ORWELL RECONSIDERED
87
in real terms: i.e., .£5-10-0 as against an equivalent of ,£4-10-0, or
a rise of 20,%. Again Orwell concentrated a great deal on condi–
tions in the coal mines. and here of course the changes have been
more spectacular. The average earnings per shift for all mine–
workers is given by Orwell as 9/1%d: in 1957 it was 57/2d-a rise
~ven
in real terms of over 100,% . The average earnings of a miner
per week in Orwell's England was ,£2-2-0: the comparable figure for
1957 is .£14-1O-4d-a rise of about 13Q%. Along with this increase
in wages there has gone a no less remarkable improvement in wel–
fare, in the social and industrial conditions of the miner. The fatal
accident rate, for instance, on which Orwell lays considerable stress
has halved between then and now. The truth is that the mining
industry from being one of the most backward and poverty-stricken
areas of the national economy has become, in what is perhaps its
ultimate phase, one of the most prosperous and progressive.
This is not to say that in the England of today, in the British
Welfare State, hardship and misery are unknown. There is a great
deal of both. But neither is to be found where Orwell found them;
in location, and perhaps even more in character, they have changed.
The poverty of today is "secondary" rather than "primary"; it
af–
fects the old and the sick, the neglected and the improvident, the
lame ducks of the class-system and not, as in Orwell's day, the
centrally-placed members of one specific class. And though in–
equality is as much a feature of our England as of his, the whole
structure of inequality has been shifted upwards,
en bloc
as it were,
so that today its evil effects are not recognizably what they were,
being cultural and psychological rather than anything material
in
the crude sense. The evils of contemporary Britain are not those of
insufficiency but of injustice; and though Orwell talked of injus–
tice, what he was really interested
in
doing was to point out to
those who had enough to eat that there were others living not a
hundred miles away who hadn't. And yet it must be said in all fair–
ness to Orwell that the kind of remedy we need for our ills did not
fall outside his imaginative grasp.
.
The Road to Wigan Pier
is then a piece of out-of-date jour–
nalism.
It
is, if I am not wrong, out-of-date and it is journalism.
