Nicky Charlish
posted 29 August 2007

Drab clothes. Long faces, bomb sites, endless queues. Numerous documentaries have familiarised us with these stock images of the age of austerity which Britain underwent immediately after winning the Second World War. Can another commentator give us any fresh insights into that hopeful yet empty era?

Arguably there was – for several decades – a cosy consensus about the period covered by this book. Austerity was tough, but the concepts forged in that period - especially the ‘New Jerusalem’ of the welfare state – were good and stood the test of time. Also it was a time when British values and society remained rock-steady. However, since the 1980s that picture has come under attack, especially from Corelli Barnett in his book The Audit of War (1986), one of four book in which he critically re-examined British political, social and economic myths and realities from the end of the First World War to the Suez debacle. But more of Barnett in a moment. By contrasting and comparing the official pronouncements of politicians from the era with records from Mass-Observation (M-O), letters and diaries, Kynaston attempts to give another view of that time.

Whilst Kynaston revisits the shortages and drabness of the austerity years, he also uncovers concerns that we think have only arisen in recent times. Take dumbing-down and education. Writer and broadcaster JB Priestley was among intellectuals who wanted cultural uplift for the masses. The masses weren’t interested: the preferred the Daily Mirror, which, with its skilful mixture of irreverence, cartoons, human interest stories and coverage of (often Hollywood) celebrities was the precursor of modern tabloid style. Many of the subjects of a 1947 M-O survey in Tottenham showed little interest in reading. Two years later, a survey amongst young males in an Outer London borough undertaken by two researchers from the Social Medical Research Unit found that many had ‘unrealistic dreams of becoming champion cyclists, football stars or dance-band leaders’ with ‘very few signs of any awakening interest in wider civit or community activities’ and suffering from ‘a good deal of emotion disturbance’.

Given this, it’s unsurprising when Kynaston shows that schooling for many such young people was unimpressive, and quotes examples of classroom mediocrity and mayhem from Edward Blishen (future novelist) and Rhodes Boyson (future Tory education firebrand) when they were doing their time as secondary-modern teachers (although their behavioural burdens would probably be regarded as pretty light by their current successors). Although comprehensive education was regarded as the way of giving all children an equal start, one commentator warned perceptively that ‘middle-class parents will not readily send their children to a school in which they feel that the tone of speech and behaviour will be set by children coming from the poorest homes’. The technical colleges, which night not only have been personally beneficial for non-academic pupils but also helped to strengthen Britain’s economic performance, never got off the ground (due to reasons of cost-cutting and the feeling that the offered too narrow a curriculum). But full employment with industries having plenty of unskilled, educationally-undemanding jobs and the self-confident – and unchallenged – educational policy-makers (along with the equally-secure cultural elite such as Leavis and Eliot) successfully masked these problems which would confront future generations.

The feeling that politicians were nannying figures, remote from ordinary people’s concerns, was also a feature of the immediate post-war era. Lewis Silkin, the Minister for Town and Country planning, got a rough ride at a public meeting in Stevenage over his plans for its redevelopment. ‘It is no good your jeering: it is going to be done’ was his reply. After this outburst, he discovered that the tyres of his ministerial car had been deflated and its petrol tank filled with sand. Austerity, too, didn’t help the standing of the establishment in general, particularly when some levels of post-war rationing were worse than they had been during the conflict. Some belt-tightening after the war was probably unavoidable, but writer John Lehmann noted of 1945s newly-triumphant Labour MPs that ‘Too many of them seemed to think there was a virtue in austerity and shabbiness, in controls and restrictions…’.

Conflict about the role of women was in progress too. The future issues of ‘work/life balance’ was rearing its awkward head: there was pressure from the Ministry of Labour for young married women to return to work, but many felt they would only do so if they could fulfil their duties to their homes and families. Fashion was a battleground, too. The introduction in 1947 of the New Look, with its long, voluminous skirts, was regarded as frippery by socialists (‘The ridiculous whim of idle people’ thundered Labour MP Bessie Braddock): by the end of the year, some 10 million women had or desired the New Look, and found ways of adapting it to the needs of their daily lives.

