I was at a private boys’ school similar to Dulwich College, at the same time as Nigel Farage. I was also in the combined cadet force. The sorts of racist behaviour described in your article were normal (‘Deeply shocking’: Nigel Farage faces fresh claims of racism and antisemitism at school, 18 November).
As the child of a refugee from the Nazis, I chose not only to ignore but even to join in with some of the antisemitism, much to my shame these days. It is striking that, with the exception of Chloe Deakin, teachers at the time seem to have viewed Farage’s behaviour as more like “high spirits” or “naughtiness”. Striking, but unsurprising: the private schools which were built to train young Englishmen for empire-building were deeply racist even in the 1980s. Mine had a quota for the maximum number of Jewish pupils. My German teacher routinely, and publicly, humiliated the one Muslim boy in my class.
