The Baby Boomer Generation (2 page)

During the war, few British towns or cities escaped the bombardments from enemy aircraft, with Bootle, Hull, Birmingham and Coventry being among those that suffered the most. But, from the start of the Blitz in September 1940 and throughout the war, it was London that took the brunt of the incessant German bombing raids and suffered the most destruction and the highest number of casualties. Now, at long last, people would no longer need to fear the terrifying buzzing sound of approaching German V-1 flying bombs or Doodlebugs, as they were commonly known, and the newer and even more terrifying V-2 rockets, which travelled faster than the speed of sound and gave no warning before impact. Nevertheless, residents in urban areas of the country were haunted by recollections of the sheer terror they had experienced during the war. The enormous amount of destruction and the indiscriminate killings these missiles inflicted on innocent civilians were all too fresh in their memories. Those who were fortunate enough to have escaped any bodily damage still carried the mental scars of war: vivid memories of enemy attacks and the loved ones they had lost, the sound of victims' cries for help coming from beneath the rubble of bombed and collapsed houses, and the horrible smell of burning buildings and powdered brick dust that regularly filled the air. It had only been six weeks since the very last German V-2 missiles had fallen on London, on 27 March 1945, one having made a direct hit on Hughes Mansions in the Stepney area of London, killing 134 residents and leaving 49 seriously injured. On that same day, the final V-2 had landed in Orpington, Kent, killing housewife Mrs Ivy Millichamp, who was the last civilian to die as a result of enemy action over Britain during the Second World War. The horrors and torment of war were indelibly stamped upon everyone's mind and nerves remained very raw. Despite this, there were few who could suppress the happiness they now felt in the knowledge that those six long years of wartime destruction and misery were now at an end. At last, Nazism had been defeated.

Meanwhile, the war against Japan in Asia and the Pacific continued unabated, but that war was also expected to end soon. It did so shortly after the USA dropped two atomic bombs, one on Hiroshima and the other on Nagasaki. Just three months after the Allied victory over Germany in Europe, the Japanese emperor, Hirohito, made a radio broadcast announcing Japan's unconditional surrender. The Allies declared the historic day of Wednesday 15 August 1945 to be Victory over Japan (VJ) Day and it was to be marked by a two-day holiday in the UK, the USA and Australia. Once again the people took to the streets and the scenes of jubilation were repeated. For the British people, this was the ultimate celebration because it marked the end of the horrible world war. No more British servicemen and women need die in battle and loved ones could start to come home. The biggest conflict in history, the Second World War, formally ended on 2 September 1945, several days after the VJ Day celebrations, when the Japanese finally signed the surrender document on board the American battleship, USS
Missouri
, in Tokyo Bay.

Amidst the excitement of Britain's victory celebrations, there were many people who had to face up to crucial and sometimes upsetting changes that the war had caused in their personal lives. There was a coming together of war-torn families, friends and sweethearts, and some of these reunions were not at all easy. Many child evacuees returned home as strangers to their parents, having spent their formative childhood years living with foster parents miles from home. Some never managed to adjust to their change in circumstances, rejecting their real parents and wanting to go back to their foster parents. After all, imagine a 12-year-old child returning to a war-torn inner-city home after having lived in a quiet country village as part of a loving adoptive family since the age of 6. It was hard for all concerned; the homecoming children often spoke with unfamiliar regional accents they had picked up from local people in the area they had been evacuated to, and their real home life was very different from what they had been used to when living in the country. For some, having spent such a long time apart, even their brothers and sisters were now strangers to them. Not all siblings had been evacuated during the war, however, many children stayed at home or returned home within weeks of being evacuated and so their family bond was not broken, unlike those who had spent years away from home. It was a very difficult and sad situation; there were parents who felt guilty for having sent their children away to the country and some children carried the mental scars of evacuation with them for the rest of their lives.

Then there were the problems of battle-weary servicemen returning home from war. Many had been changed physically or mentally, or both, by the effects and the long duration of the war. Young people in particular struggled to come to terms with each other's new behaviour as time spent apart sometimes turned a one-time lover into a stranger. The young teenage boys who went off to war six years before were returning home as full-grown men, often shell-shocked and traumatised by the horrifying things they had witnessed. They longed to see their sweethearts who in younger days had sworn their undying love, but sadly, some were not waiting at home with open arms as they were expected to be. They too had experienced the strains of war, having been left at home to suffer the austere times and to witness all the wartime distress while, at the same time, living in an environment in which there was a distinct shortage of young men. A lot of these young women had found themselves living and working in strange surroundings, doing jobs they would never have dreamed of doing and having to live temporarily in places that were unfamiliar to them. To help the war effort, the majority of eligible women had worked in various skilled and labouring occupations that would have normally been done by men, from working in dangerous munitions factories to labouring for long hours in the fields as Land Girls in the Women's Land Army. Most of the other eligible women either joined or were conscripted into one of the many women's auxiliary services, like the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service), the Wrens (Women's Royal Naval Service), the WAAFs (Women's Auxiliary Air Force), the WTS (Women's Transport Service) and the WVS (Women's Voluntary Service). Some even did service overseas, particularly those special women who undertook highly dangerous roles in the SOE (Special Operations Executive). Women also served alongside men in the fire, police, air transport and air raid and anti-aircraft services. All in all, about 90% of women took an active part in the British war effort. This was one of the hidden consequences of the war, suffered by many families; everyone and everything had changed to some extent and people had to get to know one another again.

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 working in dangerous and generally bad conditions, poorly paid and with no job security.