Love on the Dole

by Walter Greenwood

In Hanky Park, near Salford, Harry and Sally Hardcastle grow up in a society preoccupied with grinding poverty, exploited by bookies and pawnbrokers, bullied by petty officials and living in constant fear of the dole queue and the Means Test. His love affair with a local girl ends in a shotgun marriage, and, disowned by his family, Harry is tempted by crime. Sally, meanwhile, falls in love with Larry Meath, a self-educated Marxist. But Larry is a sick man and there are other more powerful rivals for her affection.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, British Literature, 20th Century, Historical Fiction, Historical, Novels

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1933

About the author

Greenwood was born in Hanky Park, in Pendleton, Salford, Lancashire, the son of radical working class parents. His father died when he was nine, and his mother supported him by working as a waitress. Like many children he left school at the age of 13 to work (as a pawnbroker's clerk). He took a succession of low paid jobs, and continued to educate himself in Salford Public Library. During periods of unemployment he worked for the local Labour Party and began to write short stories.

While unemployed, he wrote his first novel, Love on the Dole, in 1932. It was about the destructive social effects of poverty in his home town. After several rejections, it was published in 1933. It was a critical and commercial success, and a huge influence on the British public's view of unemployment. It even prompted parliament to investigate, leading to reforms. The popularity of the novel, which was adapted as a play that had successful runs in both Britain and the United States, meant Greenwood would not have to worry about employment again.

The script for the 1935 Sydney Howard comedy, Where’s George? was written by Greenwood although it had none of the social commentary of his other work.

Greenwood was engaged to a local Salford girl Alice and stayed in Salford for a while, where he served on the city council, but soon moved to London. He abandoned his fiancée who sued him successfully for breach of promise. In 1937 he married Pearl Alice Osgood, an American actress and dancer.

During the Second World War Greenwood produced films through Greenpark Productions Ltd for the British government, and served in the Royal Army Service Corps. 1944 saw the publication of Something in my Heart, and the end of his marriage to Pearl.

After the war he wrote the Trelooe trilogy – So Brief the Spring (1952), What Everybody Wants (1954) and Down by the Sea (1956) – and a few plays: Cure for Love (1945, filmed 1950), Date of West End opening "12 July 1945" Too Clever for Love (1952) and Saturday Night at the Crown (1958). He also co-wrote the film Chance of a Lifetime in 1950, in a similar factory setting to Love on the Dole. In 1951 his book Lancashire in the County Books Series was published by Robert Hale. It has only five chapters of which the first four are short and the fifth (pp. 42-298) contains descriptions of the larger towns and a selection of other places. He retired to Douglas, Isle of Man in the 1950s, and wrote an autobiography There Was a Time (1967) which became a play Hanky Park (1968).

His manuscripts and letters are archived in the University of Salford's Walter Greenwood Collection.

He died in Douglas, Isle of Man on 13 September 1974 aged 70.

Reviews

[John Eliot · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Mother was ten when this novel was written. I know from what she told me about her childhood that she lived in similar circumstances. A child died, the neighbours went to see the laid out body in the coffin on the day of the funeral. The little girl was dressed as a bride of Christ. My grandmother, I was told was absolutely furious. The child had died because of her poor circumstances, and my grandmothers anger was that the child never wore clothes such as these when she was alive. And this novel, although reads as fiction is obviously based on truth. Poverty such as described in the novel existed and sadly still exists.
I could not give the novel 5* as it ended a little to on a higher note for the main characters. The author, say like Orwell in 1984, wasn't brave enough to take his realism to a depressing end. The difference between genius and simply an excellent author perhaps.
Those who never read, have no understanding of others and the situations they find themselves in. A relative of mine never reads; he has no sympathy for others, votes Conservative. He and May and her millionaire cabinet should be fed this novel for breakfast dinner and tea.
A must read.

[Nigeyb · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have recently been reading a lot of 1930s-1940s English fiction - most of it set in and around London. It was interesting to shift geographically up to Salford in the North West. Love On The Dole's dialogue is written in a Northern vernacular & it took me a while to adjust.

