‘As I write, highly civilised human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.’ So began one of the most famous essays in the English language, George Orwell’s ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’, written almost 70 years ago.
It’s a much-loved essay thanks to its lyrical invocation of ‘English civilisation’: red pillar boxes, bad teeth, the old maids cycling to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn mornings, etc. (John Major ‘borrowed’ some of this language when describing what he loved most about Britain.) But it’s worth pointing out that in most respects ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ was completely wrongheaded. The theme of the essay was that the English class system was impeding the war effort, largely thanks to the incompetence of the public-school educated officer class. England, according to Orwell, was a family with the wrong members in control. If we were to stand a chance of defeating Hitler, the old ruling class had to be put out to grass. ‘What is wanted is a conscious open revolt by ordinary people against inefficiency, class privilege and the rule of the old,’ he wrote.
In fact, no such revolt took place and we still went on to win the war, albeit with a little help from our allies. Orwell’s essay can be read as a veiled attack on Winston Churchill, who was not only the embodiment of class privilege but beyond retirement age when he became Prime Minister in 1940. Orwell can be forgiven for lacking confidence in Churchill less than a year into his premiership, but it is now almost universally accepted that the Allied victory — or, more precisely, the avoidance of defeat before America entered the war — owed much to Churchill’s leadership. ‘I’m absolutely convinced that if Churchill hadn’t been there, the British people would have made terms with the Nazis,’ says Max Hastings, author of the recently published Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940-45.
I’ve just finished reading First Light, Geoffrey Wellum’s memoir about the Battle of Britain, and it flatly contradicts Orwell’s oft-quoted assertion that while the battle of Waterloo may have been won on the playing fields of Eton, the opening battles of all subsequent wars were lost there.
OK, Wellum didn’t go to Eton, but his privileged upbringing and the sense of patriotic duty it gave rise to undoubtedly played a part in his decision to volunteer for active service at the age of 17 and contributed to his exemplary record as a fighter pilot. And he was a fairly typical RAF officer. The young men risking their lives to protect Orwell from the civilised human beings flying overhead trying to kill him were nearly all public schoolboys.
Which isn’t to say the working class didn’t play their part in the Battle of Britain. First Light is full of tributes to Wellum’s ‘salt-of-the-earth’ ground crew. Nor am I suggesting that a ‘socialist’ RAF, staffed entirely by trade unionists, would have fared worse in the Battle of Britain (though it’s hard to believe it could have done much better). I’m simply pointing out that Orwell had very little basis for claiming that the English class system was impeding our war effort.
Orwell is often credited with seeing through the conventional wisdom that prevailed among the left-wing intelligentsia in the 1930s and 1940s, particularly when it came to Joseph Stalin. In the Cold War, he was on the right side. But when he expressed the view that the public-school educated elite were ‘clapped out’ and should be hounded from power he was simply echoing herd opinion.
Few members of the intelligentsia would express such a view today. It’s not that their estimation of Britain’s traditional ruling class has gone up. Rather, their estimation of the alternatives has plummeted. In 1941, Orwell could talk up the virtues of left-wing leaders from ordinary backgrounds without fear of contradiction, but having lived through the Wilson years, the Callaghan years and now the Brown years we are not so naive. According to a poll published this week, historians rank Brown the third-worst prime minister in Britain’s history, just eclipsed by two old Etonians: Eden and Douglas-Home.
Staring up at the sky above my garden 70 years after the Battle of Britain, I’m glad no one is up there trying to kill me. But it’s worth remembering that the few whom we owe so much to were all members of England’s ‘clapped out’ ruling class.
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