50s/60s Britain and Now

[rockershovel]

Haliborange tablets! Radio malt, malt and cod liver oil.... “fortified” bread and milk ...

 

 

[St Enodoc]

35 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

Chicken was a delicacy, before the introduction of battery farming in the 1960s. 

Yes, Sunday lunch rotated between beef, lamb and pork with chicken only perhaps every two or three months.

 

"Chicken in a basket" at a pub was the height of luxury.

[pH]

17 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

Haliborange tablets! Radio malt, malt and cod liver oil.... “fortified” bread and milk ...

 

 

 

There's a song (rather incidentally) about a couple of those things:

 

 

Not the best version of it - in fact not even the best Hamish Imlach version of it  - but it's the best I can find online.

[rockershovel]

One thing you certainly don’t see or hear now, is the post-War habit of describing babies as “Bonny” or “bouncing”, meaning plump, and regarded as highly desirable at the time. 

 

It’s probably no coincidence that Vitamin D is a type of steroid. 

[Enterprisingwestern]

1 hour ago, St Enodoc said:

"Chicken in a basket" at a pub was the height of luxury.

 

Along with soup in a basket!

 

Mike.

[iL Dottore]

Some interesting comments about inherited furniture, utility furniture and today’s “go to“ furniture from IKEA. When I was growing up, there was still a certain section of society that regarded buying furniture as very, very Nouveau Riche or terribly, terribly middle-class. In fact, I recall reading in a magazine or book a withering comment made about an arriviste, going along the lines of... “Oh, they’re the sort of people that buy their furniture...”

Probably the most annoying thing about IKEA furniture is that, like all furniture, it sometimes goes out of style but unlike traditionally built furniture, it is not robust enough nor are the materials of high enough quality to hang around until that particular type of furniture is back in fashion. I sincerely doubt that, in 200 years, a future Sotheby’s or Christies will be auctioning off “a fine collection of period IKEA furniture“.

 

The schools I went to had OK food and most of it was edible, some was downright more-ish and a little of it was inedible (I loathed the salads smothered in “salad creme” leading to my current distaste for and distrust of “salad” [specifically anything involving lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber]). Another thing I remember from the food of those days, was how so much of it was made from scratch. My parents weren’t poor, my father having a good career and the family owned our house, but when my father was establishing himself in his career money was in relatively short supply. Which meant that my mother used to shop about two or three times a week for fresh ingredients and everything was freshly cooked. Very occasionally, we were treated to a VESTA curry, but as a rule of thumb tinned, frozen and pre-packaged foods were just too expensive to be other than the occasional treat (Tinned Peaches and tinned Carnation condensed milk were a rather pleasant Sunday lunch treat, although my preference was always for steamed suet puddings). Nowadays, it seems that cooking from raw ingredients is becoming more and more the province of the cash rich, whilst convenience food (frozen, tinned, dried and ready-made) seems to be aimed towards those who are, how can I put it, “cash poor”.
Overall, as far as food goes, I was very lucky and most definitely the exception to the rule of how children were fed in the late 50s and early 60s. As my parents had a mixed marriage (mother English, father Italian) food choices were considerably varied and sometimes even exotic (the latter thanks to an uncle who had lived in Hong Kong and travelled around South East Asia, which was very uncommon in the early 60s). So pasta (of all types), German wurst, stir-fried rice, spezzatino and risotto appeared on the table along with British staples such as toad in the hole.

 

In culinary terms, I think my parents were the “bridge generation“ between my grandparents generation - who mostly regarded any food other than British as suspiciously foreign, oily and full of strange, strong, flavours and my generation, for whom the world is their culinary oyster. (A relevant anecdote: Whenever the family treated itself to a “takeaway Chinese“ [circa 1968], my grandmother always insisted on ordering a simple plain omelette and chips. And nothing could persuade her to try even something as bland as a spring roll)

Edited May 28, 2020 by iL Dottore

[St Enodoc]

3 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

A relevant anecdote: Whenever the family treated itself to a “takeaway Chinese“ [circa 1968], my grandmother always insisted on ordering a simple plain omelette and chips.