This book was published in 1933 and there is a wealth of great period detail but it is the overriding impression of grinding, unremitting poverty that is most powerful. The story is fairly predictable and is centred on the hopelessness and despair of the main characters.

The book's main strength is as a social document of a dreadful, pre-welfare state world, and a reminder of how we must preserve this hard-won social safety net.

By the way, Love on the Dole, was Walter Greenwood's first novel and has never been out of print since. He wrote in on scraps of paper as he tramped the streets looking for work. The authenticity of his own experience imbues this book.

[Mark Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

'A living corpse; a unit of the spectral army of three-million lost men'.

Salford, 1930's. Sterile, bleak and chill

Amidst the Great Depression, Mass unemployment and Grinding poverty - siblings Harry and Sally Hardcastle attempt to find their way.

Mazes and jungles of tiny houses huddled together.
Public Houses by the score where 'forgetfulness lurks in a mug'.
Pawnshops by the dozen where you can 'raise the wind to buy forgetfulness'.

Greenwood paints a grim picture of life in a northern town in the early 20th Century, a time after 'local men made their millions out of cotton and humanity'.

Unvarnished, raw, haunting. Such a brutal depiction of life for those who fell through the net. It's rare to find a five-star book but this is definitely one of them for me. A moreish storyline, very unnerving, and sadly far too many similarities nearly a hundred years on.

[Jean Hardee · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know the astronaut meme where they're staring at "history" and the one with the gun to its head says "wait it's all class struggle" and the one holding the gun says "always has been". Basically that, but in a book about industrial Salford

[Troy Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Undoubtedly one of the most honest and vivid portrayals of life in England’s industrial north between the wars. It is genuinely heart breaking to think of how so many people’s lives at this time were spent in constant poverty. This is a tremendously powerful book that will stay with me.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Altogether, a pleasant place, marred by activities of unpleasant people whose qualities, perhaps, are sad reflections of sadder environments.”

Love on the Dole centres on the Hardcastle family and their neighbours in Hanky Park,a poor part of Salford. Mr Hardcastle, a miner, Mrs Hardcastle a housewife and their children Harry and Sally along with their neighbours represent a working-class economy which was always fragile and was further damaged during the 1930's as a consequences of the Great Depression.

The novel focuses mainly on Harry Hardcastle who having left school at 14 initially works at a pawnbroker’s, a job which he hates because he does not regard it as 'manly' before getting taken on as an indentured apprentice engineer at a local factory, Marlowe's. Harry's indenture is guaranteed for seven years after which he believes that he will become a qualified engineer and as such set for life.

However, as the worldwide economic slump hits the British economy Harry and his peers are dismissed as soon as they qualify for a full wage: ‘they now were fully qualified engineers. They also were qualified to draw the dole’ only to be replaced by younger 'apprentices' who can be paid a lower rate of pay. Harry’s hopes and dreams is now in ruins but initially he is not too downcast as he believes that as a qualified engineer he will be able to get another position but he is soon disillusioned as there is none.

The focus of the novel then shifts to Harry’s sister, Sally, who falls in love with Larry Meath, a qualified engineer and political activist in the Labour party. Larry is relatively well paid, has no dependants and is generally well liked by his neighbours who he helps with troublesome bureaucracies. Larry in short is a good catch. However, just as Harry’s dreams have been shattered so too are Sally’s. Shortly before she and Larry are to wed Larry is also made redundant but worse is to follow when he catches pneumonia and dies.

In the meantime Mr Hardcastle has also been made redundant when the coal mine where he worked closes and the government in an attempt to save money introduces a Means Test and have decided to stop Harry's and his father's dole money meaning that Sally, who works at a local textile mill, is the only family breadwinner. As unemployment increases in Hanky Park, it becomes the rule rather than the exception. To make matters worse Harry's girlfriend, Helen, finds herself pregnant meaning that they have to marry in order to be ‘respectable’.

