Coming Up for Air

Breaking Big Brother - Chapter 7

Orwell arrived home from Spain in June of 1937. In April 1938, Homage to Catalonia was published.

It was the first book of Orwell’s which spoke extensively about media manipulation, as well as the first to express a negative attitude towards the Soviet Union (the latter point beginning a rift between Orwell and his publisher, Victor Gollancz, who rejected Homage to Catalonia due to his own Soviet sympathies). It was also the first to signal a more pessimistic outlook of the future. Consider this paragraph from Looking Back on the Spanish War, written in 1942 and published in 1943:

“[I often have] the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world… How will the history of the Spanish war be written? If Franco remains in power his nominees will write the history books, and… [a] Russian army which never existed will become historical fact, and schoolchildren will learn about it generations hence. But suppose Fascism is finally defeated… even so, how is a true history of the war to be written? For, as I have pointed out already, the Government also dealt extensively in lies. From the anti-Fascist angle one could write a broadly truthful history of the war, but it would be a partisan history, unreliable on every minor point. Yet, after all, some kind of history will be written, and after those who actually remember the war are dead, it will be universally accepted. So for all practical purposes the lie will have become truth.”

Sound familiar? Even the terminology Orwell uses is similar to the kind that he used in his final and most famous novel. Let’s move on to the next paragraph:

“I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written. In the past people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously colored what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth, well knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that ‘the facts’ existed and were more or less discoverable… It is just this common basis of agreement… that totalitarianism destroys. Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as ‘the truth’ exists… The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader; or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’—well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five—well, two and two are five.”

Interesting. Clearly, Orwell never gave up on this idea—as we will see, it was the one which remained on the forefront of his mind even on his deathbed. He was terrified. Not of war—he’d seen war and survived it. What he was scared of was a totalitarian future that would destroy not only freedom, but truth.

Things were turning sour in Orwell’s personal life, too. Homage to Catalonia was a commercial flop, only selling about a thousand copies in its first year of publication. He was still recovering from his near-fatal injury, which quite understandably took its toll on him. In 1939, he suffered a severe bout of tuberculosis which necessitated a months-long recovery, during which time he wrote what might be the most pessimistic book of his bibliography: Coming Up for Air. The book is about modernity, the inevitability of change, and the rather depressing, mass-produced world that was beginning to take shape in England.

It was understandable that Orwell’s attitude was bleak. In many ways, it mirrored the world around him. In addition to his own ill health, Europe was on the brink of war—World War II would break out in September of 1939, just three months after Coming Up for Air’s publication. In April, two months before the book came out, the Republican side was defeated in Spain, ushering in a dictatorship under Francisco Franco that would last for decades.

His wife Eileen took a job with the Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information in London—a job which would also serve as fodder for Nineteen Eighty-Four, but which she described as exceptionally dull. The job took its toll on Eileen, if not because of the duties itself then because of the travel it required. She stayed with her family in London during the week for work, and took a several-hour trip home every other week to see her husband. Meanwhile, she was suffering from bouts of lethargy and uterine bleeding, a condition which would only continue to get worse.

Then the war came. At first, Orwell wanted to fight for the British Armed Forces, but was turned away due to his own poor health. Eager to contribute to the war effort, he joined the Home Guard, a volunteer militia consisting of about a million and a half to two million recruits, mostly a mixture of boys who were too young to enlist in the army and older men deemed unfit for service. The point of the Home Guard was to provide an extra layer of protection for local areas, and Orwell described their responsibilities as follows:

“Apart from training, the Home Guard relieves the army of some of its routine patrols, pickets on buildings, etc. and does a certain amount of ARP [Air Raid Precautions] work… The tactical idea is not so much to defeat an invader as to hold him up till the regular troops can get at him.”

Orwell contributed to this effort, and meanwhile, he did a lot of writing. He wrote his essay collection Inside the Whale and his famous three-part essay The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius. During this time he also began writing “London Letters” to the American left-wing publication Partisan Review, in which he provided updates about the war as it looked in England.

The war only strengthened Orwell’s socialist sympathies. To him, the war was a turning point—the moment when the people of Britain would either stand strong and implement a democratic socialist future, or the moment when the country would succumb to totalitarianism. His reasoning was threefold:

1. The military efficiency of the German and Soviet armies proved that planned economies worked better than unplanned economies, particularly for warmaking, and if Britain were to defeat Hitler, they would have to do it by implementing a planned economy.

2. There were two types of planned economies—socialism and fascism—and socialism was the more desirable one of the two.

3. The war (and particularly the emergence of the Home Guard) actually brought about the proper conditions for a socialist revolution in England.

In some ways, the outcomes he expected were threefold, too. Following Orwell’s reasoning, the only possibilities for England at the end of the war would be that the country would remain independent by becoming socialist, remain independent by becoming fascist, or get taken over by the Nazis and become fascist.

None of these outcomes happened, although England did arguably move towards a planned economy—something we will touch on later. For now, let’s look at why Orwell thought what he did, contained in the third section of The Lion and the Unicorn: “The English Revolution.”

Here’s a rather eloquent description of the problem (i.e. the British aristocracy devoling into a ‘functionless class’ and remaining blissfully ignorant of it):

“The underlying fact was that the whole position of the moneyed class had long ceased to be justifiable… For long past there had been in England an entirely functionless class, living on money that was invested they hardly knew where, the ‘idle rich”… They were simply parasites, 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… 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.”

