George Orwell – The Road to Wigan Pier (Penguin)
I should have read this book years ago but, in the current climate where clear thinking is so needed, this 1937 semi-autobiographical, semi-sociological work seems uncannily relevant. Spoiler Alert: Orwell very strongly criticises (and mocks) the language and the alienating aspects of strident left-wing activism while supporting its core values of justice and liberty.
He opens with superb but harrowing descriptions of life as a lodger in shared housing in the depressed North of England between the wars, and then of several trips into the coal mines to get a sense of working conditions. These high definition descriptions are utterly compelling and shocking. Our empathy and humanity is aroused and fortified. It’s impossible not to think of so many of our current workers who work and live in such similar conditions, nearly one hundred years after Orwell wrote.
There are some excellent insights into class identity, because Orwell, a plummy-accented Etonian, finds it difficult to remove himself from the target of socialist critique of ‘bourgeois ideology, manners etc’. This even though he (as a ‘sinking lower middle-class man who has never worked with his hands’) supports the cause of the working man. He continually finds his humane impulse towards the poor, and his desire to help a coherent movement emerge to address their needs, frustrated by the hackneyed slogans of Marxist propaganda.
Yet fascism must be resisted – gaining ground as it was with terrifying ease across Europe in the 1930s – and, he argues, socialism must become less repellant in order to attract people whose sympathies and sense of decency would point in that direction, whatever their background: ‘Throughout left-wing thought and writing…there runs an anti-genteel tradition, a persistent and often very stupid gibing at genteel mannerisms and genteel loyalties (or, in Communist jargon, ‘bourgeois values’). It is largely humbug…but it does major harm, because it allows a minor issue to block a major one. It directs attention away from the central fact that poverty is poverty, whether the tool you work with is a pick-axe or a fountain pen…For what I am worth it would be better to get me in on the Socialist side than to turn me into a Fascist. But if you are constantly bullying me about my ‘bourgeois ideology’…you will only succeed in antagonizing me. For you are telling me either that I am inherently useless or that I ought to alter myself in some way that is beyond my power. 201
On Dignity and Indignity. One miner he go to know suffered a debilitating injury as a result of a mining accident (‘Health and Safety’? What ‘Health and Safety’?). This man received a small allowance from the company but, Orwell notes, the man had to spend half a day each week, waiting at the company office to receive his pittance in cash: ‘This business of petty inconvenience and indignity, of being kept waiting about, of having to do everything at other people’s convenience, is inherent in working-class life. A thousand influences constantly press a working man down into a passive role.’ 43
By contrast: ‘A person of bourgeois origin goes through life with some expectation of getting what he wants, within reasonable limits. Hence the fact that in times of stress ‘educated’ people tend to come to the front; they are no more gifted than the others and their ‘education’ is generally quite useless in itself, but they are accustomed to a certain amount of deference and consequently have the cheek necessary to a commander.’ 44
Good sense in the midst of poverty: In England, at least, there was no political assault on the working-class family: ‘A working man does not disintegrate under the strain of poverty as a middle-class person does. Take, for instance, the fact that the working class think nothing of getting married on the dole [receiving state benefits]. It annoys the old ladies in Brighton, but it is a proof of their essential good sense; they realize that losing your job does not mean that you cease to be a human being…Families are impoverished, but the family-system has not broken up. 78
Humour: ‘In a Lancashire cotton-town you could probably go for months on end without once hearing an ‘educated’ accent, whereas there can hardly be a town in the South of England where you could throw a brick without hitting the niece of a bishop.’ 102
On the instant gentrification of lower middle-class Europeans emigres: ‘It was this that explained the attraction of India (more recently Kenya, Nigeria etc) for the lower-upper-middle class. The people…went there because in India, with cheap horses, free shooting, and hordes of black servants, it was so easy to play at being a gentleman.’ 108
On the servility and intimidation of the poor: ‘During the past dozen years the English working class have grown servile with a rather horrifying rapidity. It was bound to happen, for the frightful weapon of unemployment has cowed them. ‘Before the war [WW1] their economic position was comparatively strong, for though there was no dole [state benefits] to fall back upon, there was not much unemployment…A man did not see ruin staring him in the face every time he cheeked a ‘toff’, and naturally he did cheek a ‘toff’.’ 111
On Empire, Imperialism, and oppression: ‘I was in the Indian [Burmese, now Malaysia] Police five years, and by the end of that time I hated the imperialism I was serving with a bitterness which I probably cannot make clear…It is not possible to be a part of such a system without recognizing it as an unjustifiable tyranny. Even the thickest-skinned Anglo-Indian [by which I think he means a white Brit born there] is aware of this. Every ‘native’ face he sees in the street brings home to him his monstrous intrusion…The truth is that no modern man, in his heart of hearts, believes that it is right to invade a foreign country and hold the population down by force. Foreign oppression is a much more obvious, understandable evil that economic oppression…All over India there are Englishmen who secretly loathe the system of which they are a part; and just occasionally, when they are quite certain of being in the right company, their hidden bitterness overflows. … Not only were we [the Burmese Police, judicial system] hanging people and putting them in jail and so forth; we were doing it in the capacity of unwanted foreign invaders. The Burmese themselves never really recognized our jurisdiction…For five years I had been part of an oppressive system, and it had left me with a bad conscience…I was conscious of an immense weight of guilt that I had got to expiate…I [therefore] had reduced everything to the simple theory that the oppressed are always right and the oppressors are always wrong: a mistaken theory, but the natural result of being one of the oppressors yourself.’ 126-130
On the alarmingly sudden rise of tyrants: ‘Just how soon the pinch will come it is difficult to say; it depends, probably, upon events in Europe; but it may be that within two years, or even a year we shall have reached the decisive moment [He was writing in 1937. WW2 did indeed break in 1939]. That will also be the moment when every person with any brains or any decency will know in his bones that he ought to be on the Socialist side…It is doubtful whether a…heavy dragoon of Mosley’s stamp [Mosley, a British fascist and supporter of Hitler] would ever be much more than a joke to the majority of English people; though even Mosley will bear watching, for experience shows (eg. the careers of Hitler, Napoleon III) that to a political climber it is sometimes an advantage not to be taken too seriously at the beginning of his career…’ 186 Chilling stuff.
On how fascism rose so swiftly in the ‘30s: Fascism draws its strength from the good as well as the bad varieties of conservatism. To anyone with a feeling or tradition and for discipline it comes with its appeal ready-made. Probably it is very easy, when you have had a bellyful of the more tactless kind of Socialist propaganda, to see Fascism as the last line of defence of all that is good in European civilization…[It is] partly due to the mistaken Communist tactic of sabotaging democracy, i.e. sawing off the branch you are sitting on…As a result Fascism…has been able to pose as the upholder of the European tradition, and to appeal to Christian belief, to patriotism, and to the military virtues. It is far worse than useless to write Fascism off as ‘mass sadism’, or some easy phrase of that kind. If you pretend that it is merely an aberration which will presently pass off of its own accord, you are dreaming a dream from which you will awake when somebody coshes you with a rubber truncheon.’ 188
Orwell’s conclusion: ‘Justice and liberty! Those are the words that have got to ring like a bugle across the world.’ 190
You can see, as I did, the relevance of much of this surprising book. Not one chapter is wasted or irrelevant. Not all are equally relevant of course – all chapters are equal, but some chapters are more equal than others – but as a stimulant to clear thinking, it’s well worth reading, even if you land in a different place to Orwell.
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