Larry's demise on the face of appears to be quite a telling. He appears to be Hanky Park's only working-class intellectual and his death on the face of it seems to leave it's residents trapped and apparently with no hope of change.

Although this is a novel that is set in a very specific time in history when the British and the world economy was under considerable strain I believe that its central story still resonates in Britain today. Well paid working class jobs particularly in manufacturing appear difficult to find and even those that exist seem to have been undermined by the introduction of zero hours contracts where workers have no idea from one week to the next what they will earn. We also have a situation where good rental properties are becoming ever more unaffordable for working class people meaning that they are compelled to live in substandard accommodation where over time there rental payments far exceed the value of the property. Also we seem to have an establishment (in this case represented by the social security office staff and the Police) seem to be indifferent to the workers plight. I enjoyed the writers style which to me seems to really capture the despair that they all feel but I also enjoyed the social message that it conveyed. Walter Greenwood had been unemployed for three years when he wrote this his first book and it rapidly changed his life from being an unemployed Salford worker to a best-selling author, a remarkable achievement.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book of 1930s Salford the neighbouring City to Manchester. It shows how hard the life was in Salford and the Hankinson Park area of Salford when the crash of the late 20s came and how disposable life was for the underclass.

It is very much about love, loss and hope for the future, based on real events.

Great read try it

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1933, 'Love on the Dole' became a huge influence on the British public's view of unemployment and social deprivation, and even prompted an investigation by Parliament, leading to reforms. This is a work of fiction, but is very closely based on the lives of real people - Greenwood himself and the people he grew up with - and later studied from street corners - he always carried a notebook with him to make observations for later use.

Although the lives of the residents of Hanky Park seem bleak there is a real feeling of solidarity and community amongst them. They help one another out where they can, even though the majority of them having nothing much to offer. They exist by pawning items on a Monday morning - from the husband’s ‘Sunday best’ to their bed linen - and then reclaiming it on Friday when the men get paid.

Young lads got taken on as apprentices at the local factories at the age of 13/14, only to be laid off as soon as they reach 21 when they would have to be paid a man’s wage. After that, only a few lucky ones get jobs, the rest face life on the dole.

Eventually, even the dole was withdrawn if the ‘means test’ showed that other members of the family earned enough to ‘support’ them. This meant that quite often, daughters would end up supporting entire families - and in reality, her money was not enough to live on.

Despite the rife poverty and the feeling of ‘doom and gloom’ there is plenty of humour amongst the characters too, which is reflected in the story and prevents it from being entirely depressing - and things don’t turn out too bad for the Hardcastle family in the end.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another book set close to home. This one in set in Salford, during the 1930's. I read this described as Cathy Come Home for the 1930's. Now as much as I think that should be the other way around it is a good comparison.

This tells the story of Harry Hardcastle and his sister Sally. They live in 'Hanky Park' one if Salford's industrial slums. There isn't much cheer here. If I magine the setting I think of something similar to an Adolphe Valette scene. Greys, damp and fog.

Harry has 'ideas above his station' and is not too good at thinking an 'opportunity' through. he ends up in the same conveyor belt lifestyle everyone in the area does. Big industry isn't painted very well here.

The book mentions the 'means test' designed to see if people were entitled to the dole. The effects this had on the local population were pretty awful. Greenwood's description of life is by no means an enjoyable read. What is does have is that it feels very real. The characters are well drawn and very believable. Th depressing world in which they live is painted well. This is definitely a book worth reading but not when you're feeling a little low anyway.

[Chris Schmidt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this... a wonderfully vivid account of working class life in Salford between the wars. With all the social history of Orwell's 'Road to Wigan Pier' and the reality of Tressell's 'Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' but with a valuable insight, without excessively heavy political influences, of how life must have been living through true austerity and exploitation. Add to this a strong narrative structure, some beautiful descriptive writing on par with Steinbeck and a cast of characters you truly care about and you have a book that leaves you feeling a better person for having read it.

