How Britain Kept Calm and Carried On

by Anton Rippon

  They also carried on. The Ministry of Food’s ‘Dig For Victory’ campaign encouraged self-sufficiency, and the number of allotments rose from 815,000 to 1.4 million. The BBC’s Radio Allotment grew twenty-three kinds of vegetable, with weekly wireless reports on progress. Pigs, chickens and rabbits were reared domestically for meat; vegetables were grown anywhere that could be cultivated. By 1940, as we have seen, wasting food was a criminal offence, whether you were feeding bread to the birds or aiming jars of pickles at your wife.

  Meanwhile, the Second World War lifted the status of the humble carrot to an almost mystical level. It became the food that Britons believed could win the war. Curried carrot, carrot jam, carrot pudding, and a homemade drink called ‘Carrolade’ – they were new culinary delights to lift the spirit of a war-weary nation.

  Most of all, though, it was the carrot that apparently won the air battle against the Luftwaffe. Therefore, so far as civilians were concerned, it was the veg that could help you ‘see in the dark’, which was quite useful in blacked-out Britain.

  It started when the government responded to an oversupply of carrots by hinting that the RAF’s exceptional success in night-flying operations was due to pilots being fed high-carotene-content carrots. Even Walt Disney lent a hand, creating a carrot family that included Carroty George, Clara Carrot, and Dr Carrot, for British newspapers to promote the eating of carrots.

  The propaganda worked. The nation flocked to buy or grow carrots. Whether the Nazis also bought the notion, or whether they rightly assumed that the RAF’s success was due more to the increased sophistication of radar, is not clear. It didn’t matter. The problem of too many carrots was being solved.

  Besides its Radio Allotment, the BBC also broadcast a daily five-minute programme, The Kitchen Front, that advised on new food sources and creative recipes – not all of them sounded too appealing.

  And then there was the ‘Black Market’ which actually prospered further when peace was declared because, in the early post-war years, food rationing became more severe. My mother had already made a huge compromise with her morals. Despite being scrupulously honest almost to the point of eccentricity, after war was declared, the Black Market was one area where she soon became happy to dabble on the wrong side of the law. Down our street lived a busy little woman who I knew only as Mrs Potter. She could often be seen scurrying about the neighbourhood after dark, lugging a huge sack on her back. One winter’s evening, I answered the door to her furtive knock, to be told in an anxious whisper: ‘Go and see if your mother wants any tea.’ Naturally my mother did want some tea – or sugar, or butter, or anything else that was on ration – and money and consumables changed hands on the darkened front step. The goods had been stolen, of course, but even otherwise law-abiding housewives desperately wanted to put a little extra on their families’ tables. Keeping calm and carrying on, you see.

  Actually, it was all too easy to break the law. A soldier posted to the Isle of Man took the advice of Lord Woolton and saved up his sugar ration for jam-making. When he was posted back to the mainland, he found that he could not take the sugar with him. In fact a law blocked his every alternative. He could not take it with him because the Ministry of Food refused him a permit. He could not sell it because he had no licence to trade in sugar. He could not destroy it because that was against food regulations. He could not give it away because it was illegal to allow another person to obtain sugar from his ration coupons. A Manx government official stated: ‘We cannot allow all and sundry to take sugar away from the Isle of Man.’ What eventually happened to the soldier’s sugar hoard is not recorded.

  People were desperate for certain items and a lot of bartering went on. One newspaper advertisement read: ‘Swap peach bedlinen for nylon stockings or honey Victorian cheese dish for 1 dozen new handkerchiefs.’ Another said: ‘Set of frying pans for suit for 1 public schoolboy.’

  Some food items became a national joke. In December 1944, solicitors acting for the American company that marketed Spam, the canned pre-cooked meat product first introduced in 1937, complained that a joke by Sonnie Hale in the pantomime Aladdin at Manchester Hippodrome, referring to the smell of burning Spam, implied that Spam was not a suitable food. The Americans obviously thought jokes about Spam had gone too far.

