Personality of the month
Here – back again by my own demand is “Personality of the month”
This month is George Orwell – a holiday on Wigan pier for you sir!
George Orwell (Eric Blair) is most famous for his novels Animal Farm and 1984. He was, however, also a prolific author of essays. I recently took the time to read his essay “the lion and the unicorn”. The essay was partly a motivational message for Britain during its darkest times in the summer of 1940 – summer 1941. It seemed as though the country might very well be invaded. To that background Orwell wrote his essay: espousing in equal measure national unity and socialism.
To be fair, he tends to keep the socialism on the backburner in the first half of the essay; he spends most of the first half analysing the English. He does so, with a mixture of eccentricity and candour. He comments for example that: the British Empire was ruined by the telegraph, because it prevented men of talent from exercising their own judgement; it instead made imperial leaders mere administrators, carrying out the wishes of Whitehall. He also commented that the British did not like violence. One of the ways this manifested itself was that the British Empire used a navy rather than an army as its principle force for subjugation. He commented, rather wittily, that there are plenty of military dictatorships; but never naval ones. That spirit of restraint poses a different model of intervention from the nature of allied involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, which I believe is far healthier: assuming that we should even be there in the first place.
It is only towards the very end of his writing that Orwell ‘let’s slip’ what he thinks the socialist post war state will look like. It will include, state direction of industry – to the point where the state will dictate all that is produced. There would be room for different wages levels, but only varied by a factor of 10. That is to say that the lowliest position would only receive 10 times less than the most valued person in the whole country – surely an unrealistic balance. Although to contemporary readers, this would make us wonder why anyone would therefore take on more responsibility or invent anything new: since the state will provide no matter what – this was not necessarily obvious at the time. Perhaps more importantly still, from the context of the 1940s, what had capitalism shown as an alternative? It was, after all, the liberal/capitalistic tradition that took the world into World War 1, caused the starvation and unemployment of the 1930s , and the loss of community from 1900 – 1940. Given that legacy of laissez faire capitalism, it was hardly surprising Orwell wanted a radical solution.
Orwell’s essay attempted to join together different groups into a fighting force that would allow Britain to win the war. In common with many others, he realised that whatever problems Britain had before the war; and whatever problems it was to have after the war; they would be as nothing to a fascist occupied Britain. He therefore did the sensible and honourable thing; he joined forces with his political foes to win the war. The lion and the unicorn, came together on the private soldier’s uniform as well as on the royal coat of arms. A co-operative framework had been established.
Orwell was to get, something like, the changes he wanted. The Age of Consensus Politics, which started immediately after the war, saw an agenda set out by Keynes. Although couched in the language of the middle ground, the Keynesian vision was more socialist than “middle-ist”. Free health care, state support from cradle to grave; nationalisation of much of industry; high taxation and even compulsory purchase of certain land. Since the 1970s though, something resembling more closely liberal style capitalism has re-asserted itself. The state Orwell wanted is largely gone, though not forgotten. We have learnt about the mistakes of heavy state intervention – but maybe we have forgotten the lesson of group involvement and identity of something larger it brought.
Mr. Orwell, please send us a postcard and do enjoy the sand castles of Wigan; the party mug is in the (still just state owned post).