[Elizabeth Sulzby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love on the Dole is a must-read for students of sociology and class distinction. While it is set in England, it fit quite well with the coal mines in Alabama where I grew up. At the end I compare the sadness in this book with that in The Full Monty, which is advertised in the USA as a "comedy." Wonder what re-viewing that film would elicit from readers in Occupy/99ers.

Greenwood shows how very young boys are brought into factory work before they are of age to work. During those times, they can be hired for what seems like a lot of money to run errands, buy things for the middle or upper management, and then, when old enough, they are hired--all to find that their salary is far below what they made is early to middle teen-agers. These hired men may have become engaged, got "caught" by pregnancy, or other means into marrying and setting up a household--which they cannot support on their pay and they can no longer get the "tips" for running errands as when they were teenagers.

This book is heartbreaking and even more so since the 1930's do not seem so far from the 1990's and early 2000 in factory towns.

We know that in the latter 20th century, people in the USA went into and out of poverty. We did not know until looking back from 2011-ish that more and more people were staying in poverty because of lack of jobs. President Clinton bought into the idea that we had so-called "welfare queens" in the USA so he agreed to legislation that required people on welfare--in particular single or divorced mothers with children--to work after a period of time. However, nothing was done to create appropriate jobs or to raise the training level of workers.

(An interesting tangent is that there were more fraudulent "welfare queens" in cults such as FLDS than in the general population.)

Greenwood also describes how workers in their 20's and 30's were in their prime and pushed to retire soon after, again on the Dole. (Welfare in the USA.) In the USA in 2011, we are debating the age of retirement on social security but only depicting healthy workers. Workers in mines and hard labor factories as well as in some highly polluted industries such as chemical industries--Montesanto's plant in Northern Alabama comes to mind--are hard pressed to reach retirement age at 65. Many have forced retirement and increasingly health insurance and retirement benefits are being stripped away in the 2011+/- economic crises.

Many people in the USA took the movie "The Full Monty" as a comedy, but to me it was a heartbreaking depiction of the loss of factory jobs and the "laying off" or firing of workers and the extend to which this group of men burdened with the loss of their jobs and the humiliation of men whose women still have paying jobs. It is a very sad movie, but with the upbeatness of the comedy of the bar dancing and the comedy of the wives' respect for some of these men. Excellent characterization by Tom Wilkinson and others brings this situation to the attention of people in the USA--now is a good time to thoughtfully re-view that movie.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn't an easy book to read. Set in the early 20th century in a part of Salford, Hanky Park, that many of my friends still remember, the story is an extreme version of what is going on in Britain today. While we may have a more generous safety net for people who lose their jobs, the attitude of government to those on benefit seems not to have changed. The precedence of capital (the economy) over the rights of workers and the short termism of employers and policy makers that would rather see mass unemployment than people in work, earning, spending and paying taxes is key to this novel. Greenwood gets into the minds of the main characters struggling to understand the endemic poverty of Hanky Park, how they are exploited as apprentices, and then dumped on the scrap heap when they become expensive qualified workers, and how the 'boss' system works to favour the few and the people it wants to support - not what you know but who you know.
So, not an easy read in terms of politics and the comparison to today's class system, but also the book is written in dialect. I would imagine it is hard for people not used to the old Salford/Lancashire way of speaking to get to to. Having said that, I really enjoyed this book. Maybe because I know the area, maybe because the politics interests me. But it is also well written and, interestingly, it not only shows the male side of labour and unemployment but the way that women not only kept families' heads above water, but find ways to overcome the dire straits of male unemployment. There's nowt new under t' sun, as tha says.

[Miriam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is certainly radical in its portrayal of unemployment and working class poverty. It is hardbreaking to read abour Harry Hardcastle's perpetual hope that things will go all right, that he will find a job, that he will manage on the dole. This hope is both frustrating for the reader, because it is so far removed from reality, and uplifting in its perpetually positive outlook. While the book as a whole couldn't be called feminist, the ending that Greenwood writes for Sally Hardcastle is still a pleasant surprise and one that seems to go straight against morality norms of the time. She makes an informed decision in order to empower herself, and is not shamed or punished for it by the other characters or by the narrative.