  Then there were pets to think about. At a Home Guard post near the Admiralty, the men adopted a large black cat. It was put ‘on the strength’ and drew a daily allowance of half a pint of milk. Then it was discovered that the cat was already drawing rations from the Royal Navy. The matter was brought to the attention of the Admiralty, and the cat was withdrawn from Home Guard rations

  Of course, if food was in short supply, cosmetics most certainly were. Yet women were still encouraged to maintain a groomed look, even though this took a fair degree of ingenuity. In 1940, a book entitled Technique For Beauty told women: ‘The stress and strain of war can easily make you lose interest in your personal appearance. But it is up to you to take care of yourself for the sake of other people.’ There were also practical considerations. For instance, Pond’s Cold Cream was promoted as a way to prevent women working outdoors from developing ruddy complexions and chapped lips.

  There was also something called ‘day lotion’ produced by Cyclax, one of the oldest cosmetic companies in Britain. The lotion came in wartime shade choices with bewildering names such as Peach, Light Rachel, Rachel, Deep Rachel, Dark Rachel, Sunburn No 1 and Sunburn No 2. Cyclax also produced a burns cream and a camouflage cream, and the company also suffered badly in the Blitz when its factory on Tottenham Court Road was destroyed by enemy action. Surely Hermann Goering wasn’t targeting the cosmetics industry in a bid to ruin British morale?

  I was a shy, freckled child of five or six and an only child at the time. My father was away in the army, so it was just my mother and I.

  I was sent on an errand to a distant shop for a tin of Spam. It seems like it’s miles away when you’ve only got little five-year-old legs! The old dragon who kept the shop snapped from behind the counter: ‘We have no Spam. Take this home instead!’ So I ran home with the precious tin of meat. My mother was less impressed. She yelled at me: ‘What’s this – snoek*? I don’t want blinking snoek. Take it back! What’s she trying to get rid of this for on you?’ I went back into the shop trembling and waiting to be executed by the dragon, who calmly refunded my money instead.

  Brenda Shaw, Hull

  * ‘Snoek’ was popularly claimed to be ‘whale meat’ but was in fact a fish mostly from South African waters. It was just unfamiliar to the British who began to treat it as a national joke.

  I remember reading that a lemon sent home from the Middle East by a Chertsey soldier raised more than £6 when it was raffled in aid of Red Cross funds. A Mrs Lemon won it. That made everyone chuckle.

  BRIAN ORMSBY, LONDON

  I’m relating a story, which my husband always told as if it had happened to us, but it actually happened to a friend of his. Here is the story:

  We received a food parcel from our cousins in Melbourne, Australia. It contained enough dried fruits to make both a Christmas cake and a Christmas pudding. Plus a small unlabelled packet, which I assumed to be spice.

  I made the puddings and cake. Then we received a letter, which we should have received before the fruit parcel arrived. It told us that the fruit was on its way and that a very special package was to be included. A small packet containing the ashes of a dear friend whose dying wish had been to have his ashes scattered from the Clifton Suspension Bridge. There was only one thing for it: the cake and the pudding had to be scattered from the bridge!

  Mrs G. Horner, Bristol

  During the rationing of food, one was always on the lookout for queues to secure anything that was going. A woman asked a man at the end of a queue what the line was for and he told her: ‘Tales of Hoffman.’

  After a moment’s hesitation, she murmured, half to herself: ‘Well I suppose they could always make some soup!’

  James
Walker, Aberdeen

  When I was driving for the WVS, I served a variety of passengers, including Lord Keynes, the economist, and various civil servants, often from the Ministry of Information. Two particular ladies, from the Ministry of Food, always instructed me ‘to bring nosebags’ and we used to sit outside factories munching sandwiches. Usually my passengers would fix a meal where we were going, or sometimes we’d go for a ‘five bob’s worth’ at one of the British Restaurants that were run by local authorities and subsidized to provide nutritious food for people.

