on January of this year a small milestone passed somewhat unnoticed amid the glut of millennial celebrations: the fiftieth anniversary of the death of George Orwell, from *ruberculosis at the age of forty-six. Orwell's literary career was relatively brief: His first book, Down And Out In Paris and London was published in 1933, and his last and most famous, Nineteen Eighty-Four, in June 1949, a few months before his death. The work that he produced in this short period had enormous impact, however, and its influence has endured long after his death.
There are plentiful recent illustrations of this. In the last three years there have been film versions of his novels, Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Animal Farm (the second version).
The latter and Nineteen Eighty-Four appeared among the top ten of 'Britain's favourite novels' in a recent survey carried out by Waterstones. Orwell's views are still widely cited by political commentators:
I IN THE NINETIES, millions of women and men for example, last year, the Guardian columnist, Francis Wheen, quoted at length from Orwell's writings on fascism in order to justify his own support for the Bolsheviks. NATO bombing of Serbia. Even the TV programmes, Big Brother and Room 101, are based on trivialised versions of ideas from Nineteen Eighty-Four.
A contested the denial of freedom. legacy Orwell's last two novels reflect the major preoccupation of his last years: the the end of his life, and danger of totalitarianism, the features of which he saw as common to both Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Nineteen Eighty-Four is a horrific premonition of Britain (renamed Airstrip One) in what was then the near future: under the monolithic regime of Ingsoc (English socialism), 'the Party' has brutally suppressed all political pluralism, cultural diversity and even independent thought. what it would mean.
The plot of Animal Farm closely follows the history of the Russian Revolution, with the revolutionary overthrow by the animals of the OUTLOOK people, demotyrannical humans leading to the creation of an egalitarian society, which is sabotaged by the corruption of the pigs, representing the that Orwell occupies an For this reason, these extremely important posiworks have been invoked, tion in the British socialist since their appearance at the tradition. Although by no outset of the Cold War, to means a theoretician, he justify the view that revolu- made a number of important tions inevitably become cor- contributions to socialist rupted and socialism means thought, which today's left can ill afford to ignore.
This was very far from Orwell's Orwell's intention, however. background He remained a socialist to Orwell (whose real name argued, throughout the was Eric Blair) came to Spanish Civil War and the socialism relatively late in Second World War, that rev- life, with no background in olution was both desirable the labour movement, or and an urgent necessity if even in the working class. fascism were to be defeated. He was born, in 1903, into a In his non-fictional books family which he meticuand in his prolific journalis- lously described as 'lowertic output, Orwell was a tire- upper-middle class', meanless critic of class society, ing that their financial social injustice and colonial- situation didn't match their ism, and continually sought social status. His father was to explain in clear and con- a colonial official, in the crete terms why socialism Opium Department of the was needed in Britain and Indian civil service.
The young Blair attended The absence of a strong a prep school near theoretical tradition on the Eastbourne, and worked left in Britain, and the popu- hard enough to earn a schollarity and accessibility of his arship to Eton. His subsemore famous works, means quent academic career was unimpressive, however. After leaving Eton in 1921 he went not to Oxford or Cambridge, but to Burma, where he served as an officer in the Imperial Indian Police until his return to England in 1927. After seeing for himself the reality of the occupation and exploitation of that country by a foreign power, he came to hate British imperialism.
This was undoubtedly a politically formative experience - turning his natural rebelliousness towards a specific target - but at this stage he did not develop a general critique of capitalist society. His decision to become a writer was motivated entirely by literary - not political - goals.
Even the poverty that he described, from first-hand experience, in Down and Out in Paris and London, was undergone voluntarily for the purposes of 'social investigation', and was the poverty of tramps and drifters, not of the working class itself. It was not until 1936 that he became convinced of the necessity of socialism, seeing it as the only hope for the future in a world beset by economic crises, fascism and the threat of another major war. Living in Hampstead at the time, and mixing with the middle-class intelligentsia, Orwell seems to have been influenced by friends in the Independent Labour Party (ILP). The first literary expression of his socialism was The Road to Wigan Pier, which attacked capitalism by vividly describing the poverty of the Lancashire and Yorkshire mining communities, but also deplored the weakness of the socialist movement and its apparent inability to win the support of ordinary working people.
In this book, Orwell set out for the first time, most of the key ideas that he was to develop throughout his subsequent writings and political activities. 'Socialism and the English genius' The second half of The Road to Wigan Pier addresses the problem that, just as socialism is more urgently needed than ever, so it is becoming less attractive to its intended beneficiaries. Orwell argues for the movement and its propaganda to be taken out of the hands of middle-class intellectuals, whose 'crankiness' repelled potential supporters and who were preoccupied with abstract ideas, and incapable of relating to the concerns of working class people.
He argues that if socialism is to succeed, it must be rooted in the experiences of the people to whom it is aimed, taking account of the specific social circumstances of each country.
In England this means, for instance, recognising the many gradations of class which exist and which take on undue significance because of the effect of snobbery; and accepting that socialists must appeal not just to manual workers, but to all those in the intermediate social strata who do not consider themselves working class, but who nevertheless have an interest in the defeat of capitalism.
Their class prejudice will