r o W Our Sixty years ago Britain set out on a remarkable journey and a New Britain was emerging. The nation we live in today was starting to take shape.
s e v i L g n i k
Thanks to A massive thanks to all the participants who shared their memories with us. Volunteers John Yarrow Jean May Barbara Marns Rosemary Hayward Cliff Densley Giles Taylor John Crowther Margaret Sansom Fran Buttress Joan Cooksey Poole Museum Michael Spender Museum Manager David Watkins Local History Manager Katie Hanks Local History Librarian
Vivien O’Driscoll, Home Library Services Manager Poole Arts Development Team Photographs on front cover and pages 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 20 © English Heritage.NMR. Archival photos on pages 4, 5 and 8 © Ian Andrews and Frank Henson collection and Merc Ltd. A digital:works project. www.digital-works.co.uk
This book is dedicated to the memory of Alf Cooksey. He was one of the inspirations behind the project and is deeply missed. “The past was neither as good nor as bad as we suppose: it was just different. If we tell ourselves nostalgic stories, we shall never engage the problems that face us in the present... The past really is another country: we can not go back. However, there is something worse than idealizing the past – or presenting it to ourselves and our children as a chamber of horrors: forgetting it.” Tony Judt: Ill Fares the Land
Introduction Digital:works, along with a group of volunteers from Poole and Poole Museum Local History Centre have investigated working practices of people starting work in the 1940/50s. One volunteer, Jean May, said; “It’s been fascinating hearing how much Poole and peoples working lives have changed.” The fifties was a transitory time between the war, rationing and hardship of the forties and the sixties freedom of expression. Ten years of enormous social shift. By the end of the decade we had near full employment, wages had doubled in ten years and every worker qualified for a statutory two-week holiday.
Local people have reflected on the changes they can see and remember what has happened in their lifetime. One of the volunteers, Rosemary Hayward, said; “Understanding our heritage enables us to embrace the future with understanding.” While another of the volunteers, Cliff Densley, highlighted the fact that: “The recollections are not necessary from Poole, as we found people had to move around the country during their working life, or later in life when they retired. Personally I started my working life near Bath and only moved to Poole much later in life.” Our Working Lives oral history interviews show that there was no single national experience, everyone has a story to tell. To hear the full interviews, or for more about this project; visit www.ourworkinglives.org, or Poole Museum Local History Centre, 4 High Street, Poole, Dorset BH15 1BW.
“It was easy to get a job in a sense. Mind you when the children were growing up I didn’t believe in going out to work, to leave my children. So I took dressmaking in.” Doris Gostling
This project explores the everyday personal histories, traditions, memories, values and hopes and encouraged closer relationships between generations. Over two years we have recorded more than eighty oral history interviews exploring people’s memories of how they experienced leaving school and starting work.
Britain was Changing Sixty years ago Britain set out on a remarkable journey and a New Britain was emerging. The nation we live in today was starting to take shape. As the fifties progressed most things were getting better and there was an enormous feeling of optimism. The population was enjoying rising living standards. Social attitudes were changing and people were looking forward.
Getting To work Britain was forging a more open-minded society at home, while abroad it was casting off its imperial mantle. In the workplace a new economy was emerging creating challenges to old ways of working. Along with the rapid pace of modernisation, the British wanted a less rigid society and old-fashioned attitudes to race, gender and class had to be pushed aside. Prosperity arrived by the end of the decade echoed by the quote from Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan; “most of our people have never had it so good.”
Car companies emerged as new employers. Cars were initially hard to buy in the UK, with long waiting lists, as the vast majority of cars made in the UK were exported to pay for Britain’s $4.34 billion wartime debt. In the early 50s just 10 percent of households owned a car, people either walked to work or took public transport.
There was a serious labour shortage and to rebuild the country Britain needed more workers. From 1948 the government funded recruitment drives in the British colonies encouraging its citizens to leave their homes and help rebuild the ‘Mother Country’. Thus began a major change in the history of Britain’s workforce.
Between 1945 and 1958 the number of vehicles in Britain rose from 2.5 to 8 million and was continuing to grow at the rate of 8 percent per annum. By the end of the 50s one in three households owned a car. The greatest part of this expansion of car ownership was accounted for by new owners among skilled manual and lower paid white collar workers.1
Poole had a vibrant economy in the 50s and by 1959 there were over 400 factories with a mix of established industrial manufacturers and newer companies that had moved into the area, some of whom had to relocate due to the war. “A local newspaper was proclaiming ‘Poole’s industrial boom’.” The Sprit of Poole, 1953-1963 by John Hillier and Martin Blyth.
