by Paul Feeney
Each and every family knew of some unfortunate person who had been killed during the conflict or had his or her home destroyed, and there was still a lot of grieving to be done. The young had been forced to grow up quickly and to do without many of the frivolities usually enjoyed as part of one’s youth. Everyone sacrificed a lot over a long period of time to help secure our country’s freedom and to create a safer world for future generations to live in. These young men and women now yearned for the dawning of a new Britain – one that would be filled with opportunities to improve their standard of living and provide a better future for all – and they had helped to lay new foundations on which their children could grow up and prosper without the dreadful burden of war hanging over them. Parents could now happily leave their new-born babies in prams outside their street doors to enjoy the fresh air without fear of enemy bombing raids and the resulting pollution. People were at last able to plan for the future in the knowledge that employment prospects were good, housing and social services were destined to improve, and the country was a safe place in which to live and bring up children.
There were lots and lots of new-born babies in the mid- to late forties. Most were either planned or allowed to happen but there were also many surprise and unwanted pregnancies. The country was in a triumphant mood and young adults had lots of pent-up tension to release at a time when methods of birth control were limited and unreliable. It was inevitable that there would be unwanted pregnancies and that some young couples, and principally young women, would have to suffer the consequences for their moment of unbridled passion. Sadly, countless numbers of young unmarried girls were left holding the baby, the fathers having either disappeared altogether or ducked out of their parenting responsibilities. In those days, there was a real stigma attached to an unmarried woman giving birth to a baby. Whether the father was on the scene or not, the child was still considered to be illegitimate and would be referred to as a bastard. It was regarded as shameful to have a child outside of marriage and it brought scandal on the whole family. As a consequence, pregnant young girls were often spirited away to ‘unmarried mothers’ homes where they would be pressured into giving up their new-born baby for adoption. This practice continued on into the fifties.
All in all, there was a huge increase in births after the war, peaking in 1947 when the annual birth rate rose to just short of a million. The increase went some way to repopulating the nation, which had been reduced by 450,000 during the war. By the end of 1947 the UK population was 49.4 million, rising to 50.2 million by 1952. All those born from 1946 to 1952 were to make up what would become known as the first wave of the post-war baby-boomer generation. More baby boom periods would follow in the late-1950s and through to the mid-1960s, but the period immediately following the war is the time that most people associate with the birth of the baby boomers. It was these babies who were to become the innocent children of the fifties and the pioneering teenagers of the 1960s. Born to parents who had only known hardship and suffering for most of their lives, it was hoped that these baby boomers would grow up in a safer world that would be full of opportunity.
The nation was eager to get started on rebuilding the country’s damaged and worn-out cities and to help create the new dawn that had been promised for us all. However, within two months of Churchill being hailed as the hero of the hour, the British public turfed him out of office. In the July 1945 general election, the people of the United Kingdom decided that the man who had led Britain so well in war was not the man to lead the nation in peace, and instead they elected a new Labour Government into office. Clement Attlee became the new prime minister with a mandate to change the face of Britain, to maintain full employment and greatly enlarge our system of social services. Our parents and grandparents had now started the ball rolling. Their aim was to create a better future for us baby boomers. They didn’t know where it would lead but they wanted their children to have greater opportunities and to strive for more than they could have ever hoped for.
Britain in the 1940s allowed few opportunities for young people to better themselves and so their ambitions were usually simple ones: to get a job and put food on the table, the same as it had been for generations. Some managed to break out of the mould but those with limited education would more often than not become industrial workers doing some sort of manual work, which would usually mean performing the same tasks on just one machine for the rest of their working lives. There was plenty of work available but where you lived often determined the type of work you did. If you grew up in a mining village then from an early age you were destined to go down the mines. A grammar school education was a route to a profession, but for most working-class people the idea of developing a career was not something they even thought about. When kids left school at the age of 14 or 15 their only concern was to get a job and to keep it; it was both a matter of pride and necessity to be in regular work. Family members of working age were expected to contribute a sizable proportion of their take-home pay towards housekeeping costs. Many youngsters gave their pay packet to their mum at the end of each week and she would give them back a small amount of money each day to pay for their travel and get them through the day; the rest would go towards the housekeeping. Even highly motivated young people found it very hard to carve out a worthwhile career. British employers were not particularly efficient in the way they ran their businesses. It was all very traditional, following a well-trodden path handed down from the generations before. Managers didn’t go to business school but instead learned their skills through their own boss. This was a hopeless situation because most business leaders were ex-public schoolboys who had no management skills themselves. Nepotism was rife in business and there was a huge gap between management and workers. Men ran industry and they employed men for any skilled and managerial jobs, while women worked on assembly lines, did the typing, ran errands and made the tea. The poor management skills and the short-sightedness of untrained people at the top set the tone for the way British industry was run and helps explained why, as a manufacturing nation, we were achieving such poor productivity. Our manufacturing industry was providing lots of jobs and producing all the right things, but we could not efficiently produce enough. It was difficult for business bosses to see where they were going wrong; many had blinkers on and were living in the past. At the same time, it was difficult for fresh blood to break through the glass ceiling put in place by the ‘old boys’ brigade and any new ideas put forward to change business practices were frowned upon.
