Fifty Orwell Essays

the notion that a half-witted public-schoolboy is better fitted for

  command than an intelligent mechanic. Although there are gifted and

  honest INDIVIDUALS among them, we have got to break the grip of the

  moneyed class as a whole. England has got to assume its real shape. The

  England that is only just beneath the surface, in the factories and the

  newspaper offices, in the aeroplanes and the submarines, has got to take

  charge of its own destiny.

  In the short run, equality of sacrifice, "war-Communism", is even more

  important than radical economic changes. It is very necessary that

  industry should be nationalised, but it is more urgently necessary that

  such monstrosities as butlers and "private incomes" should disappear

  forthwith. Almost certainly the main reason why the Spanish Republic

  could keep up the fight for two and a half years against impossible odds

  was that there were no gross contrasts of wealth. The people suffered

  horribly, but they all suffered alike. When the private soldier had not a

  cigarette, the general had not one either. Given equality of sacrifice,

  the morale of a country like England would probably be unbreakable. But

  at present we have nothing to appeal to except traditional patriotism,

  which is deeper here than elsewhere, but is not necessarily bottomless.

  At some point or another you have got to deal with the man who says "I

  should be no worse off under Hitler". But what answer can you give

  him--that is, what answer that you can expect him to listen to--while

  common soldiers risk their lives for two and sixpence a day, and fat

  women ride about in Rolls-Royce cars, nursing pekineses?

  It is quite likely that this war will last three years. It will mean

  cruel overwork, cold dull winters, uninteresting food, lack of

  amusements, prolonged bombing. It cannot but lower the general standard

  of living, because the essential act of war is to manufacture armaments

  instead of consumable goods. The working class will have to suffer

  terrible things. And they WILL suffer them, almost indefinitely, provided

  that they know what they are fighting for. They are not cowards, and they

  are not even internationally minded. They can stand all that the Spanish

  workers stood, and more. But they will want some kind of proof that a

  better life is ahead for themselves and their children. The one sure

  earnest of that is that when they are taxed and overworked they shall see

  that the rich are being hit even harder. And if the rich squeal audibly,

  so much the better.

  We can bring these things about, if we really want to. It is not true

  that public opinion has no power in England. It never makes itself heard

  without achieving something; it has been responsible for most of the

  changes for the better during the past six months. But we have moved with

  glacier-like slowness, and we have learned only from disasters. It took

  the fall of Paris to get rid of Chamberlain and the unnecessary suffering

  of scores of thousands of people in the East End to get rid or partially

  rid of Sir John Anderson. It is not worth losing a battle in order to

  bury a corpse. For we are fighting against swift evil intelligences, and

  time presses, and:

  history to the defeated

  May say Alas! but cannot alter or pardon.

  iii.

  During the last six months there has been much talk of "the Fifth

  Column". From time to time obscure lunatics have been jailed for making

  speeches in favour of Hitler, and large numbers of German refugees have

  been interned, a thing which has almost certainly done us great harm in

  Europe. It is of course obvious that the idea of a large, organised army

  of Fifth Columnists suddenly appearing on the streets with weapons in

  their hands, as in Holland and Belgium, is ridiculous. Nevertheless a

  Fifth Column danger does exist. One can only consider it if one also

  considers in what way England might be defeated.

  It does not seem probable that air bombing can settle a major war.

  England might well be invaded and conquered, but the invasion would be a

  dangerous gamble, and if it happened and failed it would probably leave

  us more united and less Blimp-ridden than before. Moreover, if England

  were overrun by foreign troops the English people would know that they

  had been beaten and would continue the struggle. It is doubtful whether

  they could be held down permanently, or whether Hitler wishes to keep an

  army of a million men stationed in these islands. A government

  of ----,---- and ---- (you can fill in the names) would suit him better.

  The English can probably not be bullied into surrender, but they might

  quite easily be bored, cajoled or cheated into it, provided that, as at

  Munich, they did not know that they were surrendering. It could happen

  most easily when the war seemed to be going well rather than badly. The

  threatening tone of so much of the German and Italian propaganda is a

  psychological mistake. It only gets home on intellectuals. With the

  general public the proper approach would be "Let's call it a draw". It

  is when a peace-offer along THOSE lines is made that the pro-Fascists

  will raise their voices.

  But who are the pro-Fascists? The idea of a Hitler victory appeals to

  the very rich, to the Communists, to Mosley's followers, to the

  pacifists, and to certain sections among the Catholics. Also, if things

  went badly enough on the Home Front, the whole of the poorer section of

  the working class might swing round to a position that was defeatist

  though not actively pro-Hitler.

  In this motley list one can see the daring of German propaganda, its

  willingness to offer everything to everybody. But the various pro-Fascist

  forces are not consciously acting together, and they operate in different

  ways.

