In my previous piece of writing on the Real George Orwell, Eric Blair, BBC 4 Radio production he had returned to England on official holiday leave from his position as a police officer for the Colonial Service in Burma and to recover from a bout of tropical fever at the home of his parents. During a holiday in Cornwall he came to the decision to resign without knowing what his next income would be. He was 24 years of age. He wanted to become a professional writer.
As I also wrote there are sufficient connections and coincident to confirm my contention of the repetitive and cyclical nature of experience between individuals and generations
At the age of 20 after fours years working in local government in central London and Croydon I decided to test my increasing confidence and wish to better myself and became a office equipment salesman for the Italian firm Olivetti attending a month‘s sales course at their headquarters in Barclay Square and finishing top out of about 40 others, some of whom did not survive the weekly examination and appraisal. In the first month I achieved over 30 placements of the latest machine on a trial based and was unable to sell one because those using did not like the soft, spongy touch. The new design was a disaster and I quickly lost heart as door after door was shut in my face and only having a limited number of small offices to visit in a concentrated areas in the City of London around Bishopsgate, as the weather changed, I found myself spending more and more time travelling around the circle line of the underground sitting in park, pubs and coffee houses, a journey which took around 53 to 55 minutes.
For the cost of three old pence ticket, the minimum fare you could spend all day travelling around and around if you wished and it was interesting to note other fellow travellers in the compartment of choice, mostly salesmen killing time or writing up their sales and notes, but also the elderly keeping warm and school children playing truant. There was the occasional tramp although I do not remember seeing many,
I resigned much to the horror of the management without having another job to do. I quickly became dependent on my family but after a couple of months I obtained a temporary job at Housemans Bookshop close to Kings Cross Station and from the same building the Pacifist weekly Peace News was also published.
While Blair was helping to control the Empire at the same age I had become an activist for the Direct Action Committee against Nuclear War helping to organise the Scottish end of the London to Holy Loch march and demonstration against the location of the USA controlled Polaris Submarines at Holy Loch, and a short time member of the Committee 100 set up by Bertrand Russell, electing to serve six months in prison rather than give an undertaking to stop such activities. I resigned from the committee after Russell rejected my warnings about the conduct of his assistant and which makes nonsense of subsequent 8 page “I was misled” tirade against the man published as an appendix in the official work on his life by Ronald W Clark. I had some limited experience of being on the road and once spent a night frozen in a bus shelter in a town in Derbyshire on my way to Liverpool to join a march between Liverpool and Hull. I will refer against to the experience of walking 12 to 20 a miles a day in all-weather, on little food, dependent on the hospitality of others and usually sleeping on the floor of some hall in a sleeping bag.
On his return Eric Blair consulted a Cambridge Don about becoming a writer, attended an Eton College reunion dinner and in the Autumn he moved to London acquiring a flat in the Portobello Road. During the five years he commenced to investigate the lives of the poor, in and out of work in London and Paris publishing an essay The Spike, moving to Paris until 1928, and turning his experiences into an autobiographical novel Down and out in Paris and London some after. His first published work was completed. His mother’s sister lived in Paris and provide him with social and financial support to enable him to write the first version of Burmese Days although the issue of what is what is was like to be poor without prospects obsessing him as a subject for writing.
Like myself although he was poor, without a job or a home of his own, he was not isolated without relatives and others who he could fall back on and lend support, including financial support and therefore unlike the majority of the rest who were poor without support unless provide by the state or charities, and more significantly without prospects. I will come back to this issue as does Blair several times in his work.
In 1929 Blair became ill and was admitted to a hospital leading to an essay How the poor die (1946). You want to write the experiences you have but you need time, perspective and a measure of objectivity and then from a publishing viewpoint there is the problem about writing about contemporary others without their expressed permission or whose activity in question has been made public by them or is already in the public domain, although even in this respect there are appropriate restrictions where it is wise to follow if one dos not wants to find oneself in the civil and sometimes criminal courts as an accused. Blair and his publishers appears to have adopted her device of converting experiences into fiction with Homage to Catalonia the exception.
