Walter Greenwood (17 December 1903 – 13 September 1974) was an English novelist, best known for the socially influential novel Love on the Dole (1933).
Greenwood was born at 56 Ellor Street, his father's house and hairdresser's shop in "Hanky Park", Pendleton, Salford, Lancashire.
Greenwood's parents belonged to the radical working classes; his mother came from a family with a strong tradition of socialism and union membership, and she inherited her father’s book-case complete with its socialist book collection.
During periods of unemployment Greenwood worked for the local Labour Party, briefly becoming a councillor, and began to write short stories, after no longer qualifying for the dole, exhausting his entitlement under the rules of the time.
[5] While unemployed, during 1932, Greenwood wrote his first novel, Love on the Dole, about the destructive social effects of poverty in his home town.
The critic of The Times wrote: Being conceived in suffering and written in blood, it profoundly moves its audience in January 1935 ... it has the supreme virtue in a piece of this kind of saying what it has to say in plain narrative, stripped of oration.
[6]The play had successful runs in both Britain and the United States, which meant that Greenwood would not have to worry about employment again.
[13] Greenwood stood twice as a Labour Party candidate for Salford City Council; he won on his second attempt, in November 1934, securing a seat in the St. Matthias's Ward.