Popular History and Literary History has forgotten that “The Road to Wigan Pier” was, to coin a phrase, a book of two halves.
The 2nd half of that book absolutely skewers socialists of both the 1930s and of today. It eviscerates them – the “fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist”
The modern Left love Part One, as do I, but pretend Part Two does not exist. As it is now out of copyright (author’s death + 70 years), everyone should spend a day or two with Eric Blair in Lancashire, but do read to the end. https://www.orwell.ru/library/novels/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/english/e_rtwp
Indeed. I’ve been reading it and the similarities between the Hampstead socialists of the 1930s and today are quite astonishing. Orwell may have been a socialist, but he seemed to dislike most other socialists. But a writer who’s lasted well and is still worth reading. Most of his judgements from the 1930s and 1940s have aged quite well.
Orwell, being Old Etonian (from a faded aristocratic line in part), was exactly the classic ‘leftist’ because leftism is actually a species of revolt by one resentful section of the ruling class against another (in Orwells phrase, ‘a family with the wrong members in control‘). The old tripartite scheme for sons (army service, church and ‘diplomacy’) had broken down after WW1).
If I were pushed I’d say that the root of the problem was the nature of aristocratic inheritance (of both wealth (which nevertheless was occasionally self-despising if earned) and status), which by-passed certain younger (or female) members of families in the ruling elite (Virginia Woolf was particularly scathing and vitriolic about this). Prince Harry is, in my view, a good modern example.
Orwell, being Old Etonian (from a faded aristocratic line in part), was exactly the classic ‘leftist’ because leftism is actually a species of revolt by one resentful section of the ruling class against another (in Orwells phrase, ‘a family with the wrong members in control‘). The old tripartite scheme for sons (army service, church and ‘diplomacy’) had broken down after WW1).
If I were pushed I’d say that the root of the problem was the nature of aristocratic inheritance (of both wealth (which nevertheless was occasionally self-despising if earned) and status), which by-passed certain younger (or female) members of families in the ruling elite (Virginia Woolf was particularly scathing and vitriolic about this). Prince Harry is, in my view, a good modern example.
Indeed. I’ve been reading it and the similarities between the Hampstead socialists of the 1930s and today are quite astonishing. Orwell may have been a socialist, but he seemed to dislike most other socialists. But a writer who’s lasted well and is still worth reading. Most of his judgements from the 1930s and 1940s have aged quite well.
Phyddeaux .
1 year ago
Popular History and Literary History has forgotten that “The Road to Wigan Pier” was, to coin a phrase, a book of two halves.
The 2nd half of that book absolutely skewers socialists of both the 1930s and of today. It eviscerates them – the “fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist”
The modern Left love Part One, as do I, but pretend Part Two does not exist. As it is now out of copyright (author’s death + 70 years), everyone should spend a day or two with Eric Blair in Lancashire, but do read to the end. https://www.orwell.ru/library/novels/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/english/e_rtwp
Dougie Undersub
1 year ago
At least Orwell bothered to leave London, which is more than you can say for the Guardian writers of today.
Dougie Undersub
1 year ago
At least Orwell bothered to leave London, which is more than you can say for the Guardian writers of today.
A Willis
1 year ago
Perhaps more importantly, Orwell and Priestley both highlighted the hypocrisy of the comfortable middle-classes believing that they knew best what was in the interests of the working class.
Absolutely. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Graham Robb that this was a campaigning book directed at a very specific readership from the comfortable, mostly Southern, middle class. Orwell’s agenda was to open their eyes to places and ways of life they knew nothing about.
He also wanted to take aim at the illusions of the Socialist Left, which he did not yet fully identify with. That identification started shortly afterwards with his participation in the Spanish Civil War. Wigan Pier got a lot of Northern, working class and Leftist readers’ backs up and obviously still does. But if you read Orwell’s 1940s As I Please columns the main attitude that comes across is inverted class snobbery. Far from sneering at working class people, the fully-formed Orwell thought their outlook on life was superior to that of the middle classes!
Absolutely. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Graham Robb that this was a campaigning book directed at a very specific readership from the comfortable, mostly Southern, middle class. Orwell’s agenda was to open their eyes to places and ways of life they knew nothing about.
He also wanted to take aim at the illusions of the Socialist Left, which he did not yet fully identify with. That identification started shortly afterwards with his participation in the Spanish Civil War. Wigan Pier got a lot of Northern, working class and Leftist readers’ backs up and obviously still does. But if you read Orwell’s 1940s As I Please columns the main attitude that comes across is inverted class snobbery. Far from sneering at working class people, the fully-formed Orwell thought their outlook on life was superior to that of the middle classes!
A Willis
1 year ago
Perhaps more importantly, Orwell and Priestley both highlighted the hypocrisy of the comfortable middle-classes believing that they knew best what was in the interests of the working class.
Ian Stewart
1 year ago
“I know people who are happy to work in factories”
I hate the contempt that some people frequently voice for certain job roles as a marker for limited ambitions – “shelf stacker in a supermarket”, “flipping burger in Macdonalds”. It just shows they are snobs and/or socialists.
