Family Britain, 1951-1957 (74 page)

Henry St John, the misanthropic civil servant, continued the almost commentless chronicling of his life. ‘In Ealing the trolley-bus driver refused to move until some people who he stated to be standing upstairs were removed,’ he recorded on Saturday, 16 April. It was a situation that might have appealed to Tony Hancock, whose second radio series – hard on the heels of the first one finishing in February – was due to start the following week. Unfortunately, he had done a runner, booking himself in at a cheap
pensione
on the Neapolitan Riviera. The frantic producer turned to another comedian, who good-naturedly agreed to stand in, and on Tuesday evening it fell to Robin Boyle to announce, ‘This is the BBC Light Programme. We present
Hancock’s Half Hour
, starring – Harry Secombe . . .’ Soon afterwards, Hancock himself (or his agent) gave a quote to the
Sunday Pictorial
: ‘I’m the kind that can’t relax. It doesn’t matter how many times I play a scene, I’m always trying to add something to it. It frays my nerves to a frazzle and suddenly my system won’t take it any more.’ Since the previous November he had been performing twice-nightly in
The Talk of the Town
, a revue at the Adelphi Theatre. Now, he eventually returned to the fray, but not before Secombe had deputised twice more. The rest of the series, however, proved a triumph, as (in one biographer’s words) ‘public enthusiasm built quickly’ and 1955 turned into the year ‘in which the country became truly conscious of the Hancock phenomenon’.

Radio, not television, was still the universal medium, with figures in June showing that whereas some 40 per cent of middle-class households had a TV set (still quite an expensive item), only 26 per cent of working-class households did. Class, though, was not the sole determinant, for whereas 41 per cent of families with a child aged between eight and fifteen had a set, the same was true for only 26 per cent of families without such a child. Or in the nicely understated explanation of Mark Abrams, in his analysis of ‘Child Audiences for Television’, there existed ‘a widening appreciation among parents that television can take from their shoulders the burden of keeping their children silent in the hours between returning from school and going to bed’. Abrams in April 1955 systematically investigated the viewing habits of children (eight to fifteen) and revealed as never before the medium’s addictive qualities: ‘As far as the majority of children are concerned, the tea-time viewing [ie of programmes specially for children] is at best a mere warming-up, a preliminary flexing of the eye muscles, before the main diet starts at 7.30 pm [ie after the so-called toddler’s truce, with no programmes at all while parents got their small children to bed]; over 70 per cent of children in TV homes said they had watched at least part of the adult TV programmes on the evening before the interview.’ Moreover, ‘middle-class parents who own TV sets are only a little more restrictive than working-class parents with TV sets when it comes to letting their children stay up and watch adult programmes’. All in all, ‘the average child in a TV home spent 1½ hours every evening watching adult television’, with half of those in the 11-to-13 range still being in front of their sets after 9.00 p.m. And unsurprisingly, when children were asked to name their favourite programmes, only 34 per cent of their votes went to children’s programmes, with far more plumping for
Ask Pickles
(a particular favourite of working-class children),
The Grove Family
and
Fabian of the Yard
.
¹⁶

This spring the annual outcomes to the football season had a more than usual resonance, in retrospect at least. Newcastle United won the FA Cup for the third time in five seasons; Chelsea won their first league championship, overcoming an early 5–6 home defeat to Manchester United; Luton Town, watched by increasingly prosperous Vauxhall car workers, gained promotion to the First (ie top) Division; and the supporters of Accrington Stanley went through the emotional mill, faithfully recorded by the
Accrington Observer
. Only one team would be promoted from Third Division North, and Stanley started the Easter programme four points clear of Barnsley at the top (only two points then for a win). After a battling draw at York City on Good Friday (‘a grand slam set-to with plenty of good football, thrills and he-man stuff’), humiliation came next day, 9 April, as in bright sunshine and in front of a crowd of 11,250, they crashed 5–2 at home to Hartlepool, with Stanley ‘more and more disorganised and ragged, until, by the final whistle, the rout was complete’. By the 23rd, after more indifferent results, it was a case of ‘something of a miracle needed’, but over the next week things suddenly swung back Stanley’s way, so that by the 30th, the last Saturday of the league season, ‘hope will, indeed, be very much alive’ if Stanley could win at Chesterfield. Sadly, they slumped to a 6–2 defeat – ‘Oh dear, oh dear, what an anti-climax!’ – and the same afternoon Barnsley wrapped up promotion. Still, a 3–0 win at Bradford City the following Wednesday secured second place. ‘At any rate,’ optimistically reflected ‘Jason’ of the local paper, ‘Stanley are now “on the map” and a team and club to command respect.’