It was a hard task for anyone from a working-class background to become a senior manager, and it was almost impossible for women. Many employers shied away from employing anyone who showed signs of having ambition. They tended to look no further than covering an immediate requirement for someone to perform a single task, like an office worker who could add up a row of figures or a girl who could type a letter. A supervisor would be used to keep an eye on workers and make sure they didn’t skive off or pinch anything, rather than devise ways to improve efficiency. A factory worker with initiative was seen as a hindrance rather than an asset; the boss just wanted someone who could operate a lever 1000 times a day. There were also no rules about equality in the workplace. It was quite legal for employers to specify exactly what type of person they were looking for when placing job adverts, including age, gender, colour, religion, height, weight or whatever. And, once employed, there was nothing to protect employees from bad employers other than the limited protection offered by the trade unions, which usually meant the threat of strike action. There were no health and safety rules and no legal requirement for employers to treat workers with respect or to pay them a reasonable wage. Membership of trade unions was an established part of working life in Britain and as our businesses struggled to compete in the post-war world, the trade unions became more aggressive and powerful. There was an invisible barrier between workers and management and there were no common objectives. Industrial workers felt they were hard done-by, often work
ing in dangerous and generally bad conditions, poorly paid and with no job security.
In the 1940s city, the early morning street scene was of men and women trudging to work with smoke drifting from dog-ends hidden beneath hundreds of anonymous flat caps and scarves. Others on bicycles expertly weaved their way through the throng, many gripping roll-ups between their teeth and puffing away as they went. The rush to work was not spurred on by enthusiasm but the need to clock in on time. Work was a necessary chore and for most there was no expectation of job satisfaction at the end of each day and nothing better to look forward to at work the next day. Many had to endure awful working conditions; miners suffered dangerous, dark, dirty and cramp conditions underground, while factory workers risked life and limb on each shift by manually operating unguarded machines for long hours in overcrowded, noisy and dirty factories. A cushy office job wasn’t the perfect alternative, as office workers were closely supervised and often worked in cramped and untidy conditions, forced to breathe air that was usually filled with cigarette smoke. Accidents were an everyday occurrence in the 1940s workplace, especially for the industrial workers.
The homes that many of us early baby boomers were born into in the late 1940s were very simple in comparison to today. Apart from the noticeable absence of any labour-saving machines and electronic devices, there were only a small number of people with television sets; only about 400 wealthy households in and around London had one. At the time, the service from the Alexandra Palace transmitter in North London only covered a radius of 40 to 100 miles on a good day, and even the wealthy families who had bought a television when transmissions first began in 1936 had not been able to switch them on since war broke out in 1939 because the transmitter was shut down and the BBC’s television service only resumed in 1946. The service was extended to cover the Midlands in 1949 but the rest of the country had to wait a few more years. It didn’t really matter because televisions were a real luxury item: too expensive for most wage earners. There was also a newly introduced television licence fee to pay. The television may be today’s main instrument of home entertainment but it was not part of home life in the late 1940s Britain. As our mothers sat cradling us new-born babies in their arms, their only distraction was the soothing sounds coming from a huge valve wireless set on top of the sideboard. Mum’s fireside cuddle and the deep comforting tones of radio were all that were needed to send us off to the Land of Nod.
Houses were by no means cosy, but in between fighting off drafts from every corner of the house our parents did their best to make our early years as comfortable as possible. Having practiced a ‘make do and mend’ way of life for the past six years, they now wanted more for themselves and their children. The restrictive 1940s lifestyle had been forced on them at a very young age and they missed out on so much of their youth. Many of them were still at school when war broke out in 1939 and they were never able to properly enjoy their teenage years. However, the war was now over and they were still young, many in their late teens and early twenties and with their whole lives ahead of them. Times were still hard and rationing was on going but things could only get better. Everybody knew that the country was up to its neck in debt to America and almost bankrupt, so they had no real idea what the future held for them. It was difficult to understand how we were going to get out of debt while at the same time rebuild the country. There were a lot of big hurdles to overcome and it seemed a mountain of a task that would take years to achieve. Although grateful for what they had, they wanted to see improvements in their overall standard of living and as soon as possible. The government wasn’t going to give away any hand-outs and the only option was for them to work hard, even if they hated the job they did. Anyway, the idea that anybody could be privileged enough to live the dream – a job they loved doing in a workplace they looked forward to going to each day and a comfortable home to return to each night – was just a fairy-tale to the post-war working classes, but they knew there had to be a better way of life ahead.
