Domestic Soldiers

by Jennifer Purcell

  But the fight was not, according to Priestley, just against the Nazis. It was also against the politics of ‘officialdom’ and the greed and privilege that had prevailed in the inter-war period. ‘We’re not fighting to restore the past,’ he argued one July evening, for ‘it was the past that brought us to this heavy hour.’ Instead, the fight against the Nazis was only an ‘encumbrance’ to be eliminated so that the real work could be done: ‘so that we can plan and create a noble future’.4

  That new future was a radical restructuring of society, steeped in equality, in which kindness and decency trumped bald-faced power, and community needs triumphed over the individual. Priestley urged the people to ensure that the post-war era prioritized community and creativity over power and destruction, asking his audience to consider the needs of all ahead of selfish, individualistic concerns corrupted by money and property. To illustrate this idea, Priestley told his audience of a large garden in his neighbourhood that had fallen into disuse because its owners fled to America at the opening of the war. Under the traditional conception of individual ownership the community was supposed to protect that property, but, he argued, that duty to protect the absentee owner’s land made no sense when war workers in the area desperately needed land for vegetable allotments. The people had every right to take over that land for the larger good.

  In order for a new dawn to break after the war, all ordinary individuals had to come together and stand up to the bureaucrats and vested interests that threatened to tamp down popular feeling and put things back the way they were. The failure of the inter-war years, he told his audience, was that they ‘let the old hands, the experts, the smooth gentry’ trick them into believing that ordinary citizens could not grasp the problems of the day, and certainly could do nothing about them. In the process, these ‘old hands’ put their hands back on the reins of power, abandoned the people and ultimately ‘sold [them] out’.5 Priestley’s greatest fear, he made clear on his last regular Postscript appearance in 1940, was that the popular spirit of 1940 would evaporate, allowing the ‘old hands’ to enter once more and usher in the bad old days of the inter-war period.

  Every time Priestley took to the air, he skilfully entwined his new vision of the world order and a call to popular action as he painted wholesome, kindly pictures of ordinary Britons and Britain. This radicalism increasingly infuriated the upper levels of government (including Churchill) and, though he assured his audience that it was entirely his decision to leave in October 1940, it was most probably his quest for a new world order that was behind Priestley’s departure as a regular Postscript announcer. He appeared in the Postscript spot several times during the remainder of the war, but never with the regularity of his 1940 stint.

  J.B. Priestley’s ‘people’s peace’ message resonated with Irene Grant. Rarely one to miss his Postscripts, she also devoured his newspaper columns with great eagerness. To one article, in which he insisted that the nation could easily get by without the aristocracy and bureaucracy, but would sink into oblivion without the honest workers, she exclaimed, ‘Them’s my sentiments!’ On another occasion, she echoed Priestley’s community-over-individual ideal in stressing that any vacant homes left standing after a blitz be given to the homeless. ‘The poor homeless people are 100 per cent more value than… property,’ she explained to M-O. The failures of the past that so concerned Tom as he considered buying a new home had transformed Irene into a crusader for a better peace, both for herself and for others. ‘Won’t I fight for the new order with Priestley and Co.!… Good old Priestley!!’ she cried.

  Irene felt closely connected to Priestley and his calls for a radical rebuilding of society: she felt that he had a special way of expressing her thoughts and feelings in words that she could never conjure on her own. Irene wished that she could be as articulate and persuasive as he was in advocating a world order in which she strongly believed. Though she humbly told M-O, ‘My choice of words is so poor,’ she regularly laid out her hopes for the peace in her writing.

  As in Priestley’s vision, Irene’s ideal society emphasized hard-working, salt-of-the-earth, ‘real people’, like her and her family. ‘Yes out goes my chest, I’m real,’ she proudly told M-O when she declared that Priestley had the support of ‘real people’ across Britain. She believed that capitalists and ‘Tories the world over’ had lived on the backs of the common people and had hijacked the power of the state away from them. She was convinced, too, that these same Tories had started the war for their own selfish ends and forced working people around the world to fight one another. In the post-war future, Irene hoped to see a reversal of power through a national takeover of banking and industry, which she believed would undercut capitalist and corporate influence and greed. She also strongly advocated common ownership of land – ‘It ought never to have belonged to any private person,’ Irene asserted.