I know someone who accidentally stumbled into Turiya whilst working in a factory. She was astonished to become “enlightened” without knowingly trying for this and afterwards found the ancient texts explaining the experience and the difficult but simple path to higher consciousness. A radiant person.
It is observable that doing a job well – with attention and care – is both satisfying and replenishing. The opposite is also true.
I do appreciate that this sounds pretentious but am neither making it up nor proselytising. We live in a world where the superficial is prized too highly, where humble occupations are despised because they do not incur the empty reward that is excess money and status and where the clamouring illusion of worldly success has drowned out the hidden value of the interior life, the invisible and unhailed value of simple goodness.
Hence the epidemic of “mental health” problems and negative emotion with which our society has become awash.
I don’t believe that there is anything that can remove, or impede, human capacity except, perhaps, authoritarian regimes that would stifle and police freedom of thought.
There’s often great camaraderie – lots of chat and banter during factory work – but sadly automation is making people more sparse on factory floors, losing the opportunities for the socialisation aspect.
I know someone who accidentally stumbled into Turiya whilst working in a factory. She was astonished to become “enlightened” without knowingly trying for this and afterwards found the ancient texts explaining the experience and the difficult but simple path to higher consciousness. A radiant person.
It is observable that doing a job well – with attention and care – is both satisfying and replenishing. The opposite is also true.
I do appreciate that this sounds pretentious but am neither making it up nor proselytising. We live in a world where the superficial is prized too highly, where humble occupations are despised because they do not incur the empty reward that is excess money and status and where the clamouring illusion of worldly success has drowned out the hidden value of the interior life, the invisible and unhailed value of simple goodness.
Hence the epidemic of “mental health” problems and negative emotion with which our society has become awash.
I don’t believe that there is anything that can remove, or impede, human capacity except, perhaps, authoritarian regimes that would stifle and police freedom of thought.
There’s often great camaraderie – lots of chat and banter during factory work – but sadly automation is making people more sparse on factory floors, losing the opportunities for the socialisation aspect.
Ian Stewart
1 year ago
“I know people who are happy to work in factories”
I hate the contempt that some people frequently voice for certain job roles as a marker for limited ambitions – “shelf stacker in a supermarket”, “flipping burger in Macdonalds”. It just shows they are snobs and/or socialists.
j watson
1 year ago
Orwell’s development did not stop at ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’. There is a danger in removing the context from which he was writing and applying to today. What he did with Down & Out, Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia was radical and had been little done before in literature. He actually went and sought the experiences. He forced himself. He knew how much he was conditioned by his background and upbringing and it is to his credit how hard he worked at correcting and rebalancing that.
His concerns about the intelligentsia’s disconnection and the potential for working class to be pulled by populism were both valid, and arguably still are.
I’m forced to read your posts and will feel obliged to object if we differ substantially. Nothing to complain about here.
j watson
1 year ago
Orwell’s development did not stop at ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’. There is a danger in removing the context from which he was writing and applying to today. What he did with Down & Out, Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia was radical and had been little done before in literature. He actually went and sought the experiences. He forced himself. He knew how much he was conditioned by his background and upbringing and it is to his credit how hard he worked at correcting and rebalancing that.
His concerns about the intelligentsia’s disconnection and the potential for working class to be pulled by populism were both valid, and arguably still are.
N Forster
1 year ago
What on earth is the point of this article? And who wrote the headline?
If one is trying to turn London into a global centre of finance shenanigans, one must attack and discredit the out-of-town critics. Maybe that is the motivation behind the sources described in this interesting history.
If one is trying to turn London into a global centre of finance shenanigans, one must attack and discredit the out-of-town critics. Maybe that is the motivation behind the sources described in this interesting history.
N Forster
1 year ago
What on earth is the point of this article? And who wrote the headline?
John Williams
1 year ago
In the road to Wigan Pier Orwell observed that if only the working class smelled less unpleasantly class differences would disappear.
I first read this in 1976 and even back then I couldn’t help thinking that my local chemist and some retailers were selling various fragrances of deodorant and that the smell shaming adverts for Lifebuoy soap which targeted working class body odour, (the ads were mainly of people in work, such as the one of a strap hanger on the tube having his/her armpits sniffed at in disgust by a fellow traveller) had already bitten deeply into our consciousness. Yet the class system still prevailed.
I can only think that now many people have bathrooms that not only have showers but are bursting at the seams with myriad toiletries, that would have had Cleopatra drooling with envy as she bathed in smelly old asses milk, that the class war is over.
Yes indeed.
Cleopatra
Now, Iras, what think’st thou?
Thou an Egyptian puppet shalt be shown
In Rome, as well as I. Mechanic slaves
With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers shall
Uplift us to the view. In their thick breaths,
255
Rank of gross diet, shall be enclouded,
And forced to drink their vapor.
Yes indeed.
Cleopatra
Now, Iras, what think’st thou?
Thou an Egyptian puppet shalt be shown
In Rome, as well as I. Mechanic slaves
With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers shall
Uplift us to the view. In their thick breaths,
255
Rank of gross diet, shall be enclouded,
And forced to drink their vapor.