[Camille · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good novel which also doubles as a sociological portrayal of the misery of poor people in the late 1920s/early 1930s.
Several points of view allow the reader to explore this world of poverty from different angles. The fact that all the dialogues are also written in the dialect the characters speak make the writing vivid as you almost hear them speaking.
I really enjoyed this novel despite it breaking my heart a bit!

[Cat Evans · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's grim oop North. No, really... it reads like the Monty Python 'Four Yorkshiremen' sketch. It also felt really patronising towards the demographics it was trying to portray... and deciding to write all your dialogue in dialect and then translating it in parentheses does not make for an easy read.

[Jarvo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book set not so very long and not so very far away, but its remarkable for its depiction of a world that seems completely unrecognizable now. The description of poverty in the slums of Salford is utterly compelling even if the book's more specifically literary qualities (like characterization, plot, and dialogue) are more limited.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to get over just how much impact this novel had back in the day. Before TV, before the Internet, before the kitchen-sink-dramas turned into tropes, there was this book. It brought the North to the South with the force of a tidal wave. Fresh, unvarnished and alive.

[Deanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Think this has been done better by other writers in particularly Tressel, reading the dialogue was interesting but it reminded me of my grandparents.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love on the Dole (1933) might be the last depressing, worthy, important account of the toll and misery of working class poverty I read. Every now and then I suffer flashes of panic that I myself will fall back into it, die poor and struggling. Reading this really doesn't help, and every year older I get the more deeply existential this fear becomes. Especially as I am now too old to escape, like Sal, through becoming a kept woman and making the most of that to help myself and my family.

So thought I'd make the most of this book. But though 1933 is several decades along, it's descriptions are depressingly, distressingly similar to the East End's Mean Streets described by Arthur Morrison, Lambeth's slums from Reeves' A Pound a Week or Maugham's Liza of Lambeth. Things have become a little better from the abject poverty of Manchester in the 1850s described by Engels in The Conditions of the Working Class in England , but while bodies hold together survive a little longer, the soul is still crushed.

They call this part 'Hanky Park'. It is that district opposite the parish church of Pendleton, one of the many industrial townships comprising the Two Cities. In the early nineteenth century Hanky Park was part of the grounds of a wealthy lady's mansion; at least, so say the old maps in the Salford Town Hall. The district takes its names from a sloping street, Hankinson Street, whose pavements, much worn and very narrow, have been polished by the traffic of boots and clogs of many generations. On either side of this are other streets, mazes, jungles of tiny houses cramped and huddled together, two rooms above and two below, in some cases only one room alow and aloft; public houses by the score where forgetfulness lurks in a mug; pawnshops by the dozen where you can raise the wind to buy forgetfulness; churches, chapels and unpretentious mission halls where God is praised; nude, black patches of land, 'crofts', as they are called, waterlogged, sterile, bleak and chill.

The doorsteps and windowsills of the houses are worn hollow. Once a week, sometimes twice, the women clean them with brown or white rubbing stone...Some women there are whose lives are dedicated to an everlasting battle with the invincible forces of soot and grime. (11)

Hanky Park has emerged from the industrial revolution, the modern upheaval of everything driven by capitalist industry and the transformation of stately homes and country fields into factories and ugly homes for the workers they need to work in them. Greenwood writes:

Trafford Park is a modern miracle. Thirty years ago it was the country seat of a family whose line goes back to the ancient British kings and whose name the area retains.Thirty years ago its woodlands were chopped down to clear the way fro commerce and to provide soles for Lancashire clogs; thirty years ago the lawns, lately gay with marquees, awnings and fashionably dressed ladies and gentlemen, were obliterated. The Hall still stands though it now houses only dust and memories and echoes. And the twin lions surmounting either side the wide flight of steps now survey...a double railway track only six yards away, and, where the drives once wound their serpentine paths through the woods, the fungus of modern industry, huge engineering shops, flour mills, timber yards, oil refineries, automobile works, repositories for bonded merchandise, choke and foul the prospect....