  As she and her daughters went house-hunting, Irene personally confronted another problem of the capitalist basis of British society: the escalation of prices as supply became scarce and demand rose. Many profited from the housing shortage exacerbated by the Blitz; houses that had once gone for £400 were now selling for twice as much, Irene angrily reported. At the start of her house-hunt, she had believed that £600 would be more than enough to buy them a comfortable home, but after a few months’ search, she found that £900 was more like it, a fact that priced her out of many previously affordable homes. ‘Demand and supply is a wicked greed,’ she fumed.

  In the end, she hoped to see socialism established in Britain and across the globe. As George Orwell once wrote, ‘The “mystique” of socialism is the idea of equality; to the vast majority of people Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all.’6 Equality was very much the core of Irene’s understanding of socialism. Indeed, Irene was driven by acute memories of past experiences of inequality. Though her father had been a respectable, hard-working man who never drank or squandered his money, he never seemed to get ahead. The poverty of the father, too, Irene realized, became the burden of his daughters: Irene felt that she and her sisters had been held back because her family could not afford higher education. ‘My decent brain and my good hands (plain truth, not swank)’, she told M-O, ‘could never have a proper chance because of lack of money, though I come of hardworking people.’ Instead, she watched while others whom she called ‘nin-compoops’ wasted a university education gained simply because their parents had money.

  In the bitter cold of winter, with food increasingly scarce, Irene seethed with anger about the rich who were feeding on luxuries in cafes, while her diligent and respectable family went hungry. She sincerely hoped that, after the war, all ‘ordinary people’ would ‘fight like hell until all are equal’. The chance for ordinary people to ‘fight like hell’ came not after the war, but rather during it, when Sir William Beveridge unveiled a plan that he hoped would be ‘a contribution to a better new world after the war’.

  In numerous public and private capacities throughout his entire career, William Beveridge constantly concerned himself with social reform. In addition to civil service work before and during the First World War, he worked in London slums as a young man and wrote one of the most important texts regarding the problems of unemployment in the early 1910s. In the 1920s and 1930s, he ran the London School of Economics, and during the early years of war was appointed to research and analyse various policy issues.

  The plan that Beveridge introduced to the public on 1 December 1942 would become the pivotal document shaping social insurance in Britain for the rest of the twentieth century, but while he was working out the details of a comprehensive insurance scheme that year, he was also dealing with the more pressing wartime concern of fuel shortages. Early in 1942, the Board of Trade commissioned him to solve the growing gap between coal supply and demand. More than six months before the plan that would make William Beveridge a household name and place him at the forefront of the crusade for a better future, he unveiled a coal rationing plan
that was hotly criticized.

  Fuel shortages and the quality of coal were a constant source of irritation throughout the war, but with Germans prowling the Atlantic and coal extraction suffering in Britain, 1942 was a particularly difficult year. Irene Grant complained incessantly about the quality of the coal delivered to her home, most of which consisted of less fuel than worthless stone and the cost was outrageous, especially in light of its poor quality. The fuel situation also hit Edie Rutherford hard that autumn.

  In the wake of coal shortages that year, the Ministry of Fuel and Power called for a ban on central heating in all but industrial buildings. Edie’s flats were soon freezing and she was furious. As the head of the tenants’ association, Edie went on the offensive, writing to the BBC, her regional fuel controller and her MP about the injustice of the new fuel measures. The tenants also fought the management, who threatened to raise the cost of rent, in order to cover the rising costs of coal, if central heating was reinstituted. Edie stood firm. ‘We shan’t get the heat we used to have,’ she told management and the fuel controller, but ‘of course we don’t expect it.’ The tenants were simply protesting for their fair share, Edie argued; all they wanted was, ‘One warm room which everyone else in the country has got.’

  Her mission was ultimately successful and the ban on central heating was soon lifted, but the fight with management did not end there. In an interview with a local newspaper, the owner of the flats stated that he ‘hoped [the tenants] could economise’. This angered Edie deeply, for it made them look ‘greedy and extravagant with fuel’. The opposite was in fact true, she told M-O. Edie and Sid were committed to conserving energy: even before the fight over fuel erupted, they woke up with candlelight, draped themselves with heavy rugs to keep warm; Edie cooked pot roasts on the hob instead of in the oven and both used the stairs to save the fuel needed to work the lift. Edie simply couldn’t imagine what else they could do.

  Soon after the owner gave his initial interview on the central heating problem, he once again sought out the media to announce that, since workers were rarely home during the day, he would not stoke the central fires until 9 p.m. Once again, the tenants pulled together to combat this new measure – for, as Edie stressed, the elderly and young children were at home during the day and deserved warmth as much as the workers who came home late at night. With all the difficulties she faced that autumn, Edie agreed with Beveridge – rationing was the only equitable way to deal with the uneven access to fuel that kept her shivering in the dark.

