IRONY CAN BE PRETTY IRONIC

'Big Brother' was watching George Orwell

By Graham Tibbetts
George Orwell, the author who coined the phrase "Big Brother is watching you", was himself the subject of intense surveillance by the secret services, documents released on Tuesday disclose.

The creator of Nineteen Eighty-Four, which envisages a day when every person's movements are scrutinised by a totalitarian state, was closely monitored amid concerns that he was a prominent member of the communist movement.

Every aspect of his life came under the microscope during the 1930s and 40s. The scrutiny even extended to his wife Eileen, who had to be vetted before she was allowed to take up a post with the Ministry of Food. Files released by the National Archives disclose that in 1942, Scotland Yard was paying close attention to Orwell, who was then working at the BBC. A report on Jan 20 by a Sgt Ewing of Special Branch charted the career of Eric Blair - Orwell's real name - from 1927, the year of his resignation from the Burma police.
"He drifted to Paris and London and has written a few books on his experiences, under the name of Orwell. He was practically penniless when he found work with the BBC," wrote Sgt Ewing.
Eton-educated Orwell, who considered himself an anarchist in the 1920s, used his experiences of sleeping rough for the basis of his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London.
As his political views swung towards socialism in the 1930s he was commissioned by the publisher Victor Gollancz to write a book about the conditions of the working classes in the north of England.
According to police, when Orwell reached Wigan in Lancashire the local communist party helped to find him accommodation.
Before The Road to Wigan Pier was published, the author enlisted to fight against the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War, where the brutal actions of the Soviet-backed communists turned him into a lifelong anti-Stalinist.
Working for the BBC during the war, Orwell was placed in charge of the Indian section of the Middle East Department.
Sgt Ewing wrote: "This man has advanced communist views, and several of his Indian friends say that they have often seen him at communist meetings. He dresses in bohemian fashion, both at his office and in his leisure hours."
However, the report, countersigned by a superintendent, was treated with scorn by the security services.
The minutes of a telephone call in February 1942 shows a security service officer, W. Ogilvie, challenging the Special Branch report and highlighting inconsistencies with Orwell's published views.
Mr Ogilvie added: "It is evident from his recent writings - The Lion and the Unicorn and his contribution to Gollancz's symposium The Betrayal of the Left - that he does not hold with the Communist Party, nor they with him."