Britain in the 1950s: Ordinary Lives in Extraordinary Times – Memories of a Post-War Decade

By John Wade

The 1950s was the decade of the Queen’s Coronation and the Festival of Britain; of family shops and pea-souper smogs; listening to the wireless and watching the box; when money was counted in pounds, shillings and pence and weights were in pounds and ounces. It was when children walked to school and ‘six of the best’ was a painful experience; postmen wore uniforms with peaked hats and chimney sweeps rode bikes with their brushes and poles balanced on their shoulders; milk and bread were delivered to your doorstep every morning and orange juice was free for schoolchildren; and when most people still preferred smooth shiny toilet paper to the new absorbent type. The Second World War left Britain in a period of austerity. Yet, born of the relief of the war ending in 1945, there was a spirit of hope for the future and new beginnings, from which grew a climate that was a comforting mix of the traditional past blended with exciting glimpses of an exhilarating future.

John Wade records briefly some of the great achievements and events of the 1950s, but concentrates more on what it was like for ordinary British people living their lives during a far from ordinary decade.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Jun 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781399061391

John Wade

John Wade is a freelance writer and photographer, with more than forty years’ experience in both fields. He has written, illustrated, edited and contributed to more than thirty books, plus numerous magazine articles, for book and magazine publishers in the UK, US and Australia. His specialties are photographic history and techniques, as well as social history.

Book preview

Introduction

Britain’s slow recovery from the aftermath of the Second World War

FACT BOX

•The average weekly wage in 1950 was £ 5 12 s , rising to £ 8 18 s by 1959.

•An average family house cost about £ 1,890 at the start of the decade, rising to £ 2,170 by the end.

•The cost of the Daily Mirror newspaper rose from 1 d in 1950 to 2½ d in 1959.

•The cost of posting a letter in Britain rose from 2½ d to 3 d during the decade.

•In 1951, a Murphy television with a 12-inch screen cost £ 80.

•Cheap ballpoint pens could be found for 1 s .

•A roll of toilet paper cost about 1 s 3 d .

•A tin of Nescafé instant coffee cost 2 s 9 d .

In the 1950s, during the course of ten years, Britain went from bad times to good times, and from austerity to prosperity. The decade began less than five years after the end of the Second World War, leaving Britain strongly influenced and affected by the six years of hostilities. At the dawn of the 1950s, Britain was not a cheery place in which to live. In major cities everywhere, and particularly in London, there were still houses damaged by enemy bombs and awaiting repair. Bomb sites proliferated, heaps of rubble where once a row of houses had stood and now favourite places for young children to play. Prefabs were erected in parks and other open spaces to temporarily house those who had lost their homes. Back gardens had been turned into allotments to help feed families during the war when food was in short supply, and would be in use for a few years more. Outside of the cities, wartime military bases still stood, some abandoned, others active again in preparation for the possibility of a coming Cold War.

Taxation was high. At a time when the then current monetary system meant there were twenty shillings to a pound, the standard rate of income tax was set at nine shillings in the pound. In the early years, a shortage of manpower, food scarcity and a lack of everyday essentials were all part of daily life.

During the Second World War, the role of women changed dramatically. With the men away fighting, women stepped up to take on many of their jobs, proving themselves capable and competent in ways that neither they nor their husbands might have previously thought possible. Then the war ended, the men came home assuming they could have their old jobs back and women went back to being housewives.

Women were expected to be the homemakers, keeping the house clean and tidy, doing the washing, bringing up the children, taking them to and from school, and all the while having a hot meal ready on the table when their husbands came home from work. Women’s magazines of the time, far from championing women’s rights, maintained the stereotype with articles on homemaking and advertisements for all the latest household appliances aimed directly at the woman of the house, who the advertisers knew would be the driving force behind purchases of twin-tub washing machines, the latest vacuum cleaners and kitchen utensils.

There were of course exceptions, but by and large, the acceptance that a woman’s place was in the home continued throughout the 1950s and well into the 1960s. And when women did work it was perfectly acceptable for them to be paid less than men, even when they were doing exactly the same job.

In the days before the Trade Descriptions Act of 1968 prevented manufacturers, retailers or service industry providers from misleading consumers, cigarettes were advertised as being essential if you wanted a good time at just about any social occasion. Eating lard was recommended for good health. Advertisements invited husbands to spank their wives for buying the wrong coffee. Equally politically incorrect advertisements suggested that what a wife really wanted for Christmas was a refrigerator and spoke about cars that were so simple to drive that even a woman could do it.