In Paris when his money was stolen from a lodging house where he was staying Blair took a job as a dish washer in in fashionable hotel. Later, as the end of the year approached he returned to the comfortable existence of life with his parents who settled at Southwold and where he remained for the following five years 26 to 31.
After I commenced the life as direct actionist (Marx on Fuerbach’s 11th Theses point) I worked occasionally as a temp in a left wing coffee bar meeting place in Soho and where the manager offered a permanent job in part to dissuade me from the course I had set on to go to prison. I was also elected to the executive of my local Labour Party which then sponsored me to Ruskin College Oxford, where after studying a year for a Politics and Economics diploma I was able to switch to a post graduate University Diploma in Public and Social Administration where the other students were first and second class honours graduates in other subjects, my tutorial partner for Criminology had gained a First in Theology which set the gold standard for analytical reproduction of the academic work others in the form the essay. I had three articles published in the university weekly Isis, joined several Oxford Societies and was appointed to a Labour Club Committee to campaign fort eh labour party to keep the UK out of a non socialist European Economic Community. Then de Gaulle said Non. Thus via the back door I had two amazing years in he City the Oxford and its University life experience, return to live and work there for three after a year in Birmingham. Eat your heart out Eric.
I went to Birmingham University for the embryonic new Certificate of Qualification in Social Work, specialising in Child Care which was gained, together with a Home Office Certificate of professional competence and then joined Oxfordshire Council, as a child care officer arriving on the day when its head became leader of the Association of Children’s Officers. Because of her role I read and summarised Hanzard in relation to child and family social work which developed into a subscription magazine which I produced with around 35 issues a year for a three year period, publishing other articles in addition to becoming the Parliamentary officer and then Vice President of the professional Association followed by becoming the first chairman of one of the new sections of the British Association of Social Workers. I had developed a clear vision of what I wanted to do and be. And also I knew where I stood politically, a socialist, but passionate anti communist where the writing of Orwell (1984 and Animal Farm) and others helped to confirm from my limited contact with members of the party and the Trots, their actual approach to political issue in the UK and the realities of life in the Soviet dictatorships, as I once tried to explain to Sir Keith Joseph when an official dinner guest. I had also written a play which although rejected by the English Stage company they asked to see my other work which at the time I had not created, and I was then set on a different course.
The second week of the BBC Book at Bedtime in the Real George Orwell series commenced with his travelling to London which surprised me because I was under the impression the was at least one further episode on his experiences in Paris. Undertaking catch up reading after the Monday night episode February 3rd, 2012 I appreciated what had happened,
The decision had been taken to omit his experience of leaving the hotel and working in the restaurant with Boris run by another Russian. They had only taken the job at the hotel because the restaurant was not ready to employ them so when Boris gets the call that it is about to open, Blair feels obliged to hand in his notice although he had become settled in the employment. I say Blair although this work was published as a novel and it is not surprising that his first attempts to publish were rejected. While he did work as a kitchen hand in a hotel I cannot confirm that he worked in the kitchen of any restaurant and therefore his description of the Russian owned one may have been based on hearsay.
In the story he explains how having given up the hotel job, Boris and the two waiters employed found that the premises were in the same condition as when they had started at the hotel. The owner did not have the funds to hire labour to finish the job and therefore adopted the ruse of getting the waiters, dependent on any money as tips for getting the job done. Because he was the plongeur without tips he was paid a wage but the owner only gave him part of what he was due and because, but did give a glass of brandy when he left for home. He describes that when the restaurant opened he worked 17 to 19 hours days sometimes sleeping on the trampled food on floors too tired to make his way to his lodgings. In the book he claims that he was so fed up with the life that he approached a contact in London for work and he returning to London on the promise of being a companion to a mentally disabled young man in a family, but who he finds had gone abroad for a month hence his need to find the cheapest of lodgings and then to become a tramp dependent on charities providing at and bread during the day and the workhouse spikes for bed and breakfast. As I have noted in fact his experiences were the other way round, investigating the life of the poor living in cheap lodging houses and then going on the Spike and then going to Paris and then going home to become a professional writer.
