The thing about working to help people emerge from squalor is that the very act of doing so expresses a certain disdain. Deciding to change someone’s circumstances implies that there is something about the way they live, and therefore about them, that must be changed. Paternalistic conservatism, like religion, is built on the notion that you are defective and that Father shall improve you – but for socialists this has always been even more of a problem.
Hence the title of Bill Broady’s historical novel about the creation of the Independent Labour Party (please keep reading, it’s more fun than that sounds). In cities such as Manchester and Bradford, English socialism flourished on the issue of privy middens, communal cesspits from which the solids were removed by the night-soil men (“gong farmers”, as they were known in Tudor times) while the town slept. The poorest streets shared a single privy between four to eight houses.
[See also: A reckoning with Ghislaine Maxwell]
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This article appears in the 17 Jul 2024 issue of the New Statesman, The American Berserk