Previous winner Peter Beaumont and previously longlisted Lindsey Hilsum both pay tribute to Marie Colvin, killed in Syria this week His criticism of left-wing intelligentia ('And from that they will proceed to argue that, after all, democracy is “just the same as” or “just as bad as” totalitarianism.') is just as relevant today as it was in 1941. It is quite true that the English are hypocritical about their Empire. In the working class this hypocrisy takes the form of not knowing that the Empire exists. But their dislike of standing armies is a perfectly sound instinct. A navy employs comparatively few people, and it is an external weapon which cannot affect home politics directly. Military dictatorships exist everywhere, but there is no such thing as a naval dictatorship. What English people of nearly all classes loathe from the bottom of their hearts is the swaggering officer type, the jingle of spurs and the crash of boots. Decades before Hitler was ever heard of, the word ‘Prussian’ had much the same significance in England as ‘Nazi’ has today. So deep does this feeling go that for a hundred years past the officers of the British army, in peace time, have always worn civilian clothes when off duty.

The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius

DV8 physical theatre company at the National Theatre Uses part of our event, ‘What can’t you speak about in the 21st Ce ntury?’ On the bright side, our sense of togetherness saves us from overt hostility. It also means that we’re mostly tolerant of others, and that differences of opinion don’t have to carry too much resentment at the end of the day. Llevaba mucho tiempo sin leer un libro completo de ensayos. Aunque el género me agrada, estaba destinando mi tiempo libre para abordar algunos textos filosóficos y literarios (me refiero a ficción y poesía) que me llamaban la atención. Ahora, aprovechando la oportunidad de dictar un curso de Ensayos de opinión en la universidad en la que trabajo, decidí abordar algunos textos que había comprado hace tiempo.

The first part of the essay, " England Your England", is often considered an essay in itself. With the introductory sentence "As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.", [1] the content sheds some light on the process which eventually led Orwell to the writing of his famous dystopia Nineteen Eighty-Four. The text is also influenced partly by his other experiences in the Spanish Civil War, which he published his memoirs of in " Homage to Catalonia". His beliefs molded there of the dangers of totalitarianism and his conviction for democratic socialism to defeat fascism and Soviet communism are evident in all of his future novels such as Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm but are expressed here without allegory. The Road to Wigan Pier : 75 years on, 6.30pm, Saturday 31 March: Stephen Armstrong, Beatrix Campbell, Juliet Gardiner, Paul Mason, chaired by D. J. Taylor

