Do members of today’s Labour Party read George Orwell? It seems unlikely. Leftists who read (or have read) Orwell don’t make very good Labour Party members. Those who have read his famous study of poverty in Northern England, The Road to Wigan Pier, would find it especially difficult to listen to most of today’s Labour people with a straight face. Orwell’s description of the typical Labour activist, though written more than 80 years ago, still rings true.
He begins by drawing the reader’s attention to:
[T]he horrible, the really disquieting prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw toward them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.
