Was Gareth Jones's name behind Orwell’s naming of ‘Farmer Jones in Animal Farm?

A hypothesis by Nigel Colley, February 2004 

‘Farmer Jones’ in Animal Farm obviously alludes to Tsar Nicolas, but it is thought by Jackie Jura, an Orwellian expert at Orwelltoday.com, who believes that Orwell, had Gareth in mind behind his specific choice of surname http://orwelltoday.com/garethjones.shtml.  

In a recent email, she wrote: “In the most recent biography - INSIDE GEORGE ORWELL, by Gordon Bowker, he mentions on page 385 that one of the influences on Orwell in the writing of 1984 were the writings of Eugene Lyons...  I think that more or less clinches that Orwell was aware of Gareth Jones and what had been done to him.” [I.E. – the ‘damning Jones as a liar’ episode]  

In an earlier email dated 15^th January 2004, she initially wrote: “it struck me that Orwell HAD mentioned Gareth Jones after all in the character of Farmer Jones in Animal Farm!!  Just like how the Communists had killed the Tsar and all his family, so too had the Communists just as ruthlessly and cruelly killed Gareth Jones. And so Orwell gave the Tsar character the name of Jones.  It is so obvious!!” 

As background to Orwell’s own thinking, in his 1945 essay “The Prevention of Literature”, when speaking on Political Press journalism, Orwell might well have possibly being thinking of Gareth when he wrote (http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/essay/prevention.htl ):  

“A heretic-political, moral, religious, or aesthetic-was one who refused to outrage his own conscience. His outlook was summed up in the words of the Revivalist hymn:

Dare to be a Daniel

Dare to stand alone

Dare to have a purpose firm

Dare to make it known 

To bring this hymn up to date one would have to add a 'Don't' at the beginning of each line. For it is the peculiarity of our age that the rebels against the existing order, at any rate the most numerous and characteristic of them, are also rebelling against the idea of individual integrity. 'Daring to stand alone' is ideologically criminal as well as practically dangerous…” 

Or later in the essay: 

"…Freedom of the intellect means the freedom to report what one has seen, heard, and felt, and not to be obliged to fabricate imaginary facts and feelings."  

Also, in the same essay, there is a clear reference, in part, to Walter Duranty:  

"The fog of lies and misinformation that surrounds such subjects as the Ukraine famine, the Spanish civil war, Russian policy in Poland, and so forth, is not due entirely to conscious dishonesty, but any writer or journalist who is fully sympathetic for the U.S.S.R.-sympathetic, that is, in the way the Russians themselves would want him to be-does have to acquiesce in deliberate falsification on important issues." 

Orwell clearly knew of a press cover-up about the famine as in his 1945 Proposed Preface to Animal Farm he wrote: “…it was considered equally proper to publicise famines when they happened in India and to conceal them when they happened in the Ukraine. And if this was true before the war, the intellectual atmosphere is certainly no better now.”

Therefore I argue that Orwell, clearly well-read on the subject of the famine, though having never visited the USSR, must have known of Gareth’s role in exposing of the famine, through: Gareth’s own April 1933 articles in the Daily Express, Gareth's May 8^th 1933 letter to the editor of the Manchester Guardian (http://www.garethjones.org/soviet_articles/peasants_in_russia.htm), Eugene Lyons’ book “Assignment in Utopia”, Muggeridge’s “Winter in Moscow” [where Gareth is alluded to as the heavy drinker (Gareth was actually a teetotaler) ‘Wilfred Pye’ (c.f. the alcoholic Farmer Jones)] and finally, through Duranty’s March 31^st 1933, denigration of Gareth in The New York Times, “Russian’s Hungry, but Not Starving”.  

In my mind, what clinches Orwell’s ‘Mr. Jones’ being named after Gareth Jones is that Orwell would have seen the unusually high number of times the word "Mr. Jones" was used within Duranty’s NYT hastily written and brief article:

1. "Its Author is Gareth Jones..."
2. "Mr. Jones is a man of a keen and active mind,"
3. "...but the writer thought Mr. Jones's judgment was somewhat hasty"
4. "But to return to Mr. Jones."
5. "Since I talked to Mr. Jones..."

Then Gareth’s stinging reply to the New York Times’ Editor of the 13^th May 1933, was simply entitled: "MR JONES REPLIES"...

In itself, this is not proof of a direct relationship but perhaps also consider the first two words of the book: "MR JONES of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes." On a welsh farm, Mr. Jones would have been an appropriate common name for a farmer, on Manor Farm, a typical English farm, however, where Animal Farm is supposedly set, then Mr. Smith would have been far more appropriate, or otherwise a name directly alluding to Tsar Nicholas, such as Farmer Nick would have been much more apt.  

Finally, it is a complete misnomer that Orwell ever wrote the phrase ‘Farmer Jones’ at all in his book, his farmer is only ever known as “Mr. Jones”…  

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Also see Nigel's Colley's appraisal of Orwell's symbolism of the Holodomor in Animal Farm - Click HERE

With much gratitude and many thanks to Jackie Jura of the Orwell Today website for her knowledgeable Orwellian advice in helping to confirm my long-held belief of a probable link between Gareth and Orwell's 'Mr Jones' in Animal Farm. Please CLICK HERE to view our correspondence on this subject at her website.