History?

[bainbrig]

Well in French, une histoire is a story, and it seems the original meaning is creeping in here.

A journalist, Babita Sharma, has currently got her book ‘The Corner Shop” on R4, in which she bangs on about life in England in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s.

Now, as in 1970 I was in my twenties, I can claim some first-hand knowledge of all those decades, and unless I’m going senile, it weren’t like that!

Queues for paraffin at my local shop? Nah. The 70s, a decade plagued by power cuts? Not in London, anyway. The 80s, plunged into deep economic recession? Well, no worse than now.

Turns out Ms Sharma wasn’t born until 1977,

But it makes you wonder just how much history is bull.

BB

[10ClarionSt]

It didn't affect us. We had nowt. So no effect. But one thing I learned from "having nowt", was not to spend money I didn't have, e.g. credit cards, loans. I still live by that.

[1ozzy]

When I were a lad.....

Oh, hang on, sounding a bit Yorky here....

[10ClarionSt]

Yep. Times were really tough in Yorkshire! Have a look at this.

[1ozzy]

'Arf a crown to get some dinner 10C?

Corr blimey, you was posh!

[10ClarionSt]

Yes but that was for a family of 10!

[1ozzy]

Tuppence it was, to feed 8 of us.

Never ate better in my whole life, them were the days!

[THECORBYLOON]

Was that the cost of hot or cold gravel?

[1ozzy]

Cold gravel Corby, Dad made us sit on it until it was warm!

[woofgang]

bb, there are going to be different personal experiences of historical factual events....its reasonable to say that you remember them but they didn't affect you....or you don't remember them..... but your OP implies that they never happened when plainly they did!

[tamborine]

1950s Mum was donating to cancer but alas still no cure. 60s dad gave me driving lessons on new M4 London to Maidenhead in his Austin Westminster with foot button for overdrive. 70s surrounded with motorways; M4, M40, M25 & M3 cutting up farmland & agricultural/livestock livelihoods with little compo. Social housing rampant around Heathrow for city overspill; 3b semis @ £4k & corner shops snapped up by asians selling spices, exotic sweets; I gorged on jellabies, ludoos, russagulahs & rass malli; & fruits mangoes, rambultans, lychees, papaya & pomello.

[andres]

Some of the posters have been quite sarcastic and nasty towards bainbrig. We all have our own memories of the past . Bainbrig is right to point out that Babita Sharma could not have possibly have known from a personal aspect about life in the time frame that she wrote about. She would have used statistics and heresay.
In the 40s/50s we were all busy re-building Britain after the war. People worked hard and there was a strong community spirit. The education system in 1950s Britain was second to none in the world and brought social mobility. Instead of working in the local town we looked further afield and went ''out into the world''to get a better job but public transport wasn't always convenient and so people started to buy cars. Better jobs meant higher wages.Instead of renting people began to buy houses. Houses were filled with all manner of material goods. All at once we were into Hire-purchase, mortgages, Credit Unions etc.Live now pay later. By the early 70s people needed higher wages in order to pay for all these material things. The miners strike led to a shortage of coal which in turn affected the electricity supply. Power cuts meant that industry suffered. Jobs were lost and that meant mortgage arrears for a lot of people. Misery for a lot of families.. In our area some of the collieries and smaller mines closed and we had power cuts ,dustmen and postmen on strike and the three day week. These did happen but maybe some areas were not as badly affected as others. It is possible that bainbrig lived in one of those towns .We shouldn't be so quick to criticise other people .

[naomi24]

//It is possible that bainbrig lived in one of those towns .//

Bainbrig has said he lived in London's East End ... not the most affluent of areas.... ever.

[Peter Pedant]

// 1950s Mum was donating to cancer but alas still no cure. 60s dad gave me driving lessons // but I still cant drive
sozza sozza

//Tuppence it was, to feed 8 of us.
Never ate better in my whole life, them were the days!//

POW story again - mid fifties, Dad came in with two whole uncut loaves under his arm and said
" I found these on someone's rubbish dump, but I really think they are still good to ear"
My mother waited and buried them somewhere
The children of one of his pals said - that's nothing, he saw apples split on the road some crushed and we were tipped out of the car to collect them.....

so when I read 'By Jan 1945, Germany was starving and the camps had the worse of it .....' it is clearly true

[Peter Pedant]

// we had power cuts ,dustmen and postmen on strike and the three day week.//

Charing Cross the junior doctors sallied forth and wrecked the striking ancillary workers picket hut ( 1979 ) shouting we arent allowed to go on strike!
I asked one how they mobilised and they said - switch agreed to send out a cardiac arrest call to wreck the hut at the front
no criminal charges, GMC uninterested
oh those were the days !

[bainbrig]

M4 - no driving lessons, at least not legally!

Three-day week. Yes, Heath’s government attempted to get firms not to use electricity on certain days, but apart from bashing the miners (after the victory at Saltley Gate) any factory that actually laid workers off was doing it for their own ends.

To quote from a song of the 70s “We may be in the same boat, But it’s us that’s got the oars.”

My point was (is) this.

The problems we had 40 years ago were hugely exaggerated by the right-wing press, and now ‘memories’ of them are similarly embroidered by anti-working-class sentiment.

BB

[Peter Pedant]

I prefer history is a social construct for each generation
( er Amritsar should teach us that - sozza liked it so much that I thought it deserved another outing)

// But it makes you wonder just how much history is bull. //
erm well - history is bunk - henry ford
have we had that ?

an Maurriac he say
there is only one lesson from history and that is there are no lessons from history

yeah - foo ! as 3t often says

[zebo]

Danny, we certainly had power cuts in Keighley and our friends also had them in Bradford, there was a published rota of, I think, 4 hour cuts and we would go to each other's houses to escape! It was in 72/73, it was that and the 3 day week that made us look at jobs abroad.

[jno]

ate everything in the Berlin Zoo, didn't they PP?

[ToraToraTora]

BB:"The problems we had 40 years ago were hugely exaggerated by the right-wing press, and now ‘memories’ of them are similarly embroidered by anti-working-class sentiment. " - so rubbish piled up in Leicester Sq, gravediggers strike, etc, all mad up then BB? Cobras mate.

[bainbrig]

No, not cobras, but EXAGGERATED cobblers.

Was it their Henry (or a Toynbee) who lamented that History was just one damned thing after another?