Sunday 7th September, 2008
George Orwell
George Orwell, real name Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950), was born in Bengal where his father was a civil servant. In 1905 he moved with his mother and sisters to Henley on Thames. His parents were not particularly wealthy but he attended a number of public schools.
In 1936 he was commissioned by Victor Gollancz to investigate the effects of mass unemployment in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Orwell visited these areas, staying in low class lodging houses and mixing freely with miners and their families.
His researches resulted in a book named "The Road to Wigan Pier", published in 1937. It must be noted that the book is not just about Wigan - he also visited Barnsley and Sheffield. He probably chose the title because of the joke attached to Wigan Pier. Unfortunately, most people now associate his damning descriptions with Wigan alone.
Emotive "over the top" phrases
"The Road to Wigan Pier" is split into two distinct and very different parts. The first half depicts working class life in grim detail. He uses many emotive, derogatory adjectives to describe the conditions he encountered.
The description of Wigan, quoted in the first part of this article, is a good example of this, but the whole text is peppered with phrases such as, "fearful northern slums", "dreadful room in Wigan", "Wigan's miry canal", "filthy hovel in the middle of Wigan". These are not the phrases of an objective observer but the subjective account of a "man on a mission".
Political Motivation
The second half of the book describes Orwell's ideals and political objectives. It shows that he was indeed "a man on a mission". He lived in an era which was still class concious and describes himself quite precisely as "lower-upper-middle class". In spite of this, he was an active left wing socialist who defined his political ideals quite clearly. He wrote, "Socialism means the overthrow of tyranny, at home as well as abroad".
The unification of all shades of socialism was vital to him as a weapon against the rising threat of fascism, but he had little love for the Labour Party and even less for pseudo-intellectual left wingers, whom he dismissed as "...the dreary tribe of high-minded women and sandal-wearers and bearded fruit-juice drinkers who come flocking towards the smell of 'progress' like bluebottles to a dead cat."
It was his political motivation which led Orwell to describe Wigan, (and Sheffield and Bradford) in such emotive and subjective terms. In many ways he is similar to William Dodd, the "factory cripple", who wrote about Wigan in 1841.
Both were commissioned to investigate and write about the worst aspects of working class life. Consequently, neither looked at the more prosperous areas and property in Wigan. Neither had reason to.
Neither did Wigan any favours.