Love in the time of Cameron
Two, seperate but entwined views from John Harris in the Guardian. Firstly, a look at Walter Greenwood's classic tale of poverty in 30s Salford, Love on the Dole, looking too at the same area of Salford now and finding more deprivation and despair. I lived in the same part of Salford myself for a year, and can only agree. But however grim it, and similar places remain, it's set to get still worse, as examined in the second article. All the small progress of recent years, insufficient as it is, is about to vanish, as misery multiplies with this government's cuts. Naked class war, yet too few are seeing the emperor's new clothes. Public school boys Cameron and Clegg are about to put the boot into the poor, blaming and punishing them for the economic catastrophe for which their insectoid hooray pals in the banks are in fact responsible.
Love on the Dole, and The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists were books chronicling the human misery caused by laissez -faire capitalism - both went on to greatly inspire those who fought and won against it, battles resulting in the heroic compromise of civilised social democracy. As we sink further into a blank night of neo-Victorian sadism, my greatest hope in a hopeless time is that a novel gestates, one which will illuminate the sordid ignorance of this time just as Greenwood and Tressell did for the ages before. And I hope people will look back at the years ahead with the sad, angry incredulity with which we look back at theirs.
