Technicians and Workers

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Orwell Society member Michael O’Sullivan offers us his analysis (first published in 2020 in the RN Artificers’ journal Fisgardian) of the technical world and the need for skilled workers. We prefix it with two observations by George Orwell and then with Robert Colls’ description of the present as it has descended even from 2020.

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‘There are people (Tennyson is an example) who lack the mechanical faculty but can see the social possibilities of machinery. Dickens has not this stamp of mind. He shows very little consciousness of the future.’

(‘Charles Dickens’, 1940)

‘The place to look for the germs of the future England is in the light-industry areas and along the arterial roads… To that civilization belong the people who are most at home in and most definitely of the modern world, the technicians and the higher-paid skilled workers, the airmen and their mechanics, the radio experts, film producers, popular journalists and industrial chemists. They are the indeterminate stratum at which the older class distinctions are beginning to break down.’

(The Lion and the Unicorn, 1941)

‘But much has changed since [the death of George Orwell], not least what we mean by “ordinary” and the erasure of the industrial working class… ’

(George Orwell: Life and Legacy by Robert Colls [2026], p162)

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Socrates and Artificers

Knowledge and Application

Britain has become a post-industrial nation; it appears to pride itself on the fact. This needs to be examined in terms of necessity and of the requirement needed within society to maintain its social fabric and economy. As a country we are still heavily reliant upon infrastructure built by the Victorians, and in terms of cultural assets those built in the medieval period. To be able to maintain a culture practicality is paramount, but culture and society, in the first instance, need to be created.

The Athenian state thought it necessary to silence Socrates. His teaching of a liberal view was considered by the state to encourage dissent. But Socrates’ belief was that society should evolve through liberal forms of appreciation. Liberalism, in a contemporary societal sense, therefore, could be allied to an understanding of the social contract as appreciation of the creation and maintenance of a culture. As such, those whose education had been based upon liberal consideration should be the first to understand that society would need to be protected.

My respect for Artificers lies in their capability and their work ethic, developed by the state in the protection of society. It appears now there is little disparity between intellect and capability regarding societal need. This would appear to be the view within education, practical considerations being managed, it is thought, through forms of artificial intelligence. Regarding need, synthesis, the accepted position of education, or antithesis, if intellect is positioned against capability, might require those with liberal appreciation to take on the challenge of production and protection. Engagement, however, would necessitate capability, an appreciation of the ability and effort required in the creation of a national culture, an economy, and the ongoing need of protection, being fundamental in maintaining and developing a society.

Within any society primary provision is paramount, the ability of a state to create wealth and through the social contract provide services and protection to its citizens. When capitalists react and investment moves to more lucrative locations the nature of provision might require attention. This may be considered, possibly, within the sphere of application, the shared responsibility of labour/work being one way to balance the loss of investment revenue. Knowledge, in this regard, would encompass innate ability, the ability of those whose skills extend and are expressed naturally through practical capability.

An elitist attitude and an increasingly dependent society would appear to disregard the importance of provision; this being supplied through globalisation by the market and third-party procurement. This dependence requires the least amount of knowledge and effort in the supply of primary provision.

Promoting skill training as utilitarian practice, ‘actions are right if they are useful to the majority,’ recognises the importance of capability within the social contract; skilled work affords protection for society and the state. An appreciation of this concept creating benefit would need to be gained through imaginative process if not through learning/experience, the connection of one idea to another to initiate an understanding.

In John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy (1848) he suggested that ‘an economy is reliant upon production, the distribution of goods and exchange.’ The value of labour in the creation of all aspects of an economy should be recognised and understood by all within society; both Mill and Marx advocated that labour was the source of profit. Mill was creating a philosophical argument: from an egalitarian viewpoint skilled labour, the arm of necessity, could be seen as being above rhetoric in importance within society. Workers should be informed of Mill’s understanding in realising their place in society. Philosophically this understanding would, in principle, be a priori, in that without developed skills society would founder.

Necessity is defined within philosophy and the law as; ‘that which cannot be otherwise’.

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Michael O’Sullivan MA IA(Eng) FRSA is a member of the Orwell Society. The views in this article are his own.