On the journey to Tilbury he tried to persuade a Rumanian couple that England was a paradise of art, culture architectural good design compared to Paris. He then finds his would be employment was on hold for a month and only a few shillings and six pence to survive so he determines to find the cheapest of lodging houses leaving the rest of his possession at a railway station.
He also attempted to pawn his clothing for inferior stuff but this only yielded one shilling, mentioning four pawn shop experiences. He then sees a tramp coming towards him and realises it is his reflection in a shop window. I have previously commented on the difference in how you are treated if you wear a suit collar and tie or casual clothes, especially once past the age of 65. Blair also comments on the disparity between accent and clothes and towards the end of the book comments how a tramp manager at a Spike treated him favourably because his accent revealed him to be a gentleman on hard times. I suppose I ought to explain, although out of sequence that the Spike is the food and board for the night available at workhouse casual wards for those on the road who were not pauper inmates,
His first experience of a lodging house brought him the experience of a 15 feet square room with eight beds and later at a spike there would be eighty. I have experience of sleeping in a room with a score of others (at an open prison camp, former RAF station and again at the Iona Community House in Sauchiehall Street although for the most part all the other beds were vacant during this stay in Glasgow while helping to arrange the Polaris Protest at Holy Loch. And then of course I did spend the first ten years of my life after babyhood sharing one double bed with three adult women two at one end and me and my care mother at the other.
Blair complains that the beds in lodging house were hard as board and the pillows blocks of wood, so you should try sleeping on floors in just a sleeping bag my spiritual friend? It is during this experience he begins the diet of bread with marge and large cups if tea. His money lasts for three days and four nights.
He begins to learn about the comradeship that develops between those in like circumstances spend whatever comes their way and share what they have although there is also a lot of stealing from those in similar circumstance who fail to share. He finds that many of the men are 10 shillings a week pensioners and their ongoing survival Blair found inspiring. One of my aunts, abandoned by her bigamist husband eventually got a 5 shillings a week widow’s pension and relied exclusively on my birth mother’s earning as a teacher for her survival.
Blair was then driven to use the Spike and to his horror found that the rule was you could not stay for more than one night in 30 days in the same place, but you could stay at two different places in London. This meant the hundreds if not thousands of men on the road were constantly walking in all weathers a dozen or more miles a day which was wasted energy to no social purpose and caused harm to the men in question, given they walked on a starvation diet. I have participated in two walkings of over 100 miles from Liverpool to Hull taking about ten days and a number of shorter walkings Aldermaston to London and London to Bedford over four to five days. In all these instances any baggage including sleeping bags was transported from morning sleep over on a floor, with only one instance a bed provide by a college lecturer at Hull. As with the tramps one therefore was able to walk freely but in Wintry conditions with the two main walks immediate after Christmas through to the New Year. Blistering feet rather than the absence of food was the problem although unlike the tramps there was more than bread and tea provided and the fundamental difference being that we walked with a purpose.
While they would be seen by a doctor this was to ensure they did have some potentially lethal contagion which could be passed onto the general community. You were not allowed in if you had 8 pence in possession and what you had you were required to hand in including any tobacco but this you smuggled in your socks as although you were searched they rarely got below the knee while others had made secret pockets in their coats,
The evening meal was a half pound loaf of bread and a mug of cocoa. You left with a 6pence open voucher for some food and a hot drink and were told where they could be exchanged on the next journey selected.
He also learned of the existence of places, usually provided by religions groups which offered tea and a bun on the condition you accepted half an hour of prayers and contemplation. Many of those he encountered came from the north who had lost jobs, a few were mentally challenged,
He makes one friend, from Ireland who lost his job and failed to get another. Learned from the art of turning cigarettes stubs into smokes with London of course the Big Smoke, but also the man‘s reluctance to steal milk left on the front steps.
It was in episode eight that Blair refers to the hatred which has almost become universal that Englishmen and women, in the UK have for those who come and work from another country, the Scots, the Irish, The Jews, the Blacks, the Indians, the Muslims etc, in fact blame the bloody foreigner nor unemployment and lack of housing. The odd man who works, the young man who is not at home or a student and everyone who sponges off the state, Sounds familiar? While Blair dislikes this he dislikes the Salvation Army of their military approach to the charity they provided.