A Five Year Plan thirty years ahead of the Russian. Yesterday the country seat of an aristocrat, today the rowdy seat of commerce. Revolution! and not a drop of blood spilt or a shot fired! (158)

This is of course, novel as call to conscience, call to action. There's little room here for the humour, the humanity that got people through these conditions. I'd happily read more of those, like Mord Em'ly , or oral histories of these times where grinding poverty can't efface the cheer and character of everyone. Still, there are too many familiar elements to deny or diminish the power of this reality -- the reason for my panics after all:

In the staring gas light, the women, throwing back their shawls from their dishevelled hair revealed faces which, though dissimilar in features, had a similarity of expression common, typical, of all the married women around and about; their badge of marriage, as it were. The vivacity of their virgin days was with their virgin days, gone; a married woman could be distinguished from a single by a glance at her facial expression. Marriage scored on their faces a kind of preoccupied, faded, lack-lustre air as though they were constantly being plagued by some problem. As they were. How to get a shilling, and, when obtained, how to make it do the work of two. Though it was not so much a problem as a whole-time occupation to which no salary was attached, not to mention the sideline of risking life to give children birth and being responsible for their upbringing afterwards. (31)

I do like how this almost journalistically portrays the changing times, the new fashions, the weekly routines of labour and leisure of both men and women.

Clatter of clogs and shoes; chatter of many loud voices; bursts of laughter. Hundreds of girl operatives and women from the adjacent cotton mills marching home to dinner arm in arm, two, three, four and five abreast. They filled the narrow pavements and spread into the roadway.

A generation ago all would have been wearing clogs, shawls, tight bodices, ample skirts and home-knitted, black wool stocking. A few still held to the picturesque clogs and shawls of yesterday, but the majority represented modernity: cheap artificial silk stockings, cheap short-skirted frocks, cheap coats, cheap shoes, crimped hair, powder and rouge; five and a half days weekly in a spinning mill of weaving shed, a threepenny dance of a Saturday night, a Sunday afternoon parade on the erstwhile aristocratic Eccles Old Road which incloses the public park, then work again, until they married when picture theatres became luxuries and Saturday dances, Sunday parades and cheap finery ceased altogether. (42)

I like how it acknowledges the fascinations of these new factories as young Harry burns to become more than just a messenger:

Machines! MACHINES! Lovely, beautiful word! (69)

But still it describes a system of labour that guarantees steady work at lowered wages to women and children, and lays off men to ensure they do not have to pay the higher wages their training (and the simple fact of being men in this sexist world) entitles them to. It leaves them to hang about street corners and pubs and wait in queues for the dole until they are kicked off it through the new and now infamous means test. A government seal on an acceptable level of utmost misery. In this book at least (much like The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists), none of them asking the whys or fighting back except for one. Socialism and struggle showing him glimpses of a better life and how to get there.

He dies.

Worried about whether you have in fact escaped poverty? This is what you need:

That dirty hovel, home? Where else? In all the wide world, of all the sweet dreams and fond imaginings of such homes as were writ or projected at the pictures, of them all, hers was that in North Street.

Dully, insistently, crushing came the realisation that there was no escape, save in dreams. All was a tangle; reality was too hideous to look upon: it could not be shrouded or titivated for long by the reading of cheap novelettes or the spectacle of films of spacious lives. They were only opiates and left a keener edge on hunger, made more loathsome reality's sores. (65)

Then there is this passage, which describes the mix of industry, housing and government offices that marked poor urban areas, reduces its residents to animals, and then more or less compares them to the animals heading in great bewilderment to the slaughterhouse.