Does make me think about Gordon Comstock’s advertising campaign for foot deodorant in Keep the Aspidistra Flying. This was still going on up to the 1980s/1990s with Hands up if you use Right Guard – Hands down if you don’t!
No, the class war is still on, but not between ‘bodies’ but ‘minds’ these days, though still a favourite leftist insult is ‘little man’ which refers to the allegedly ‘stunted’ nature of working-class growth (the Frost Report sketch about the heights of the different classes resulting from differences in their diets was then spot on). These days obesity (as well as ‘smoking’) is the commonest noticeable prejudice-attracting marker, though usually masquerading as a concern about ‘health outcomes’ – the working classes are supposedly ‘greedy’ and ‘incontinent’).
Does make me think about Gordon Comstock’s advertising campaign for foot deodorant in Keep the Aspidistra Flying. This was still going on up to the 1980s/1990s with Hands up if you use Right Guard – Hands down if you don’t!
No, the class war is still on, but not between ‘bodies’ but ‘minds’ these days, though still a favourite leftist insult is ‘little man’ which refers to the allegedly ‘stunted’ nature of working-class growth (the Frost Report sketch about the heights of the different classes resulting from differences in their diets was then spot on). These days obesity (as well as ‘smoking’) is the commonest noticeable prejudice-attracting marker, though usually masquerading as a concern about ‘health outcomes’ – the working classes are supposedly ‘greedy’ and ‘incontinent’).
Last edited 1 year ago by Arnold Grutt
John Williams
1 year ago
In the road to Wigan Pier Orwell observed that if only the working class smelled less unpleasantly class differences would disappear.
I first read this in 1976 and even back then I couldn’t help thinking that my local chemist and some retailers were selling various fragrances of deodorant and that the smell shaming adverts for Lifebuoy soap which targeted working class body odour, (the ads were mainly of people in work, such as the one of a strap hanger on the tube having his/her armpits sniffed at in disgust by a fellow traveller) had already bitten deeply into our consciousness. Yet the class system still prevailed.
I can only think that now many people have bathrooms that not only have showers but are bursting at the seams with myriad toiletries, that would have had Cleopatra drooling with envy as she bathed in smelly old asses milk, that the class war is over.
Arnold Grutt
1 year ago
Yet again I will point out that there is no ‘national’ border between England and Scotland (the UK is a Union of Monarchies, hence the name: United Kingdom, not a Union of States). It is possible to cross the ‘Scottish border’ without even being aware of it (ditto the ‘Welsh border’). No tolls, no differing ‘customs’ regulations for each side, no guards, no weapons no fences or barbed wire. The only place the actual lines of the border can be discerned is on a map.
What the Borders are is ‘delimiters of political institutions which vary locally between the two ‘parts’ of geographical Great Britain’ (councils, police forces, NHS regions etc. – in fact the NHS isn’t really ‘national’ either – it should really be called the ‘State Health Service’, which is much more accurate).
Last edited 1 year ago by Arnold Grutt
Arnold Grutt
1 year ago
Yet again I will point out that there is no ‘national’ border between England and Scotland (the UK is a Union of Monarchies, hence the name: United Kingdom, not a Union of States). It is possible to cross the ‘Scottish border’ without even being aware of it (ditto the ‘Welsh border’). No tolls, no differing ‘customs’ regulations for each side, no guards, no weapons no fences or barbed wire. The only place the actual lines of the border can be discerned is on a map.
What the Borders are is ‘delimiters of political institutions which vary locally between the two ‘parts’ of geographical Great Britain’ (councils, police forces, NHS regions etc. – in fact the NHS isn’t really ‘national’ either – it should really be called the ‘State Health Service’, which is much more accurate).
Last edited 1 year ago by Arnold Grutt
Dr. G Marzanna
1 year ago
Fabulous article and I’m ordering the book now.
Agree fully about the venality of current politicians, surely Bojo is an outlier (or is that outliar?( we can’t get worse, can we?
Dr. G Marzanna
1 year ago
Fabulous article and I’m ordering the book now.
Agree fully about the venality of current politicians, surely Bojo is an outlier (or is that outliar?( we can’t get worse, can we?
David Lindsay
1 year ago
Wigan is of course an inland town, but its council put up a pier on the canal, because people kept expecting to see one. Anyway, a quarter of a century ago, I suddenly realised quite what it was to be from the North or the Midlands in the South, or at a Southern outpost even as far north as Durham. Bless him, and it was not his fault, but I remember how an exact contemporary of mine, from exactly the same background including a comprehensive school, was treated as stratospherically posher because he was from the South
Now, I am not knocking God’s Own University. I held a staff card and email address there until 2018, 21 years after my matriculation. And I am still very much around the place. One of its most senior figures recently described me as “family”, and introduced me to a very distinguished visitor as, “Once of the last links to the gentler old Durham.” It was a good thing that it gave my 20-year-old self a class consciousness that I had never previously had, but which I have never lost. That would be downright preposterous to most people who met me in ordinary life. It would have been then, and it would be now, but here we are.
