Austerity Britain Read online

  Praise for Austerity Britain, 1945–51

  ‘One of the most vividly imagined, brilliantly researched and hugely entertaining books of social history I have ever encountered and I can’t wait for the next volume in the series’ Rupert Christiansen, Spectator Books of 2007

  ‘Narrative history at its best – thoughtful, compassionate, quirky, with immense, rich quotations’

  Richard Davenport-Hines, Sunday Telegraph Books of 2007

  ‘Kynaston’s improbably entertaining history made enterprising use of unusual sources and was an unexpected popular success’

  Philip Hensher, Spectator Books of 2007

  ‘Kynaston writes brilliantly and readably’

  Mark Bostridge, Independent on Sunday Books of 2007

  ‘Tuck into David Kynaston’s Austerity Britain, a hugely enjoyable history of the Attlee years and definitely one to bring back memories both fond and wistful’

  Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Telegraph Books of 2007

  ‘This was a vintage year for history books, none better than Kynaston’s Austerity Britain, a cracking read with powerful resonances for those of us born under the Attlee Junta’ Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Spectator Books of 2007

  ‘Gloriously vivid . . . flavours its democratic vision of post-war Britain with tantalising foretastes of celebrity culture, by supplementing Mass Observation-style oral history with snippets from famous people’s diaries’

  Ben Thompson, Independent on Sunday Books of 2007

  ‘A marvellous new book . . . Reading it, I found myself increasingly unable to answer a simple question about life in this country: why are we less human and less kind when prosperous than we managed to be when we were poor? No washing machines, no Starbucks, no computers, no television – but people evidently knew how to listen in a spirit of fairness’

  Andrew O’Hagan, Daily Telegraph

  ‘In this appealing slice of social history, Kynaston doesn’t so much sprinkle his text with first-hand testimony as drench it. Mixing recollections from the famous (Fay Weldon, Joan Bakewell and Doris Lessing all chip in with memories) with extracts from Mass-Observation reports, his giant book summons up in vivid brushstrokes both the actuality of life in staple-starved post-war Britain and the state of the nation’s morals and attitudes . . . a triumph’

  Andrew Holgate, Sunday Times

  ‘An object lesson for social historians in how to blend chronological flow and thematic attack into a single, seamless narrative’

  D.J. Taylor, TLS

  ‘This is a classic; buy at least three copies – one for yourself and two to give to friends and family. It is a classic because its portrayal of that unheroic, slightly shabby yet formative era that was Attlee’s Britain is utterly convincing – and more than that, evocative. No one born in this country between 1939 and 1959 will fail to recognise what is being described . . . a plum-duff of a book for both the historian and the general reader’

  John Charmley, Guardian

  ‘This is a must-read history, an intimate picture of a country trying to pick itself up after the war . . . magnificent’

  Sue Baker, Book of the Month, Publishing News

  ‘A masterly account . . . Austerity Britain has a marvellous flowing sweep to it. Kynaston does not press his opinions on us, but they emerge sharply enough from the weight of evidence he marshals and the expertise he deploys as a leading historian . . . unfailingly evocative’

  Ferdinand Mount, Times Literary Supplement

  ‘A skilful blend of statistical data, personal testimony and obscure but entertaining detail, it is remarkable for the freshness of the materials on which it is based . . . This is social history fashioned into narrative on the grand scale . . . Austerity Britain is an outstanding portrait of an age’

  Paul Addison, Literary Review

  ‘This wonderful volume is only the first in a series that will take us to 1979 and the election of Margaret Thatcher. When complete, Kynaston’s skill in mixing eyewitness accounts and political analysis will surely be one of the greatest and most enduring publishing ventures for generations. It is very hard to praise the author too highly. . . unputdownable’

  Brian Thompson, Observer

  ‘The book is a marvel . . . the level of detail is precise and fascinating . . . If the succeeding volumes can sustain this quality, Kynaston will have written the fullest, deepest and most balanced history of our times’

  John Campbell, Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Magnificently refulgent take on the immediate post-war years . . . A couple of months before the Attlee landslide, Evelyn Waugh published Brideshead Revisited, that bestselling high-Tory paean to a lost age. A couple of years after Margaret Thatcher took office, a TV adaptation made Waugh’s vision of a sweet and innocent past more popular than ever. Nearly 700 pages long, Austerity Britain is only the first in a projected series of books that will take us all the way from Brideshead to Brideshead. I, for one, can’t wait’

