For Winston, the protagonist of George Orwell’s 1984, all hope for change lay in the “proles”. Only in those swarming, disregarded masses could the force to destroy the Party be generated, he wrote.
One wonders what Winston would have made of the 100 or so protesting ‘proles’, gathered in London’s Portobello Road, on 3 November. Would he have been angered or amused or disappointed, by the presence of more policemen on the scene than protesters?
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