The Road to Wigan Pier

by George Orwell

Once again, here am I, with my middle-class origins and my income of about three pounds a week from all sources. For what I am worth it would be better to get me in on the Socialist side than to turn me into a Fascist. But if you are constantly bullying me about my “bourgeois ideology,” if you give me to understand that in some subtle way I am an inferior person because I have never worked with my hands, you will only succeed’ in antagonising me. For you are telling me either that I am inherently useless or that I ought to alter myself in some way that is beyond my power. I cannot prole-tarianise my accent or certain of my tastes and beliefs, and I would not if I could. Why should I? I don’t ask anybody else to speak my dialect; why should anybody else ask me to speak his? It would be far better to take these miserable class-stigmata for granted and emphasise them as little as possible. They are comparable to a race-difference, and experience shows that one can co-operate with foreigners, even with foreigners whom one dislikes, when it is really necessary.