That reminds me of a Chinese takeaway in Derby in the 1970s (off-topic - sorry!). On the section of the menu headed "English Dishes" was listed "Spanish Omelette".

[iL Dottore]

3 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

... On the section of the menu headed "English Dishes" was listed "Spanish Omelette".

Now that’s something you rarely see in “foreign” restaurants in the UK these days - a section of the menu dedicated to “English Dishes”

[rockershovel]

my late mother's family spent much of their lives in the Empire, hence her erratic house-keeping (she had never needed to learn, growing up in British India) but they were familiar with curries and so forth, and regarded Vesta with disdain. My father wasn't a fan, his experience of foreign travel being active service in the North African campaign and subsequently the last stages of the European war. 

 

I first encountered pizza when having tea with an American schoolfriend, one of the numerous US Air Force families resident off-base in the Cambridge area. I wasn't initially impressed but I came to like it over time - ready made pizza was quite the latest thing, when I was a student in the 1970s...

 

Tinned peaches and Carnation was a treat! 

 

 

[Kickstart]

Pizza was something my main primary school tried to make.

 

It was vile. Best described as stale bread with very sour tomato purée on it. Took me years to be persuaded try pizza again.

 

All the best

 

Katy

[Fat Controller]

The quote about 'they had to buy their furniture', implying that the speaker had inherited his, came from the arch-snob Alan Clark. He omitted to mention that he only lived in a castle because his father had bought it ....

We have some furniture made by our grand-fathers; Lynne has a small footstool, which her grand-father made at school. whilst I've a book-case made by mine from 'repurposed' orange boxes.

[Mark Saunders]

6 hours ago, rockershovel said:

Chicken was a delicacy, before the introduction of battery farming in the 1960s. 

 

Hence the invention of Coronation Chicken in 1953 !

[rockershovel]

Re il Dottore, above, having a family who had travelled widely depended on who you were. My late mother’s family were from that professional and military class known as “Sons of the Empire” and between them, had wide experience of the Far East, India, Africa and the White Dominions, as they were then known. 

 

Some returned to England in the post-War era, most settled in Canada, Australia and the US. The “English lot”, as they were known, never really took to England (having mostly left as children, or never having seen the place) and tended to socialise with others in similar case, or maintained correspondences and occasional visits with the extended family and THEIR contacts. Our family holidays invariably included a visit to some retired colonial or other, bearing letters of introduction from contacts of contacts, and complete strangers would occasionally appear on our doorstep on the same basis. 

 

It was a strange, Lost Cause sort of world, often conducted amid a sort of genteel poverty by people whose occupation had deserted them, in a society they felt no affinity with. 

 

 

Edited May 28, 2020 by rockershovel

[Poggy1165]

School dinners - ye gods! My school had the miraculous ability to impart a taste to potatoes that literally made me want to retch. How they achieved this I have no idea, but it put me off eating potatoes - bar chips - for years. Once I got married, my wife gradually weaned them back onto them, but it took me a while to accept that potatoes didn't necessarily make me want to spew.

 

At home "luxury" meals - that is what my mother set before honoured guests, and which she would have set before the Queen had HMQ ever visited Gorton - were tinned salmon (always "potted" that is, with added breadcrumbs to make it go further) or chicken, in those days a dish for high days and holidays only. 

 

I think people tend to go on about the "old days" with rose-coloured spectacles. It was mostly absolutely crap. OK, we had steam locos and trolleybuses and it was only 25p for an adult to get into Maine Road. But against that, the food was generally appalling and at present we enjoy far higher quality, a much wider choice, and generally speaking, lower prices in real terms.

Edited May 30, 2020 by Poggy1165

[Reorte]

33 minutes ago, Poggy1165 said:

I think people tend to go on about the "old days" with rose-coloured spectacles. It was mostly absolutely crap. OK, we had steam locos and trolleybuses and it was only 25p for an adult to get into Maine Road. But against that, the food was generally appalling and at present we enjoy far higher quality, a much wider choice, and generally speaking, lower prices in real terms.

