John Newsinger - A Rebel’s Guide to Orwell

A Rebels Guide to George Orwell

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Colm Bryce and Simon Assaf for their work on the production of this book. Also special thanks to my partner Lorna Chessum who will be quite happy to never hear George Orwells name ever again

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Newsinger is the author of two books about George Orwell Orwells Politics (1999) and Hope Lies in the Proles: George Orwell and the Left (2018) as well as a large number of other books including the best-selling The Blood Never Dried: A Peoples History of the British Empire (2006).

COVER IMAGE: Orwell at his flat at 27b Canonbury Square in Islington, late 1946. Photograph: Vernon Richards
INSIDE FRONT: Orwell with the POUM militia on the Aragon Front during the Spanish Civil War in 1937.
Photograph: Christopher Thomond
INSIDE BACK: Orwell late 1946. Photograph: Vernon Richards

Published by Bookmarks Publications 2020

Copyright Bookmarks, 1 Bloomsbury Street, London WC1B 3QE

ISBN print edition: 978-1-914143-00-7

ISBN Kindle: 978-1-914143-01-4

ISBN ePub: 978-1-914143-02-1

ISBN PDF: 978-1-914143-03-8

Series design by Noel Douglas

Typeset by Simon Assaf for Bookmarks Publications
Printed by Halstan & Co Ltd, Amersham, Buckinghamshire, England

ALSO IN THIS SERIES:

A Rebels Guide to James Connolly by Sean Mitchell

A Rebels Guide to Eleanor Marx by Siobhan Brown

A Rebels Guide to Rosa Luxemburg by Sally Campbell

A Rebels Guide to Gramsci by Chris Bambery

A Rebels Guide to Trotsky by Esme Choonara

A Rebels Guide to Marx by Mike Gonzalez

A Rebels Guide to Lenin by Ian Birchall

A Rebels Guide to Malcolm X by Antony Hamilton

A Rebels Guide to Martin Luther King by Yuri Prasad

A Rebels Guide to Alexandra Kollontai by Emma Davis

A Rebels Guide to Friedrich Engels by Camilla Royle

Sexism and the System: A Rebels Guide to Womens Liberation by Judith Orr

Available from Bookmarks, 1 Bloomsbury Street, London WC1B 3QE

www.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk | 020 7637 1848

1:
INTRODUCTION

G eorge Orwell died in January 1950, aged only 46 years of age. He was best known as a socialist novelist and journalist, the author of a book about mass unemployment in the North of England, The Road to Wigan Pier, of a book about revolutionary Barcelona in 1937, Homage to Catalonia, one of the very few sympathetic first-hand accounts of a revolution by a British participant and observer, and of two ferociously anti-Stalinist novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four. Both Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four were hijacked, indeed weaponised, for use in the Cold War after his premature death. Interest in his other writings continued throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s so that he never became a mere literary footnote like so many other writers. And then in the late 1960s with the opposition to the Vietnam War, the widespread disillusionment with the Wilson Labour government, indeed with Labourism more generally, and with the growth of student radicalism his socialist politics were rediscovered. More recently, however, interest in George Orwell has positively soared. Why is this?

It is very much in response to the times we live in: people are turning to Orwells writings because of contemporary developments, looking for both answers and inspiration. There is the harsh impact of austerity regimes on millions of people, both in Food Bank Britain and abroad. The poverty and hunger, the job insecurity and deteriorating working conditions, the worsening housing conditions and increase in homelessness, all the miseries that are part of everyday life for millions of people in Britain today, give Orwell a very contemporary relevance. The savage cutback of social provision, whether it be in housing, schooling, health or benefits, is all part of a deliberate, yes deliberate, sustained attack on the working class for the benefit of big business and the rich. And all this has been accompanied by the continuing drive to privatise everything that can make a profit for big business, whether it be done openly, like the Royal Mail (courtesy of Liberal Democrat Vince Cable it is worth remembering) or by stealth, piece by piece, like in education and the NHS. This attack on many fronts, class war from above, has been grinding people down remorselessly since the 1980s, starting with Thatcher, consolidated under Blair and Brown and then relentlessly intensified under Cameron, May and Johnson. We actually have a situation in Britain today, one of the richest countries in the world, where children are going hungry and where the governments housing policy for millions of people is, in practical terms, a return to the slum housing of the past despite all their empty rhetoric about home ownership. What we have to recognise is that it is not that the system isnt working. It is working all too well for the benefit of the rich and super rich. While the May government actually boasted of creating a hostile environment for immigrants, and the racist treatment of the Windrush Generation is certainly one of the most shameful episodes of recent times, May has, in fact, created a hostile environment for everyone who is not rich. Orwell would have had no trouble recognising this attack for what it is. This is why The Road to Wigan Pier, more than eighty years after its publication, still resonates, still speaks to us today.

And there is more. There is the increasing levels of surveillance, both government and corporate, just about everywhere, from the USA to China and places in between. Facebook, it turns out, is a close relative of Big Brother. Indeed, we live in a world increasingly dominated by billionaire Big Brother oligarchs. We are also experiencing a dramatic increase in routine everyday dishonesty on the part of politicians and governments, something not unrelated to the dominance of the new class of the super rich. Politicians have always lied, but have never been so unconcerned at being caught in the lie. This has been compounded by the brazen denial of known facts and championing of alternative facts by the Trump administration in the United States. Orwells 2+2=5 if thats what the government wants scenario from Nineteen Eighty Four seems to be, indeed actually is, the official position of President Trump and his courtiers. The consequences of all this when global warming threatens the whole planet are going to be truly catastrophic. Alongside this there is the rise of the far right, the revival of racism and fascism and the spread of authoritarianism across much of the world. This is how ruling classes have always sustained themselves in power at times of crisis: turn ordinary people against each other, get them to blame each other for societys ills rather than turn on those really responsible, big business, the bankers, the rich and the super rich. A saviour will emerge in the shape of a right-wing authoritarian ruler with dictatorial ambitions and at least some of the trappings of fascism.