The 1950s was when children walked to school; when postmen wore uniforms with peaked hats and trousers with red stripes down the legs as they made three deliveries a day; when orange juice was free for the nation’s schoolchildren; milk and bread were delivered to homes by milkmen and bakers every morning; butchers hung raw meat outside their shops on hooks; chimney sweeps rode bikes with brushes and poles balanced on their shoulders; a local call from a telephone box cost fourpence; large towns and cities were often engulfed for days in a kind of fog called smog, popularly known as a pea-souper; and most people still seemed to prefer smooth, shiny toilet paper to the new absorbent type. Izal was one of the better-known brands responsible for this particularly uncomfortable approach to toiletry hygiene. It was not just smooth and shiny, it also smelt vaguely of disinfectant and it was used a great deal in schools, hospitals, factories and public conveniences, probably to discourage people from lingering too long in any of those locations. Much to the discomfort of many children, however, grown-ups of the early 1950s, for some unaccountable reason, also brought it into the home. It was completely unsuitable for the job in hand, although the upside for children at least, unlike the newer absorbent paper beginning to find its way onto the market, Izal was ideal for use as tracing paper.

According to an advertisement from 1951, cigarettes were a social necessity for enjoyment anytime, anywhere.

A NOTE ABOUT MONEY AND MEASUREMENTS

In the 1950s decimal money and metric measurements were something that few would have thought or known about. Money was calculated in pounds, shillings and pence; weights were in ounces, pounds, hundredweights and more; measurements were in inches, feet and yards. Because this was the norm throughout the decade, references in this book to money, weights, measurements and distances have been maintained in the old styles. More information on this subject will be found in the chapter on weights, measures, money and temperatures.

Born from the relief of the Second World War ending, the 1950s generated a spirit of hope for the future and new beginnings. Even though the early years of the decade saw austerity and hardship, a climate gradually grew to be a comforting mixture of the traditional past blended with exciting glimpses of an exhilarating future. The following pages will explore how people lived their lives throughout this initially dreary, but ultimately exciting, decade.

Chapter 1

Life in the 1950s

Achievements – politics – holidays – fashion – the arrival of rock ’n’ roll – the development of household goods – the rise of brutalism

FACT BOX

•More than half a million holidaymakers visited Butlin’s holiday camps during the 1950s.

•The first package tour aeroplanes were converted from military aircraft.

•The bikini was named after the place where the first nuclear tests were carried out.

•20 per cent of British homes owned a washing machine.

•45 per cent of homes owned a vacuum cleaner.

•14 per cent of homes owned a telephone.

•White Christmas was the best-selling record of the decade.

The first half of the 1940s had been devoured by the Second World War, and much of the second half was taken up with the recovery. The 1960s saw an opening up of society in ways that had never before been envisaged or experienced. In between stood the 1950s, a time of change and a transition from the Formal Forties to what became known as the Swinging Sixties.

After the war

Although the Second World War was over and it would be the last time enemy action would be taken against people on British soil, it was by no means the end of war for the British military called to other parts of the world.

NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS

The years 1950 to 1959 saw many achievements that, pre-war, would have been thought of as impossible, or had never been thought about at all. Here are some of them from Britain and around the world.

Replica of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite to be put into space.

At the time the Second World War ended, the Japanese had been ruling the Korean peninsula for thirty-five years. When Japan was defeated, it was decreed that Korea should be divided in two along the 38th parallel. The intention was that this would be for a five-year period culminating in independence for the unified country. The Soviet Union occupied the north, America occupied the south and the two halves began to lead very different lives, according to the influences of their occupying forces. In 1950, North Korea invaded the south in an attempt to unify the country under communist rule. The two sides called upon their allies for aid and British soldiers once again went to war. The conflict ended in 1953 with a stalemate that left the two Koreas still separated and divided by a 2½-mile wide demilitarised buffer zone.

In 1956, British troops once again found themselves involved in a foreign war following the nationalisation by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser of the Suez Canal, a waterway that controlled the traffic of two-thirds of Europe’s oil. As a result, Israeli armed forces invaded Egypt, soon to be joined by French and British forces. It wasn’t long before Egypt emerged victorious and the British and French withdrew troops in late 1956 and early 1957. The only real effect of the war felt by the British at home was five months of petrol rationing.

Until then, National Service had been a fact of life for boys after they left school, with all those from the ages of 17 to 21 called up to serve at least a year and half in one of the branches of the military. The system began to be phased out in 1957, with the last recruits called up in 1960.

The political climate

Britain went into the Second World War in 1939 under a Conservative government with Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister. But it was clearly no time for party politics and, the following year, in May 1940, Chamberlain invited the Labour Party to join him in forming a coalition government. Labour leaders, however, had little faith in Chamberlain as a leader and he was forced to resign, his place as Prime Minister of the coalition government taken by Winston Churchill, previously First Lord of the Admiralty.

For many, Churchill was the voice of Britain during the war, his rousing speeches, his wit, and his talent for often verbose but always stirring words bringing hope and optimism to the people of Britain in their darkest hours. So when a general election was called in 1945, the year the war ended, the fact that Churchill had guided Britain through the six difficult war years, and the not unimportant fact that the Allies had won, meant that most people, Conservative politicians especially, thought it would be a forgone conclusion that Churchill would be elected at the head of a new Conservative government. It didn’t happen. Instead, the Labour Party swept to power with Clement Attlee as Prime Minster. This is where things stood politically at the start of the 1950s. Then, in 1951, Attlee, in an effort to increase his majority, called another general election, only to be beaten by the Conservatives and putting Winston Churchill back in power as Prime Minster.

