Sweet end to rationing, 70 years ago

As schools go, Liverpool’s Westminster Road (Emergency) Junior Boys left much to be desired. The real school had been destroyed in the Blitz. So two classes were housed in a local scout hall.

pounds’ worth. It wasn’t even one pound’s worth, but I was too excited to quibble. I had won 20 sixpenny bars, each with a different filling – more chocolate than I’d ever seen outside a sweetshop cabinet.

certificate commemorating my achievement.

Seventy years ago, in 1953, after 11 years, sweets came off the ration. I was nine.

To save on transport costs, shops could sell sweets produced only in their own region. Thus the north had become used to Rowntree’s products, made in York.

To counter this, Cadbury’s announced a competition for schools: pupils had to write an essay on chocolate production and draw a cocoa bean. The prize, we heard, was a million pounds’ worth of chocolate.

Half the boys faced one way, taught by one teacher, while the other half faced the other way, taught by another. There was a gap of three yards between the two back rows, with 84 boys over the two classes and two teachers armed with only a stick and a will of iron.

One afternoon, my teacher announced the winner of the great chocolate competition – me! He invited me out to the front of the class, opened his desk and showed me the prize.

Sadly, it wasn’t a million

With half an hour of school to go, Sir escorted me to the door with the instruction to go straight home, stop nowhere and speak to no one on the way. When I arrived, my little brother, aged four, burst into tears at the prospect of so much unrationed pleasure.

The number of my friends was considerably diminished the next day, but a few weeks later I won them all back again. Cadbury’s had made an error, and a second parcel arrived, along with a

In an uncharacteristic gesture of generosity, I told the teacher to share out the prize – the certificate was reward enough. Every boy in the class received a half-bar –three penn’orth – of chocolate. As there were 42 boys and only 20 bars, simple arithmetic suggested that Sir must have supplied the extra bar.

My classmates were all delighted. It was the other class who beat me up.

By Terry Morgan, Withern, Lincolnshire, who receives £50

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