http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/30/eliot-george-orwell-animal-farm
Piece in The Guardian today, which reveals T.S. Eliot’s letter to George Orwell, explaining why Faber and Faber would not be publishing Animal Farm. This, after Orwell’s publisher of many years, Victor Gollancz had already rejected it for the same reason: it was not a good idea to be critical of Stalin if you wanted to address a left-wing audience.
All the great and the good of the left (H.G. Wells, Bernard Shaw) were queuing up to say what a splendid chap Stalin was at the time. If you were against the fascists, it seems you had to be for Stalin.
Michael Foot, the future leader of the Labour party, saw through Stalin as well. He was forced to resign from the Tribune for not taking the Communist Party line.
Its not hard to see where Orwell got his ideas for ‘right think’ and ‘wrong think’ in 1984. And worth remembering that our most cherished liberal ideas may be dead wrong – just because we think the opposite of our political opponents, that we have no guarantee of being right.
