The Baby Boomer Generation (3 page)

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

H
aving 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.

Our parents had become used to doing without many of the things that we now regard as essentials. During the war, they had learned how to use things sparingly by efficiently managing the government's endless list of rationed goods, including meat, butter, lard, margarine, sugar, tea, coffee, soap, clothing, petrol and sweets. The end of war, however, had not signalled the end of rationing. In fact, the rules governing rationing were made even stricter in the aftermath of war than they had been during the war. Bread and potatoes had not previously been rationed in the UK but the Ministry of Food put bread and flour on ration from 21 July 1946 to 25 July 1948, and potatoes were put on ration in the autumn of 1947 through until 30 April 1948. Other goods remained on ration until well into the 1950s, with tea coming off the list in 1952, sugar and eggs in 1953 and finally cheese and meats in 1954 when all rationing ended. Our parents had experienced life before rationing first began in 1940 and they had found it hard to get used to living within the strictly enforced limits. The harsh rationing system meant they had to get by on much smaller quantities of the everyday essentials, which they had been used to having in unlimited quantities before the war began. They were forced to adapt their whole way of life to conform to the rationing system and learn to get by with much less of everything; they certainly felt deprived, and they were. By 1954, having already suffered fourteen years of official rationing, they were resigned to the fact that it would be a few more years before they would see a return to the good times, but it was all very different for us children because we had been born into a world of rationing and we didn't feel deprived because we had never known anything different. Each day, our mothers struggled with the task of how to best utilise the rationed items to satisfy the needs of the whole family and we children came to think of this as being a normal part of housekeeping. In the worst of times, some children will have been undernourished but the majority of us usually had enough to eat and didn't find it hard to live within the restraints of rationing; we didn't even think about it. We thought it was normal for our mums to carry ration books with them whenever they went out shopping and as far as we knew it had always been that way. We were used to running errands armed with the appropriate ration book and we considered this to be normal. In the same way, we thought that kids had always spent their childhoods playing on bomb sites and exploring derelict buildings. We didn't regard our upbringing as being in any way unusual and most of us didn't really feel deprived of anything. After all, we never shared our mothers' concerns over how to make a small scrag-end of mutton into a healthy family meal. Mind you, we had no real choice in what we ate; we just ate what was put in front of us. There was no such thing as a fussy eater and phrases like, ‘I don't like this,' and ‘I'm not eating that,' were never used. We had never known what it was like to have a choice. To us it was just food that we needed to eat regularly for nourishment and energy. If we were hungry between meals, we knew that the quickest way to a full belly was a doorstep of bread. As young children, we were aware that sweets were not freely available to buy and so we never got into the habit of nagging our mums to buy them when we were out at the shops. We grew up believing that chocolate and other sweets were luxuries, something you only had occasionally as a special treat. Mind you, we did go a bit mad when sweet rationing was lifted on 5 February 1953. On that day, we all raided our piggy banks and headed off to the local sweetshops. It was a very special day; the shopkeepers were besieged with hordes of neighbourhood kids, all desperate to buy one or two treats from the huge selection of unrationed sweets on display. Penny chews, boiled sweets, nougat and liquorice sticks were all very popular but, surprisingly, it was toffee apples that were the biggest sellers of the day. A firm in South London gave away 800 free lollipops to local kids, while other manufacturing companies handed out free sweets to anyone who turned up at their factory gates. It was all very exciting: a one-off experience that was unlikely to ever happen again. We had an extra special spring in our step that day; it was certainly a day to remember. Knowing that sweets were now available to buy in unlimited quantities didn't immediately turn us into chocoholics. Having spent our early years doing without sweets, we had no addiction to them and most of us continued to regard them as treats, preferring to buy a comic than a packet of Spangles. Strangely enough, although sweets were now de-rationed, we had to wait another few months before sugar was taken off rationing in September 1953.