began. A friend at the time remembers him having a coltish obsession with the distinctive drum break in the middle of Phil Collins’s 1981 single ‘Something in the Air Tonight’, and decided that playing air drums to it was not enough. With characteristic gusto, he went so far as to take lessons. His drum teacher Steve Lees has no recollection of his having formed or joined a band, though.
Despite this amiable pottering, something remarkable was to happen over the next two years that propelled him out of the ranks towards the front. An awakening interest in politics, a steely ambition and an academic facility flowered in him, seemingly simultaneously, just in time for his A-levels. Not for the last time in his life, he suddenly burst from the pack when the prize was in view.
From C block, which he reached in September 1982, onwards, boys are known as ‘specialists’. Becoming a specialist is akin to reaching adulthood, and it marks the point when boys are permitted to drink, in moderation, at Tap, the school pub; they are also allowed more weekends away from the school. By this time Cameron’s brother had gone on to Bristol University, but he would go back to Peasemore, often seeing his sisters Tania – then heading for A-levels at St Mary’s, Calne, in Berkshire – and Clare – who was still at the Manor prep school in Abingdon – as well as his parents. Cameron, as he says himself, didn’t really ‘get going academically’ until he started doing A-levels. He was now beyond the reach of those set subjects required by the Eton curriculum and he could follow his own interests more closely. He chose as his three A-levels History of Art, History and Economics with Politics. It is at this stage, perhaps, that the benefits of Eton come to the fore. Cameron was fortunate to be taught History of Art by William Franklin, undoubtedly one of the school’s stars, and Bill Winter, the convivial organiser of the Political Society. He was taught History by Giles St Aubyn and Michael Kidson, a kindly and scholarly man, whose faux pomposity endeared him to generations of Etonians. But it was his enthusiasm for Economics (and Politics) that really fed his academic appetite.
As a specialist, a boy is free to choose the Tutor who will see him through to A-levels, with whom he would share twice-weekly informal private business sessions. As before, these sessions, often just ‘talking things through’, as one master puts it, were not oriented towards exams but were designed to give boys a taste for off-curriculum culture at its broadest. John Clark, who taught Cameron for his last four terms, sees private business as one of the keys to what might be called ‘the Eton experience’. ‘The school is remarkably informal,’ he says, ‘despite the exterior that the outside world sees. It gives tremendous opportunities to talk and discuss and be taken seriously by adults, and private business is a case in point.’
Cameron chose as his Tutor Tim Young, an Etonian himself, who ran the school’s First XI soccer team. Paradoxically, although Young himself had been a scholar (remarkably, the fourth in what is now a family line of five to win a King’s scholarship), his reputation among the boys was as much for gregariousness as