06-09-2019, 03:22 PM
Horsewhip Harry
Scallywag issue 23, 1994
Harry Greenway, the Con party member for Ealing North since 1979, is trying to take over Patten's job as Education Secretary and has been grooming himself by taking on all sorts of minuscule educational jobs to try to look helpful and fit for the job for the next, inevitable, reshuffle. Perhaps unknown to his peers is the fact that he is a proven sadist who was quietly, but effectively, removed from his 12-year job as deputy headmaster of the Sir William Collins School for boys in Charrington Street, Camden.
His reign there lasted from 1960 to 1972 - an era when punishment of pupils was an everyday occurrence and the cane ruled. Even then, however, there were strict rules for such punishments. The cane had to be a regular size and weight and no punishment could be administered without an entry into a punishment book. That was the law, archaic as it may seem now.
But Horsewhip Harry had scant regard for such niceties. He did not use a cane for a start, but a set of vicious riding crops which he kept in his desk drawer. He used these whips quite indiscriminately on any young boy he took a fancy to. Sometimes plucking them from the playground (by the ear), especially if they were in shorts. Then he flogged them unmercifully until many of them bled. He never had a punishment book for these impromptu whippings.
Needless to say, he is Portillo's choice as Ed. Sec. should the right wing of the Con party eventually make it, and is a firm advocate of bringing back the birch.