Richard Askwith: I was bullied – and it proved a valuable lesson

Public schools tend to be boarding schools – and in the dormitory no one can hear you scream

Much astonishment has been expressed over the case of James Slade, the 18-year-old awaiting sentence for inflicting grievous bodily harm on a fellow pupil at an exclusive public school in Durham. Most of it relates to the idea that parents paying £14,000 a year to secure their offspring a better-than-bog-standard education have a right to expect that said offspring will not end up permanently damaged by injuries received in the dormitory. Which is fair enough, but naive.

Nearly 30 years ago, I had the misfortune to win a scholarship to Harrow, where I subsequently spent three years having most of my academic enthusiasms drummed out of me by philistine masters and boys. In the process, I learnt some useful lessons about alcohol, drugs and gambling. I also learnt as much as I want to know about bullying.

Most of these lessons could have been equally well learnt elsewhere: never let them see that they've hurt you; if in doubt, keep your legs crossed; etc. And, because of our respectable backgrounds, some aspects of the subject – knives, for example – were omitted. But in other respects the public school environment is uniquely conducive to bullying, and the fact that it still thrives there should surprise no one.

Public schools tend to be boarding schools; and, in the dormitory, no one can hear you scream. Well, they can, obviously (although it's remarkable how often they don't). But the metaphorical isolation is real: there is no retreat to the safety of home; no escape from the fact that, sooner or later, the grown-ups will vanish. Sooner or later – usually later – your tormentor will catch up with you.

I escaped relatively lightly: the odd, indiscriminate attack from the house psychopath (who may well have gone on to fill a similar role in the House of Lords). Low-level molestations in the communal baths. Jostling, verbal abuse, fights with older boys, fagging. And the nocturnal attentions of another young aristocrat, whose relentless predations of the younger boys would – if ever exposed – presumably disqualify him from finding work as a daytime television presenter.

If I was scarred by such goings-on, I am oblivious to the fact. On balance, I'm grateful for the learning experience. But I can't help reflecting – when I read of cases such as Slade's or, for that matter, of other cases of alleged institutional bullying, such as those at Deepcut barracks – on how vulnerable we all were. For 10 or 11 weeks at a time, 24 hours a day, we were almost continuously exposed to the threat of the bullies.

Nor can I help reflecting that it is often the institution as much as the individuals that is at fault. In our case, the problem was exacerbated by the tradition – invented by Flashman's mentor, Dr Arnold – of delegating most of the responsibility for day-to-day law-and-order to the senior boys. (In an army barracks, it's the NCOs.) There is much to be said for such delegation, but where bullying is concerned there is a flaw: that those most directly responsible for curbing it tend to be the bullies themselves. Our prefects were particularly fond of the "hauling up" – whereby they woke you up in the middle of the night and frog-marched you off to a senior prefect's room for interrogation about some real or invented disciplinary matter.

This flaw in the system was vividly illustrated one winter night, when I was 15, when an older boy took it upon himself to burn down the house in which we slept. He could have killed us all, but I don't think any of us ever held this against him. He was an otherwise decent bloke, and, being boys, we welcomed the disruption to our routine.

In due course, the culprit was caught, charged and tried. To our amazement, he was acquitted – "without a stain on your character", according to the judge, who was probably not even aware of the defendant's blood relationship with the Queen. What really astonished us, though, were other allegations that emerged in the trial: namely, that he had started the fire as a "cry for help" in response to the unwanted attentions of an even older boy – who was universally known as a puny, ineffectual swot. How could such an unintimidating character have exercised such terror? The answer, of course, lay in their relative seniority: the older boy was absolutely powerful, the younger one absolutely vulnerable. Even the mildest adolescent might feel intrigued by the possibilities of such an imbalance; all but the boldest might feel terrified by it. Perhaps that was why we sympathised with him; we had all felt similarly exposed at one time or another.

It is, of course, relatively easy for an institution to correct the kind of overdelegation that creates opportunities for abuse. More disturbing, perhaps, is the balancing thought: that it is not our inherent decency that prevents most of us from tyrannising and torturing our fellow adults. It is just that we lack the opportunity.