The front cover, with its array of 80s female goths, and its Orwellian title struck a note with me. I love reading about pop culture and about social history. I wish I had realised this when I was a student (an abandoned sociology A'Level, forever my disgrace).
'A brilliant exposé of poverty and politics in Britain today', says the back cover. The book addresses the 'second depression' era,f ollowing on from 1937 Great Britain when George Orwell pioneered investigative journalism by way of travelogue/interviews/political observations up and down the UK. Whereas Orwell exposed the shocking and dire living conditions of the working classes (the coalminers of this era, who faced job losses that all but completely finished the industry off in this country – and their families), Beatrix Campbell approaches the situation from female point of view. That is, the wives of the jobless workers, and the wives being jobless themselves and the effect of all this on working class families.
I did not realise how crassly the government treated women citizens in the 1980s. There are interviews here with women who were effectively forced back into living with abusive male partners, because there was the suspicion that they would claim dole money falsely! Women were instructed to live back with men who had beaten or verbally abused them so that they would not be homeless or without funds to live. There is also the pertinent portrayal of single parent mothers and the stigmatisation of them then (it is probably just as bad nowadays, however), and how people perceived them as grabbing money off the state, when there was no work that would accept them, that is if it was available in the first place.
The coalminers' wives are touched on too. How they fought to get pay equal to the men – when at this time, their work was not seen as equal. They worked as dinner ladies, or did other kinds of physical labour, contributing just as much to their families.
Something that still rings true today, sadly, is how when men are out of work it is seen as a great loss, and damaging to their person – yet if it is a woman, she is simply referred to as a 'house-wife', and it might be seen as a lesser concern. Campbell rightly points out that it would be more helpful if women in these circumstances were referred to as wageless rather than housewives. This thought has certainly had me re-analysing my thoughts about myself/housework/my status as a woman when I have been unemployed. I still remember how Orwell recounted in his book that a certain kind of working class northern man who finds himself unemployed will still get the best seat in the house, not perform any housework alongside his wife, and have perfect leisure, tea on the table, etc!
A brilliant, brilliant book. One that I am sorely surprised has not been reprinted and re-marketed, given its poignancy in the last few years. But I hear that Beatrix Campbell has been working on a book that recounts more recent social/working history, and I relish its arrival in print. Campbell remains an active feminist and campaigning member of the Green Party.
Follow her inspiring blog too:
http://www.beatrixcampbell.co.uk