Orwell's Political Vision

2003 marks the retirement year of my colleague and friend of more than thirty years, Professor Graham Maddox, from the University of New England. We first met in the September of 1971, as fellowpostgraduates at LSE, and I have valued his stimulating academic advice as well as his profound humanity and constant support ever since. 2003 also marks the centenary of the birth of Eric Blair (wholater became George Orwell) as well as a renewed interest in Orwell's concern about plain language and truthfulness in the public domain (Glover, 2003, Hitchens, 2003, Watson, 2003). Orwell's grim warnings about the threats to political freedom if we lose meaning in political language were set out during and after the end of World War Two in the 1940s. These ideas were conscripted as ideological ammunition in the Cold War years, and now are enlisted in a new technological age where one great power dominates the globe, and where there are unparalleled means to test, construct and manipulate public opinion through political propaganda.