The Road to Wigan Pier was
first published in 1937 by the Victor Gollancz Ltd. The first uniform edition
was published by Martin Secker & Warbug Ltd., in 1959. The book resulted
from the commission of the Left Book Club to examine the conditions of
the poor and unemployed in the industrial towns of England. For collecting
facts Orwell went on living among the poor about whom he was to write his
book. The book is divided in two parts. The first part is a precise and
detailed account of the life in the mining communities in the "Black Country",
whereas in the second part Orwell takes issue on Socialism and the English
class system. The main difference between the first and the second part
is that the first part is nearly free of Orwell's personal opinion whereas
the second part is very subjective, and also autobiographical.
Index
Part 1 (just below)
Part 2
Part 1
In the first part of this book Orwell tries to give the
reader a detailed view of the conditions of the poor and unemployed. In
the first chapter of the first part, Orwell describes the Brooker family.
They belong to the so called "wealthy" among the poor ones. In their house,
they have installed a cheap lodging-house and a tiny shop. Both, Mr and
Mrs Brooker are already pensioners, and with the rent they get for the
rooms, they can afford at least enough to eat. Generally the people who
live in this lodging house, are unmarried, or very old and also pensioners.
Orwell himself spends during his researches a couple of weeks in this house.
In the second chapter he describes the life of miners. Their working conditions
are very bad, for they work underground, where it is very hot, and very
dusty, and where the miners have just the minimum of space. The work is
also very dangerous, the coal-miners are often handling with dynamite and
also the tunnels aren't very stable. Here Orwell describes how he went
down to see the working conditions down there. He described that the place
where the coal is dismantled is not just right at the elevator, but often
lies some miles away from it. And because the tunnel is often only three
to four feet high. That means that the miners not only have to work under
the very most hard conditions, but also have to "travel", this means going
to his working place in the miners-jargon, for about half an hour. Orwell
who is not trained needed about one hour to get there ("After half a mile
it gets an unbearable agony", 1/2 P 23). In the next chapter Orwell takes
a look at the social situation of an average miner. First of all he looks
at the hygienically situation of the miners, for many people believe that
miners generally do not wash. But in fact only every third has a bath or
shower for the miners. The situation in the homes of the miners is even
worse. Only a couple of houses in the industrial region have bathrooms.
The rest of the coal-workers have to wash in a little basin. The miners
also have very little time, although they work only seven hours a day.
But actually getting to the pit, and the travelling underground van make
up to three hours. So the average miner has about four hours leisure time,
including washing dressing and eating. Then there is the common believe
that miners get comparatively well paid , about ten to eleven shillings
a week. But this is very misleading, because only the " coal getter" is
paid at this rate, whereas for example the "dattler" is paid at eight to
nine shilling per shift. But one must also look at the conditions the miners
are paid at. So the "getter" is paid for the tons he extracts. On the one
hand he is dependent on the quality of the coal, and when the machinery
breaks down it may rob his a days or two earnings. Another fact is that
miners certainly do not work six days a week. In 1936 the average earning
of the miners per shift actually was 9s 1¾d. But even this sum is
just a gross earning, there are all kind of stoppages which are deducted
from the miners wage every week. Totally this stoppages make around 4s
5d per week. The next chapter deals about the housing situation in those
districts. Generally all the houses look all the same. The main problem,
is the housing shortage in this region. So people are ready to accept any
dirty hole, bugs, blackmailing agents and bad landlord, just to get a roof
over ones head. And so long the housing shortage exists the local authorities
cannot do anything to make the existing houses more liveable. The authorities
can condemn a house, but they cannot pull it down till the tenant has no
other house to live in. But there is another problem that results from
this one. The landlord will surely not invest more money that he can help
in a house that is going to be pulled down in the future. Orwell has made
notes to a dozens of houses in this region, and here are two examples:
House in Wigan, near Scholes quarter:
Condemned house, four rooms (two up two down) +coal hole,
walls falling to pieces, water comes into upstairs rooms in quantities,
downstairs windows will not open. Rent 6s, Rates 3s 6d total 9s 6d.
House in Barnsley, Peel Street:
Back to back (front house facing street, back house facing
yard),two up and two down + large cellar, all rooms have about 10 feet
square, living room very dark, gaslight at 4 ½d a day, distance
to the lavatory 70 yards (lies in the yard), four beds for eight persons
(parents, two girls one 27, young man, and three children), bugs very bad,
smell upstairs almost unbearable. Rent 5s 7½d including rates.
