A brief general history of the UK paint industry: Part 10. Nineteen Eighty‐Four; realpolitik in the can

In 1949, Eric Blair published Nineteen Eightf‐Four, his last novel; shortly afterwards he died of tuberculosis, say the myth‐makers. Smoking up to sixty black‐shag cigarettes a day which he rolled himself, who really knows what took him? Anyway, in his novel he quite seriously prophesised all sorts of nasty things with which the sophisticated readers of these columns will be familiar. In reality 1984 saw those of us prepared to take Boxer's advice, in reasonable individual clover; moreover, those unable (for any reason) to get up and go or too idle to compete, were doled to new heights. Agreed the miners were thumping their fellows and the police. Even so, without the violence, it amounted to nothing more than a series of little local difficulties, well contained by the best peacetime government since Disraeli's last administration.