[Prodigal Son]

What the Guardian fails to mention here is why Orwell was up to turning in names of communists in the first place. It wasn't for love. This is to demean his reasons.

Orwell was a hardcore leftist who went off to fight against Franco in Spain. He was wounded their by a sniper. He believed in the leftist cause. But then he saw that the communists were not interested in uplifting the little man but simply in attaining power and they were willing to be just as or more ruthless as any other despot to get it.

This was an epiphany for Orwell. He devoted his writing thereafter to trying to demonstrate what was wrong with Marxist movement. It's the leftists own fault that he came out hard against them after Spain. He meant his books as a warning against the very ideology he had held dear and for which he had shed blood.

[Sam Cree]

"the very ideology he had held dear and for which he had shed blood"

Did he no longer hold it dear then? I had supposed he remained a socialist to the end.

[Prodigal Son]

wounded their= wounded there (d'oh!)

[Southack]

"Orwell was a hardcore leftist who went off to fight against Franco in Spain. He was wounded there by a sniper. He believed in the leftist cause. But then he saw that the communists were not interested in uplifting the little man but simply in attaining power and they were willing to be just as or more ruthless as any other despot to get it."

Franco is *STILL* not a subject that Leftists permit their journalists to discuss today. He's far too inconvenient for them. Hitler sent troops and planes to help the fellow national socialist, yet Franco spurned Hitler's cause and ideology as well as spurned Germany itself when it was in its time of need, so Communist sympathizers in the media can't paint Franco as being a Fascist. That makes him very inconvenient.

Franco was clearly a socialist, yet he was opposed to Communism but nor would he side with Fascism. Clearly this painted a dilema for the Communists of that day. Apparently it was also difficult for the earlier Blair to sufficiently hate Franco enough to overcome the warts that he saw in Communism (thankfully).

So Franco was/is inconvenient to the Left. He certainly doesn't get much historical coverage today.