In his typically salty way, Orwell describes his beloved England in one of his essays written 85 years ago this month as a nation whose rulers are “parasites.”
Orwell speaks to us from across “the pond” and beyond the grave with observations still timely, relevant, and enlightening in "England Your England."
He has much to say about inequality within society.
“England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly,” he writes.
Yet, the people of England showed supreme “emotional unity” during the crisis of the Second World War, when authoritarian forces threatened freedom and England’s very existence as a democratic constitutional monarchy.
Orwell calls his country “a family with the wrong members in charge.” Young people must “kowtow” to the rich and powerful and not question the upper classes’ source of wealth.
“It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts.”
Orwell recounts the evolution of Britain from an empire with a feudal power system to a modern technological society. The people in country estates and castles became “owners” with no direct contribution to the economy, the so-called “idol rich.” Some are celebrities who get power and wealth by being famous for being famous.
'American Millionaires ... Privileges ... Bribery ... Tear Gas'
Referring to the ultra rich and privileged class: “They were simply parasites,” Orwell writes, “less useful to society than his fleas are to a dog.”
“By 1920 there were many people who were aware of all this.
By 1930 millions were aware of it. But the British ruling class obviously could not admit to themselves that their usefulness was at an end. Had they done that they would have had to abdicate. For it was not possible for them to turn themselves into mere bandits, like the American millionaires, consciously clinging to unjust privileges and beating down opposition by bribery and tear-gas bombs. After all, they belonged to a class with a certain tradition, they had been to public schools where the duty of dying for your country, if necessary, is laid down as the first and greatest of the Commandments. They had to feel themselves true patriots, even while they plundered their countrymen. Clearly there was only one escape for them— into stupidity. They could keep society in its existing shape only by being unable to grasp that any improvement was possible. Difficult though this was, they achieved it, largely by fixing their eyes on the past and refusing to notice the changes that were going on round them.
There is much in England that this explains. It explains the decay of country life, due to the keeping-up of a sham feudalism which drives the more spirited workers off the land. It explains the immobility of the public schools, which have barely altered since the eighties of the last century. It explains the military incompetence which has again and again startled the world. Since the 'fifties every war in which England has engaged has started off with a series of disasters, after which the situation has been saved by people comparatively low in the social scale. The higher commanders, drawn from the aristocracy, could never prepare for modern war, because in order to do so they would have had to admit to themselves that the world was changing. They have always clung to obsolete methods and weapons, because they inevitably saw each war as a repetition of the last. Before the Boer War they prepared for the Zulu War, before 1914 for the Boer War, and before the present war for 1914. Even at this moment hundreds of thousands of men in England are being trained with the bayonet, a weapon entirely useless except for opening tins. It is worth noticing that the navy and, latterly, the Air Force, have always been more efficient than the regular army. But the navy is only partially, and the Air Force hardly at all, within the ruling-class orbit.”
That wasn’t the first or last time Orwell exempted the Royal Navy or Royal Air Force from the rampant incompetence of a caste system of leadership based on rich versus poor.
At least, he notes, the country’s rulers had not attempted to establish an authoritarian dictatorship or agitated for a civil war –– with a paramilitary force on the streets of London.
“It must be admitted that so long as things were peaceful the methods of the British ruling class served them well enough. Their own people manifestly tolerated them. However unjustly England might be organized, it was at any rate not torn by class warfare or haunted by secret police.”
Orwell saw a direct line to the Gestapo, Nazism, and spread of fascism as an outcome of the Spanish War of 1939 between Nationalists and Republicans. Although he had fought for the Spanish Republic against Franco’s fascists he later became disillusioned by the Republicans’ ties to Soviet Russia. His disillusionment would inspire his masterwork “1984” against totalitarianism.
While he lauds the fact that there were no secret police roaming London’s streets, he acknowledges, “Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor.”
“Everyone believes in his heart that the law can be, ought to be, and, on the whole, will be impartially administered,” Orwell writes. “The totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law, there is only power, has never taken root.”
The same thing could be said about nearly all of the first 250 years of the United States’s history.
Fascist Diversity
In his essay “Looking Back on the Spanish War” Orwell says “When one thinks of all the people who support or have supported Fascism, one stands amazed at their diversity. What a crew!”
He mentions a varied array of powerful men including Germany’s Führer/Chancellor Adolf Hitler, Vichy France’s Philippe Pétain, Croatian fascist leader Ante Pavelic, American media tycoon William Randolph Hearst, American expatriate and Mussolini supporter Ezra Pound, Palestinian Arab nationalism and Nazi collaborator Mufti of Jerusalem, Canadian-American Christian Supremacist and America First isolationist Father Charles Coughlin, among others.
“They are all people with something to lose, or people who long for a hierarchical society and dread the prospect of a world of free and equal human beings,” Orwell writes.
[Interestingly, in another essay he decries his country’s discrimination against hiring immigrants to work in coal mines. Although he acknowledges the “wasteful, dirty and inefficient” nature of coal fires, he celebrates the idea of families of any “class” gathered around a fireplace.]
The ultra wealthy privileged caste, many of whom would be considered part of the “Epstein Class” today, tend to show disdain for immigrants, poor people, and workers. And what do working people ask for?
“All that the workingman demands is what these others would consider the indispensable minimum without which human life cannot be lived at all. Enough to eat, freedom from the haunting terror of unemployment, the knowledge that your children will get a fair chance, a bath once a day, clean linen reasonably often, a roof that doesn't leak, and short enough working hours to leave you with a little energy when the day is done. Not one of those who preach against ‘materialism’ would consider life livable without these things. And how easily that minimum could be attained if we chose to set our minds to it for only twenty years! To raise the standard of living of the whole world to that of Britain would not be a greater undertaking than this war we are now fighting … The major problem of our time is the decay of the belief in personal immortality, and it cannot be dealt with while the average human being is either drudging like an ox or shivering in fear of the secret police.”
Orwell staunchly believed in the rule of law and protection of voting rights within a culture of income inequality.
Regarding the English electoral system: “In a dozen obvious ways it is gerrymandered in the interest of the moneyed class” but “not completely corrupt,” Orwell contends. “You do not arrive at the polling booth to find men with revolvers telling you which way to vote, nor are the votes miscounted nor is there any direct bribery.”
But income inequality can lead to corruption, autocracy, voter suppression, and war –– both on foreign and domestic soil.
More about that in our next Navy Reads post.
By the way…
Today we saw another gift from across the pond from musical artists whose roots are from the "working class" and lower-middle classes:
The islands that gave us The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin just delivered the Irish band U2’s “Days of Ash” EP with the lead song “American Obituary,” recounting ICE’s killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis with these powerful lyrics: “What you can’t kill can’t die, America will rise against the people of the lie;” “I love you more than hate loves war;” and “the power of the people is so much stronger than the people in power.” U2’s timely and exceptionally good set of songs complement to America's Bruce Springsteen’s recent tribute to Renee Good and Alex Pretti, “The Streets of Minneapolis.”