They could get into the Sally Army hostel at six if they possessed the means to buy a cup of tea each otherwise they had to wait with the rest of the 200 until 8. You went to bed at 10 with two officers making sure there was no smoking and no noise with gambling forbidden during the time before bed and lights out.
Having enough of this experience he goes back to his contact for £1 and gets £2 which takes him and the Irishman into lodgings once more, He also learns about screevers or the pavement artist, now long gone and replaced by those who paint themselves into statues. He tells of one who had studied art in Paris and discovered that if his wife took in sewing they and his six children could survive on the £1 a week average net profit he earned from drawing the likeness of Churchill and other known figures, although his Botticelli nude had caused reaction from one London church and the police. He explains the hierarchy of beggars and begging scams notably the street photographer
While there is reference to drink being the cause of getting some men onto the street, and tobacco their drug, there is no mention of other drug substances, or to difficulties after prison, or served in the armed forces. He rarely came across a woman and one fellow traveller was interested in prostitutes as he regarded all other women out of his league, but in fact the overwhelming number of men remained celibate because of their life style and the effect their appearance had on other women, unless they were religious do gooders.
He also learns something of the rhyming slang, some of which he said was out of fashion although was still being used during my childhood social circle in the 1940’s. He also discovers the use of f,,,k and f,,,king as a swear word although in my 1960’s edition there are simply ----. One of the great moments of my Scottish experience in 1961 was getting on a bus full of shift ending factory girls where the coarseness of their comments towards and about me as well as in genera took my breathe away.
Blair then argues that Tramps and fellow dossers are not a different race from the rest of humanity although they are treated as such, but are men who have fallen on hard times and find it difficult to impossible to break back out or in depending on ones perspective. He ends the book with, the device that he is able to survive the days left before his prospective employer arrives back from going abroad and a plea for a more rational approach to treating the poor. All this was before the creation of the welfare state and where now the present Coalition, in part from good intentions and commenced to unravel the principal of universality with underpinned the Beveridge Reforms and Welfare system. We are going back an era to soup kitchens and means testing, begging officialdom rather than on the street. As a say everything is cyclical and generational. We never learn.
As I also wrote there are sufficient connections and coincident to confirm my contention of the repetitive and cyclical nature of experience between individuals and generations
At the age of 20 after fours years working in local government in central London and Croydon I decided to test my increasing confidence and wish to better myself and became a office equipment salesman for the Italian firm Olivetti attending a month‘s sales course at their headquarters in Barclay Square and finishing top out of about 40 others, some of whom did not survive the weekly examination and appraisal. In the first month I achieved over 30 placements of the latest machine on a trial based and was unable to sell one because those using did not like the soft, spongy touch. The new design was a disaster and I quickly lost heart as door after door was shut in my face and only having a limited number of small offices to visit in a concentrated areas in the City of London around Bishopsgate, as the weather changed, I found myself spending more and more time travelling around the circle line of the underground sitting in park, pubs and coffee houses, a journey which took around 53 to 55 minutes.
For the cost of three old pence ticket, the minimum fare you could spend all day travelling around and around if you wished and it was interesting to note other fellow travellers in the compartment of choice, mostly salesmen killing time or writing up their sales and notes, but also the elderly keeping warm and school children playing truant. There was the occasional tramp although I do not remember seeing many,
I resigned much to the horror of the management without having another job to do. I quickly became dependent on my family but after a couple of months I obtained a temporary job at Housemans Bookshop close to Kings Cross Station and from the same building the Pacifist weekly Peace News was also published.
While Blair was helping to control the Empire at the same age I had become an activist for the Direct Action Committee against Nuclear War helping to organise the Scottish end of the London to Holy Loch march and demonstration against the location of the USA controlled Polaris Submarines at Holy Loch, and a short time member of the Committee 100 set up by Bertrand Russell, electing to serve six months in prison rather than give an undertaking to stop such activities. I resigned from the committee after Russell rejected my warnings about the conduct of his assistant and which makes nonsense of subsequent 8 page “I was misled” tirade against the man published as an appendix in the official work on his life by Ronald W Clark. I had some limited experience of being on the road and once spent a night frozen in a bus shelter in a town in Derbyshire on my way to Liverpool to join a march between Liverpool and Hull. I will refer against to the experience of walking 12 to 20 a miles a day in all-weather, on little food, dependent on the hospitality of others and usually sleeping on the floor of some hall in a sleeping bag.
