Jimmy Sime, 'Toffs and Toughs'

It's actually a nice picture, but it's hopelessly posed. Also, the title is made-up, and the only person in it who is still alive (one of the boys on the right) no longer wishes to be associated with it for the simple reason that he isn't and never was a "tough".

This picture has been produced again and again over the years by Marxists (both the ideological and the de facto sort), who hate Britain and hate tradition, as some sort of piece of killer evidence that Britain has (or had, before the Second World War) some sort of terrible "class system".

In actual fact, yes, this picture is hopelessly posed, and the only difference between the two sets of boys is that those on the left had parents who were rich enough to send them to Harrow* and the others, were pupils at the local Church of England school who had take the afternoon off to earn a bob or two by helping out at Lord's Cricket Ground. And far from being "toughs" they were perfectly respectable, working-class English lads who all went on to live long, full and (compared with those of the two Harrow boys) happy lives.

Again, the only real difference nowadays (because I don't think the school uniform at Harrow has changed very much) would be that the boys on the right would be of a different race.

And that of course is the main way in which Britain is now a more divided society than it has ever been before - just not in the way the latter-day Marxists of the media Establishment would like us to think.

So, leaving aside that nowadays the boys on the right would be just as likely to be beaten up for being "posh" (not to mention English and white) as the boys on the left would have been back then, the photograph is hopelessly posed and the title itself is both misleading and probably no older than 2004.

In fact the boys on the right are not "toughs" but pupils at a local Church of England school. They'd taken the day off school for a trip to the dentist and then decided to earn some easy money by helping out at the Eton-Harrow cricket match that was taking place at Lord's that afternoon. Sime has clearly, er, solicited their aid for his photograph (presumably for a small fee). And given that nice young Anglican boys would generally have been discouraged from walking around with their hands in their pockets, he's presumably also instructed them to adopt the poses their holding to look as if they're quietly masturbating. The two Harrovian* boys though just happened to be standing at the gate at the time waiting to be collected by one of their parents, and by all accounts they were persuaded to pose for the camera with neither their parents' consent nor any financial emolument.

The picture is of course well known in England, and a good example of indigenous English leftist propaganda - that is to say the lies we like to tell ourselves. It was first published in the 10th July 1937 edition of the News Chronicle, a leftist newspaper that later merged with The Daily Mail (which of course by modern standards isn't even considered leftist). The screechy agitprop caption read 'Every picture tells a story'.

The real "story" of the photograph - of the tragic fates of the two "toff" boys and of the long, happy, normal lives of the "toughs" - is now freely available on line thanks to dear old Wikipedia.

*Not Etonians, as countless hopeless American editors have stated, as if it were true.