Love on the Dole

Hanky Park, an area near Salford, Manchester, in the 1930s:

A district ".. Whose pavements, much worn and very narrow, have been polished by the traffic of boots and clogs of many generations....houses cramped and huddled together, two rooms above and two below...?”  

A place where, capitalist, industrial, systems create both a ‘working class’ peoples and the conditions for their existence. For the occupants of Hanky Park, theirs is a grim condition, a bleak existence.

Love on the Dole is an account of a ‘working class’ community set within this district, during the period of:  ‘The Battle of Bexley Square’.  A period where economic depression and the ‘means test’ really mean that poverty is contingent.   

The community of Hanky Park, working class born and bred they are!

We are introduced to the Hardcastle family. Young Harry, dreams of a life away from the Park and the Pawn shop and of an ‘apprenticeship’ in ‘Marlowes’ engineering factory.  However,   on his first day, Larry Meath, a self educated Marxist, warns him:  

“You're part of a graft, Harry, All Marlowe's want is cheap labour, and the apprentice racket is one of their ways of getting it...” 

Soon, his dreams become stifled within the confines of old clothes and a factory floor.  A meagre lifestyle, broken in part, by a new suit purchased by his mother on the never-never   and a trip to the seaside with Helen. Props, that leave him with a baby on the way, a quickie, marriage, a shameful existence of  unemployment  and the  anger  of hunger that erupted in a fight for dignity in: ‘The Battle of  Bexley Square’.

For the women, their:  “lives are dedicated to an everlasting battle with the invincible forces of soot and grime.”  They scrub the floors, pawn blankets and borrow a fiver for a decent funeral for their husbands.

Yet, for all the effort and hope, the shame of poverty seeps in.

"You fell into the habit of slouching, of putting your hands into your pockets and keeping them there; of glancing at people, furtively, ashamed of your secret, until you fancied that everybody eyed you with suspicion. You knew that your shabbiness betrayed you; it was apparent for all to see.”

This is poverty caused by the free hand of capitalism that twisted the fingers that held the pen that wrote government policy. This is shame that gripped the palms that held the swinging batons of the police, the spindly hands that turned the key of the jail cells and the grip on the spades that dug the graves of many.

   From birth, to death the existence of the working classes are portrayed throughout this novel, as one of poverty, shame and death.  Fast forward 80 yrs and readers may draw from this, the cyclical themes of working class feelings of poverty, hope,  shame and hopelessness. For this reason, many have found little hope in this novel, preferring to point out the ridiculing nature of capitalist systems and their historical mimicry.  They point out the economic cuts of the 1930s and austerity measures, factory owners and corporate interest, apprenticeships and zero hour contracts, means tests and benefit sanctions and soup kitchens? Well... more  soup kitchens and food banks. Nothing, critics may argue, appears to have changed. 

An Economic Depression?

As Larry Meath, foretold: “government economies ay! Who are they economising on ? on you ! And when they economise on you they are robbing your wives and kids of bread!

An Endemic Working Class Depression!

...what are you going to do about it?’

I quote:  Mrs Hardcastle when she says, “…one day we’ll all be wanted. The men who’ve forgotten how to work and the young ‘uns there must be no Hanky Park, no more.” 

Eh, Gal!  That’s true!  Take Unity! Take Hope!

There is and should always be a committed, firm unified spirit of HOPE!

After all, without a firm unified spirit and hope, what are the working classes to become?

‘Love on the Dole’

  A novel ready for reading