Only Revolution Can Save England

Abstract

Orwell regarded the approach of war between the European powers with considerable trepidation. He considered the coming conflict as a clash of rival capitalist imperialisms, in the course of which Britain would inevitably proceed down the path towards totalitarianism. His attitude was very much informed by his understanding of developments in Spain. There he had seen a revolution forcibly suppressed by the Communists and their allies and an authoritarian regime established in power behind the Republican lines long before Franco’s final victory. In the event of a European war, this experience would, he believed, be repeated on a larger scale, involving the inevitable suppression of democratic liberties in Britain. In early March 1939 he wrote to the anarchist and art critic Herbert Read that, over the next few years, war or the preparations for war would result in ‘a fascizing process leading to an authoritarian regime, i.e. some kind of Austro-fascism’. The greater part of the left would, he believed, associate itself with this fascizing process just as it had gone along with Communist suppression of the revolutionary left in Spain. Support for the war effort would ‘ultimately mean associating themselves with wage reductions, the suppression of free speech, brutalities in the colonies etc.’ There was, he concluded, ‘not much hope of saving England from fascism of one kind or another’. Nevertheless, ‘one must put up a fight’. Orwell attempted to enlist Read’s support for preparations for underground propaganda activity in the event of a crackdown on the anti-war left.¹ He was personally determined to oppose the coming war and actually wrote an anti-war pamphlet, no copies of which have so far surfaced. This stance was to be dramatically abandoned.