05-07-2011, 04:31 PM
Fido, you are right in your assumptions. There were enough jobs in the 1950s. The problem was that most of them were dead-ends and paid wages to match. However, there was the tacit assumption that - as long as you landed an apprenticeship and ended up with a trade, it would be yours for life. When I started work, many of the working men around me had been in the same post throughout their lives. As an example, the oldest man in my department was 73 and he had never changed firm or job since the age of 14. This was quite typical. In the 1960s, things began to change. Technology, for one thing, pushed older practices out and replaced them with new. It was a case of adapting or losing the job. This affected firms too: it was important for the employee to watch for 'the writing on the wall' and make his move before being pushed. I did this successfully several times between 1962 and 1984.
Whether the root cause of much of the industrial decline is indeed due to the American attitude, as David says, there remained work - if one wanted it - but a decent job with some career prospects wasn't so easy to find.
Regarding the 'radio' aspect, I do agree that we never matched the style of the best Deco-inspired prewar designs, nor was there great advancement in the technological side: valve development was almost completed before the war and at best, post-war added only consolidation and degrees of improvement, miniaturisation and efficiency. The advent of FM in this country brought a late flowering of valve technology but here again the visual aspects of design were of their period - 1950s bland, cautiously dipping a toe in the water here and there in case the public took exception. It wasn't just radios, of course. Car design was in my opinion held back, with many makers creating small and timid versions of American car design: think early 1950s Hillman Minx, for example. Then there's men's haircuts, everyone wearing ties no matter how lowly their working status was, cycling to work and almost everywhere else plus the odd hard-earned motorbike and rare car.
The austerity of post-war Britain was harsh; queuing with ration-book in hand and for many of us coal fires, outside toilets, no bathrooms, no TVs and matronly BBC starchiness (heavy on religion and moral education, thin on entertainment). The latter was tempered in the early 1950s by Radio Luxembourg, much to the chagrin of the pious Beeb bosses. It wasn't a good time, but at least you knew your neighbours and your workmates, could join the local working men's club for amusement, snooker, darts and reasonably priced beer and take your self and your family on a railway runabout ticket for a week's holiday at a price you could just about afford, having worked 51 weeks for it.
Would I go back? No. Do I miss the period? No. Am I concerned for the future of this country? Most definitely.
-Tony
Whether the root cause of much of the industrial decline is indeed due to the American attitude, as David says, there remained work - if one wanted it - but a decent job with some career prospects wasn't so easy to find.
Regarding the 'radio' aspect, I do agree that we never matched the style of the best Deco-inspired prewar designs, nor was there great advancement in the technological side: valve development was almost completed before the war and at best, post-war added only consolidation and degrees of improvement, miniaturisation and efficiency. The advent of FM in this country brought a late flowering of valve technology but here again the visual aspects of design were of their period - 1950s bland, cautiously dipping a toe in the water here and there in case the public took exception. It wasn't just radios, of course. Car design was in my opinion held back, with many makers creating small and timid versions of American car design: think early 1950s Hillman Minx, for example. Then there's men's haircuts, everyone wearing ties no matter how lowly their working status was, cycling to work and almost everywhere else plus the odd hard-earned motorbike and rare car.
The austerity of post-war Britain was harsh; queuing with ration-book in hand and for many of us coal fires, outside toilets, no bathrooms, no TVs and matronly BBC starchiness (heavy on religion and moral education, thin on entertainment). The latter was tempered in the early 1950s by Radio Luxembourg, much to the chagrin of the pious Beeb bosses. It wasn't a good time, but at least you knew your neighbours and your workmates, could join the local working men's club for amusement, snooker, darts and reasonably priced beer and take your self and your family on a railway runabout ticket for a week's holiday at a price you could just about afford, having worked 51 weeks for it.
Would I go back? No. Do I miss the period? No. Am I concerned for the future of this country? Most definitely.
-Tony