An erstwhile reformatory school for erring boys, an ugly, barrack-like building, serves as one of the Two Cities' labour exchanges. Hemmed in on three sides by slums, tenements and doss houses, the remaining side stares at the gas works and a cattle-loading mound, into, and out of which, bleating sheep, cows and bulls, their eyes rolling, their parched tongues lolling, are driven by loutish men and cowed dogs. And the slum children, seeing in the inoffensive creatures a means to exercise their own animal instincts, come out of their dens armed with whips and sticks and stones to belabour the animals as they pass, meanwhile indulging in the most hideous inhuman screams, shouts and howls such as occasions horror in the mind of a sympathetic observer and, doubtless, terrified bewilderment on the parts of the doomed beasts as they, starting under whip, stick and stone, run blindly along the dinning unfamiliar streets finally to find themselves packed, suffocatingly, in wretched cattle trucks.

A high wall, enclosing an asphalt yard, ran round the building. On it was scrawled in chalk, and in letters a foot high: 'Unemployed Mass Meeting Today 3 o'clock.' The handiwork of Communists five or six weeks ago. (153)

If only the unemployed had come in their masses.

The Hardcastles escape from this fate to some extent -- but the moral of that escape is clear. I have great admiration for Sal, after her socialist love and hope dies of consumption she stares her fate in the face (with the help of the older and wiser Mrs Bull). To escape it she becomes a hard-headed woman of business, using her beauty to obtain security as her labour cannot do it for it her. I like that the novel is not sentimental and does not seem to judge her harshly for this. Simply points it out to a world that will, in the hopes that such a fall from grace might spur action where nothing else has.

[Elias · Rating 5 out of 5]

This absolute banger of a book is the summation of Marx’s theory of consciousness in which the material conditions of society shape the ideological outlook of the two contending classes

The book follows the hopelessness of the working class in an English industrial town during The Great Depression, gaslight by the “institution(s) that had grown up out of people’s discontent”. A class, not just enclosed and trapped by the system which thrives on the exploitation of their labour, but further caged in by the back-street bookies and pawnbrokers in which they desperately rely on. The story follows siblings, Harry and Sal, whom over the years conform to the conditions in which they know no else. Demonstrating the polarisation of desire to create a meaningful life in the dregs of a society which material conditions are in a constant state of decay. Showcasing the resilience of the working class and the opportunity to spark mass class consciousness within those who have nothing to lose but their chains!

“It is not consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness”

A lot of yapping on my part, I just thoroughly enjoyed this book!

[Matthew Gurteen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm really surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. It did hit quite close to home for me as I grew up less than an hour away from where it is set. The story felt so real, and I loved both of the main characters (who I would say are Harry and Sally). All of the characters were believable, and even though the story is quite depressing, I found myself engaged with it entirely. Although the book is set in the 1930s, it is incredible how much of it can still be applied to present times. I know the Harrys and Sallys of the world now, which made me connect with it even more. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in sociology especially in terms of poverty in the north of England,

[George Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A strong and saddening account of tough times, with the hope of love shining through.

[Joe Stamber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Walter Greenwood's first novel is a miserable portrayal of poverty in 1930s North-West England. I can't say whether or not it is an authentic account, but it certainly feels authentic. Life for these working-class families is a depressing grind, with no hope of improvement and no way out. Rather than things getting better, they get worse, as unemployment hits and people struggling to get by on a pittance suddenly have to do the same on even less of a pittance. It's a desperate, depressing tale and Greenwood absolutely nails it.

Starting out with Love on the Dole requires a bit of an effort, partly due to its age, but mainly due to the style of the dialogue. Greenwood attempts (and achieves) working-class authenticity by having his characters speak as they would have at the time. This involves a lot of slang and contractions, occasionally clarifying the meaning of a word or phrase by following it with brackets enclosing a more common version. This makes it quite hard to begin with, but it does get easier with the reading.