Last edited 1 year ago by David Lindsay
David Lindsay
1 year ago
Wigan is of course an inland town, but its council put up a pier on the canal, because people kept expecting to see one. Anyway, a quarter of a century ago, I suddenly realised quite what it was to be from the North or the Midlands in the South, or at a Southern outpost even as far north as Durham. Bless him, and it was not his fault, but I remember how an exact contemporary of mine, from exactly the same background including a comprehensive school, was treated as stratospherically posher because he was from the South
Now, I am not knocking God’s Own University. I held a staff card and email address there until 2018, 21 years after my matriculation. And I am still very much around the place. One of its most senior figures recently described me as “family”, and introduced me to a very distinguished visitor as, “Once of the last links to the gentler old Durham.” It was a good thing that it gave my 20-year-old self a class consciousness that I had never previously had, but which I have never lost. That would be downright preposterous to most people who met me in ordinary life. It would have been then, and it would be now, but here we are.
Last edited 1 year ago by David Lindsay
Malcolm Knott
1 year ago
Orwell saw clearly and wrote what he saw. You might not like it – many readers didn’t – but that’s because the truth is sometimes disagreeable. He didn’t invent the clogs any more than he invented the dirty fingerprint on the sandwich his landlord gave him.
Malcolm Knott
1 year ago
Orwell saw clearly and wrote what he saw. You might not like it – many readers didn’t – but that’s because the truth is sometimes disagreeable. He didn’t invent the clogs any more than he invented the dirty fingerprint on the sandwich his landlord gave him.
Jonathan Sidaway
1 year ago
Maurice Cowling said more snappily that GO was slumming it. Orwell good on the commies, but otherwise overrated.
Jonathan Sidaway
1 year ago
Maurice Cowling said more snappily that GO was slumming it. Orwell good on the commies, but otherwise overrated.
John Baxendale
1 year ago
This is a excellent article about Priestley’s English Journey. I have also written about EJ in books and articles (look them up) and I’m delighted to find Graham Robb, whose books about France I much admire, joining in. But the headline, and most of the comments, are about Orwell, which simply compounds the Orwell-obsession that bedevils English culture. English Journey is a far better book than Wigan Pier, for the reasons that Graham sets out. Its final chapter also offers a historical/economic analysis of where we’ve gone wrong – over centralisation, the dominance of City and Empire – which still rings true today. Which is more than Orwell does. Wigan Pier contains little real analysis, mainly description and rhetoric. But most of the commenters seem baffled that Robb is putting Priestley in the way of their Orwell-worship. We need to get over Orwell before we can move on.
John Baxendale
1 year ago
This is a excellent article about Priestley’s English Journey. I have also written about EJ in books and articles (look them up) and I’m delighted to find Graham Robb, whose books about France I much admire, joining in. But the headline, and most of the comments, are about Orwell, which simply compounds the Orwell-obsession that bedevils English culture. English Journey is a far better book than Wigan Pier, for the reasons that Graham sets out. Its final chapter also offers a historical/economic analysis of where we’ve gone wrong – over centralisation, the dominance of City and Empire – which still rings true today. Which is more than Orwell does. Wigan Pier contains little real analysis, mainly description and rhetoric. But most of the commenters seem baffled that Robb is putting Priestley in the way of their Orwell-worship. We need to get over Orwell before we can move on.
Mr Bellisarius
1 year ago
[J.B. Priestly] believed that centralised government and national party politics were stifling democracy and that England should be divided into four, five or six partially self-governing “provinces”: “politics should be local, so that you can keep an eye on them”.
Heaven knows what Priestly would have made of the UE. But one thing is for sure, if he had written that today in the Guardian’s comments section he would be identified as an ignorant, rascist, nationalist little Englander who is in desperate need of re-education.
Mr Bellisarius
1 year ago
[J.B. Priestly] believed that centralised government and national party politics were stifling democracy and that England should be divided into four, five or six partially self-governing “provinces”: “politics should be local, so that you can keep an eye on them”.
Heaven knows what Priestly would have made of the UE. But one thing is for sure, if he had written that today in the Guardian’s comments section he would be identified as an ignorant, rascist, nationalist little Englander who is in desperate need of re-education.
Bob MacLean
1 year ago
“The Road to Wigan Pier” was presumably written, if perhaps not published, before Orwell went off the fight in the Spanish Civil War. When reading “Homage to Catalonia” I didn’t detect the snobbishness mentioned in this article and I wonder if his attitude changed when he was living and fighting with them on a day-to-day basis.
Bob MacLean
1 year ago
“The Road to Wigan Pier” was presumably written, if perhaps not published, before Orwell went off the fight in the Spanish Civil War. When reading “Homage to Catalonia” I didn’t detect the snobbishness mentioned in this article and I wonder if his attitude changed when he was living and fighting with them on a day-to-day basis.
Heidi Mahon
1 year ago
I would say that the Northern working class stereotype themselves perfectly well without any help from anyone else and seem happy to do so,no where have I seen this more than in West Yorkshire where I have been working and living for the last 4 plus years and it is painful to observe
Heidi Mahon
1 year ago
I would say that the Northern working class stereotype themselves perfectly well without any help from anyone else and seem happy to do so,no where have I seen this more than in West Yorkshire where I have been working and living for the last 4 plus years and it is painful to observe
Harry Bo
1 year ago
Good article.
