The Road to Wigan Pier Revisited

George Orwell's Road To Wigan Pier documented poverty in 1930s Britain--75 years later, a journalist travels the same route and finds just how little has changed

The Road To Wigan Pier is George Orwell's 1937 account of the bleak working and living conditions in the depressed north of England. In describing the misery of the country as it crawled out of a grim recession, he helped fuel a move for change that resulted in the nation's modern welfare state and health service. This year is the 75th anniversary of Orwell's book and the postwar progress is receding. Many parts of Orwell's book reveal the same conditions as people living in poverty today--people living four to a room, shift workers "hot bedding," employers flouting health and safety rules, and real job insecurity. More than 6 million people in the UK are living in poverty and are working. The author follows Orwell's original path and spends time with the people hit by the changes. He discovers shocking poverty, missing community, and a forgotten generation, as well as acts of heroism, imagination, and optimism that offer hope and faith.