Writer Orwell – Seventy Years Ago Today

According to Orwell’s diaries (as edited by Peter Davison), he spent the early part of July 1942 in Worcestershire while on a week’s leave from his wartime job at the BBC. Seventy years ago today, a Saturday, he would have been travelling back to London so there is no diary entry for that day. However, the previous day’s entry summarises his stay in the village of Callow End, and mentions a couple of local pubs, The Blue Bell, and the Red Lion. Both hostelries, it is good to record in these tough times for pubs, are still going strong. However, both were struggling in 1942 not through a shortage of custom, but due to a lack of beer.

Orwell records, ‘The “Blue Bell” again shut for lack of beer. Quite serious boozing for 4 – 5 days of the week, then drought”. It seems that “The Red Lion”, on the other hand, handled the beer shortage rather differently, Orwell again, ‘…the proprietor explains to me: “I don’t hold with giving it all to visitors…I keep the pub door shut, and then only the locals know the way in at the back. A man that’s working in the fields needs his beer”‘.

Orwell also records another issue that resonates today, that of immigrants taking jobs from the locals. However, the ‘immigrants’ in 1942 were british servicemen, somewhat mystifyingly set to work on the harvest, and Italian prisoners of war. The local’s seem to have viewed the influx of workers with ambivalence. However, the farmers were far from ambivalent, with Mr. Philips (the farmer with whom Orwell stayed) explaining, ‘Well it makes you a bit independent of your own work-people, you see. The work-people, they’re awful nowadays, just do so much and no more. It helps a bit when you get a few (immigrants)…Makes you more independent, like”.

Some things, as they say, never change!