  The Communists must certainly be regarded as pro-Hitler, and are bound to

  remain so unless Russian policy changes, but they have not very much

  influence. Mosley's Blackshirts, though now lying very low, are a more

  serious danger, because of the footing they probably possess in the armed

  forces. Still, even in its palmiest days Mosley's following can hardly

  have numbered 50,000. Pacifism is a psychological curiosity rather than a

  political movement. Some of the extremer pacifists, starting out with a

  complete renunciation of violence, have ended by warmly championing

  Hitler and even toying with Antisemitism. This is interesting, but it is

  not important. "Pure" pacifism, which is a by-product of naval power, can

  only appeal to people in very sheltered positions. Moreover, being

  negative and irresponsible, it does not inspire much devotion. Of the

  membership of the Peace Pledge Union, less than 15 per cent even pay

  their annual subscriptions. None of these bodies of people, pacifists,

  Communists or Blackshirts, could bring a large scale stop-the-war movement

  into being by their own efforts. But they might help to make things very

  much easier for a treacherous government negotiating surrender. Like the

  French Communists, they might become the half-conscious agents of

  millionaires.

  The re
al danger is from above. One ought not to pay any attention to

  Hitler's recent line of talk about being the friend of the poor man, the

  enemy of plutocracy, etc etc. Hitler's real self is in MEIN KAMPF, and in

  his actions. He has never persecuted the rich, except when they were Jews

  or when they tried actively to oppose him. He stands for a centralised

  economy which robs the capitalist of most of his power but leaves the

  structure of society much as before. The State controls industry, but

  there are still rich and poor, masters and men. Therefore, as against

  genuine Socialism, the moneyed class have always been on his side. This

  was crystal clear at the time of the Spanish civil war, and clear again

  at the time when France surrendered. Hitler's puppet government are not

  working men, but a gang of bankers, gaga generals and corrupt right wing

  politicians.

  That kind of spectacular, CONSCIOUS treachery is less likely to succeed

  in England, indeed is far less likely even to be tried. Nevertheless, to

  many payers of supertax this war is simply an insane family squabble

  which ought to be stopped at all costs. One need not doubt that a "peace"

  movement is on foot somewhere in high places; probably a shadow Cabinet

  has already been formed. These people will get their chance not in the

  moment of defeat but in some stagnant period when boredom is reinforced

  by discontent. They will not talk about surrender, only about peace; and

  doubtless they will persuade themselves, and perhaps other people, that

  they are acting for the best. An army of unemployed led by millionaires

  quoting the Sermon on the Mount--that is our danger. But it cannot arise

  when we have once introduced a reasonable degree of social justice. The

  lady in the Rolls-Royce car is more damaging to morale than a fleet of

  Goering's bombing planes.

  PART III: THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION

  i.

  The English revolution started several years ago, and it began to gather

  momentum when the troops came back from Dunkirk. Like all else in

  England, it happens in a sleepy, unwilling way, but it is happening. The

  war has speeded it up, but it has also increased, and desperately, the

  necessity for speed.

  Progress and reaction are ceasing to have anything to do with party

  labels. If one wishes to name a particular moment, one can say that the

  old distinction between Right and Left broke down when PICTURE POST was

  first published. What are the politics of PICTURE POST? Or of CAVALCADE,

  or Priestley's broadcasts, or the leading articles in the EVENING

  STANDARD? None of the old classifications will fit them. They merely

  point to the existence of multitudes of unlabelled people who have

  grasped within the last year or two that something is wrong. But since a

  classless, ownerless society is generally spoken of as "Socialism", we

  can give that name to the society towards which we are now moving. The

  war and the revolution are inseparable. We cannot establish anything that

  a western nation would regard as Socialism without defeating Hitler; on

  the other hand we cannot defeat Hitler while we remain economically and

  socially in the nineteenth century. The past is fighting the future and

  we have two years, a year, possibly only a few months, to see to it that

  the future wins.

  We cannot look to this or to any similar government to put through the

  necessary changes of its own accord. The initiative will have to come

  from below. That means that there will have to arise something that has

  never existed in England, a Socialist movement that actually has the mass

  of the people behind it. But one must start by recognising why it is that

  English Socialism has failed.

  In England there is only one Socialist party that has ever seriously

  mattered, the Labour Party. It has never been able to achieve any major

  change, because except in purely domestic matters it has never possessed

  a genuinely independent policy. It was and is primarily a party of the

  trade unions, devoted to raising wages and improving working conditions.

  This meant that all through the critical years it was directly interested

  in the prosperity of British capitalism. In particular it was interested

  in the maintenance of the British Empire, for the wealth of England was

  drawn largely from Asia and Africa. The standard of living of the trade

  union workers, whom the Labour Party represented, depended indirectly on

  the sweating of Indian coolies. At the same time the Labour Party was a

  Socialist party, using Socialist phraseology, thinking in terms of an

  old-fashioned anti-imperialism and more or less pledged to make

  restitution to the coloured races. It had to stand for the "independence"

  of India, just as it had to stand for disarmament and "progress"

  generally. Nevertheless everyone was aware that this was nonsense. In the

  age of the tank and the bombing plane, backward agricultural countries

  like India and the African colonies can no more be independent than can a

  cat or a dog. Had any Labour government come into office with a clear

  majority and then proceeded to grant India anything that could truly be

  called independence, India would simply have been absorbed by Japan, or

  divided between Japan and Russia.