For almost four weeks this spring, sporting and other deeds went largely unreported in the national press. As the result of a dispute involving the Amalgamated Engineering Union and the Communist-dominated Electrical Trades Union, a national newspaper strike began on 25 March, affecting almost all London-published daily and Sunday titles. Harold Macmillan’s diary recorded some early developments:

27 March.
There have been no papers obtainable for two days except the
Manchester Guardian
and the
Yorkshire Post
. No Sunday papers – an immense relief! . . .

31 March.
Today, I am told, the whole London consignment of the
Yorkshire Post
was stolen at Kings X, by some ingenious speculator, for re-sale at an enhanced price . . .

1 April.
The newspaper proprietors are losing heavily. Those which have a great range of papers, periodicals etc (like Amalgamated Press etc) are sound enough. The
Daily Chronicle
[ie
News Chronicle
] is said to be rocky. And the
Daily Herald
too. So perhaps the only tangible result of the strike may be to silence the Socialist and Radical press! . . .

Eventually, after the inevitable Monckton-appointed Court of Inquiry, there was a settlement, and the papers reappeared on 21 April. ‘For all the people who are connected with newspapers the strike has been a difficult period, a time they will long remember as one of anxiety, suspense and frustration,’ declared the pink paper that was starting to cover the British economy as a whole and not just the City. ‘For many papers, including the
Financial Times
, it was the first time in their history that they altogether failed to appear.’ At least one diarist was less fussed. ‘It is extraordinary,’ reflected Madge Martin in Oxford the same day, ‘how everyone got on quite well without them.’

Had they? ‘Results show, in general, a picture of frustration (not always unhappy), a good deal of anti-strike feeling, a broad awareness that the strikers want wage increases and a vague knowledge of the pros and cons of the matter,’ Mass-Observation found during the strike on the basis of its familiar mix of interviews, observations and overheards. ‘People are adjusting themselves to the strike: some with irritation and signs of nervous strain as they search for
anything at all
to read; some with relief as, freed from apparent compulsion to read, they decide that the strike has compensations. For most, however, the loss of newspapers is a big loss . . .’ Of 500 carefully watched Londoners travelling to work by Tube on the first Monday in April, 59 per cent were sitting and doing nothing, while the same morning at Surbiton station at about 9.00, the usually very busy bookstall made only three sales in ten minutes. ‘A young clergyman bought
Robin
, a children’s paper; a young man bought
Automobile
; a middle-aged man bought the
Christian Science Monitor
after picking it up between thumb and finger and enquiring sarcastically “What is
this
?”.’ M-O also included some vox pop, mainly but not entirely negative:

My husband gets very depressed. The paper’s a part of his life. I feel utterly lost. (
Tailor’s wife
)

Not reading
The Times
is like not cleaning your teeth. (
Middle-class man, retired
)

You know there’s something missing. It’s getting a bit tight to light the fires. You have to scrape round the boy’s scrapbooks and his comics. (
Working-class housewife
)

I miss my bit of scandal in the Sunday newspapers. (
Young working-class shop assistant
)

It’s a nuisance to men, not so much to women, they don’t have time to read. (
Wife of Post Office worker
)

Oh, I do miss the newspapers. For one thing I never know the date and then there is nothing to argue about on the bus going to work. (
Wages clerk
)

I think it’s rather a nice change not to have newspapers, not to read about Atom bombs all the time. (
Electrician
)

It saves me a bit of money – 2s 6d a week. (
Trade representative
)

I think it’s a jolly good thing. It gives people a chance to read stuff that’s more valuable. (
Local government official
)

Those – the majority – who said they had been personally affected by the strike were asked to identify what in the papers they had missed in particular. Sport (including the pools) was easily top on 35 per cent, followed by the news (20 per cent), crosswords (7 per cent) and cartoons (4 per cent). Among that last small but dedicated group, feelings seem to have run especially high. ‘There is a rumour that they are printing papers for themselves in Fleet Street,’ a female reader of the
News Chronicle
said. ‘Does that mean that when the papers start again we shan’t know what has happened to Colonel Pewter for a fortnight?’