“I used to cycle the 18 miles to do my shift and cycle home again.” Roy Goodwin
According to Sir John Elliot, Chairman of London Transport, about half of London’s bus routes were unprofitable by 1956 “because of the enormous growth of private car and motorcycle travel”. A similar trend was reported by the railways and provincial transport undertakings.
“At 18 I had an insurance policy paid out, so I brought a car, a Morris 8 soft top. At the time there were only two of us at the company that had a car, that was the Managing Director and myself.” By the late fifties Britain had more vehicles per mile of road than any other country. In 1959 the M1 opened, Britain’s first full length motorway which cut a seventy mile swathe through the English countryside between Birmingham and London. 1. Survey Growth of car ownership 1957-1960 by social grade of household, quoted Financial Times, 20 October 1960.
Trade Unions During the war years, between 1939 and 1945 with a coalition government and under the state held umbrella of the essential works orders the Trade Unions had become deeply involved in all levels. On equal terms with Capital in the running of the industrial machine. After 1945 the Trade Unions gained new status, symbolised in Labour’s victory in the polls. In the newly nationalised industries compulsory Trade Union consultation at all levels was written into the founding statutes, with the Trade Unions new power reinforced by a growth in their total membership by more than 50 percent, to over nine million union members. In this new climate many large private concerns now came to favour full Trade Union membership for their employees. For this not only conferred a reputation for enlightenment but was also administratively convenient. Often this attitude brought about what in effect, though not in name, was a closed shop. Facing chronic labour shortages, employers began to adapt working conditions to attract women with childcare responsibilities back to work. Unions responded by mounting recruitment campaigns targeting women. These efforts were not very successful in increasing female
membership. With 7.25 million women at work, only 1.7 million were members of trade unions. White-collar trade unions experienced a large growth and by 1955 there were 35 white-collar unions with a total membership of around one and a half million.
“Everybody had to belong to a union. The unions and the company used to come to an agreement with the apprenticeships, how far they could go, where they could go. It was all organised. The unions couldn’t put a foot out of place. “If you didn’t have a ticket you could not get a job. So it was more or less forced on you. But my father, being a staunch freemason and all the rest of it, he didn’t like this idea. But it’s the best thing you could ever have.” Reg Rolfe
Standard of Living Continuing full employment had forced the British employer out of his ancient preoccupation with wage cutting, it had compelled them to bid for labour and organise to make high wages economic. In 1936, 33 percent of poverty was due to inadequate pay. In 1950 it was just one percent, with the less well off families found to be well above the poverty line. A survey in York in 1950 found the proportion under the poverty line had fallen to less than three percent, those under the poverty line were ascribed wholly to old age and sickness and not to pay. The proportion of the population engaged in professional work, in civil service, in managerial and administrative jobs increased by 50 percent between 1938-1951.
These jobs continued to grow, with expansion of service based occupations, which is a well established feature of advanced industrial societies. By 1955 the average manual worker had drawn level with the average bank clerk of 28 years old and was considerably ahead of the local government clerk of the same age (The Black Coated Worker by David Lockwood, 1958). With the manual worker being ardently wooed by employers with offers of pleasant surroundings, music, cut price or free refreshments, and even free hairdressers in some parts of the country.
“If you didn’t like where you were there was ample opportunity just to go up the road and get another job with no great effort� Alex Mcgreggor In 1945 only 14,000,000 were entitled to one weeks paid holiday. By the second half of the fifties a fortnights paid holiday had become all but universal. This, particularly when linked to higher wages and a five-day week, amounted to a minor social revolution in itself.
A Woman’s Place The traditional division of labour between men and women, broken by the urgencies of war quickly reasserted itself and women in industry once again did the dull repetitive jobs. The war had raised women’s expectations about the possibility of a better deal in the post-war reconstruction. Unsurprisingly equal pay remained a burning issue throughout the war and for years governments had paid lip service to the principle of equal pay for equal work while protesting that unfortunately, the financial position made this quite impossible. After the war the campaign for equal pay went off the boil as the government and the unions concentrated their efforts on persuading women to return to their more traditional spheres of employment. Nonetheless, married women had always worked and continued to do so. However, the sort of work available to women remained limited. For working class women the fifties was the high point of the all-female typing pool in offices. There was no equal pay legislation and average female wages were only 59 percent of men’s. Neither the Labour Party nor the Trades Unions pushed at all hard to increase the status of female work.
The percentage of married women in paid employment rose steadily throughout the fifties - from 26 percent in 1951 to 35 percent by 1961 - still a minority, but significantly less conspicuously so. However for the vast majority of women the issue of going out to work was a particularly thorny one and women often had to change jobs when they married or had children. A Mass Observation survey in 1957 found less than a quarter of men approved of married women going out to work. ‘A woman’s place is in the home,’ was the blunt reason given, ‘bringing up the kids.’ Workers on the production line at Ryvita.