On his return Eric Blair consulted a Cambridge Don about becoming a writer, attended an Eton College reunion dinner and in the Autumn he moved to London acquiring a flat in the Portobello Road. During the five years he commenced to investigate the lives of the poor, in and out of work in London and Paris publishing an essay The Spike, moving to Paris until 1928, and turning his experiences into an autobiographical novel Down and out in Paris and London some after. His first published work was completed. His mother’s sister lived in Paris and provide him with social and financial support to enable him to write the first version of Burmese Days although the issue of what is what is was like to be poor without prospects obsessing him as a subject for writing.
Like myself although he was poor, without a job or a home of his own, he was not isolated without relatives and others who he could fall back on and lend support, including financial support and therefore unlike the majority of the rest who were poor without support unless provide by the state or charities, and more significantly without prospects. I will come back to this issue as does Blair several times in his work.
In 1929 Blair became ill and was admitted to a hospital leading to an essay How the poor die (1946). You want to write the experiences you have but you need time, perspective and a measure of objectivity and then from a publishing viewpoint there is the problem about writing about contemporary others without their expressed permission or whose activity in question has been made public by them or is already in the public domain, although even in this respect there are appropriate restrictions where it is wise to follow if one dos not wants to find oneself in the civil and sometimes criminal courts as an accused. Blair and his publishers appears to have adopted her device of converting experiences into fiction with Homage to Catalonia the exception.
In Paris when his money was stolen from a lodging house where he was staying Blair took a job as a dish washer in in fashionable hotel. Later, as the end of the year approached he returned to the comfortable existence of life with his parents who settled at Southwold and where he remained for the following five years 26 to 31.
After I commenced the life as direct actionist (Marx on Fuerbach’s 11th Theses point) I worked occasionally as a temp in a left wing coffee bar meeting place in Soho and where the manager offered a permanent job in part to dissuade me from the course I had set on to go to prison. I was also elected to the executive of my local Labour Party which then sponsored me to Ruskin College Oxford, where after studying a year for a Politics and Economics diploma I was able to switch to a post graduate University Diploma in Public and Social Administration where the other students were first and second class honours graduates in other subjects, my tutorial partner for Criminology had gained a First in Theology which set the gold standard for analytical reproduction of the academic work others in the form the essay. I had three articles published in the university weekly Isis, joined several Oxford Societies and was appointed to a Labour Club Committee to campaign fort eh labour party to keep the UK out of a non socialist European Economic Community. Then de Gaulle said Non. Thus via the back door I had two amazing years in he City the Oxford and its University life experience, return to live and work there for three after a year in Birmingham. Eat your heart out Eric.
I went to Birmingham University for the embryonic new Certificate of Qualification in Social Work, specialising in Child Care which was gained, together with a Home Office Certificate of professional competence and then joined Oxfordshire Council, as a child care officer arriving on the day when its head became leader of the Association of Children’s Officers. Because of her role I read and summarised Hanzard in relation to child and family social work which developed into a subscription magazine which I produced with around 35 issues a year for a three year period, publishing other articles in addition to becoming the Parliamentary officer and then Vice President of the professional Association followed by becoming the first chairman of one of the new sections of the British Association of Social Workers. I had developed a clear vision of what I wanted to do and be. And also I knew where I stood politically, a socialist, but passionate anti communist where the writing of Orwell (1984 and Animal Farm) and others helped to confirm from my limited contact with members of the party and the Trots, their actual approach to political issue in the UK and the realities of life in the Soviet dictatorships, as I once tried to explain to Sir Keith Joseph when an official dinner guest. I had also written a play which although rejected by the English Stage company they asked to see my other work which at the time I had not created, and I was then set on a different course.