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
Ay.. jist cuz’ arz a pigeon fancier nt’ run mi whippets ont’ yon hares…
Popular History and Literary History has forgotten that “The Road to Wigan Pier” was, to coin a phrase, a book of two halves.
The 2nd half of that book absolutely skewers socialists of both the 1930s and of today. It eviscerates them – the “fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist”
The modern Left love Part One, as do I, but pretend Part Two does not exist. As it is now out of copyright (author’s death + 70 years), everyone should spend a day or two with Eric Blair in Lancashire, but do read to the end.
https://www.orwell.ru/library/novels/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/english/e_rtwp
Yes to all the above. Thanks for making the same points I wanted to raise…
Indeed. I’ve been reading it and the similarities between the Hampstead socialists of the 1930s and today are quite astonishing. Orwell may have been a socialist, but he seemed to dislike most other socialists. But a writer who’s lasted well and is still worth reading. Most of his judgements from the 1930s and 1940s have aged quite well.
Orwell, being Old Etonian (from a faded aristocratic line in part), was exactly the classic ‘leftist’ because leftism is actually a species of revolt by one resentful section of the ruling class against another (in Orwells phrase, ‘a family with the wrong members in control‘). The old tripartite scheme for sons (army service, church and ‘diplomacy’) had broken down after WW1).
If I were pushed I’d say that the root of the problem was the nature of aristocratic inheritance (of both wealth (which nevertheless was occasionally self-despising if earned) and status), which by-passed certain younger (or female) members of families in the ruling elite (Virginia Woolf was particularly scathing and vitriolic about this). Prince Harry is, in my view, a good modern example.
Orwell, being Old Etonian (from a faded aristocratic line in part), was exactly the classic ‘leftist’ because leftism is actually a species of revolt by one resentful section of the ruling class against another (in Orwells phrase, ‘a family with the wrong members in control‘). The old tripartite scheme for sons (army service, church and ‘diplomacy’) had broken down after WW1).
If I were pushed I’d say that the root of the problem was the nature of aristocratic inheritance (of both wealth (which nevertheless was occasionally self-despising if earned) and status), which by-passed certain younger (or female) members of families in the ruling elite (Virginia Woolf was particularly scathing and vitriolic about this). Prince Harry is, in my view, a good modern example.
Yes to all the above. Thanks for making the same points I wanted to raise…
Indeed. I’ve been reading it and the similarities between the Hampstead socialists of the 1930s and today are quite astonishing. Orwell may have been a socialist, but he seemed to dislike most other socialists. But a writer who’s lasted well and is still worth reading. Most of his judgements from the 1930s and 1940s have aged quite well.
Popular History and Literary History has forgotten that “The Road to Wigan Pier” was, to coin a phrase, a book of two halves.
The 2nd half of that book absolutely skewers socialists of both the 1930s and of today. It eviscerates them – the “fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist”
The modern Left love Part One, as do I, but pretend Part Two does not exist. As it is now out of copyright (author’s death + 70 years), everyone should spend a day or two with Eric Blair in Lancashire, but do read to the end.
https://www.orwell.ru/library/novels/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/english/e_rtwp
At least Orwell bothered to leave London, which is more than you can say for the Guardian writers of today.
At least Orwell bothered to leave London, which is more than you can say for the Guardian writers of today.
Perhaps more importantly, Orwell and Priestley both highlighted the hypocrisy of the comfortable middle-classes believing that they knew best what was in the interests of the working class.
Absolutely. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Graham Robb that this was a campaigning book directed at a very specific readership from the comfortable, mostly Southern, middle class. Orwell’s agenda was to open their eyes to places and ways of life they knew nothing about.
He also wanted to take aim at the illusions of the Socialist Left, which he did not yet fully identify with. That identification started shortly afterwards with his participation in the Spanish Civil War. Wigan Pier got a lot of Northern, working class and Leftist readers’ backs up and obviously still does. But if you read Orwell’s 1940s As I Please columns the main attitude that comes across is inverted class snobbery. Far from sneering at working class people, the fully-formed Orwell thought their outlook on life was superior to that of the middle classes!
Absolutely. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Graham Robb that this was a campaigning book directed at a very specific readership from the comfortable, mostly Southern, middle class. Orwell’s agenda was to open their eyes to places and ways of life they knew nothing about.
He also wanted to take aim at the illusions of the Socialist Left, which he did not yet fully identify with. That identification started shortly afterwards with his participation in the Spanish Civil War. Wigan Pier got a lot of Northern, working class and Leftist readers’ backs up and obviously still does. But if you read Orwell’s 1940s As I Please columns the main attitude that comes across is inverted class snobbery. Far from sneering at working class people, the fully-formed Orwell thought their outlook on life was superior to that of the middle classes!
Perhaps more importantly, Orwell and Priestley both highlighted the hypocrisy of the comfortable middle-classes believing that they knew best what was in the interests of the working class.
“I know people who are happy to work in factories”
I hate the contempt that some people frequently voice for certain job roles as a marker for limited ambitions – “shelf stacker in a supermarket”, “flipping burger in Macdonalds”. It just shows they are snobs and/or socialists.