 

Different up sides and down sides to all sorts of things. I do hate the "like the look of the past? Must be rose-tinted spectacles" claim, rather than just accepting that different people like different things, and that having a preference doesn't mean pretending downsides didn't exist. If I were to take the same approach I'd say a lot of people who say that look at the present through them.

 

Personally speaking I don't find it hard to find things that I think should stay in the past - most of the success of progress has been keeping them there. But I like little, and detest a lot (to the point of genuine depression), of what's been added.

 

Anyway modern food doesn't seem to be doing the health of the nation much good, considering the number of overweight people around (myself among them).

Edited May 30, 2020 by Reorte

[Poggy1165]

I remember the 1950s and 60s very well, and as far as I am concerned, most aspects were ghastly. The present isn't perfect (I could write a flipping book about stuff I would like to change) but on balance I think life is better. Compared to my grandparents, I live like a king. On the specific topic of food, I don't think there's an argument, I really don't. Of course, if some people abuse the choice available to them - wider than it has ever been in human history - that is their problem, but it's a consequence of freedom. I wouldn't want to live in a country where people were told what to eat "for their own good".  Anyone who wishes who has something like a reasonable income can eat a healthy diet, and the choice is amazing. 

 

If you want another example of something that has changed for the better - schools. The one I went to was barbaric, although it would have been an excellent training-ground for anyone contemplating a life in Strangeways. Children of today's generation nearly all want to go to school, and are really missing the current absence of it. I should have thought that I had died and gone to heaven.

[rockershovel]

Certainly, decision making faculties were no better focussed then. The decision, or inability to see beyond the continuation of Empire in Africa (and Labour shared these delusions; they were, after all, the authors of the Ground Nut Scheme) was never feasible, and definitively killed off at Suez. The complete failure to address vocational training as an essential component of education, in the 1950s and 1960s, plagues us to this day.

 

There was also a lack of necessary ruthlessness. The textile industries of the North-West were a lost cause, because the loss of the Indian Empire destroyed their business model overnight. Their plant was worn out and obsolete, their labour force would not return to the essentially Victorian living and working conditions which prevailed. Importing Pakistani labour en masse was never going to work. 

 

The more perceptive members of the electorate could see this. Mass emigration to just about anywhere was THEIR solution, and few returned. 

[Nearholmer]

Some pluses and some minuses in “progress”, and just right now I’m a tad unhappy that the progress of aviation has allowed a pandemic to roar round the world faster than it ever have could in the past, but leaving that aside, and forgetting all the very many positives, one thing I think is very sad is the effective disappearance of functioning small towns from much of Britain.

 

The efficiency of modern distribution, uniform offerings in shops, the ease of internet purchasing, and a host of other factors, have combined to kill the high street in towns <c10k population, and made the rest really bland and characterless. And not just the high street: garages, builders’ merchants; timber yards, bike shops, secondhand places, all are now largely “chains” and concentrated in fewer places.

 

The old model was less efficient, so prices perhaps 20% higher in real terms, and choice less, but it was so much more human.

 

As to emigration and immigration: I think it’s easy to get fixated on it is a factor and indicator of change; it has been one thing among many, and probably no bigger in affect than several others. My gut feel is that the definitive end of both Empire and the first wave of the industrial revolution have been the most impactful changes since WW2, and that the 60s was the decade where the ‘old model’ predicated on these things finally crumbled to create the dust that was the 70s.

Edited May 30, 2020 by Nearholmer

[rockershovel]

Certainly the 60s were the decade in which large sectors of British industry lost the ability to generate cash, although major manufacturers like North British Locomotive were already going rapidly,  by then. It was also the decade in which both German and Japanese manufacturers stepped up to a new level in design, quality control and production engineering, which the British couldn’t understand, let alone compete with.

 

The cartoon archives of Punch are quite a good place to look for the opinions of the time... it has to be remembered that the British Isles had been net exporters of population since the 17th Century. The British were well accustomed to the idea of opportunity abroad. 

 

 

Edited May 30, 2020 by rockershovel

[iL Dottore]

5 hours ago, Poggy1165 said:

....Compared to my grandparents, I live like a king...

