The importance of narrative

George Orwell asked, in The road to Wigan Pier (1962), ‘do the “lower classes” smell?’ He answered this immediately with ‘Of course, as a whole, they are dirtier than the upper classes.’ He goes on to say that, given the circumstances of their living and working conditions, their lack of resources, time and money, they were bound to be dirtier than those with more resources. Orwell raises this question in response to his revelation that as a member of the upper middle class he was taught that the lower classes were inferior and that they smelt, and he noted that this lesson had stayed with him throughout his life.

I first read The road to Wigan Pier as a 16-year-old. I was given a copy by an editor, Annie Pike, from Penguin Books, who visited my family home in North Nottinghamshire during the miners’ strike in 1984. We were a striking family and frequently had visitors from odd places offering support. Annie came up from London once a month with a cheque for about £20, funds she had raised in her office to support miners’ families. My mother was chair of Women Against Pit Closures Teversal and Silver Hill Branch, and I had just left school and started work at the Pretty Polly factory making tights with my mother and aunties. On one of these visits Annie talked to me about George Orwell, after a conversation I had had with her about my love of reading. She brought me a collection of books by Barry Hines and George Orwell. I still have those books, although I have not seen Annie since 1984.

Reading George Orwell as a 16-year-old working-class girl living in a mining community during the 1984 miners’ strike was difficult. I didn’t pick that book up again until 2001 when I went to university. Orwell’s depiction of working-class life during the 1930s was upsetting; this was the time of my grandparents who had raised me until I was six years old, and whom I dearly loved. The knowledge that ‘others’ had been taught that they smelt and were dirty was very painful, and led me to think about how we were known and thought of in 1984. I had not considered this at all in my 16 years. I was the daughter, granddaughter, and niece of miners.