I know someone who accidentally stumbled into Turiya whilst working in a factory. She was astonished to become “enlightened” without knowingly trying for this and afterwards found the ancient texts explaining the experience and the difficult but simple path to higher consciousness. A radiant person.
It is observable that doing a job well – with attention and care – is both satisfying and replenishing. The opposite is also true.
I do appreciate that this sounds pretentious but am neither making it up nor proselytising. We live in a world where the superficial is prized too highly, where humble occupations are despised because they do not incur the empty reward that is excess money and status and where the clamouring illusion of worldly success has drowned out the hidden value of the interior life, the invisible and unhailed value of simple goodness.
Hence the epidemic of “mental health” problems and negative emotion with which our society has become awash.
I don’t believe that there is anything that can remove, or impede, human capacity except, perhaps, authoritarian regimes that would stifle and police freedom of thought.
Wow you put it much better than I did!
Wow you put it much better than I did!
There’s often great camaraderie – lots of chat and banter during factory work – but sadly automation is making people more sparse on factory floors, losing the opportunities for the socialisation aspect.
I know someone who accidentally stumbled into Turiya whilst working in a factory. She was astonished to become “enlightened” without knowingly trying for this and afterwards found the ancient texts explaining the experience and the difficult but simple path to higher consciousness. A radiant person.
It is observable that doing a job well – with attention and care – is both satisfying and replenishing. The opposite is also true.
I do appreciate that this sounds pretentious but am neither making it up nor proselytising. We live in a world where the superficial is prized too highly, where humble occupations are despised because they do not incur the empty reward that is excess money and status and where the clamouring illusion of worldly success has drowned out the hidden value of the interior life, the invisible and unhailed value of simple goodness.
Hence the epidemic of “mental health” problems and negative emotion with which our society has become awash.
I don’t believe that there is anything that can remove, or impede, human capacity except, perhaps, authoritarian regimes that would stifle and police freedom of thought.
There’s often great camaraderie – lots of chat and banter during factory work – but sadly automation is making people more sparse on factory floors, losing the opportunities for the socialisation aspect.
“I know people who are happy to work in factories”
I hate the contempt that some people frequently voice for certain job roles as a marker for limited ambitions – “shelf stacker in a supermarket”, “flipping burger in Macdonalds”. It just shows they are snobs and/or socialists.
Orwell’s development did not stop at ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’. There is a danger in removing the context from which he was writing and applying to today. What he did with Down & Out, Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia was radical and had been little done before in literature. He actually went and sought the experiences. He forced himself. He knew how much he was conditioned by his background and upbringing and it is to his credit how hard he worked at correcting and rebalancing that.
His concerns about the intelligentsia’s disconnection and the potential for working class to be pulled by populism were both valid, and arguably still are.
I’m forced to read your posts and will feel obliged to object if we differ substantially. Nothing to complain about here.
I’m forced to read your posts and will feel obliged to object if we differ substantially. Nothing to complain about here.
Orwell’s development did not stop at ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’. There is a danger in removing the context from which he was writing and applying to today. What he did with Down & Out, Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia was radical and had been little done before in literature. He actually went and sought the experiences. He forced himself. He knew how much he was conditioned by his background and upbringing and it is to his credit how hard he worked at correcting and rebalancing that.
His concerns about the intelligentsia’s disconnection and the potential for working class to be pulled by populism were both valid, and arguably still are.
What on earth is the point of this article? And who wrote the headline?
Indeed. The author “writes about French history and literature”. Perhaps he’s seeking to escape his own cliché.
Would strongly recommend the author’s book, ‘The Discovery of France’ Superb piece of writing.
I’d like to second the recommendation for The Discovery of France. It’s a brilliant book, one of my favourites, and well worth reading.
I’d like to second the recommendation for The Discovery of France. It’s a brilliant book, one of my favourites, and well worth reading.
Would strongly recommend the author’s book, ‘The Discovery of France’ Superb piece of writing.
If one is trying to turn London into a global centre of finance shenanigans, one must attack and discredit the out-of-town critics. Maybe that is the motivation behind the sources described in this interesting history.
Indeed. The author “writes about French history and literature”. Perhaps he’s seeking to escape his own cliché.
If one is trying to turn London into a global centre of finance shenanigans, one must attack and discredit the out-of-town critics. Maybe that is the motivation behind the sources described in this interesting history.
What on earth is the point of this article? And who wrote the headline?
In the road to Wigan Pier Orwell observed that if only the working class smelled less unpleasantly class differences would disappear.
I first read this in 1976 and even back then I couldn’t help thinking that my local chemist and some retailers were selling various fragrances of deodorant and that the smell shaming adverts for Lifebuoy soap which targeted working class body odour, (the ads were mainly of people in work, such as the one of a strap hanger on the tube having his/her armpits sniffed at in disgust by a fellow traveller) had already bitten deeply into our consciousness. Yet the class system still prevailed.
I can only think that now many people have bathrooms that not only have showers but are bursting at the seams with myriad toiletries, that would have had Cleopatra drooling with envy as she bathed in smelly old asses milk, that the class war is over.
Coincidentally enough, from Anthony & Cleopatra (Act 1, Scene 4) comes the line:
“knaves that smell of sweat”
Yes indeed.