  To a Labour government in power, three imperial policies would have been

  open. One was to continue administering the Empire exactly as before,

  which meant dropping all pretensions to Socialism. Another was to set the

  subject peoples "free", which meant in practice handing them over to

  Japan, Italy and other predatory powers, and incidentally causing a

  catastrophic drop in the British standard of living. The third was to

  develop a POSITIVE imperial policy, and aim at transforming the Empire

  into a federation of Socialist states, like a looser and freer version of

  the Union of Soviet Republics. But the Labour Party's history and

  background made this impossible. It was a party of the trade unions,

  hopelessly parochial in outlook, with little interest in imperial affairs

  and no contacts among the men who actually held the Empire together. It

  would have had to hand the administration of India and Africa and the

  whole job of imperial defence to men drawn from a different class and

  traditionally hostile to Socialism. Overshadowing everything was the

  doubt whether a Labour government which meant business could make itself

  obeyed. For all the size of its following, the Labour Party had no

  footing in the navy, little or none in the army or air force, none

  whatever in the Colonial Services, and not even a sure footing in the

  Home Civil Service. In England its position was strong but not

  unchallengeable, and outside England all the key points were in the hands

  of its enemies. Once in power, the same dilemma would always have faced

  it: carry out your promises, and risk revolt, or continue with the same

  policy as the Conservatives, and stop talking about Socialism. The Labour

  leaders never found a solution, and from 1935 onwards it was very

  doubtful whether they had any wish to take office. They had degenerated

  into a Permanent Op
position.

  Outside the Labour Party there existed several extremist parties, of whom

  the Communists were the strongest. The Communists had considerable

  influence in the Labour Party in the years 1920-6 and 1935-9. Their chief

  importance, and that of the whole left wing of the Labour movement, was

  the part they played in alienating the middle classes from Socialism.

  The history of the past seven years has made it perfectly clear that

  Communism has no chance in western Europe. The appeal of Fascism is

  enormously greater. In one country after another the Communists have been

  rooted out by their more up-to-date enemies, the Nazis. In the

  English-speaking countries they never had a serious footing. The creed

  they were spreading could appeal only to a rather rare type of person,

  found chiefly in the middle-class intelligentsia, the type who has ceased

  to love his own country but still feels the need of patriotism, and

  therefore develops patriotic sentiments towards Russia. By 1940, after

  working for twenty years and spending a great deal of money, the British

  Communists had barely 20,000 members, actually a smaller number than they

  had started out with in 1920. The other Marxist parties were of even less

  importance. They had not the Russian money and prestige behind them, and

  even more than the Communists they were tied to the nineteenth-century

  doctrine of the class war. They continued year after year to preach this

  out-of-date gospel, and never drew any inference from the fact that it

  got them no followers.

  Nor did any strong native Fascist movement grow up. Material conditions

  were not bad enough, and no leader who could be taken seriously was

  forthcoming. One would have had to look a long time to find a man more

  barren of ideas than Sir Oswald Mosley. He was as hollow as a jug. Even

  the elementary fact that Fascism must not offend national sentiment had

  escaped him. His entire movement was imitated slavishly from abroad, the

  uniform and the party programme from Italy and the salute from Germany,

  with the Jew baiting tacked on as an afterthought, Mosley having actually

  started his movement with Jews among his most prominent followers. A man

  of the stamp of Bottomley or Lloyd George could perhaps have brought a

  real British Fascist movement into existence. But such leaders only

  appear when the psychological need for them exists.

  After twenty years of stagnation and unemployment, the entire English

  Socialist movement was unable to produce a version of Socialism which the

  mass of the people could even find desirable. The Labour Party stood for

  a timid reformism, the Marxists were looking at the modern world through

  nineteenth-century spectacles. Both ignored agriculture and imperial

  problems, and both antagonised the middle classes. The suffocating

  stupidity of left-wing propaganda had frightened away whole classes of

  necessary people, factory managers, airmen, naval officers, farmers,

  white-collar workers, shopkeepers, policemen. All of these people had

  been taught to think of Socialism as something which menaced their

  livelihood, or as something seditious, alien, "anti-British" as they

  would have called it. Only the intellectuals, the least useful section of

  the middle class, gravitated towards the movement.

  A Socialist Party which genuinely wished to achieve anything would have

  started by facing several facts which to this day are considered

  unmentionable in left-wing circles. It would have recognised that England

  is more united than most countries, that the British workers have a great

  deal to lose besides their chains, and that the differences in outlook

  and habits between class and class are rapidly diminishing. In general,

  it would have recognised that the old-fashioned "proletarian revolution"

  is an impossibility. But all through the between-war years no Socialist

  programme that was both revolutionary and workable ever appeared;