  Chris Bray, New Statesman

  ‘Kynaston’s book is not only a blood-draining record of wide-scale misery but an absorbing history with surprises for young and old . . . Kynaston’s achievement is great, and the facts and views and values here will give us much to think about’

  Rhoda Koenig, Evening Standard

  ‘Truly brilliant social history of Britain in the immediate post-war years, Kynaston depicts a country battered but hopeful . . . Rarely has a book’s title been more at odds with the sheer pleasure derived from reading it’

  Elizabeth Jenkins, London Paper

  ‘A moving read, not least for anyone whose parents came of age in the era’

  Greg Neale, BBC History Magazine

  ‘The sheer ambition of the project is breathtaking . . . Peering through the grey pall that characterises the public imagination of these years, Kynaston sheds light on both the hardships and lighter moments . . . It will be a determined nostalgic who can get through this book without once thanking their lucky stars for the comforts of today. It will also be a rare social historian who will not be looking forward to the next instalment’

  Sarah Warwick, Family History Monthly

  ‘A glorious bran-tub of a book . . . full of miscellaneous information about the post-war habits of the British people . . . it is written with a wit and sparkle that makes it a pleasure to read’

  Vernon Bogdanor, Financial Times

  ‘A wonderful evocation of post-war Britain . . . this is a convincing picture of the profound cultural conservatism of post-war Britain, an antidote to nostalgia accounts of the Attlee years’

  Pat Thane, History Today

  ‘Austerity Britain calls on a dazzling array of contemporary voices, many of them writing in private diaries, to chart the emergence of today’s Britain from VE day to 1979’

  Martin Waller, The Times

  ‘A magnificent, rich and moving social history that grips as firmly as any great novel, with the mouth-watering promise of much, much more to come in the not too distant future’

  Manchester Evening News

  AUSTERITY BRITAIN

  1945–51

  David Kynaston

  First published in Great Britain 2007

  Copyright © David Kynaston

  This electronic edition published 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  The right of David Kynaston to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written
permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 978-1-40880-907-5

  www.bloomsbury.com/davidkynaston

  Visit www.bloomsbury.com to find out more about our authors and their books.

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  Contents

  Preface

  A WORLD TO BUILD

  PART ONE

  1 Waiting for Something to Happen

  2 Broad Vistas and All That

  3 Oh Wonderful People of Britain!

  PART TWO

  4 We’re So Short of Everything

  5 Constructively Revolutionary

  6 Farewell Squalor

  7 Glad to Sit at Home

  PART THREE

  8 Christ It’s Bleeding Cold

  9 Our Prestige at Stake

  10 The Whole World Is Full of Permits

  11 Ain’t She Lovely?

  12 A Change in the Terms of Struggle

  SMOKE IN THE VALLEY

  PART ONE

  1 What Do You Say?

  2 Oh, for a Little Extra Butter!

  3 Jolly Good as a Whole

  4 A Decent Way of Life

  PART TWO

  5 A Negative of Snowflakes

  6 Part of the Machinery

  7 Stiff and Rigid and Unadaptable

  8 Too High a Price

  9 Proper Bloody Products

  PART THREE

  10 Andy Is Waving Goodbye

  11 The Heaviest Burden

  12 A Kind of Measuring-Rod

  13 Their Own Private Domain

  14 That Dump?

  Afterword

  Notes

  Acknowledgements

  Picture Credits

  Preface

  Austerity Britain comprises A World to Build and Smoke in the Valley – the first two books of Tales of a New Jerusalem, a projected sequence about Britain between 1945 and 1979.

  These dates are justly iconic. Within weeks of VE Day in May 1945, the general election produced a Labour landslide and then the implementation over the next three years of a broadly socialist, egalitarian programme of reforms, epitomised by the creation of the National Health Service and extensive nationalisation. The building blocks of the new Britain were in place. But barely three decades later, in May 1979, Margaret Thatcher came to power with a fierce determination to apply the precepts of market-based individualism and dismantle much of the post-war settlement. In the early twenty-first century, it is clear that her arrival in Downing Street marks the defining line in the sand of contemporary British history, and that therefore the years 1945 to 1979 have become a period – a story – in their own right.

  It is this story that Tales of a New Jerusalem is intended to tell: a story of ordinary citizens as well as ministers and mandarins, of consumers as well as producers, of the provinces as well as London, of the everyday as well as the seismic, of the mute and inarticulate as well as the all too fluent opinion-formers, of the Singing Postman as well as John Lennon. It is a history that does not pursue the chimera of being ‘definitive’; it does try to offer an intimate, multilayered, multivoiced, unsentimental portrait of a society that evolved in such a way during these 34 years as to make it possible for the certainties of ‘1945’ to become the counter-certainties of ‘1979’.