  Leila Mackinlay, London

  For seven years I had known the tranquillity of country life when my peace was shattered by the news that Hitler had entered Poland and we had declared war on Germany. I knew I had to do something towards the war effort. I could have become a ‘Land Girl’, but my decision to join the NAAFI was encouraged by a friend of mine who was already a member of the service. With forms filled in and a medical report that said I was A1, I packed my cardboard suitcase and made for my first assignment, which was a barracks where thousands of troops waited for transport to go overseas.

  From a quiet existence I was plunged into noise and people, and for a while I found it hard to accept, but eventually became accustomed to it, and part of it. I was to bake cakes for hungry boys and, under the supervision of another girl, learned the tricks of the baking trade. I made thousands of rock cakes that lived up to their names when they cooled off, thanks to the lack of fat in the recipe. It was surprising what one pound of flour, two ounces of margarine and a few currants could make. Sausage rolls were eaten by the dozen, and a concoction called ‘Nelson’ was a great favourite. This had a pastry base with a bread-pudding filling and a pastry topping. It smelled very good and spicy when it was baked but weighed a ton when lifted from the oven. It certainly kept the soldiers on the ground after they had tasted it!

  However, it was all devoured enthusiastically by the troops, but I was often teased about whose side I was on! One declared I was ‘Hitler’s secret weapon’ trying to kill them off!

  Gwyneth Wright, London

  If news got around that a certain shop had a certain rare commodity, there would be a ‘stampede’ and queues a mile long. I remember stampedes for potato crisps (only one packet per family) and bananas (one per person). The cry would go up: ‘Brown’s have got some custard creams!’ and whoosh, a queue of kids had formed in seconds.

  Brenda Shaw, Hull

  At Christmastime most people took their mixed cake – made from fruit and other ingredients that had been hoarded for months – to the baker’s along the road for cooking. Nanny lived with Granddad in one house, and her two married daughters lived one house away. So, when the girls arrived home to find the cakes had been mixed, they wanted to know what she had done about lemon essence, as this was in their pantry. Nanny said she’d got some in her own pantry, but it turned out to be yellow Brilliantine [a hair product] left there by one of the sons! We’d spent so long collecting all the ingredients that we daren’t waste them, so had the cakes baked anyway.

  Mrs B. M. Hipperson

  One of the most notable things about the war was the shortage of cigarettes. When you could get them, all sorts of unfamiliar names began to appear on packets. One day, a lady waiting in a queue with my mother said: ‘I’m dying for a fag. Can you see any?’

  Regular customers of the shop knew that ‘special’ items were often put aside under the counter or to one side, so my mother leaned over to have a look before spotting yet another unfamiliar brand of cigarettes.

  ‘They’ve got some packets of “Push”’, she answered proudly, not realizing that, in those days before flip-top packs, she was simply reading the opening instructions on the side of the packet.

  Mrs E. Cross, Bexley, Kent

  One recalls the wedding of one of the girls on ‘B’ shift to a young soldier who had been working in another part of the building and then been diverted to REME. Our staff were not supposed to mingle, but love had triumphed and the courtship was largely conducted by him ringing the message room from a phone box at the corner and having a chat to his Mavis when no alert was on. We managed to provide, between us, the necessary ingredients to give her a proper wedding cake. We were all very fond of the Tchaikovsky concerto, which formed one of the records in our gramophone club. Unbeknown to the bride and groom, we arranged for the organist to play this piece when they were about to go and sign the register. Who could forget the incredible joy on Mavis’ face as she halted and stood still until it was finished?

  Leila Mackinlay, London

  I know we had to be inventive when it came to doing our best with whatever food was available. But when I think of some of the things we concocted – fish in savoury custard, mock crab made from dried egg, margarine and cheese, dripping cake – it makes me wonder how we survived the war.

  Beryl Bentley, Derby

  I was working in a newsagent’s during the war but have some notes of letters received at the Milk Office, asking for free milk.

  ‘Please send me a form for cheap milk, as I’m expecting mother.’

  ‘Please send me a form for cheap milk for having children at reduced prices.’

