Telling People What They Don't Want to Hear
The fact that people of very different political persuasions are currently sharing this photo of George Orwell's statue outside of the BBC in order to score political points against their political 'enemies' says something significant about the age we are living in, a significance that would not have been lost on Orwell himself. Safely dead and at a safe distance in time, everyone claims Orwell for their side. Orwell, of course, was remarkably contrarian, and unafraid to point out the hypocrisies, lies, inanities, and stupidities wherever he saw them. He wasn't popular. And he really wouldn't have been concerned to have been harvesting 'likes' on social media.
Whilst all sides are claiming George Orwell as one of their own, he would have been on none of them.
My social media feeds are full of supposed leftists claiming to stand with Gary Lineker, as if this is a Spartacus moment. It's an easy stand to make (and an easy way to make it). Precious few of those people, I note, ever stand with 'ordinary' people in struggle. More often than not they can be found abusing people as 'far right,' shouting 'populism' and worse wherever there is mass protest. Paul Embery writes something interesting in this respect: “As a lifelong trade unionist, I love a bit of workplace solidarity. But it does grate that the liberal Left only seem to get really passionate when it's millionaire TV personalities arguing against immigration policy. Cleaners fighting for a decent wage? They show token interest.”
As someone who worked as a cleaner for the minimum wage, I wholeheartedly concur. As someone classed as a “key” and “essential worker” during Lockdown, I can also confirm the antipathy of the liberal Left to the world of work faced by many people every day. The liberal Left and now people of causes rather than the working classes (causes close to the heart of the new middle class – this is a new class war).
There's a lot of sanctimonious twaddle out there. I'd like to know where the people complaining about free speech today were when the public industries, from health to transport, were being undermined by PFI schemes, and employees were subject to gagging orders in the 1990s. But who gives a damn about the workers in an era of mindless mediation and regurgitation? Where do you stand? Either side or none?
“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated."
- George Orwell, 1984