The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius

The effect of all this is a general softening of manners. It is enhanced by the fact that modern industrial methods tend always to demand less muscular effort and therefore to leave people with more energy when their day's work is done. Many workers in the light industries are less truly manual labourers than is a doctor or a grocer. In tastes, habits, manners and outlook the working class and the middle class are drawing together. The unjust distinctions remain, but the real differences diminish. The old-style ‘proletarian’– collarless, unshaven and with muscles warped by heavy labour – still exists, but he is constantly decreasing in numbers; he only predominates in the heavy-industry areas of the north of England. Orwell, 2. Dünya savaşında Hitler'in Londra'yı bombaladığı günlerde kaleme aldığı bu uzun makalesinde; İngiliz, İrlandalı, Galli ve İskoçlardan oluşan Birleşik Krallık halklarının, kısaca Britanyalıların analizini yaparken, 19. yüzyılın sonlarından beri kendini yenileyemeyen, dış politikada zayıf kalan, 1931-40 arası faşist ve ırkçı Hitler'in yükselişini ve savaş hazırlıklarını adeta seyreden, hatta onu tehdit olarak görmek yerine Komünist Rusya'ya karşı bir koruyucu addeden, Franco ve Mussolini'yi destekleyen Muhafazakar Tory yönetimini, ülkedeki kapitalist ekonomik sistemi, gelir eşitsizliği ve toplumsal refah dengesizliğini ateşli bir şekilde eleştiriyor, kapitalizm, faşizm, komünizm ve sosyalizmin açık ve net tanımını yaptıktan sonra savaşı kazanmanın ve geleceğe güvenle bakmanın sembolü Aslan ve Tekboynuzlu At olan "Demokratik Sosyalist bir İngiltere" ile mümkün olacağını savunuyor. and to those shortlisted for this year’s Paul Foot Award (Paul Foot having won the Orwell Prize in 1995) Politics and the Press, 4pm, Sunday 1 April: Gaby Hinsliff, Martin Moore, Lance Price, chaired by Jean Seaton Orwell is best known for the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (published in 1949) and the satirical novella Animal Farm (1945) — they have together sold more copies than any two books by any other twentieth-century author. His 1938 book Homage to Catalonia, an account of his experiences as a volunteer on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, together with numerous essays on politics, literature, language, and culture, have been widely acclaimed.dünya savaşı üzerine bir araştırma yapsanız ve "acaba 1941 yılında İngiltere'nin halet-i ruhiyesi nasıl acaba?" diye bir soruya meraklansanız direk başvuracağınız bir kitap Aslan ve Unicorn. George Orwell’s war-time call to change, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, was published on February 19th, 1941. On this February 19th, Dr Philip Bounds, author of Orwell and Marxism and an Orwell Society member, takes a look at Orwell’s book, paying particular attention to its first part, ‘England Your England’. But the general weakening of imperialism, and to some extent of the whole British morale, that took place during the nineteen-thirties, was partly the work of the left-wing intelligentsia, itself a kind of growth that had sprouted from the stagnation of the Empire. Orwell genel büyüleyici genel bakış açısı yerine bu kez sosyoloji ve siyaset içeren uzunca bir makale yazmış. Hakkındaki türlü dedikodulara karşın Sosyalizme ne kadar inandığını, katıksız bir anti-faşist olduğunu net olarak görebilirsiniz. Orwell compares England to a Victorian family (p.30): everyone has a right to feel included, but the wrong ‘relatives’ hold sway, in a difficult, stiff, awkward environment. The ‘good’ people, in Orwell’s eyes (generally young, always working-class) have little to no power. I think this is a critical but mostly fair assessment of British culture: then and now, we were really ‘made’ by the Victorians and their mores, and as a naturally (small-‘c’) conservative country not much has changed. In fact, this sort of structure may have worked rather well in the 18th and 19th centuries, before (according to Orwell) the ruling class qualitatively deteriorated as they became less relevant. In Ancient Greece, aristocratic influence declined as democracy became popular; similarly, as the English middle class gained political influence through votes, the aristocracy’s importance declined, combined with the ‘social decay’ of businessmen entering the upper class and ruining their exclusivity. It doesn’t help that the older people who dominate the ‘Victorian family’ structure (p.54-5) tend to be rather clueless about change, and with the passing of time they don’t know what’s going on (and this has never become clearer than today, when so many MPs are clueless about how the Internet works, and the role it plays in people’s lives). It’s only natural that they become Conservatives who long for the ‘good old days’.

George Orwell: The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the

Though he himself is a nationalist, he honestly talks about the paradox of otherwise meaningless fights that nationalism brings with it:

