1984 - Planet eBook

about with a gang of lackeys who——’The old man brightened again.‘Lackeys!’ he said. ‘Now there’s a word I ain’t ‘eard sinceever so long. Lackeys! That reg’lar takes me back, that does.I recollect oh, donkey’s years ago—I used to sometimes goto ‘Yde Park of a Sunday afternoon to ‘ear the blokes makingspeeches. Salvation Army, Roman Catholics, Jews, Indians—allsorts there was. And there was one bloke—well, Icouldn’t give you ‘is name, but a real powerful speaker ‘ewas. ‘E didn’t ‘alf give it ‘em! ‘Lackeys!’ ‘e says, ‘lackeys ofthe bourgeoisie! Flunkies of the ruling class!’ Parasites—that was another of them. And ‘yenas—’e definitely called‘em ‘yenas. Of course ‘e was referring to the Labour Party,you understand.’Winston had the feeling that they were talking at crosspurposes.‘What I really wanted to know was this,’ he said. ‘Do youfeel that you have more freedom now than you had in thosedays? Are you treated more like a human being? In the olddays, the rich people, the people at the top——’‘The ‘Ouse of Lords,’ put in the old man reminiscently.‘The House of Lords, if you like. What I am asking is,were these people able to treat you as an inferior, simplybecause they were rich and you were poor? Is it a fact, forinstance, that you had to call them ‘Sir’ and take off yourcap when you passed them?’The old man appeared to think deeply. He drank offabout a quarter of his beer before answering.‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They liked you to touch your cap to ‘em.