Lizzy May – Chapter 24
When the War was Over
Summer 1980
Hello, Pauly. Well done with your exam results! Are you pleased? You should be. So you’ll be doing German, French and English Literature for A-Level, will you? Very good.
I was thinking we might have a chat about the political situation at the end of the War, to put things in context. I’ve just been listening to an interesting programme on Radio 4, and it’s got me thinking.
Oh, you’re not interested in politics?
Well, maybe that’s because you can’t see how it’s relevant to your life. It’s been deeply relevant to mine, so if you’re interested in my life, as you seem to be, you ought to care about politics too.
Not convinced? Let’s see if we can’t join some dots, eh?
We’ve talked a lot about the two World Wars, over the years. They were defining events of the first half of this century, in many ways, and my life would have been very different if they hadn’t happened.
Women would probably have a lot fewer rights today, for one thing, and fewer job opportunities. I might have been stuck at home, looking after Mother, becoming a bitter ‘old maid’.
For another, I wouldn’t have met your grandfather, so you wouldn’t even be here.
Now, wars are political events – or as Clausewitz put it, ‘War is a continuation of politics by other means.’ You can’t understand war without politics.
In times of war, in democratic countries like ours, political parties may set aside their differences, and work together in the country’s interest. Or that’s the hope, anyway.
So back in World War Two, Churchill’s war ministry was formed from members of the Conservative, Liberal and Labour parties. Bitter enemies, all working together!
When peace comes, though, all bets are off. Voters have a short memory and aren’t sentimental.
So in July 1945, Churchill was turfed out of power unceremoniously by the voting public, and the new Labour government under Clement Attlee was given a huge majority.
It may seem ungrateful to you, that we got rid of our country’s great war leader just before the final victory – which he did help to bring about, after all. Even I have to give him that, and I never liked the man.
The whole world was shocked, I think.
But we were so sick of being at war, you see, and wanted a new Britain, one that looked to a peaceful future. Our country was almost bankrupt, propped up by American loans. The Empire was coming to be viewed as an economic and political liability by this stage, not an asset.
Instead of doom and gloom and austerity, in this difficult time, Attlee gave us hope. He promised us jobs, homes and free health care for everyone.
It may have seemed wildly optimistic, but we wanted to give his vision a chance.
It wasn’t just a leap of faith, mind you. The Beveridge Report had detailed how it might be done, right in the darkest days of the War. Nearly a million copies were sold, and for a three-hundred-page official report, dry as dust, that ought to tell you something.
The gamble paid off, I think.
Labour honoured far more of its promises than anyone thought it could, and brought in National Insurance for all, the very next year after the War. British citizens were guaranteed unemployment and sickness benefits that were actually enough to live on, funded by a small contribution from the wages of working people.
Then two years later the NHS was founded, the National Health Service. A bout of ill health was no longer a financial disaster for families, and a new focus on preventative healthcare reduced the chances of getting sick in the first place. Resources were put into building hospitals and clinics, and staffing them with well-trained professionals.
Vital industries were nationalised – bought from their private owners at a fair price, and run for the benefit of the whole country.
It was a big step towards true socialism, although people like my good friend Eric Blair, George Orwell, wanted to go even further.
If Churchill’s government saved Britain from being crushed under the Nazi jackboot, then Attlee’s built the foundation for the Britain we live in today. I think that’s fair to say.
I mean it quite literally.
The house you live in, for example, that was built in this period, Pauly. All these estates were. Elizabeth Road was named to honour our new Queen, in the year of her coronation, 1952.
These new council estates were needed to house the people who’d been bombed out during the War, from the East End and all over London. They were living in disused army camps, and prefab houses of poor quality.
That’s why Borehamwood is such an odd place. It’s the clash of the old Cockney working class and prosperous middle-class families from the commuter belt, you see. Families like the Roys, who I know you’ve had some run-ins with over the years, aren’t bad people, but they’re East Enders, and used to a tough life. If you get on the wrong side of them, they’re hard to deal with, unforgiving.
Now the times are changing, that Thatcher woman has torn up the post-War consensus, and socialism is a dirty word. People are looking out for their own advantage.
Your Mum and Dad are hoping to buy their home, with this Right to Buy business the Tories are talking about – just like thousands of other council tenants across the country. It will be a good opportunity for them personally, and a wonderful bargain, because the houses will be sold off cheaply, if the new Housing Act is passed.
Where will the next generation of poor families live, though, when the council estates are all in private hands?
Maggie Thatcher will tell you we’re all going to be so wealthy, we won’t need council houses, or a bossy ‘nanny state’ to look after our interests. Well, I beg to differ.
But that’s enough about politics for one day. Let’s get back to Percy, your Dad and me, and our life after the War.
In our little corner of England, life chugged along without as much change as you might think, after the War was over. Ration coupons continued for another nine years. Nine years!
So we carried on gardening.
Percy was kept busy with the Prudential, as civilian drivers began to take over the roads again, and to have accidents. There was also a vast backlog of claims from the War years, and endless legal squabbles between the Pru and the Government as to who was liable for what.
Your Dad grew into an inquisitive, funny little boy with two adoring parents. After he was old enough to go to the village school, I took on part-time work, to help ends meet. I started tutoring again.
Alfred Young next door died suddenly from a heart attack. We were worried at first that Fran was going to sell up, leaving us to deal with a new landlord, but that didn’t happen, as you know.
She was a tough old bird, your ‘Nanna Young’. Even into her eighties, she was still cycling around the village and over the hill to Borehamwood.
Ah, yes, George.
He eventually came home, after convalescence in a military hospital, then a role with the army in Germany, in the aftermath of the War.
He was a very different person, just as I’d witnessed with my brother Ernie after the Great War. Polite, friendly, but reserved.
He never spoke much about his experiences during captivity, not with me at any rate, though sometimes he had long conversations with your grandfather. I wondered what they were talking about, smoking away down the bottom of the garden, or huddled in a punt out on the Reservoir, with their lines dangling in the water.
George was Percy’s only point of contact now with his first family. I didn’t know what Charlie or Daphne were up to, where they were living, or anything about them. If Percy knew, he didn’t share it with me.
The fact that we were still unmarried after all these years, and the birth of our son, was troubling both of us.
Marriage was still very important in those days, and we felt that we were letting your father down, bringing him up ‘out of wedlock’, as it were. As an expert in the law, your grandfather was aware of the potential legal ramifications, and the lack of protection little Christopher and I had, in the event of his death.
After all, he was over sixty now, and that was considered quite elderly in those days.
I think Percy had accepted that Charlie would never give him a divorce – she’d said that to me, remember – and that, as she hadn’t died in the War, the best thing was not to rock the boat, so to speak. She was older than him, so perhaps she’d die of natural causes and we could get married?
Wishful thinking! It wasn’t much to base our future on.
Coming up:
This Friday in Tales from the Wood: Pauly is finding life in the sixth form decidedly mixed, and misses his friends. (Paid subscriptions.)
Next Tuesday in Lizzy May: Britain is changing, and Christopher is growing up fast. Percy and Lizzy May receive concerning health news.