One visitor, staying at London’s Connaught Hotel, felt only modified rapture at the return of the fourth estate. ‘Would you please have someone tell the
Daily Sketch
that not only would I not do a piece of writing for them but that I wouldn’t use their rotten rag even to stuff up a rat hole,’ Raymond Chandler requested his British publisher on 27 April. ‘Our press is no bargain, but your gutter press is fantastically bad.’
¹⁷

6

A Lot of Hooey

People were also asked during the newspaper strike what stories they would like to have read about. ‘Oh, bits about accidents and murders and thrilling bits, you know,’ replied a 29-year-old cleaner in a cafeteria. ‘Any boxing news or football. The Don Cockell fight . . .’ answered a 51-year-old mechanic. ‘I think only the small news items, nothing special, just the little bits,’ said the 24-year-old wife of a transport driver. It was left to a 54-year-old builder’s labourer to stake the high ground: ‘Well, I missed the splash they would have made about Churchill and now there’s the general election, still we won’t have to read a lot of hooey, will we?’

The interviews were probably on about 18 April, only three days before the papers in fact returned, but thirteen days after the announcement that Churchill was at last stepping down. ‘Tears rolled down my cheeks,’ wrote Nella Last after hearing the news on the radio. ‘It’s been an honour to have had him for a leader, though if I’d been able to have “given him a wish,” it would be that tonight he went to bed, happy but sad, & in his sleep started his last journey & never woke as the King he served so well did.’ Next day, Wednesday the 6th, Sir Anthony Eden became Prime Minister, an event treated by the still toothless BBC as a pre-ordained coronation virtually above politics. The handsome, charming, highly strung Eden had, like many crown princes, waited a long time – too long – for this moment. ‘It is a pretty tough assignment to follow the greatest Englishman of history, but I feel sure Eden will make a good job of it,’ Harold Macmillan optimistically reflected that day, but the greatest Englishman himself had on the eve of his departure – after entertaining the Queen to dinner at No. 10 – declared with a sudden vehemence to his principal private secretary: ‘I don’t believe Anthony can do it.’

The following week, on Friday the 15th, Nella Last heard on the six o’clock news that Eden would be making a radio broadcast at 7.30. But before then, her next-door neighbour, Mrs Atkinson, dropped by:

She said, ‘What
can
Eden have so important to say? Do you think it’s about Princess Margaret marrying Townsend?’ She is so very interested in every scrap of news of them. I said, ‘I shouldn’t think it would be a Prime Minister’s job to tell us.’ My husband said, ‘More likely he’s got the newspaper strike settled.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t think he has anything to do with
that
either.’ My husband said, ‘What
can
it be then?’ Without a thought in my head it could be a solution, I said, ‘Only thing
I
can think is a sudden decision to have an Election.’ They both were doubtful.

Nella was right, with Eden setting the election date for some six weeks hence, 26 May. This was barely three and a half years since the last election, and the Tories still had an eminently workable majority, but quite apart from the natural wish to secure a personal mandate, Eden had another reason for going early. ‘Anthony has thought for a year now that we will run into trouble with our trade,’ his wife, Clarissa, had noted in her diary in February. ‘Anthony wonders if a snap election immediately after taking over may not be the best chance. He feels sure we will lose if we wait till the autumn.’
¹

Four days after the date had been set, Rab Butler presented what could not but be seen as a highly political budget, cutting the standard rate of income tax by 6d and freeing 2.4 million people from paying the tax altogether, while at the same time publicly pinning his faith on ‘the resources of a flexible monetary policy’ in order to counterbalance this fiscal generosity. The
Financial Times
, once back in action, argued that Butler had been ‘right to take his risks on the side of expansion’, though did concede not only that the budget had been inflationary, but also that ‘the condition of the economy still needs to be watched with great care’. Gaitskell as Shadow Chancellor bitterly accused Butler of placing political popularity above economic prudence, but it was the
Manchester Guardian
that called the larger game correctly: ‘Mr Butler may indeed have cause to regret his generosity later in the year . . . And then the laugh would really be with Mr Gaitskell. But the prospect of Mr Butler “eating his words” at some time in the autumn is not going to win this election.’
²