It is almost impossible to tell you how excited I was to find myself at Animal Farm on Monday. The actual Animal Farm, scene of the great revolution of the animals against Farmer Jones and the eventual betrayal of animalism by the pigs. I couldn’t see any pigs, but there was a horse that looked how I’ve always imagined Boxer. Strong, proud, Stakhanovite – all the things that George Orwell considered the proletariat to be.
My first copy of Animal Farm, bought from a church jumble sale in the late 1970s, is a red, hard-backed Longmans edition; with an introduction that states the setting for the book is ‘unmistakeably Hertfordshire’. Except that it’s not. It’s unmistakably East Sussex, and specifically, it’s Chalk Farm at Willingdon, near Eastbourne. A clue might be that Willingdon is mentioned ten times in the text. The event that sparks the revolution is Farmer Jones getting so drunk at the Red Lion in Willingdon that he forgets to feed the animals. After the revolution, he spends his time in the tap room of the same pub. The Red Lion is still there. The knackers’ van that takes Boxer off to be turned into glue and dog meat comes from Willingdon, and so does the solicitor who mediates between the pigs and humans on neighbouring farms.
There’s a hotel there now, with an Orwell lounge, and a map showing the route Orwell would have taken as a ten-year-old walking between his school in Eastbourne and Chalk Farm on ‘nature rambles.’ There’s a working farm, a plant nursery which employs adults with learning difficulties, and some guinea pigs (firmly walking on four legs, not two). According to his essay on his unhappy time at St Cyprian’s Eastbourne, written just a couple of years before he died, he never returned to Sussex, except once briefly, and never to his old school, which he hated. Which suggests that the mental images of Manor Farm in the book, which becomes Animal Farm, and at the end Manor Farm again, were all lodged when Orwell was about ten years old, and came alive three decades years later for the novel. He even remembered the name of the local pub.
I was pleased to see that the Chalk Farm Hotel had made the connection with Orwell, and marked it in a suitable fashion. It isn’t an Animal Farm theme-park, but neither has the link to one of the most important books of the twentieth century been ignored. You can stay in rooms named after Muriel the goat, Molly the vain, silly horse, Benjamin the donkey and other characters, each representing figures from the Russian Revolution. If ever the final lines about looking from man to pig, and pig to man, and being unable to tell them apart had resonance, it is when we look at the members of the current ‘coalition’ government.
England is covered in historical sites with links to the Labour movement. We make a terrible job of marking them. Sites with connections to monarchs, battles, or religious martyrdom appear in guide books. Yet with some honourable exceptions (Toad Lane in Rochdale being one; Tolpuddle in Dorset being another), Labour history is largely ignored. Why no monuments to the Chartist settlements in Heronsgate, or at the Wade Arms from where the Great Dock Strike of 1889 was directed? Why no statues of Colonel Rainsborough in Putney? The site of the Diggers’ commune on St George’s Hill, Surrey is covered in millionaires’ villas, swimming pools, and a golf club. No common treasury just gated driveways. Even the plaque commemorating Friedrich Engels’ funeral in Eastbourne was torn down by reactionaries, and found a final resting place at the Pump House People’s Museum on the banks of the Irwell. Jon Cruddas made reference to England’s radical and socialist history in a good speech a few weeks ago; everywhere it is being eroded and forgotten.
It is a task that should be taken up by local Labour parties and Labour councillors, perhaps linked to citizenship classes (before the Tories abolish them). Orwell knew all about it – who controls the past controls the future. If we let ours degrade into half-remembered folklore, or disappear altogether, we allow our enemies to win.
Orwell was great. A really good writer. I loved ‘1984’.
There’s quite a lot of memorials to our radical past (my booklet, long out of print, on ‘The People’s Monuments’ just covers the North West). It’s not about rose-tinted nostalgia – there’s a lot we cna learn from the Clarion movement with its cycling and walking clubs, choirs etc – and of the ILP’s commitment to a decentralised form of socialism. My ‘Socialism with a Northern Accent’ (Little Northern Books, October 2010) will be exploring these themes and their relevance for today
Interesting. I’ll make a point of popping into the Red Lion the next time I take the dog for a walk at Cuckmere Haven. It’s a shame that the English left ignore not only England’s radical heritage but also England itself (Britishness, fantastic; Scottishness, great; Welshness, groovy; Englishness, racist).
Newington Green on the Islington/Hackney boundary is scheduled to erect a stature to Mary Wollstonecraft. I’m not sure she would approve of any form of idolatry. Maybe this is the point. Our past can contrain our actions as well as inform them. Horace Smith’s On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below says it best.
Yup, I know what you mean. Thanks to Lord Johnny Prescott’s demented ‘Pathfinder project’ my Granddad’s perfectly well-built Victorian house in Liverpool 8 has been bulldozed to the ground. Unremarkable you might think – but it was there that Eric Blair himself stayed for around a week as a guest of my Granddad whilst he was researching his book ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’…. The Pathfinder project, yet another barmy stream of stupidity from Lord Prezza…. Thanks to him, major northern cities have been taken back to the days immediately after the Lufwaffe had visited them.
Labour needs to deal with the English question and as the colleague above said there are many versions of England, some good, some not so good, just as there are for the other nations of the UK. Labour needs to address modern England and how it can improve the governance of the country. The coalition will have a Commission on this – Labour needs to adopt a progressive view of England and explain what plans it has to improve national and regional governance – It is needed urgently.
I enjoyed Paul Richard’s piece on celebrating our radical heritage. PROGRESS members interested in historic sites associated with Britain’s radical past may like to consult Peter Clark (ed),The Lefties Guide to Britain (Politico’s Publishing, 2005). It includes a foreword by Michael Foot, chapters on different regions plus a gazeteer of historic sites and places in Britain. I contributed the chapter on Radical London.
“Jon Cruddas made reference to England’s radical and socialist history in a good speech a few weeks ago; everywhere it is being eroded and forgotten”. Does Jon Cruddas recognise that there is such a thing as English? Many on the left believe that English is racist. Maybe the left should start to stand up for the English rather than deny our existence. Fly the English flag not just at the world cup, vote for England to have its own government rather than being governed by the British many of whom couldn’t give a monkeys about England and would rather it disappeared completely!
As well a reminding others of the radical past, we need to connect ourselves with our heritage and its ideas. The mutualism of the friendly societies, the radical democracy of the Chartists, even perhaps the land reform demands of the early Labour party and Radical Liberals. Much of it remains relevant.
Keir Hardie Avenue, Robert Owen Avenue, Lansbury Place All in Cleator Moor, Copeland, Cumbria
Remember too the diggers and all those that they have inspired. remember too the garden city movement, not just about town planning but a social project to create a better society, things which have inspired the world.