It’s a pretty level-headed argument. The aristocracy had achieved its parasitic position not due to malice, but willful stupidity. He didn’t view this class with hatred, although he did want to see them removed from power. Here’s a description of how Orwell thought this could finally change.

"The fact that we are at war has turned Socialism from a text-book word into a realizable policy.

The inefficiency of private capitalism has been proved all over Europe. Its injustice has been proved in the East End of London…People who at any other time would cling like glue to their miserable scraps of privilege, will surrender them fast enough when their country is in danger. War is the greatest of all agents of change. It speeds up all processes, wipes out minor distinctions, brings realities to the surface. Above all, war brings it home to the individual that he is not altogether an individual. It is only because they are aware of this that men will die on the field of battle. At this moment it is not so much a question of surrendering life as of surrendering leisure, comfort, economic liberty, social prestige. There are very few people England who really want to see their country conquered by Germany. If it can be made clear that defeating Hitler means wiping out class privilege, the great mass of middling people, the £6 a week to £2,000 a year class, will probably be on our side.”

In short, Orwell thought that the aristocracy’s jig was up and that a the war could be used as a propaganda tool to push the masses towards socialism. He believed a revolution was coming, and as he outlined in Part II of The Lion and the Unicorn, “Revolution does not mean red flags and street fighting, it means a fundamental shift of power. Whether it happens with or without bloodshed is largely an accident of time and place.”

Although he did not think bloodshed was inevitable, he did think it was justified, and even implied the revolutionary potential of the Home Guard. Consider this line from his August 1941 letter to Partisan Review:

“Somewhere near a million British working men now have rifles in their bedrooms and don’t in the least wish to give them up. The possibilities contained in that fact hardly need pointing out.”

Just how far was he willing to take this?

Revolutionary sympathies and all, Orwell’s writings during this period suggest a deep love for England. Is it to be believed? He certainly had motive for feigning patriotism to achieve his political motives.

In August 1941, Orwell took a job with the BBC disseminating war propaganda to Indian listeners. He had this to say about the BBC in his April 1941 London Letter, before he got the job:

"I believe that the BBC, in spite of the stupidity of its foreign propaganda and the unbearable voices of its announcers, is very truthful. It is generally regarded here as more reliable than the press.”

Although he has here admitted the “stupidity of its foreign propaganda,” his defense of the BBC’s truthfulness is surprising considering his position after spending some time working for them. Consider this excerpt from his “War-Time Diary,” written just under a year later in March of 1942:

“I have now been in the BBC about 6 months. Shall remain in it if the political changes I foresee come off, otherwise probably not. Its atmosphere is something halfway between a girls’ school and a lunatic asylum, and all we are doing at present is useless, or slightly worse than useless. Our radio strategy is even more hopeless than our military strategy. Nevertheless one rapidly becomes propaganda-minded and develps a cunning one did not previously have. E.g. I am regularly alleging in all my newsletters that the Japanese are plotting to attack Russia. I don’t believe this to be so, but the calculation is:
If the Japanese do attack Russia, we can then say “I told you so.”
If the Russians attack first, we can, having built up the picture of a Japanese plot beforehand, pretend it was the Japanese who started it.
If no war breaks out after all, we can claim that it is because the Japanese are too frightened of Russia.
All propaganda is lies, even if one is telling the truth. I don’t think this matters so long as one knows what one is doing, and why.”

Strange, right? Here we have George Orwell, heralded defender of truth, admitting in his personal journal to skillfully lying in order to manipulate the Indian masses. I get the sense that he considered himself a kind of ‘sleeper-agent’ in the BBC, the one benevolent propagandist in a sea of capitalist cronies. Consider this passage from a letter Orwell wrote to the writer George Woodcock in December of 1942:

“As to the ethics of [broadcasting] & in general letting oneself be used by the British governing class. It’s of little value to argue [about] it, it is chiefly a question of whether one considers it more important to down the Nazis first or whether one believes doing this is meaningless unless one achieves one’s own revolution first. But for heaven’s sake don’t think I don’t see how they are using me. A subsidiary point is that one can’t effectively remain outside the war & by working inside an institution like the BBC one can perhaps deodorise it to some small extent. I doubt whether I shall stay in this job very much longer, but while here I consider I have kept our propaganda slightly less digusting than it might otherwise have been.”

Clearly he had no sympathy for his bosses. But consider this passage, also from his diary, written in June of the same year:

“The thing that strikes one in the BBC—and it is evidently the same in various of the other departments—is not so much the moral squalor and the ultimate futility of what we are doing, as the feeling of frustration, the impossibility of getting anything done, even any successful piece of scoundrelism. Our policy is so ill-defined, the disorganization is so great, there are so many changes of plan and the fear and hatred of intelligence are so all-percading, that one cannot plan any sort of wireless campaign whatever… One is constantly putting sheer rubbish on the airt because of haaving talks which sound too intelligent cancelled at the last moment… But even when one manages to get something fairly good on the air one is weighed down by the knowledge that hardly anybody is listening… It has come out recently that (two years after the Empire service was started) plenty of Indians with shortwave sets don’t even know that the BBC broadcasts to India.”

Orwell was morally opposed to the job, but the real reason he hated it was not because what he was doing was wrong, but because it was pointless.

He left the position in 1943 to become a literary editor for the left-wing magazine Tribune. It was a better fit for him, and the two years that he held this job were some of his most prolific. It was in this period that he penned some of his most reputable works, namely Animal Farm—the first of two novels which would become his legacy.

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