  Many of us grew up and were formed during that evolution. We live – and our children will continue to live – with the consequences.

  ‘Unadjusted impressions have their value, and the road to a true philosophy of life seems to lie in humbly recording diverse readings of its phenomena as they are forced upon us by chance and change.’

  Thomas Hardy

  Preface to Poems of the Past and Present

  1901

  A WORLD TO BUILD

  This book is dedicated to Lucy

  PART ONE

  1

  Waiting for Something to Happen

  Eleven a.m. on Tuesday, 8 May 1945, overheard by a Mass-Observation investigator at a newsagent’s somewhere in central London:

  First woman: They played us a dirty trick – a proper dirty trick.

  First man: A muddle it was. Just a muddle.

  Second woman: People waiting and waiting and nothing happening. No church bells or nothing.

  Second man: Yes – what ’appened to them church bells, I’d like to know.

  Third man: (ironically) Heard that thunderstorm in the night? God’s wrath that was!

  Fourth man: Telling us over and over the church bells would be the signal. And then there was no signal. Just hanging around.

  Second man: Well, I’m sick and tired – browned off of them I am. The way they’ve behaved – why, it was an insult to the British people. Stood up to all wot we’ve stood up to, and then afraid to tell us it was peace, just as if we was a lot of kids. Just as if we couldn’t be trusted to be’ave ourselves.

  Third man: Do ’em no good in the general election – the way they’ve gone on over this. People won’t forget it. Insult’s just what it was. No more and no less.

  Third woman: (placatingly) Oh, well, I expect people will get excited enough later in the day.

  Second man: It’s not the same. It should of been yesterday. When you think of it – peace signed at 2.40 in the morning, and then people wait and wait all day, and then nothing but it would be VE Day tomorrow. No bells, no All Clear, nothing to start people off.

  First woman: That’s just what they were afraid of, I reckon.1.

  Over a week after Hitler’s death, and following the tardy radio announcement at 7.40 the previous evening, two days of celebration and good cheer were at last under way.

  It took a while for things to warm up. Many people, not having heard the news, had arrived for work only to be turned back; quite a few stockbrokers, who naturally had heard the news, journeyed to the City anyway, just to make sure that the Stock Exchange really was closed; outside food shops the inevitable queues were even worse than usual; and in the north of England it rained steadily until lunchtime. Anthony Heap, a middle-aged local-government officer from St Pancras, found himself (with his wife Marjorie) in Piccadilly. ‘Had some lunch at the Kardomah Café followed by ice cream at a Milk Bar in Leicester Square.’ They did themselves better in Liverpool, where Beryl Bainbridge’s parents took her to a celebratory businessmen’s luncheon: ‘The man who earned his living by having boulders broken on his chest in Williamson Square was standing outside the restaurant belting out the song “It’s a lovely day tomorrow/ Tomorrow is a lovely day”. My Dad gave him a shilling and shook his hand . . . like they were equals. My mother made him go instantly to the Gents, to wash off the germs.’

  By early afternoon, huge crowds were gathering in all the main city centres, especially London. Gladys Langford, a middle-aged schoolteacher, caught a bus from Islington to Knightsbridge: ‘Piccadilly was already a seething mass of people. The hoarding around Eros was overcrowded with young people of both sexes, mostly of the Forces. About 1/3 of the people were wearing paper-hats, many of them of very attractive design. People were everywhere – on shop-fronts, up lamp-standards, singing and shouting.’ Harold Nicolson, walking through Trafalgar Square and down Whitehall after his lunch at the Beefsteak, was less enamoured of what he called ‘paper caps’ – ‘horrible, being of the comic variety’ – and regretfully observed ‘three Guardsmen in full uniform wearing such hats’. At 2.20 a bus managed to get through Whitehall – ‘HITLER MISSED THIS BUS’ chalked across it – and soon afterwards, down at the jam-packed Parliament Square end, three middle-aged women were overheard uttering their thoughts: ‘I bet Churchill’s pleased with himself.’ ‘S
o he should. He’s done a grand job of work for a man his age – never sparing himself.’ ‘Pity Roosevelt’s dead.’ A 50-year-old man butted in: ‘It was just like this after the last war and twelve months later we was standing in dole queues.’ But after cries of ‘Shut up’, another middle-aged woman had, for the moment, the final word: ‘Nobody’s going to make me miserable today. I’ve been waiting for it too long.’2.