I read this for the "1937 Club" club.
I have read a few books by George Orwell already and they were all highly interesting. This one started off a little tedious, many numbers that would have been easier to understand had they been converted to today's currencies or at least given the money in context. How am I supposed to know how much 15s. or 3s. 6d. are? How much do people have to pay for a piece of bread? How much does a good earner receive?
But the book improves after the author goes on to mention the conditions under which people live.
We are in the year 1937. A year that was very important. As another blogger wrote: "A LOT of good writing came out of the 30's. Turbulent times tend to do that...." (see here, thanks Cyberkitten)
And yes, we have similar turbulent times again and if we don't pay attention, history might repeat itself.
A quote from the book:
"They [Socialists] have never made it sufficiently clear that the essential aims of Socialism are justice and liberty. With their eyes glued to economic facts, they have proceeded on the assumption that man has no soul, and explicitly or implicitly they have set up the goal of a materialistic Utopia. As a result Fascism has been able to play upon every instinct that revolts against hedonism and a cheap conception of ‘progress’. It has been able to pose as the upholder of the European tradition, and to appeal to Christian belief, to patriotism, and to the military virtues. It is far worse than useless to write Fascism off as 'mass sadism', or some easy phrase of that kind. If you pretend that it is merely an aberration which will presently pass off of its own accord, you are dreaming a dream from which you will awake when somebody coshes you with a rubber truncheon."
We shouldn't forget these famous words by Martin Niemöller.
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me."
If we don't pay attention, we will be there again. And sooner than we would like to think.
From the back cover:
"In the 1930s, commissioned by a left-wing book club, Orwell went to the industrial areas of northern England to investigate and record the real situation of the working class. Orwell did more than just investigate; he went down to the deepest part of the mine, lived in dilapidated and filthy workers' houses, and used the tip of his pen to vividly reveal every aspect of the coal miners' lives. Reading today, 80 years later, Still shockingly true. The despair and poverty conveyed by this picture have a terrifying power that transcends time and national boundaries. At the same time, the Road to Wigan Pier is also Orwell's road to socialism as he examines his own inner self. Born in the British middle class, he recalled how he gradually began to doubt and then hate the strict class barriers that divided British society at that time. Because in his mind, socialism ultimately means only one concept: 'justice and freedom.'"