One rapid but fairly sure guide to the social atmosphere of a country is the parade-step of its army. A military parade is really a kind of ritual dance, something like a ballet, expressing a certain philosophy of life. The goose-step, for instance, is one of the most horrible sights in the world, far more terrifying than a dive-bomber. It is simply an affirmation of naked power; contained in it, quite consciously and intentionally, is the vision of a boot crashing down on a face. Its ugliness is part of its essence, for what it is saying is ‘Yes, I am ugly, and you daren't laugh at me’, like the bully who makes faces at his victim. Why is the goose-step not used in England? There are, heaven knows, plenty of army officers who would be only too glad to introduce some such thing. It is not used because the people in the street would laugh. Beyond a certain point, military display is only possible in countries where the common people dare not laugh at the army. The Italians adopted the goose-step at about the time when Italy passed definitely under German control, and, as one would expect, they do it less well than the Germans. The Vichy government, if it survives, is bound to introduce a stiffer parade-ground discipline into what is left of the French army. In the British army the drill is rigid and complicated, full of memories of the eighteenth century, but without definite swagger; the march is merely a formalized walk. It belongs to a society which is ruled by the sword, no doubt, but a sword which must never be taken out of the scabbard. 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. Had they done that they would have had to abdicate. 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. Difficult though this was, they achieved it, largely by fixing their eyes on the past and refusing to notice the changes that were going on round them.

Orwell: The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the George Orwell: The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the

National characteristics are not easy to pin down, and when pinned down they often turn out to be trivialities or seem to have no connexion with one another. Spaniards are cruel to animals, Italians can do nothing without making a deafening noise, the Chinese are addicted to gambling. Obviously such things don't matter in themselves. Nevertheless, nothing is causeless, and even the fact that Englishmen have bad teeth can tell something about the realities of English life. On May the 3rd the opera adaption of George Orwell's 1984 received its premiere in the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden) in London. Here are a couple of generalizations about England that would be accepted by almost all observers. One is that the English are not gifted artistically. They are not as musical as the Germans or Italians, painting and sculpture have never flourished in England as they have in France. Another is that, as Europeans go, the English are not intellectual. They have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic ‘world-view’. Nor is this because they are ‘practical’, as they are so fond of claiming for themselves. One has only to look at their methods of town planning and water supply, their obstinate clinging to everything that is out of date and a nuisance, a spelling system that defies analysis, and a system of weights and measures that is intelligible only to the compilers of arithmetic books, to see how little they care about mere efficiency. But they have a certain power of acting without taking thought. Their world-famed hypocrisy—their double-faced attitude towards the Empire, for instance—is bound up with this. Also, in moments of supreme crisis the whole nation can suddenly draw together and act upon a species of instinct, really a code of conduct which is understood by almost everyone, though never formulated. The phrase that Hitler coined for the Germans, ‘a sleep-walking people’, would have been better applied to the English. Not that there is anything to be proud of in being called a sleep-walker. They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are ‘only doing their duty’, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life. On the other hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any the worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the power to absolve him from evil.Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language, and a belief in democratic socialism. This is one of the most important texts in the history of humanity. It hasn’t lost any relevance despite the fact that it was published almost a century ago. George Orwell’s response to the outbreak of the Second World War was a highly unusual one. Unlike many other people on the socialist left ˗ and in spite of the vigorous anti-war sentiments expressed in his writings of the late 1930s ˗ Orwell believed that Britain had no choice but to take up arms against Hitler’s Germany and its fascist allies. On the other hand, he rejected the idea that the war could only be won if patriotic Britons rallied around the existing government. Having seen the depths to which market forces had reduced the country during the slump, Orwell firmly believed that Britain would have to abolish capitalism and embrace socialism if the challenge of fascism was to be met. His message to his fellow countrymen was as startling as it was quixotic: War and revolution are two sides of the same coin. Without a socialist government to guide the country at its hour of supreme crisis, Britain may not have the strength it needs to consign Hitler and his armies to the dustbin of history. As I write, highly civilised human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.” Beat that for an opening line. And yet somehow the ruling class decayed, lost its ability, its daring, finally even its ruthlessness, until a time came when stuffed shirts like Eden or Halifax could stand out as men of exceptional talent. As for Baldwin, one could not even dignify him with the name of stuffed shirt. He was simply a hole in the air. The mishandling of England’s domestic problems during the nineteen-twenties had been bad enough, but British foreign policy between 1931 and 1939 is one of the wonders of the world. Why? What had happened? What was it that at every decisive moment made every British statesman do the wrong thing with so unerring an instinct?