Cleopatra
Now, Iras, what think’st thou?
Thou an Egyptian puppet shalt be shown
In Rome, as well as I. Mechanic slaves
With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers shall
Uplift us to the view. In their thick breaths,
255
Rank of gross diet, shall be enclouded,
And forced to drink their vapor.
Yes indeed.
Cleopatra
Now, Iras, what think’st thou?
Thou an Egyptian puppet shalt be shown
In Rome, as well as I. Mechanic slaves
With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers shall
Uplift us to the view. In their thick breaths,
255
Rank of gross diet, shall be enclouded,
And forced to drink their vapor.
Does make me think about Gordon Comstock’s advertising campaign for foot deodorant in Keep the Aspidistra Flying. This was still going on up to the 1980s/1990s with Hands up if you use Right Guard – Hands down if you don’t!
No, the class war is still on, but not between ‘bodies’ but ‘minds’ these days, though still a favourite leftist insult is ‘little man’ which refers to the allegedly ‘stunted’ nature of working-class growth (the Frost Report sketch about the heights of the different classes resulting from differences in their diets was then spot on). These days obesity (as well as ‘smoking’) is the commonest noticeable prejudice-attracting marker, though usually masquerading as a concern about ‘health outcomes’ – the working classes are supposedly ‘greedy’ and ‘incontinent’).
Coincidentally enough, from Anthony & Cleopatra (Act 1, Scene 4) comes the line:
“knaves that smell of sweat”
Does make me think about Gordon Comstock’s advertising campaign for foot deodorant in Keep the Aspidistra Flying. This was still going on up to the 1980s/1990s with Hands up if you use Right Guard – Hands down if you don’t!
No, the class war is still on, but not between ‘bodies’ but ‘minds’ these days, though still a favourite leftist insult is ‘little man’ which refers to the allegedly ‘stunted’ nature of working-class growth (the Frost Report sketch about the heights of the different classes resulting from differences in their diets was then spot on). These days obesity (as well as ‘smoking’) is the commonest noticeable prejudice-attracting marker, though usually masquerading as a concern about ‘health outcomes’ – the working classes are supposedly ‘greedy’ and ‘incontinent’).
In the road to Wigan Pier Orwell observed that if only the working class smelled less unpleasantly class differences would disappear.
I first read this in 1976 and even back then I couldn’t help thinking that my local chemist and some retailers were selling various fragrances of deodorant and that the smell shaming adverts for Lifebuoy soap which targeted working class body odour, (the ads were mainly of people in work, such as the one of a strap hanger on the tube having his/her armpits sniffed at in disgust by a fellow traveller) had already bitten deeply into our consciousness. Yet the class system still prevailed.
I can only think that now many people have bathrooms that not only have showers but are bursting at the seams with myriad toiletries, that would have had Cleopatra drooling with envy as she bathed in smelly old asses milk, that the class war is over.
Yet again I will point out that there is no ‘national’ border between England and Scotland (the UK is a Union of Monarchies, hence the name: United Kingdom, not a Union of States). It is possible to cross the ‘Scottish border’ without even being aware of it (ditto the ‘Welsh border’). No tolls, no differing ‘customs’ regulations for each side, no guards, no weapons no fences or barbed wire. The only place the actual lines of the border can be discerned is on a map.
What the Borders are is ‘delimiters of political institutions which vary locally between the two ‘parts’ of geographical Great Britain’ (councils, police forces, NHS regions etc. – in fact the NHS isn’t really ‘national’ either – it should really be called the ‘State Health Service’, which is much more accurate).
Yet again I will point out that there is no ‘national’ border between England and Scotland (the UK is a Union of Monarchies, hence the name: United Kingdom, not a Union of States). It is possible to cross the ‘Scottish border’ without even being aware of it (ditto the ‘Welsh border’). No tolls, no differing ‘customs’ regulations for each side, no guards, no weapons no fences or barbed wire. The only place the actual lines of the border can be discerned is on a map.
What the Borders are is ‘delimiters of political institutions which vary locally between the two ‘parts’ of geographical Great Britain’ (councils, police forces, NHS regions etc. – in fact the NHS isn’t really ‘national’ either – it should really be called the ‘State Health Service’, which is much more accurate).
Fabulous article and I’m ordering the book now.
Agree fully about the venality of current politicians, surely Bojo is an outlier (or is that outliar?( we can’t get worse, can we?
Fabulous article and I’m ordering the book now.
Agree fully about the venality of current politicians, surely Bojo is an outlier (or is that outliar?( we can’t get worse, can we?
Wigan is of course an inland town, but its council put up a pier on the canal, because people kept expecting to see one. Anyway, a quarter of a century ago, I suddenly realised quite what it was to be from the North or the Midlands in the South, or at a Southern outpost even as far north as Durham. Bless him, and it was not his fault, but I remember how an exact contemporary of mine, from exactly the same background including a comprehensive school, was treated as stratospherically posher because he was from the South
Now, I am not knocking God’s Own University. I held a staff card and email address there until 2018, 21 years after my matriculation. And I am still very much around the place. One of its most senior figures recently described me as “family”, and introduced me to a very distinguished visitor as, “Once of the last links to the gentler old Durham.” It was a good thing that it gave my 20-year-old self a class consciousness that I had never previously had, but which I have never lost. That would be downright preposterous to most people who met me in ordinary life. It would have been then, and it would be now, but here we are.
