Just Finished Reading: Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (FP: 1933)

In the late 1920’s George Orwell, then known by his real name Eric Blair, found himself close to abject poverty after having the majority of his money stolen from his room. Forced to look for any kind of paying work before his rent ran out and he was cast on to the streets of Paris he finally got lucky by gaining a position of a plongeur – the lowest of the low in a hotel hierarchy: a washer of dishes, a chopper of vegetables, someone who does any task that no one else will do, do it quickly, for 15-16 hours a day and for a subsistence wage. Already familiar with a strange host of characters from all over the Continent he found himself surrounded by Russian emigres, Italian thieves, and Romanian Communists. Everyone had a tragic story to tell, a reason for ending up and the bottom of the heap and some of them were even true – at least a little. With almost no disposable income, little prospect (but a lot of hope) for promotion and a deep fatigue caused by the long arduous hours of work followed by little sleep the only release was in cheap wine, loud company, bar fights and, very occasionally, a cheap prostitute. Orwell lasted several months in the position – briefly graduating to working flat out in a new restaurant – before returning to England. He was horrified to learn that other plongeurs do the job for decades just to keep their heads above water.

Aided by a friendly loan and the prospect of an easy job Orwell returned to London only to discover that his new post – looking after an invalid – had been delayed by a month. Once again flat bloke, only this time in London, he needed to adapt swiftly to his new circumstances and he did so by falling in with a series of tramps shuffling between hostels in the South East of England. Again each tramp had his story of how he fell on hard times and each showed, in their own way, a fortitude to continue when practically everything was taken from them. What made the experience that much worse was the way the Authorities made even straightforward things – like getting a bed for the night or some decent food – unnecessarily hard and, more to the point, demeaning. In the years before the Welfare State this was how the State treated the poor – as a burden to be shifted elsewhere rather than being dealt with at source.

Despite being well written I did start to struggle with this slim book (a mere 216 pages in my edition) thinking that it was all very well describing the lives of the poor in both London and Paris but where was the analysis – and then, after just over 100 pages, there it was, a devastating critique of not only the hotel system in France but the use of semi-literate workers to produce shoddy goods at minimum wage (practically starvation wages) in order to keep them ‘occupied and exhausted’ in order to prevent them raising up against their oppressors. Whereas, if the frightened ‘masters’ had spent any time actually talking to them they would have discovered that all most people want is a roof over their head, food in their bellies, a bed to sleep in and something to look forward to in their leisure time. Violent revolution hardly enters a single head – exhausted and poorly educated or not. Clearly, he repeatedly pointed out, the poor and the tramps are not different people from the rich (or simply the employed) they are essentially the same – just with vastly different resources.

I suppose that I shouldn’t have really but I was both surprised and a little disappointed that Orwell didn’t propose some kind of Welfare State to deal with the issue and consequences of widespread unemployment. Of course this is doing him a huge disservice. The Welfare State in its early incarnation was a consequence of decades of experience accumulated in the decades after Orwell’s time in Paris and London. He could hardly look 20 years ahead and pluck such ideas even partially formed out of thin air. This was an interesting read and a welcome reminder of what the poor had to suffer before the late 1940’s. No doubt there are those in the so-called higher echelons of society who would like to bring these days back when the poor where motivated by fear to ‘behave themselves’. With first-hand accounts of what that policy meant to the men and women at the bottom of society such as this still in circulation maybe we won’t have to fight those battles again any time soon. Recommended for all social and political historians.