Baby boomers who were born before midnight on 4 July 1948, when the National Health Service (NHS) first came into operation, were more of a worry to their young parents than those born after. Before the start of the National Health Service, there was no free health care. Apart from the elderly and mentally ill who were looked after by local authority-run hospitals, only people with jobs were entitled to free medical treatment, which was made possible under a workers’ health insurance scheme, but the free treatment often didn’t cover other members of the family, even their children. It wasn’t all plain sailing for the workers who were covered under the scheme; they had to pay upfront and claim it back afterwards. Wealthy people could afford to pay for the best treatment or, alternatively, they could choose to take out expensive insurance to protect their families. Everyone else had to save up enough money before they could get treatment, otherwise they had to rely on charities or do what most people did – resort to home remedies, many of which were questionable and sometimes dangerous. There were charity doctors but they usually only gave their services free to the poorest patients; others had to find the money or do without. Those with poor eyesight could buy their spectacles at Woolworth for sixpence. For the pre-NHS baby boomers, surviving the first year of life was a feat in itself, with one in twenty babies dying before their first birthday. And, if the freezing cold houses of wintertime didn’t kill you, there were always the infectious killer diseases like pneumonia, meningitis, tuberculosis, diphtheria and polio. It must have felt like Christmas when the National Health Service finally became operational. It was a great relief to everyone, particularly to women with young children.
On that first morning there were long queues of people waiting for doctors’ surgeries to open. People with long-term medical problems could at last seek help and the nations’ young mothers could now better protect their children’s health. Our health! – the post-war baby boomers: the first generation to enjoy the benefits of the National Health Service.
Childhood Austerity and Innocence
Having endured years of hardship and witnessed the terrible atrocities of war, our parents and grandparents were at last enjoying the freedom and peace they fought so long and hard for. The victory came at an enormous personal cost to British families, with 450,900 loved ones killed during the hostilities, including 60,595 civilians who lost their lives in enemy air raids and rocket attacks, with countless numbers of survivors left physically and mentally scared. By the end of the 1940s, however, the euphoria felt by the victorious British people when the war ended in 1946 had faded into distant memory. Individual families struggled to put their lives back together, while at the same time the whole nation was feeling the pinch as the country faced up to the huge financial costs of the conflict. The war had left Britain up to the hilt in debt to the USA and Canada. The country was almost bankrupt and it was going to take us decades to pay off the combined loans of US$5.52 billion, an amount that would have the same buying power as US$66 billion in 2011 (the final payment on these loans was made in December 2006). We were at peace but most of us were destined to continue living austere lives for the foreseeable future. Although life had not been as easy since the war ended as people had expected, you could still sense that folk had a great pride and loyalty to their country and they seemed to share a common purpose in life. The post-war feeling of solidarity was still very evident around the country and there was a proper sense of friendliness and trust among the people in local communities. Families tended to stay together and live close to one other, and everyone knew their neighbours and had a sense of belonging. There was a great feeling of trust between neighbours and it was common practice for people to leave their doors unlocked when they were in, and to hang a key behind the letterbox when they went out. There were lots of families with small children and so there were plenty of young mothers around to keep an eye out for strangers and for anyone who might be up to no good; it was a sort of unofficial neighbourhood watch. There were plenty of scallywags around but
there were far fewer burglaries and robberies than there are today. With the unofficial band of Neighbourhood Watch and a plentiful supply of Bobbies out pounding their beats, there was a good chance of would-be burglars getting caught and this deterred many thieves. Most people in working-class neighbourhoods had little worth stealing anyway. The vast majority of people had a very strong work ethic with little expectation of getting something for nothing. There were plenty of jobs around and so there was less of an excuse for anyone to steal things. The need to fund a drug addiction was very rare in those days and there was no peer pressure for people to wear fashionable clothes or to have all the latest gadgets and other flashy possessions. Burglars and thieves were not as brazen as they are today; they were much more fearful of being seen in case they were recognised and caught. The punishments were much tougher then, even for petty crimes, and there was the feeling of disgrace at being branded a thief because a tremendous cloud of shame would descend over the whole family of anyone who got into trouble with the police.
Family ties were considered to be very important and people commonly held what would now be considered old-fashioned, down-to-earth values at time when the country as a whole had a good moral structure. It was very unusual to know someone with a criminal record. A high street bank was more likely to get robbed than any working-class family home.