Outer Party

The Outer Party is a fictional social stratum from the George Orwell novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The Party which controls Oceania is split into two parts: the Inner Party and the Outer Party. The Outer Party makes up approximately 13% of the population of Oceania.

The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party, as are most of the other characters, though he does interact with a few proles (generally objects of contempt or disgust for Party members). The Outer Party represents the middle class in Oceanic society, bureaucrats who do most of the actual work in the Party government and its four ministries. Its members can be identified by their blue jumpsuits.

From a certain viewpoint, the members of the Outer Party, and not the proles, are seen as the worst off of the three classes. They lack the relative personal freedom and simple pleasures of the proles, as they are under constant supervision by the Inner Party, and they do not have the comforts of the Inner Party such as pleasant food, wine, cigarettes, coffee, tea, chocolate, personal servants, convenient transportation, and more comfortable and spacious homes, as well as the privilege to turn their telescreens off. Outer Party members drink Victory Gin, as very little wine reaches them, and they have saccharine tablets instead of sugar (though it is possible for Outer Party members to obtain these in small quantities via a black market that works by stealing from the Inner Party). They smoke Victory Cigarettes, which have a tendency to lose tobacco if not carefully held.