The first half of the book is about coalminers and coal mining. Orwell embeds with the working class of Wigan, Lancashire, and Yorkshire, and provides a humane and sympathetic account of what he sees and experiences. He describes their lives, their homes, their work, their clothes, their bodies, their diets, and their poverty.
Orwell is outstanding at getting the reader to see the other in three dimensions. He achieves this without romanticizing what he is reporting on. We’re not encouraged to see tramps, beggars, and the working poor as something poetic. They are real people leading real lives.
The second half of the book is a meditation on socialism. Orwell, again, maintains his composure and tone and simply works through his analysis of class as it existed in 1930s England. Much of it feels mightily familiar; one has to remind oneself that Wigan Pier is a hundred years old. In his discussion, Orwell has this to say:
Socialism is such elementary common sense that I am sometimes amazed that it has not established itself already. The world is a raft sailing through space with, potentially, plenty of provisions for everybody; the idea that we must all co-operate and see to it that everyone does his fair share of the work and gets his fair share of the provisions, seems so blatantly obvious that one would say that no one could possibly fail to accept it unless he had some corrupt motive for clinging to the present system. (p. 171)
Orwell’s point is a fundamental one: if there could be far less misery in the world, why don’t we do the less miserable thing? Yet, the many don’t demand it from the few.
Orwell takes to task Socialists—as opposed to the thing they promote—and criticizes the language used and the posturing. Some of his criticisms are hilariously prescient, and it’s like he’s writing this now. He also warns against fascism—that the middle class in its resentment can run into the arms of a political movement that will not deliver what it needs. Sound familiar?
In Wigan Pier, Orwell makes explicit what he presents in the other two books. He does enter into analysis in Catalonia and Down and Out. But in Wigan Pier there’s a deep dive. He really makes a case for socialism, one that we would do well to take seriously.
https://www.amazon.com/Road-Wigan-Pier-George-Orwell/dp/0156767503