Another problem in these regions are, that whole rows
of houses are undermined, and the windows often are ten to twenty degrees
out of the horizontal. Because of the bad housing situation there are also
so-called "caravan dwellers". Only in Wigan, which has a population of
85.000, there are about 200 caravans, that are inhabited by around 700
people. In whole Britain there might be around ten thousand families living
in caravans. The worst thing about those caravans is that the people who
live in such place don't even save money, because the rent for such a caravan
makes up to ten shillings! Despite this problems the city of Barnsley for
example build a new town hall for 150.000 £ although there is a need
for over 2000 houses, not mention pubic baths (the public baths in Barnsley
contain nineteen men's slipper baths-in a town with 70.000 inhabitants,
largely miners who have not a bath at home). The next chapter of The
Road to Wigan Pier deals about unemployment. In 1937 there were about
two million unemployed persons. But this number only shows how many persons
are receiving the dole. One has to take this number and multiply it with
at least three, to get the number of persons actually living on the dole.
But there is a large number of people that have a work, but from financial
point of view, might as well be unemployed, because they are not drawing
anything that can be described as a living wage. Together with the pensioners
in the industrial regions that makes around fifteen million poor and underfed
people. Only in Wigan there are around 30.000 drawing or living on the
dole. So every third person in Wigan is dependant on social help. The money
that the families get varies from twenty-five to thirty shillings per week.
One organisation that helps the unemployed is the NUWM (National Unemployed
Workers Movement). This organisation helps the unemployed to spent their
time. In the sixth chapter of the book Orwell takes a look at the food
of an family living on the dole, or on a very low wage. Generally the food
for an average family makes fifteen shillings a week, including fuel for
cooking. Of course these families could live on even less money, but especially
in the poor families one can see the trend not to buy the cheapest, and
most nutritious things, but rather to buy something " tasty", in order
to forget ones dull life. This trend results in a general physic degeneration
among the poor people. So for example in industrial towns the mortality
is at a very high level. Another fact that can be observed is that hardly
anyone, except children of course, has his own teeth. In the next chapter
Orwell criticises the ugliness of the industrial towns (e.g.: Birmingham,
Coventry, Norwich Market.....)
Part 2
The second part Orwell describes his personal idea of
socialism, and what socialism is like in England. The general idea of Orwell
is that socialism an communism are no longer movements of the working class.
This movement is lead by the middle-class, the bourgeoisie. But firstly
he explains how the English class-system works. In Britain it isn't possible
to determine the class of a person by simply looking at his income. In
England the tradition plays a very important part, and therefore one can
find middle-class persons with an income up to 2000£ a year, and
down to 300£ a year. The things that make a middle-class person are
the behaviour, the birth and his profession. The people around 400£
led a life on two social levels; so for example they had a standard of
living comparable to a good situated worker, but knew everything about
good behaviour, how to give a servant a tip, how to ride a horse, about
a decent dinner, although they never could afford a servant or a good dinner.
One could say that they are struggling to live gentle lives on what are
virtually working-class incomes. So the colonies (India and Africa) are
very attractive to this social caste, for the people would earn as much
as in England (if they had a job in the administration or army), and could
afford a servant and many things more and, what was most important, they
could act like big gentleman. Another aspect of the class-system in Britain
is the almost inherited rejection of the lower classes. Orwell here tells
a story of his early boyhood, as he felt that the lower-class people are
almost subhuman, that they have coarse faces, hideous accents, gross manners,
and that they hated everyone who was not like themselves. This rejection
somehow results from the time before the war (first world war) when it
was impossible or at least very dangerous for a well dressed person to
go trough a slum street. Whole quarters were considerate as unsafe because
of hooligans. But nevertheless the rejection of the lower-class has also
some physical root. So the children of the middle-class were always taught
that the working-class smell. And this is obviously a impassable barrier,
for no feeling of like and dislike is so fundamental as a physical feeling.
Class hatred, religious hatred, differences of education, of temperament,
of intellect, even differences of moral code can be got over; but physical
repulsion cannot. But what about those middle-class people whose views
are not reactionary but "advanced"? Beneath his revolution mask is he so
much different from the other? Are there any changes in his habits, his
taste and his manners, his ideology, as it is called in the communistic
jargon? Is there any change at all except that he votes Labour of Communist?
It can be observed that middle-classed communist still associate with the
middle-class, still lives among the middle-classed, and his tastes are
those of a bourgeoisie person. The main thing Orwell criticises is that
middle-classed communists and Socialists often speak against their own
class, but that they evidently have the behaviour and manner of a middle-classed
person. The Socialists who make propaganda for "proletarian solidarity"
generally don't have even a lot of contact with the class they are "fighting
for". The only contact with working-class that socialists generally have
is only with the lower-class intelligentsia at the divers politic workshops.
Generally Orwell says that Socialism is a nearly impossible thing.
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