Number 52- Love on the Dole- Walter Greenwood

 

Many moons ago, in the days when I still had a full head of hair and barely needed to shave once a fortnight, I played Harry Hardcastle in the stage adaptation of this book.

I was kind of aware that it was based on a novel, but I never made the attempt to read the book until the end of last month (sorry, playing catch up)

The story is fairly controversial for the time it was written. The Hardcastle family live in Hanky Park, a massively deprived area of Salford where everyone lives hand to mouth, pawning their family's good clothes every week to afford food. Where siblings share beds regardless of gender, even sharing their parent's rooms in their tiny houses with large families.

Harry starts as a clerk in the local pawn shop but foolishly quits to apprentice at the local factory. Sally works at the mill.  She's described as being a natural beauty and half the male cast of the book are deeply in lust with her, only union leader Larry Meath wants her for her mind as well as her other assets. Sam Grundy, the villainous bookmaker, only wants one thing from her.

We follow the family through nearly ten years of their subsistence. Harry has his own girlfriend and, despite not being married, engages in marital activities with her on a regular basis. The extra marital affairs would certainly have been scandalous at the time, and the very end of the book, with the way Sally is able to lift her family out of the absolute poverty would have raised a lot of eyebrows.

This is poverty porn 1930's style. The copy I read was printed in 1935 which explains the condition. 

A few major takes I got from this book were exactly how much life has improved. Most of the employment tricks used in this book, the hours, the hire and fire policies, the pay, etc would be completely illegal today. The welfare state provides a safety net that we should all stop taking for granted. 

Yet, despite all the differences, there were times when I was thinking that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The attitudes of the well off to the poor, the response to the poor standing up for themselves, and the government trickery to pay the poor as little as they could all felt very familiar even today. 

This is an important yet fairly ignored work. It's basically a UK version of the Grapes of Wrath and deserves more attention. 

The writing is typical of the time it was written. By today's standards it could be described as overwritten, but it's still an easy read. Some verbal tics such as characters ejaculating when they talk raise smiles for the wrong reason.

The dialect the characters talk in might be difficult for some readers, but, having lived in Salford myself for a few decades, I didn't have any issues. I was surprised to learn that the area where I work used to be the local millionaire's row. The main location of the book was demolished in the 60s and 70s and is now a heavy concentration of high rise blocks.

This is a fascinating glimpse at bygone times. Highly recommended.