Winston Churchill gives his famous V for Victory sign.

Britain remained under Conservative rule for the rest of the decade, with Anthony Eden replacing Churchill as Prime Minister in 1955, then Harold Macmillan taking over in 1957. In fact, Britain would remain under a Conservative government throughout the first half of the 1960s as well, with Alec Douglas-Home taking the premiership in 1963, only to be ousted by Harold Wilson, leading the Labour Party to victory in 1964. It ended what Labour Party members were keen on referring to then as ‘Thirteen years of Tory misrule’.

Summer holidays

The thought of journeying abroad for a holiday at the start of the 1950s never entered the heads of most people. By the end of the decade, however, package tours to foreign climes, Spain in particular, became within the reach of many. In between came the traditional British holiday on the nearest stretch of coastline.

Seaside holidays

Few had cars at the start of the 1950s, and strangely, those that did were often loath to use them for holidays. So families were more likely to travel to their holiday destinations by train or coach. When they arrived, wealthy families might stay in hotels, but many more would stay in guest houses, in which rooms were rented out and where everyone was expected to share bathroom facilities, while meals were usually taken communally around one large table. If the service were for bed and breakfast only, many establishments expected families to leave straight after the morning meal and locked them out until early evening. Full board in some of the better guest houses provided bed, breakfast, an evening meal and even lunch as well, although frequenting rooms between meals was discouraged. Some local inhabitants of seaside towns and surrounding areas offered bed and breakfast in private homes, where guests became part of the family, sharing mealtimes and bathrooms for the duration of their stay.

A British Railways poster sums up the pleasures of beach holidays at Whitley Bay.

Days were spent on the nearest beach, where mum and dad would sit in deckchairs, behind windbreaks if the weather was chilly, devoting time to writing postcards to friends and relatives back home. The children played on the beach, building sandcastles with their buckets and spades. These activities were interspersed with paddling and swimming in the sea, whose tide came in and out during the course of the day, forcing those on the beach to move backwards and forwards as the day progressed. If the weather was fine, everyone enjoyed themselves. If the weather was bad, the whole experience could be gloomy, and it wasn’t uncommon to see children playing on the sand under lowering skies while fully dressed in their outdoor clothes and even overcoats. When it rained, the shelters found along the promenade behind the beach would be full of shivering families, while cafés seethed with people in damp clothes huddled over pots of tea.

Itinerant photographers worked along the seafronts of most seaside resorts, taking pictures with their own props.

Not everyone had a camera to record their holiday enjoyment. But they might stop off along the seafront where photographers set up places to photograph holidaymakers with simple props like a giant teddy bear or even a live monkey. A little less professional were other photographers who roamed the seafront to take what was known as walking photographs. Photographers, both professional and semi-professional, would stalk the promenade, snapping pictures at random of passers-by and handing them tickets. Later, if those who had been photographed in this way so desired they could go along to the photographer’s shop or maybe little more than a hut on the beach where the day’s pictures were displayed, to present their ticket and buy a picture of themselves that had been take earlier. A lot of people happily bought the pictures, although few were very flattering to their subjects.

Caravanning holidays

During the course of the 1950s, as car ownership became more prevalent, caravanning became a popular way to take holidays. Most caravans of the time were small and cramped with rounded designs and very few windows. They were exemplified by the Berkeley Argosy, made in 1954 when its manufacturer boasted that it was the only caravan made entirely by a female workforce. The Eccles Alert was of a similar design, dating back to 1948, but continuing in production until 1955. The Eccles company had helped during the Second World War with the manufacture of specialist vehicles for the army and home front, and so had access to raw materials which gave the company a head start over most of its early rivals. The Eccles Alert was 14 feet long and slept four people, courtesy of a double bed at the front of the van and two singles at the rear, which must have filled most of the van once they had been unfolded.

A family set off for their caravan holiday in the 1950s.

One of the most luxurious vans was made by Bluebird, the largest caravan manufacturer in Britain in the 1950s. Although the company had previously specialised in static caravans, built to remain in one place on a campsite, the post-war years saw a move into the mobile caravan market, and one of the best was the Bluebird Sunparlour, first made in 1957. At 16 feet long and 7 feet wide, it was considered to be quite a beast and needed a powerful car to pull it. Many ended up being towed to campsites and left their as static vans for rental purposes. The advantage over other static vans was that the Sunparlour was a lot more mobile and easier to transport to a campsite than many of its type. The makers, however, advertised it as a mobile model with the slogan, ‘Follow the sun with the Sunparlour.’

Caravanning in