What is the song “Eton Rifles” about by the Jam?
The Eton Rifles” are a cadet corps of Eton College, an English public school in Berkshire. The song itself is a sarcastic homage to class war and the rivalry between boys at Eton and neighbouring working class schoolboys, as perceived in the 1970s. The song was inspired by a newspaper article that singer Paul Weller read about unemployed demonstrators on a socialist ‘Right to Work’ march being heckled by what he later described as “a bunch of tossers” from the prestigious Eton College.