There are few fleeting glimpses of happiness among the drudgery of the character's lives, and it's not a book to turn to if you want something uplifting. However, the way Greenwood gets into the nitty-gritty of the everyday existence of these downtrodden people really brings them to life and drags you along with them. Love on the Dole isn't a long book, but neither is it a quick read, but persevere to the end and you'll realise how cleverly Greenwood has summed life on the poverty line in the 1930s up.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

love on the dole

Walter greenwood

vintage classics



as a novel it stands very high, but it is in its qualities as a social document that its great value lies. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT



I thought that I would include that review one of many about the book, a society preoccupied with grinding poverty ! now that sound like any country situated on this earth is it about stock market apathy...no falling oil prices, no revaluation of country's after the second world war, no.....wrong again may be its about the great depression that hit the states !....no a third world country then who's politicians think foreign aid is to back up there overseas (secret) accounts .no !!!

what I can say that after it was published, it was banned for 10 years. the words used today would go something like this SOCIAL & POLITCALLY SENSATIVE cause alarm as some publication are doing today and ignorant people are trying to use them for their warped fantasies

it is vibrant in the choice of words , engaging on every page of simple charters and there struggle in the pit holes of industrial strife, with the embers of political change on the horizon



the dvd which stars Clifford evens as the love interest to Deborah Kerr's first film role is an enjoyable film (clips can be found on you tube....)



when was it was published ??? did I not say, in 1936, Salford Manchester u.k

[Chris Hopkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm pleased that so many other readers have also enjoyed Greenwood's novel Love on the Dole and see how important it was. The novel has a significant place in British history, because it quickly became, and has remained, the novel to turn to to show the conditions of British working-class life in the thirties and the terrible impact of the Depression on the lives of individuals as well as whole towns and cities. A.J.P. Taylor refers to the novel in these terms in his widely-read 1965 book English History 1914-1945: ‘Unemployment became … a way of life, commemorated in Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood, one of the few genuinely “proletarian” novels written in English’ (Penguin edition, p.436). In fact, the importance and influence of Greenwood’s writing has not been over-estimated, but considerably under-estimated through various acts of neglect, including that of the fact that we have largely completely forgotten Greenwood’s subsequent writing about working people throughout the nineteen-thirties, forties and fifties. I have just set up a new blog-site dedicated to Greenwood's whole literary career, so if you enjoyed Love on the Dole you might like to have a look and see what else Greenwood wrote afterwards. See https://waltergreenwoodnotjustloveont...

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's summed up on the back as a pretty good novel but, a very important piece of social history. I agree. Like reading English Journey, it is a tragic peek into these stolen lives. It makes me angry to think lives could have been so disregarded. The work these people did in making Britain prosperous should be forgotten when times get rough. Ingratitude. Callous ingratitude. And the tories and this bloody coalition government still have this as their model of how things should be. Fat bosses skimming off the cream and everybody else learning to do as they're bloody well told.

It isn't a brilliant novel but it is a brilliant book. Along with The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, this should be required reading. Caring socialism may be out of fashion. That doesn't mean it was wrong.

[Rhiannon Grant · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this an interesting but not an easy read which is probably why it took me so long; although the narration is in standard English, the character's speech is rendered not just with dialect included (and sometimes, I found irritatingly, explained in inserted brackets) but in a kind of phonetic accent. This serves to create a distinction of class and education between the omniscient narrator and the characters of the book, and thereby a sense of looking down on them or at least at them from outside, which I found distasteful even as I warmed to many of the individual characters and empathised with their situations.

[Ciaran Mcfadden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't know why it has taken me so long to getting around to reading this book as it has been on my "to read" list for years.
Well eventually did pick it up and read it and glad that I did. Excellent book .. a very gritty and realistic description of working class life in North West England during the late 20's and early 30's.
Very well written, good story and strong characters .. Recommended !!

[Adrian Hunt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't really enjoy this book. It was one depressing thing after another (which was the point, I guess) but somehow the characters didn't convince until perhaps the last 20 pages. The choices the characters had to make all of a sudden made them come alive - so that then they were recognisable human beings rather than devices for a political tract. So not two stars but three.

[John Samuel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Been meaning to read this book for years. Took me ages to finish it and left me a little disappointed.

Not sure how relevant Larry's ownership of the means of production is these days.

It's grim up north.