The second week of the BBC Book at Bedtime in the Real George Orwell series commenced with his travelling to London which surprised me because I was under the impression the was at least one further episode on his experiences in Paris. Undertaking catch up reading after the Monday night episode February 3rd, 2012 I appreciated what had happened,
The decision had been taken to omit his experience of leaving the hotel and working in the restaurant with Boris run by another Russian. They had only taken the job at the hotel because the restaurant was not ready to employ them so when Boris gets the call that it is about to open, Blair feels obliged to hand in his notice although he had become settled in the employment. I say Blair although this work was published as a novel and it is not surprising that his first attempts to publish were rejected. While he did work as a kitchen hand in a hotel I cannot confirm that he worked in the kitchen of any restaurant and therefore his description of the Russian owned one may have been based on hearsay.
In the story he explains how having given up the hotel job, Boris and the two waiters employed found that the premises were in the same condition as when they had started at the hotel. The owner did not have the funds to hire labour to finish the job and therefore adopted the ruse of getting the waiters, dependent on any money as tips for getting the job done. Because he was the plongeur without tips he was paid a wage but the owner only gave him part of what he was due and because, but did give a glass of brandy when he left for home. He describes that when the restaurant opened he worked 17 to 19 hours days sometimes sleeping on the trampled food on floors too tired to make his way to his lodgings. In the book he claims that he was so fed up with the life that he approached a contact in London for work and he returning to London on the promise of being a companion to a mentally disabled young man in a family, but who he finds had gone abroad for a month hence his need to find the cheapest of lodgings and then to become a tramp dependent on charities providing at and bread during the day and the workhouse spikes for bed and breakfast. As I have noted in fact his experiences were the other way round, investigating the life of the poor living in cheap lodging houses and then going on the Spike and then going to Paris and then going home to become a professional writer.
On the journey to Tilbury he tried to persuade a Rumanian couple that England was a paradise of art, culture architectural good design compared to Paris. He then finds his would be employment was on hold for a month and only a few shillings and six pence to survive so he determines to find the cheapest of lodging houses leaving the rest of his possession at a railway station.
He also attempted to pawn his clothing for inferior stuff but this only yielded one shilling, mentioning four pawn shop experiences. He then sees a tramp coming towards him and realises it is his reflection in a shop window. I have previously commented on the difference in how you are treated if you wear a suit collar and tie or casual clothes, especially once past the age of 65. Blair also comments on the disparity between accent and clothes and towards the end of the book comments how a tramp manager at a Spike treated him favourably because his accent revealed him to be a gentleman on hard times. I suppose I ought to explain, although out of sequence that the Spike is the food and board for the night available at workhouse casual wards for those on the road who were not pauper inmates,
His first experience of a lodging house brought him the experience of a 15 feet square room with eight beds and later at a spike there would be eighty. I have experience of sleeping in a room with a score of others (at an open prison camp, former RAF station and again at the Iona Community House in Sauchiehall Street although for the most part all the other beds were vacant during this stay in Glasgow while helping to arrange the Polaris Protest at Holy Loch. And then of course I did spend the first ten years of my life after babyhood sharing one double bed with three adult women two at one end and me and my care mother at the other.
Blair complains that the beds in lodging house were hard as board and the pillows blocks of wood, so you should try sleeping on floors in just a sleeping bag my spiritual friend? It is during this experience he begins the diet of bread with marge and large cups if tea. His money lasts for three days and four nights.
He begins to learn about the comradeship that develops between those in like circumstances spend whatever comes their way and share what they have although there is also a lot of stealing from those in similar circumstance who fail to share. He finds that many of the men are 10 shillings a week pensioners and their ongoing survival Blair found inspiring. One of my aunts, abandoned by her bigamist husband eventually got a 5 shillings a week widow’s pension and relied exclusively on my birth mother’s earning as a teacher for her survival.