We certainly do live better, don’t we? The following is a list of some of the things we now take for granted but in the 50s/60s/70s were, variously, the province of the well off, the rich and the entitled at various times in those decades:

• Owning a car
• Owning a house
• Having a telephone
• Having a fridge
• Having a TV/Colour TV
• Indoor toilet
• Flying for pleasure/Foreign Holidays
• (others?)

Nowadays, there are very few who do not have any, if not all, of the above. Although nowadays, social gradation is based on what sort of the above you have (e.g. Maserati vs Kia)

5 hours ago, rockershovel said:

...inability to see beyond the continuation of Empire in Africa...

This is indeed the heart of the tragedy that afflicted Britain after the Second World War. After having sacrificed so much men, materiel and treasure in defeating the axis powers, the UK was essentially broke and exhausted in 1945.  And, in my opinion and that of a number of different historians, the near bankruptcy of the UK was down to the US extracting everything it could out of the UK in “exchange for aid”.  
After having pretty much destroyed Britain as a world-class economic power, the US realised shortly after the war that it would need allies in the Cold War against the former Soviet union, so in addition to providing Marshall Plan monies to mainland Europe, Britain also got Marshall Plan funds. Unfortunately, due to the short sightedness and delusions of Imperial Grandeur that beset the politicians of all parties at that time, the Marshall plan money was squandered on keeping the fragments of an Empire going and propping up the pound. Whereas the same monies were being invested by the former Axis powers in rebuilding their infrastructure to modern standards and educating and training their populace...

2 hours ago, rockershovel said:

...It was also the decade in which both German and Japanese manufacturers stepped up to a new level in design, quality control and production engineering, which the British couldn’t understand, let alone compete with....

I think your last sentence (my underline) is particularly damning and very, very accurate. In addition to having factories full of ancient and obsolete machinery, the whole mindset across most industry of the time (or least from what I note from recent readings of History books about the period)  was that of amiable incompetence at all levels. Mostly because, with a captive Market that had to accept/take what was being shipped to them, competence In all aspects of the industrial process at the level practised by the Germans, Japanese and Italians was not necessary, After the effective end of the Empire, British industry was like a group of Koalas that had just had their Eucalyptus trees burnt to cinders by a brush fire: bewildered, unable to get sustenance from anything else and thus condemned to a slow and painful demise.

Whilst a lot of finger-pointing about the decline and disappearance of British industry still goes on, the truth is that no one - politicians, owners, management, unions come out of  this “smelling of roses”. It was a failure, at all levels, of nerve, imagination, education and determination.

Edited May 30, 2020 by iL Dottore

[Nearholmer]

4 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

amiable incompetence at all levels

 

Brilliantly well put IMO.

 

With a layer of hubris still left on top too.

 

And, there are still more than a few bewildered koalas around in this country even now.

 

When will this country get it, and realise that the old game is well and truly over, and that we need to reinvent ourselves as something else, something that we can sustainably afford to be?

 

(Sorry, that is getting perilously close to current affairs, rather than "comparative nostalgia")

[rockershovel]

The systematic neglect of training and design was well known, at least as long ago as the 1870s. The tragedy is that nothing was done about it; it is misleading to say “it couldn’t be done in 1945” because the ability to innovate was long lost, by then. Look at the false starts and dud designs produced during dieselisation,  a classic case of too little, too late. 

 

The NCB was world class, technically; the Selby development, the most modern coalfield in the world. What happened to THAT? 

 

Things haven’t really changed since. I saw the way North Sea Oil was squandered, for the sake of “making deals”, turned my attention outwards and I’ve never looked back. 

 

 

I can’t really hold it against the US for driving a hard bargain; it’s what they do, and anyone who knows them, knows that. The British Empire was simply not defensible, particularly in the Far East. India was slipping away, long before 1947. It was well known in the 1930s that the Empire simply could not afford another major European war, financially or politically; the appeasers were quite right, on that level. 

 

 

 

 

 

[iL Dottore]

9 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

..I can’t really hold it against the US for driving a hard bargain; it’s what they do, and anyone who knows them, knows that....

