Musings - a rejection of apathy

2026

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The Road to Wigan Pier

(27th February 2026)

First published in 1937, George Orwell’s investigation of the living conditions of working class communities, specifically mining, in Lancashire and Yorkshire has been my most recent read. I’ve been reading it on the train in the morning on my commute to work.

My dad lent me this copy of The Road to Wigan Pier - well-worn with a battered spine, browned pages and that old book smell. I’m a big fan of this bright orange cover with the image of a stream of (presumably) colliers overlaid on an image of two chimneys, one smoking, and a winching system. I like that you can see the industrial plant through the faces of the men, as if that’s their whole existence, and that they and the coal mine form the entire ‘landscape’. The orange (much brighter in person) references the colour of the original edition for the Left Book Club. It’s more complicated than you first realise.

I’ve only read one other book by Orwell in recent years. Not Nineteen Eighty-Four (I’ve never actually read it but I’ll get around to it) but Coming up for Air. I didn’t really enjoy that one, primarily because I can’t stand George Bowling. I know you aren’t supposed to like him but it was a bit tedious after a while. I read Animal Farm a long time ago; my parents have a Folio edition with the most fantastic Quentin Blake cover. I remember looking at it on the shelf from my seat at the dinner table in our house in Whitnash, England.

The first part of The Road to Wigan Pier, although written nearly 90 years ago, describes struggles startingly similar to those people face today. Yes, of course, there are differences; the North of England is no longer dominated by bare slag heaps, perpetually engulfed in smog and the majority of (housed) people who live in poverty have access to a toilet or bathroom inside the place they live¹. However, Orwell describes a severe lack of well-built, well-integrated and affordable housing (sound similar?) and that those on the dole (read today as ‘benefits’) can hardly afford to eat despite claims in the media that they can.

Orwell isn’t a saint. He writes about working class people in a mixture of reverance, superiority and disgust (‘working class smell’ is a real obsession of his), and in the second half of the book describes Burmese² men in similar way but with added racist rhetoric.

In the second half of the book, Orwell discusses his middle-class upbringing, political conscience, colonialism and questions British attitudes to socialism. He rambles a fair amount and I won’t get into it all but there were some interesting quotes:

p.194 “I suggest that the real Socialist is one who wishes to see tyranny overthrown”

p.194 “[to some othordox Marxists] the whole Socialist movement is no more than... a leaping to and fro of frenzied witch-doctors to the beath of tom-toms and the tune of ‘Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of a right-wing deviantionist!’” (I’d be entertained to hear an actual song with lyrics like that.)

p.200 “Probably we could do with a little less talk about ‘capitalist’ and ‘proletarian’ and a little more about the robbers and the robbed”

p.201 “...the central fact that poverty is poverty, whether the tool you work with is a pick-axe or a fountain pen.”

In general, I enjoyed The Road to Wigan Pier. I actually found Orwell, for all his faults, fairly introspective. He genuinely had a desire for people to band together, regardless of their background, for the common good. I preferred his descriptions (although sensationalist at times) of staying in mining communities - a little more human and certainly transporting.

1. I say “inside the place they live” rather than ‘in homes’ or their ‘own’ bathrooms as some people are housed in hostels with shared bathrooms. I doubt many people who are forced to live in temporary accomodation would call the place they live ‘homes’, certainly not those who may be met with bigots calling for their executions outside when they are simply seeking asylum.

2. Here is a good resource on the history and contemporary discourse on the naming of Burma/Myanmar. There are 135 recognised ethnic groups in Burma/Myanmar, and the government of Myanmar uses the word Burmese to describe all citizens.

My dad’s copy of The Road to Wigan Pier: