Orwell's The Road To Wigan Pier and it's relevance today.

I have just finished reading Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier. It seemed to raise questions similar to those that I was having on Friday after the results of the 2015 election, despite being written in 1937 – 78 years earlier.

It was not intentional that my reading of this coincided with my disappointment at the election result, it was just one of those happy coincidences you get once in a while. The book had been sitting on my Kindle for a good couple of years before I finally got round to reading it. I really enjoy Orwell’s writing. The fact that he lived amongst the coal miners for the research for this book, and the decision to go assist in the Spanish Civil War (documented in Homage to Catalonia) are two reasons why I find him to be inspiring.

In the second part of Wigan Pier, after having described in the first part, Orwell sets out the premises:

- The appalling conditions of miners are intolerable.
- Socialism can improve these conditions.
- Therefore: we should all be socialists.

As it is clear that the conclusion is not the case (it is in fact a non sequitur), he asks the question: why are we not all socialists?

When reading this, it struck me that there are similarities with the situation we have been in recently. Is it acceptable that (among other problems) almost a million people are using more than a thousand foodbanks? It is acceptable that in the world's 9th richest country 2% of the population cannot afford food and without the food banks would potentially starve to death?

It does seem as if the Conservatives have attempted to demonise those who use foodbanks and it doesn't sit well with me. >On Friday, I was angry as I felt people had voted for a government that had allowed a version of Orwell’s first premise to occur and appeared to have no plan to improve the conditions. In the same way that they shouldn't be demonising the poor and needy, It is important that we do not demonise those who support other political parties (something I know I have also done on occasions, including Friday). Demonisation, mudslinging or any other form of character deformation reduces the force of our own message and arguments because it looks like we have had to resort to underhand tactics as we are not confident enough in our own position. In a democratic process we out to try to understand the reasons why our opponents hold a different position and attempt to persuade them that our position is better through discussion and reasoned arguments.

Orwell’s explanations why those in his time weren’t Socialists, as summarised on Wikipedia, are below. I’m not sure that all of them could be relevant today. I’m not sure of the validity of his arguments anyway. It is something I will continue to ponder.

• 1. Class prejudice. This is real and it is visceral. Middle class socialists do themselves no favours by pretending it does not exist and—by glorifying the manual worker—they tend to alienate that large section of the population which is economically working class but culturally middle class. 
• 2. Machine worship. Orwell finds most socialists guilty of this. Orwell himself is suspicious of technological progress for its own sake and thinks it inevitably leads to softness and decadence. He points out that most fictional technically advanced socialist utopias are deadly dull. H. G. Wells in particular is criticised on these grounds. 
• 3. Crankiness. Amongst many other types of people Orwell specifies people who have beards or wear sandals, vegetarians, and nudists as contributing to socialism's negative reputation among many more conventional people. 
• 4. Turgid language. Those who pepper their sentences with “notwithstandings” and “heretofores” and become over excited when discussing dialectical materialism are unlikely to gain much popular support. 
• 5. Failure to concentrate on the basics. Socialism should be about common decency and fair shares for all rather than political orthodoxy or philosophical consistency.