Wigan is of course an inland town, but its council put up a pier on the canal, because people kept expecting to see one. Anyway, a quarter of a century ago, I suddenly realised quite what it was to be from the North or the Midlands in the South, or at a Southern outpost even as far north as Durham. Bless him, and it was not his fault, but I remember how an exact contemporary of mine, from exactly the same background including a comprehensive school, was treated as stratospherically posher because he was from the South
Now, I am not knocking God’s Own University. I held a staff card and email address there until 2018, 21 years after my matriculation. And I am still very much around the place. One of its most senior figures recently described me as “family”, and introduced me to a very distinguished visitor as, “Once of the last links to the gentler old Durham.” It was a good thing that it gave my 20-year-old self a class consciousness that I had never previously had, but which I have never lost. That would be downright preposterous to most people who met me in ordinary life. It would have been then, and it would be now, but here we are.
Orwell saw clearly and wrote what he saw. You might not like it – many readers didn’t – but that’s because the truth is sometimes disagreeable. He didn’t invent the clogs any more than he invented the dirty fingerprint on the sandwich his landlord gave him.
Orwell saw clearly and wrote what he saw. You might not like it – many readers didn’t – but that’s because the truth is sometimes disagreeable. He didn’t invent the clogs any more than he invented the dirty fingerprint on the sandwich his landlord gave him.
Maurice Cowling said more snappily that GO was slumming it. Orwell good on the commies, but otherwise overrated.
Maurice Cowling said more snappily that GO was slumming it. Orwell good on the commies, but otherwise overrated.
This is a excellent article about Priestley’s English Journey. I have also written about EJ in books and articles (look them up) and I’m delighted to find Graham Robb, whose books about France I much admire, joining in. But the headline, and most of the comments, are about Orwell, which simply compounds the Orwell-obsession that bedevils English culture. English Journey is a far better book than Wigan Pier, for the reasons that Graham sets out. Its final chapter also offers a historical/economic analysis of where we’ve gone wrong – over centralisation, the dominance of City and Empire – which still rings true today. Which is more than Orwell does. Wigan Pier contains little real analysis, mainly description and rhetoric. But most of the commenters seem baffled that Robb is putting Priestley in the way of their Orwell-worship. We need to get over Orwell before we can move on.
This is a excellent article about Priestley’s English Journey. I have also written about EJ in books and articles (look them up) and I’m delighted to find Graham Robb, whose books about France I much admire, joining in. But the headline, and most of the comments, are about Orwell, which simply compounds the Orwell-obsession that bedevils English culture. English Journey is a far better book than Wigan Pier, for the reasons that Graham sets out. Its final chapter also offers a historical/economic analysis of where we’ve gone wrong – over centralisation, the dominance of City and Empire – which still rings true today. Which is more than Orwell does. Wigan Pier contains little real analysis, mainly description and rhetoric. But most of the commenters seem baffled that Robb is putting Priestley in the way of their Orwell-worship. We need to get over Orwell before we can move on.
[J.B. Priestly] believed that centralised government and national party politics were stifling democracy and that England should be divided into four, five or six partially self-governing “provinces”: “politics should be local, so that you can keep an eye on them”.
Heaven knows what Priestly would have made of the UE. But one thing is for sure, if he had written that today in the Guardian’s comments section he would be identified as an ignorant, rascist, nationalist little Englander who is in desperate need of re-education.
[J.B. Priestly] believed that centralised government and national party politics were stifling democracy and that England should be divided into four, five or six partially self-governing “provinces”: “politics should be local, so that you can keep an eye on them”.
Heaven knows what Priestly would have made of the UE. But one thing is for sure, if he had written that today in the Guardian’s comments section he would be identified as an ignorant, rascist, nationalist little Englander who is in desperate need of re-education.
“The Road to Wigan Pier” was presumably written, if perhaps not published, before Orwell went off the fight in the Spanish Civil War. When reading “Homage to Catalonia” I didn’t detect the snobbishness mentioned in this article and I wonder if his attitude changed when he was living and fighting with them on a day-to-day basis.
“The Road to Wigan Pier” was presumably written, if perhaps not published, before Orwell went off the fight in the Spanish Civil War. When reading “Homage to Catalonia” I didn’t detect the snobbishness mentioned in this article and I wonder if his attitude changed when he was living and fighting with them on a day-to-day basis.
I would say that the Northern working class stereotype themselves perfectly well without any help from anyone else and seem happy to do so,no where have I seen this more than in West Yorkshire where I have been working and living for the last 4 plus years and it is painful to observe
I would say that the Northern working class stereotype themselves perfectly well without any help from anyone else and seem happy to do so,no where have I seen this more than in West Yorkshire where I have been working and living for the last 4 plus years and it is painful to observe
Good article.
Ay.. jist cuz’ arz a pigeon fancier nt’ run mi whippets ont’ yon hares…
Wonderful information
Thanks
Wonderful information
Thanks