This is Orwells graphic and harrowing account of working life in Englands industrial North during the 1930s Great Depression. He spent two months living with the unemployed and working poor, sharing their meals, lodgings and bleak future, their horrendous working conditions and starvationlevel dole. With brutal honesty, he confronts the cramped, insanitary slums, industrial accidents, eyewatering pollution, the malnourished, ricketsprone children, and the devastating psychological and spiritual effects of unemployment. This is furiously honest investigative reporting, of a kind rarely achieved by todays politicallycorrect journalists. Part Two of the book looks at Socialism as a solution to workingclass repression, and tries to analyse why it is rejected by most working people. Class, Orwell decides, is the central problem. Socialists who are allowed a voice in society are invariably middleclass and despite championing the proletariat they remain (because of their upbringing) personally averse to associating with the poor an aversion not lost upon the workers, who also find other middleclass fads (nonsmoking vegetarians) not to their taste. The Road to Wigan Pier is uncannily relevant to todays societal problems. Orwell both points up the seemingly immutable injustice of Britains class divisions, and gives the lie to the pernicious myth of white privilege. | George Orwell The Road to Wigan Pier (Illustrated) Paperback Book