A very true statement. In fact, I would go even further and refer to the  statement attributed to Henry Kissinger who, in an unguarded moment, said “America doesn’t have friends it has interests“. A statement, as history has shown, to be avery true one. In fact, I would argue that the “special relationship“ with US is simply a myth. Born of necessity, as Churchill full well realised that without US involvement, Britain would not have been able to defeat the Nazi Regime (yes, I know I am greatly simplifying things).

It would seem that the British tendency to indulge in self delusion, regardless of political affiliation, is still alive and well.

[Reorte]

8 hours ago, Poggy1165 said:

I remember the 1950s and 60s very well, and as far as I am concerned, most aspects were ghastly. The present isn't perfect (I could write a flipping book about stuff I would like to change) but on balance I think life is better. Compared to my grandparents, I live like a king. On the specific topic of food, I don't think there's an argument, I really don't. Of course, if some people abuse the choice available to them - wider than it has ever been in human history - that is their problem, but it's a consequence of freedom. I wouldn't want to live in a country where people were told what to eat "for their own good".  Anyone who wishes who has something like a reasonable income can eat a healthy diet, and the choice is amazing. 

 

If you want another example of something that has changed for the better - schools. The one I went to was barbaric, although it would have been an excellent training-ground for anyone contemplating a life in Strangeways. Children of today's generation nearly all want to go to school, and are really missing the current absence of it. I should have thought that I had died and gone to heaven.

 

Sure, I wouldn't disagree at all that there are areas where things have improved immensely, but really everyone needs to acknowledge it's down to the individual about what they find gives life the most meaning and satisfaction. Now I admit that I'm too young to remember the 50s and 60s but I've not heard anything that really convinces me, here or elsewhere, that I'd find today vastly preferable, and within the time I can remember (born in the 70s) I've certainly found it becoming a world I like less and less. But I certainly wouldn't deny that some things have changed for the better, quite significantly.

 

it's up to individuals to work out what the net result is; the material claims I personally find don't sway me much. And I loathe all sorts of features of the present that many appear indifferent to (and quite a few many like). I'm not saying that I'm completely right, just that I know what works for me and what doesn't, and most supposedly positive visions of the future leave me hoping they don't appear in my lifetime.

 

One thing I don't like is when people claim "I lived then, you didn't, therefore your opinion is invalid." By that measure I can't claim that I'm glad I wasn't a medieval peasant or Victorian factory worker! And no-one can claim a view on any potential future they're working towards (or against).

 

On the subject of food though that is an area where you should really acknowledge the downsides rather than handwaving them away (even though I agree the overall situation does look much better). I am also against telling people what to do (other than in fairly extreme circumstances, such as drink driving - an area where there has definitely been a big improvement), but that doesn't mean being blind to the negatives either.

 

It also strikes me that the situation in terms stress, depression, and general unhappiness isn't massively improved, and that's ultimately the important one IMO.

Edited May 30, 2020 by Reorte

[rockershovel]

4 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

A very true statement. In fact, I would go even further and refer to the  statement attributed to Henry Kissinger who, in an unguarded moment, said “America doesn’t have friends it has interests“. A statement, as history has shown, to be avery true one. In fact, I would argue that the “special relationship“ with US is simply a myth. Born of necessity, as Churchill full well realised that without US involvement, Britain would not have been able to defeat the Nazi Regime (yes, I know I am greatly simplifying things).

It would seem that the British tendency to indulge in self delusion, regardless of political affiliation, is still alive and well.

 

Lord Palmerston 1784–1865
British statesman; Prime Minister, 1855–8, 1859–65 

We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.

speech, House of Commons, 1 March 1848

 

.... it probably was nothing new, even then. Caesar probably said it. 

 

 

I would say there IS a historic relationship, between Britain and the USA. The US Constitution, after all, was written by men who mostly regarded themselves as British by birth. Their legal and financial systems are very like ours, we speak a common language. 

 

I’ve had the experience, from time to time of being told by Americans “we are cousins”, or something similar. I’ve certainly never had any such experience anywhere else, including Europe. 

 

 

Edited May 30, 2020 by rockershovel