Blair was then driven to use the Spike and to his horror found that the rule was you could not stay for more than one night in 30 days in the same place, but you could stay at two different places in London. This meant the hundreds if not thousands of men on the road were constantly walking in all weathers a dozen or more miles a day which was wasted energy to no social purpose and caused harm to the men in question, given they walked on a starvation diet. I have participated in two walkings of over 100 miles from Liverpool to Hull taking about ten days and a number of shorter walkings Aldermaston to London and London to Bedford over four to five days. In all these instances any baggage including sleeping bags was transported from morning sleep over on a floor, with only one instance a bed provide by a college lecturer at Hull. As with the tramps one therefore was able to walk freely but in Wintry conditions with the two main walks immediate after Christmas through to the New Year. Blistering feet rather than the absence of food was the problem although unlike the tramps there was more than bread and tea provided and the fundamental difference being that we walked with a purpose.
While they would be seen by a doctor this was to ensure they did have some potentially lethal contagion which could be passed onto the general community. You were not allowed in if you had 8 pence in possession and what you had you were required to hand in including any tobacco but this you smuggled in your socks as although you were searched they rarely got below the knee while others had made secret pockets in their coats,
The evening meal was a half pound loaf of bread and a mug of cocoa. You left with a 6pence open voucher for some food and a hot drink and were told where they could be exchanged on the next journey selected.
He also learned of the existence of places, usually provided by religions groups which offered tea and a bun on the condition you accepted half an hour of prayers and contemplation. Many of those he encountered came from the north who had lost jobs, a few were mentally challenged,
He makes one friend, from Ireland who lost his job and failed to get another. Learned from the art of turning cigarettes stubs into smokes with London of course the Big Smoke, but also the man‘s reluctance to steal milk left on the front steps.
It was in episode eight that Blair refers to the hatred which has almost become universal that Englishmen and women, in the UK have for those who come and work from another country, the Scots, the Irish, The Jews, the Blacks, the Indians, the Muslims etc, in fact blame the bloody foreigner nor unemployment and lack of housing. The odd man who works, the young man who is not at home or a student and everyone who sponges off the state, Sounds familiar? While Blair dislikes this he dislikes the Salvation Army of their military approach to the charity they provided.
They could get into the Sally Army hostel at six if they possessed the means to buy a cup of tea each otherwise they had to wait with the rest of the 200 until 8. You went to bed at 10 with two officers making sure there was no smoking and no noise with gambling forbidden during the time before bed and lights out.
Having enough of this experience he goes back to his contact for £1 and gets £2 which takes him and the Irishman into lodgings once more, He also learns about screevers or the pavement artist, now long gone and replaced by those who paint themselves into statues. He tells of one who had studied art in Paris and discovered that if his wife took in sewing they and his six children could survive on the £1 a week average net profit he earned from drawing the likeness of Churchill and other known figures, although his Botticelli nude had caused reaction from one London church and the police. He explains the hierarchy of beggars and begging scams notably the street photographer
While there is reference to drink being the cause of getting some men onto the street, and tobacco their drug, there is no mention of other drug substances, or to difficulties after prison, or served in the armed forces. He rarely came across a woman and one fellow traveller was interested in prostitutes as he regarded all other women out of his league, but in fact the overwhelming number of men remained celibate because of their life style and the effect their appearance had on other women, unless they were religious do gooders.
He also learns something of the rhyming slang, some of which he said was out of fashion although was still being used during my childhood social circle in the 1940’s. He also discovers the use of f,,,k and f,,,king as a swear word although in my 1960’s edition there are simply ----. One of the great moments of my Scottish experience in 1961 was getting on a bus full of shift ending factory girls where the coarseness of their comments towards and about me as well as in genera took my breathe away.
Blair then argues that Tramps and fellow dossers are not a different race from the rest of humanity although they are treated as such, but are men who have fallen on hard times and find it difficult to impossible to break back out or in depending on ones perspective. He ends the book with, the device that he is able to survive the days left before his prospective employer arrives back from going abroad and a plea for a more rational approach to treating the poor. All this was before the creation of the welfare state and where now the present Coalition, in part from good intentions and commenced to unravel the principal of universality with underpinned the Beveridge Reforms and Welfare system. We are going back an era to soup kitchens and means testing, begging officialdom rather than on the street. As a say everything is cyclical and generational. We never learn.
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