our working lives, then and now

Another Dail Mail article on Briatain as a country where doors were left unlocked and children played in the street – in fact, a Britain that has long since disappeared. Here they examine how a growing tide of secularisation was beginning to take hold – with a striking effect on religious belief and leisure pursuits.

Sunday was a special day in the Fifties – specially awful, at least as
far as most young people were concerned. With shops and places of
entertainment forced to shut because of ancient Lord’s Day observance
laws, the boredom, the sense of nothing happening or ever likely to
happen again, seemingly affected everything.

It was a common view – born out by the sombre Sundays – that, if
church leaders had their way, the world would be too gloomy for words.
But it was fun and relaxation that Fifties people craved, as the
burgeoning demand for holidays showed.

The first National Parks were opened, giving access to beautiful
countryside, but until the widespread coming of the family car most
people stuck to the places they knew and loved best – the seaside.

The first Sunday of June 1950 was the hottest day of the year and
Newcastle Central Station was, according to a ticket-collector,
‘pandemonium’. From noon until late afternoon, four-deep queues for
trains snaked from the platform barriers back through the station and
out into the street.

Everyone was off for the day to the golden sands of Tynemouth,
where there were more queues – to get on the beach, for jugs of hot
water, for lemonade and candy floss, for the privilege of bathing in the
overcrowded swimming pool and for ‘funny’ paper hats. Longest of all
were the queues for ice cream.

However overcrowded, day trips like this mattered a lot to a
people still generally starved of pleasure. Most could not afford a
proper holiday away, even though the 1948 Holidays With Pay Act entitled
every employed adult to a paid fortnight off each year.

Of
those who did manage to get away, two-thirds went to the seaside and
two-fifths stayed with friends or relatives. Less than 2 per cent – one
in 50 – went abroad.

But as the decade progressed, against a background of full
employment and rising wages, the numbers who could afford a holiday
ballooned, and resorts vied with each other to attract customers.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1225031/Oh-did-like-seaside-In-Austerity-Britain-day-beach-joyous-respite.html#ixzz1HuXaqVkz

A Daily Mail article by
David Kynaston

But more important for most people was the availability of
convenience foods – instant desserts, and, most popular of all, fish
fingers. It was said they were saved only by a last-minute name change
from being called cod pieces.

But there was one particularly emblematic food. ‘Collected 15s
Sainsbury chicken,’ noted one housewife in August 1956. ‘My! It was
good!’

It may well have been a chicken produced by new factory farming
methods that in time transformed chicken from one of the most expensive
to one of the most affordable dishes.

Tea-bags had yet to make their commercial appearance, but by 1954 Nescafe instant coffee had doubled its sales since the war.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1225327/A-vanished-Britain-Formica-fish-fingers-Britain-turned-nation-shopaholics.html#ixzz1HuWXCSHM

Great article on Guardian’s website in How bad is the deficit really? As new figures show it’s going down we bring you all the data going back to the 1940s. With a graphic of Budget deficits over time.

The latest data from the Office for National Statistics shows Government borrowing up to October 2010. The figures go all the way back to the 1940s. It seems that all the political parties have faced their fair share of debt through the years – as if the economic climate has its own life independent of who is managing it.

What is the deficit? When the ONS talks about the deficit, they take a simple measure – the gap between what’s coming into the government in taxes and receipts versus what’s being spent. Most commentators look at net borrowing as the deficit figure, because it includes investment spending. It’s different to the national debt – which is the total the country owes.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/oct/18/deficit-debt-government-borrowing-data

As the 70th anniversary of the Nazi bombardment of Britain approaches,
Bob Holman recalls how adversity brought a nation together.

Yet the many difficulties provoked by the Blitz led to a response
from the state. Day nurseries were opened for mothers working in
factories. Central government began to control medical services more
fully. Local authorities became more adept at dealing with the homeless.

At
a neighbourhood level, ordinary folk realised that they could shape a
better Britain, which contributed to the Labour election victory in 1945
and the creation of the welfare state. As the historian AJP Taylor put
it: “The Luftwaffe was a powerful missionary for the welfare state.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/aug/31/second-world-war-blitz-survivor

BBC Radio 4 program, Making History, will be helping out with questions ‘Our Working Life’ project has raised. Our research has raised questions about the similarities of the country’s finances after the war and now. With UK debt now around 60% of GDP – after the Second World War it was well over 180% of GDP. While nowadays it’s all about cuts, then there was massive investment in housing, industry, the birth of the NHS, starting of universal welfare benefits and investment in arts and culture. This investment went onto help provide three decades of strong economic growth. Why the big difference, is it just a political choice or is it down to the different world situation and the UK’s place in it?

This question will be the lead item on Radio 4′s Making History, which airs on Tuesday 15 March at 3pm.