I grew up in a Lancashire mill town in the 1950s and 60s and I consider that I was fortunate to do so. It was a time when people were much more into politics than they are now. You were either Conservative or Labour (there were only a few Liberals) and which one you were was often part of your identity. By no means were all working class people Labour: some were vehemently conservative and mistrustful of socialism. But as I grew up, I detected a prevailing and palpable anger in the community, more implicit than otherwise, but summed up by the words ‘Never again!’ This sentiment was not, as one might expect, directed against the Second World War and the suffering endured by the populace. It was what happened before the war, namely the terrible conditions endured by millions of working class (especially unemployed) people and their callous treatment by successive governments. So, it came as little surprise to me when, as a boy, I first saw footage on television of crowds booing Winston Churchill during the 1945 general election campaign. Though the nation held him in the highest esteem, he belonged to the rotten political establishment of the pre-war years that had, in the words of Nye Bevan, ‘condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation’.
Love on the Dole is a powerful, angry and utterly depressing story about the poverty, squalor, and hopelessness suffered by workers — employed or unemployed — in those years, and the indifference, injustice and brutality shown by those in power in response to endeavours to stand up for themselves and fight for a better life.
Love on the Dole is a powerful, angry and utterly depressing story about the poverty, squalor, and hopelessness suffered by workers — employed or unemployed — in those years, and the indifference, injustice and brutality shown by those in power in response to endeavours to stand up for themselves and fight for a better life.