“When I started, Mrs Jennings would hand pick the girls and she would not have a married woman.” Doris Gostling “If you got married you had to leave and then restart with your married name.” Jan Ballard “[I was] controlling aeroplanes…We women fighter controllers got far more out of the pilots than the men did” Pamela Flowers
Rural Life Both the pace and extent of post-war change had in many ways been greater in the countryside than in the towns. Rural England had not remained untouched, with the war bringing about agrarian as well as a social revolution.
An agricultural minimal wage had been instituted only in 1940, but in the immediate post-war years under the auspices of the new agricultural wages board, wage rates in farming advanced faster than any other industry. Instead of touching his forelock for 33 shillings a week in 1939 the farm worker now filled in his time sheets, got extra for overtime, and enjoyed 12 days guaranteed holidays with pay. A minor turning point in British history was the agricultural act of 1947. This had struck a new balance between town and country, farm and factory. The act seemed to open the way to a new and permanent integration of the agricultural interest into the machinery of today. In 1939 there had been only 55,000 tractors on the land, by 1954 there were over 400,000. The 1947 four year plan for raising agricultural net output by about 50 percent above the 1938 level and 20 percent above that of 1946-47 level was duly achieved on schedule. Moreover by 1957, the milk yield of the average diary cow was almost a third higher than pre-war; and in ten years the yield of wheat and barley per acre had risen by a third; and that of sugar beet by a quarter.
“It was all hand milking and most of the work was done with horses. Boss didn’t like a tractor on the land in winter; he considered it pounded the ground. All the food for the cattle we grew on the farm.� Cliff Densley From 1952 as the free market increasingly asserted itself farm incomes fell. The problem of the uneconomic size of the small farm under modern mechanised conditions was increasingly brought home and many a small farmer worked long hours for a pittance. In 1958 the government was obliged to come to the rescue with a special small farms aid program.
Rapid Pace of Modernisation Between 1939 and 1946 numbers employed in electronics more than trebled, output multiplied by ten. Petrochemical output was 10,000 tons in 1945, 644,000 tons in 1958; in plastics 28,000 tons in 1938 and 500,000 tons in 1959; pharmaceuticals, 90 million in 1935 and 143 million in 1955. For years Britain’s historic staple industries – cotton, coal, shipbuilding, parts of the iron and steel industry – had seemed weighed down by the burden of advanced old age. By 1951, however, thanks to our scientists, a whole range of bright mid-century industries – oil refining and petrochemicals, synthetic fibres, pharmaceuticals, plastics, electronics, and aircraft – had declared themselves. The engineering industry – with its high content of capital and skill and its proliferation of new products – had expanded vastly during the war and had since maintained a rate of growth for which it would be difficult to find a parallel in our history. In the fifties technology was taking much of the dirt and sweat out of work. The old army of labourers was now given way to the new army of the semi-skilled, the blue
collar attendants upon machine processes, who occupied a much more indeterminate place in the scheme of things. As the new industries and techniques grew and multiplied, as mass-production increasingly replaced ‘jobbing’, the time honoured hierarchical world of crafts and skills was outmoded. New supervisory tasks multiplied, and the blue collar world merged with the white, the new working class and the new middle class from the technical college and universities touched hands.
“It was hard work. All these girls in there clattering away on typewriters, and it wasn’t like they are now, it was noisy. I suffered terrible headaches and I used to go home saying I hate it, I can’t cope. Anyway got through and made friends with one or two girls there.” Sylvia Keep The machine revolution in the office gained pace rapidly. It dethroned the old dignified senior clerk, the secretary, and the bookkeeper and ushered in the factory office of operators and data processors.
Consumer Boom and the End of Austerity Not until July 1954 was the last of the war time rationing restrictions, that of meat, finally abolished. But then, almost at once, affluence came hurrying on the heals of impoverishment. Suddenly shops were full with all sorts of goods piled high. Boom was in the air. Balance of payment crises were now, apparently, something one took in ones stride. In the middle of the 1955 crises, with its severe credit cut backs and increase in taxes, traders reported that there was now “so much money about”. There were three month delays in supplying many items of home electrical equipment, four months for the better furniture and up to a year for most cars. In the six years following 1950 the money passing across British shop counters increased by almost 50 percent and Britain was starting to become a fully-fledged
consumerist society. Newly established ‘necessities’ of life, above all washing machines, were beginning to transform our everyday lives. Spending on electronic and durable goods was now nearly six times higher than other consumable outlays.