This skirmish over skirts was symbolic of a greater divide – due to conflicting ideals – between the different adherents of socialism. As Kynaston notes, ‘The Metropolitan intelligentsia had mainly welcomed the 1945 election result, but the socialism of daily privation and daily restrictions was not their kind of socialism’. Labour minister (and grandfather of Peter Mandelson) Herbert Morrison hoped that socialism would bring about a society where people would never again ‘Be contented with limited and material aims’ although it could be argued that Labour’s provision of full employment and the welfare state were as much material aims as morally-uplifting ones. Some ‘upper-class’ socialists hoped that the working classes would work harder with the advent of Labour’s reforms and was disconcerted when this didn’t appear to the case. More prosaically, the public school and Oxford-educated Labour Politician Hugh Gaitskell didn’t enjoy attending a Butlin’s holiday camp as part of a National Union of Mineworkers entertainment. The eventually victorious stirrings of Blairite socialism against its cloth-cap rival cab be sensed here.

Meanwhile, labour intellectuals would belittle the working class patriotism stirred up over the shelling of British ships by Chinese Communists forces and the dramatic escape of HMS Amethyst from the Yangtse. This was an attitude which, when continued in the future, would harm Labour dear over the Falklands War and immigration. Essex Man would be born, and he would not be an automatic Labour supporter.

But how does Kynaston evaluate the Barnett view of the inception of ‘New Jerusalem’ as a period of almost unmitigated disaster? This book is the first of a planned series, called Tales of a New Jerusalem, telling the story of Britain from 1945 until the beginning of the Thatcher era. Unlike Barnett, Kynaston doesn’t seem to consider the phrase – and concept – of ‘New Jerusalem’ to be one deserving of opprobrium But he can’t prevent himself reaching a certain amount of agreement with Barnett. So, ‘Barnett… justifiably makes much’ of a Treasury memorandum written by John Maynard Keynes warning of the economic need for Britain to cut its overseas commitments. Barnett’s ‘scathing verdict’ on the 1945 Labour cabinet’s lack of economic skills ‘carries a powerful charge’. Nor can Kynaston fault Barnett’s picture of the directors and middle managers of industry in the period as belonging to a ‘profoundly conservative, risk-averse and mentally as well as materially unambitious culture’, although this was starting to change somewhat.

Where Kynaston is probably correct is when he states that the hope for a ‘New Jerusalem’ wasn’t just the product of a liberal elite exemplified by Sir William Beveridge, whose 1942 Report would be the virtual founding charter of the welfare state, but a hope among many of the country at large based on folk memories of the Depression such as the Jarrow march. He also points out that Chancellor Sir Stafford Cripps was committed to making British industry more efficient and that economic prosperity was integral to New Jerusalem. And he reminds us that Beveridge did not intend the forthcoming welfare state – ‘a term he would come to loathe’ remarks Kynaston – to be a soft touch, lacking economic rewards and punishments. Even the right wing historian Sir Arthur Bryant considered that socialists would do a better job of post-war government than the conservatives. Kynaston views some Labour leaders as being made of tougher stuff than Barnett would seem to give them credit for: he reminds us that Morrison had no time for democratic control, exercised from the shop floor, of nationalised industries.

Kynaston’s use of vox-pop material gives some interesting illuminations of social mores. A VE (Victory in Europe) Day street party in the London suburb of Tolworth was split into two so that the children from terraced houses were not included with those from more upmarket homes. And a diary entry by civil servant, Henry St John, is quoted about his desire to masturbate in a public lavatory after being aroused by some especially stimulating graffiti (he was unable to fulfil his desire due to the cubicle door lacking a lock). Kynaston – arguably – shows more awareness than others in recognising the biases of M-O. Discussing one M-O report he notes that, after it recorded general approval of the traditional pictures of painter Sir Alfred Munnings, it ‘rather reluctantly accepted’ (as Kynaston says) that ‘the general public are quite clear in their own minds about what they like and what they dislike’, a comment that tells us as much about M-O’s condescending cultural conceit as the public’s conservative outlook.

Kynaston quotes Polish-born economist Ferdynand Zweig, who conducted a study of the English working class between August 1946 and February 1947, as saying: ‘the renovation of sociology and economics can only come from the source of all being ie, from a minute, conscientious and truthful observation of real life’. It’s difficult to fault this. Did successive governments consider this outlook, let alone pay attention to it? Meanwhile, on his present form, we can look forward to what Kynaston uncovers from the time when – according to legend – the British never had it so good.