This devil’s advocate criticism of socialism is something from which his contemporaries did not learn and their spiritual descendants in the United States, social justice activists, ignore at their peril. Orwell attempts to explain why “so many normal decent people” reject socialism by articulating their objections. Yet, one enduring legacy of The Road to Wigan Pier is its refusal to engage in moral exhibitionism. He makes no effort to hide his sympathy for his subjects coal mining is described as a “dreadful job”. He lived in filthy boarding houses, observed coal miners at work, and scrutinized government statistics on unemployment. Commissioned as a work of investigative journalism by the Left Book Club, Orwell immersed himself in the world of the English working-class in the mid 1930s. The Road to Wigan Pier is not one of Orwell’s best known books.
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