“Marina had her first washing machine in 1957, I think, and she thought she was in heaven. Life was a luxury compared to before.” Cliff Densley In 1959 what every family wanted was a television. All through the fifties people were buying TVs. “Television opened up a world that people had never experienced before. Sights and sounds of foreign lands, unimaginable situations into the living room.” Dominic Sandbrook, Social Historian. Each morning at the bus stop, on the railway platform, in the office and shop and factory there was a new topic of conversation to replace ‘the weather’. It was not the latest antics of Khrushchev, nor the new balance of payment crises. It was: “Did you see so and so on television last night?”
Teenagers The emergence of the teenager was tribute to the multiple skills and infinite ramifications of the new advertising industry and the first full scale demonstration of its powers.
items of contemporary mass-produced bits of machinery, record players, transistorised radios and tape recorders, which by 1958 were selling at the rate of 1,500 a week.
Full employment and the low cost of living for most working class youths, who usually remained in the parental home until they married, left free spending money amounting to £900 million a year. With an urgent need for assertion, a strong imitative instinct and a lively fear of being somehow left out, adolescence offered an area open to commercial exploitation.
The espresso arrived from Italy with the first ‘Gaggia’ machine in 1952, with its most enthusiastic cliental amongst the young. This was one more pointer to the opening age of leisure. By the end of the decade over 500 coffee bars opened across the country.
“In those days when I started at Hamworthy [Engineering] …32 apprentices started at the same time as me.” Duncan Ives Although they made up only 10 percent of the population teenagers were responsible for a quarter of all sales of clothes, cigarettes, records and cosmetics. The greatest influences on teenagers in Britain came from America, with new fashions, hairstyles and rock and roll music. Leisure now often revolved around some fairly sophisticated
The change that swept through Britain in 1959 also brought new threats. The ‘new world order’ was throwing up some sinister challenges to a country that had been used to ruling the waves. Newspapers were full of the terror of senseless violence imposed by juvenile gangs whose “moronic depredations” and “smash-ups” seemed to be plunging the country back into the dangerous street life of the early 18th century. There was a widespread fear at the time that America was the cradle of social decay. With many stories of teenage gangs in the British press and a mild panic under the surface that what was happening “over there”, would happen in Britain.
In 1951 one in fifty of the 14 to 17 age group, was convicted of an indictable offence, compared with one in a hundred in 1938. It was also noted with horror that more than half the convictions for breaking and entering were carried out by people under 17, often still at school. People wrote into newspapers up and down the country saying, “What was needed was more discipline.” Others laid the blame on Dick Barton, Special Agent, the hero of a BBC serial, which from 1946 51 held an audience of 15 million glued to their radios nightly.
“I used to race to finish so we could listen to Dick Barton Special Agent on the radio.” Cliff Densley
Never Had It So Good There were many weeks in the immediate post-war years when the survival of Britain seemed to depend on the efforts of ordinary workers, as clearly as it had on its service men and women during the war. It was a country of industry with her products the world over. “At the beginning of the fifties Britain was still a country in which millions of people shared a toilet with their neighbours, in which many young married couples were forced to live with their parents, and in which few people had ever laid eyes on a television set. It was a country of conservative habits pulsed on the brink of exuberant affluence and irrevocable change.” Never Had It So Good by Dominic Sandbrook Most of the welfare state as we still know it was put in place by the post-war Labour government. The National Health Service provided universal health care. State secondary education was free for all. There were new unemployment and sickness benefits, family allowances, free school dinners and milk. By the mid-fifties, the state was building large council estates, with 75 percent of all new home building undertaken by local authorities.
In 1950 the average weekly wage was £6 8s; by 1959, it had almost doubled to £11 2s 6d. At the same time, the standard rate of income tax had fallen from over nine shillings in the pound to less than seven shillings. Spending on household items increased by a staggering 115 percent during the decade. “There was a sustained commitment to long-term public and private investment in infrastructure and machinery; older factories and equipment were updated or replaced, with attendant gains in efficiency and productivity; there was a marked increase in international trade; and an employed and youthful population demanded and could afford an expanding range of goods.” Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt
‘We’re going where the sun shines brightly, We’re going where the sea is blue. We’ve seen it in the movies– Now let’s see if it’s true.’ Cliff Richard, from Summer Holiday (1959)
Our Working Lives Audio CD 1. School (3:02) 2. Careers advice (4:27) 3. We did as we were told (8:05) 4. Office work (7:50) 5. Men at work (6:40) 6. Women at work (8:48) 7. Farm work (6:58) 8. Shop work (9:29) 9. Apprenticeships (5:58) 10. National Service (2:50)
There were many weeks in the immediate post-war years when the survival of Britain seemed to depend on the efforts of her ordinary workers, as clearly as it had on its service men and women during the war.
Book and audio CD designed and produced by Joe Stevens 51degreesnorth.net