  ‘Please send me a form for free milk. I posted the form by mistake before my child was filled in properly.’

  ‘I have a baby 18 months old, thanking you for same.’

  ‘Please send me a form, I have a baby two months old and didn’t know anything about it until a friend told me.’

  ‘I have a baby fed entirely on cows and another four months old.’

  ‘I have been in bed two weeks with my baby and didn’t know it was running out until my milkman told me.’

  Betty Quigley, Glasgow

  My grandmother was quite a character. She was largely uneducated and caused uproar on many occasions. Her three sons were called up to fight and, because her husband was poorly, she worried about how she would manage financially without her boys’ help. An official called at her house, to reassure Nanny that she would be granted an allotment. Apparently, this bothered her all morning until the rest of the family arrived back shortly after midday. She wailed to them that an allotment would be no use to Granddad, since he had never done any digging in his life!

  Mrs B. M. Hipperson

  My father, sisters and nephew lived in Hartshorne in Derbyshire. My sister and I took a bus to Burton upon Trent to buy my nephew a pair of new shoes. In one of the big shops, we selected a pair and then enquired about the price. The assistant told us the cost, which ‘includes the tax’. I was astonished. ‘Do you mean that we have to nail them together ourselves?’

  My sister, crossing her legs tightly and stifling a snigger, had to explain to me that the assistant was talking about the purchase tax, which had recently been applied to many items. I felt, and looked, such a fool.

  Mrs Z. Price, Withington

  Nanny had many upsets with shopping, although never with reckoning money. She would know exactly what was what in that department. But at the butcher’s shop, suet was in short supply and allocated according to surname initials. Nanny was unaware of this and, on seeing suet, she asked for some, only to be told that she had her allowance ‘with the Ps’. She came home totally bemused, complaining to the family that poor Mr Orford was obviously going mad because he didn’t even sell peas.

  Mrs B. M. Hipperson

  My aunt had two seven-year-old evacuees from London billeted on her just a few weeks after war broke out. Having arrived on the Saturday night, they all sat down to Sunday dinner of roast beef, potatoes, carrots and kidney beans. One of the boys just sat and looked at his plate. My aunt asked him what was wrong and with that the boy scooped up the kidney beans and threw them on the fire saying in his strong cockney accent: ‘I don’t eat bloody grass in London and I’m not eating it here!’

  My aunt asked him what he usually had for dinner at home. He replied: ‘Brown beer and doughnuts!’

  Mrs P. Pitman, Clevedon, Avon

  Wom
en might have been in the services but they were still encouraged to wear a bit of make-up. In fact, a pamphlet was issued. It pointed out that while long varnished fingernails wasn’t conducive to service life, varnish bases would help us prevent cracked nails. I think the Wrens were actually issued with a red lipstick that, it was thought, would complement their uniforms. And, of course, it was itself uniform.

  I think that the best tip, though, was not to paint your eyelashes if you were likely to be putting on a service respirator. After you’d been wearing one of those for a few minutes, it had a tendency to steam up with condensation from your breath, which, of course, would make cosmetics run into your eyes.

  Beryl Hockey, London

  Just as the war was coming to an end, I was scheduled to go to Leeds as a bus conductress with the long-distance buses. It was a bitter January day and it started to snow. To get to Leeds we had to travel over some bleak moors. By the time we reached Leeds, the snow was falling thick and fast with flakes that seemed almost as big as the palm of my hand. I went to the toilet and could hear a strange gurgling sound coming from the next cubicle. I thought someone was being taken ill so I called out to ask whether they were all right.

  There was no answer, but the gurgling continued, so I went to the station inspector who used his master key to open the cubicle door. Inside stood a naked woman, washing her clothes in the toilet bowl. She claimed that, despite it being the coldest day of the winter so far, she would put on her wet clothes and the warmth of her body would dry them.

  Mrs Z. Price, Withington

  Grandma Buggins on The Kitchen Front remarked this morning: ‘Well, if you don’t care about the nice recipes I bring you, I might as well go to Russia and fish for surgeons in the vodka.’