How To Be A Liberal: The Story of Freedom and the Fight for its Survival

by Ian Dunt

Spain made Orwell realise that Stalinism and fascism were equivalent evils. ‘The Spanish war and other events of 1936–7 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood,’ he said. ‘Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism.’ In the years to come, conservatives would seek to downplay Orwell’s socialism, so he could be turned into a typical anti-Soviet figure of the Cold War, but that was to misunderstand him. He was a socialist, albeit one with an unshakeable commitment to personal freedom. ‘I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential,’ he said, ‘if we wanted a revival of the socialist movement.’ But he wasn’t simply a socialist with liberal sensibilities. He was something else, something really quite unusual. He had split himself in two. There was the civilian, who fought for socialism. And then there was the writer, who was a liberal, by professional duty.