  Few were enamoured with this view. Although some accepted Beveridge’s proposal to ration coal in the same manner as food as the only way to ensure that the dwindling supply of coal would be available for war industry, most recoiled at the thought of implementing such a policy. Some argued that restricting coal to homeowners was unfair and others (many from mining districts) worried over the potential impact on miners’ wages. While some called for Beveridge’s resignation from the Board of Trade, he doggedly hung on and took his cause to the media, stating that, like food rationing, the plan would actually ensure fair shares. But the original ‘Beveridge Plan’ was soon dropped.7

  While working out the intricacies of a coal-rationing plan in 1942, Beveridge was also leading a committee that carried out investigations and deliberated over the issue of social insurance. The recommendations that flowed out of this process laid the foundations of the post-war welfare state, yet it was not certain at the outset that the Social Insurance Committee’s work would ever see the light of day, let alone have any significant influence on government or social behaviour. Indeed, Sir William was known in governmental circles as having an unbending personality, and his placement on the committee may well have been a political tactic designed to sideline the irascible civil servant. Beveridge was initially upset when he learned of his appointment to the committee, which he saw as a ‘kicking upstairs’, placing him out of the way, on inconsequential research.8

  But, within six months of work, it became clear that Sir William would not be quieted. Word soon got out that the committee was taking on such controversial questions that the government became worried, and Sir William was informed that the other civil servants on the committee were now only advisers who could not officially endorse any recommendations that resulted. The government washed its hands of the whole affair; henceforth, the committee’s work was entirely Beveridge’s.

  Still, Beveridge’s Social Insurance Committee carried out its investigations during the most dismal period of the war, and though many in government wished to tamp down the potentially revolutionary ideas bandied about by Beveridge, others saw the committee as a potential panacea for waning wartime morale. In fact, hoping for the maximum public effect, the Ministry of Information suggested that the committee’s work be marketed as the ‘Beveridge Plan’ rather than its singularly uninspiring official title, Command Paper (Cmd) 6404.

  Sir William himself also did his own marketing before the official rollout in December 1942. He appeared on the BBC’s popular discussion programme, Brains Trust (the predecessor of today’s Any Questions?), gave interviews about his work and wrote articles for various newspapers such as the Liberal News Chronicle (which Irene Grant, Edie Rutherford and Natalie Tanner all read) and The Times. While the public became more hopeful of the possibility of significant social insurance reform, the government became more wary that Beveridge was fomenting nothing short of revolutionary change. This was especially true after a journalist for the right-wing Daily Telegraph baited Sir William in November 1942 into agreeing that the implementation of his proposals would ‘take the country half way to Moscow’.9

  It was this fear of change that postponed the official unveiling of the command paper on the committee’s work. Lord Privy Seal, Sir Stafford Cripps (the unsuccessful missionary offering the promise of independence to India earlier in 1942) wrote to a friend that the report was completed in October, but that it had not been released because the Cabinet thought it ‘too revolutionary’.10 Indeed, one of Beveridge’s assistants wrote that the ‘atmosphere’ in official circles at the time was ‘unpleasant’ towards Beveridge and his plan.11 Soon, Parliament and the press were abuzz with allegations of official suppression of the report. On 1 December, however, the long-awaited ‘Social Insurance and Allied Services – Report by Sir William Beveridge’ was finally released to the public.

  The plan was an instant popular success. When Sir William went on the BBC the day after his report was published, nearly 40 per cent of the British listening audience (more than 11.5 million) tuned in. Tommy Handley, the frontman for the popular comedy ITMA, was on the air a few days later joking about the new plan, calling it ‘Gone with the Want’ and, ever the artful schemer, conjuring up ways to get the best benefit for himself.12 Within two weeks of the report’s publication, a Gallup poll reported that 95 per cent of people surveyed had heard of the report and nine out of ten believed the government should adopt its proposals.

  As the poll suggests, not all were enthusiastic about the plan. Edie Rutherford immediately cast it aside as a ‘sop to the masses’, while Mrs B, a tenant living with Helen Mitchell, nearly swooned when she heard the broadcast. ‘Isn’t the Beveridge Report dreadful,’ she cried, ‘we shall be just like Russia!’ Always oppositional, Helen had to ‘confess to a strong admiration of Russia’ and a tendency to lean towards the political left. Yet, privately, she believed the plan to be at base ‘defeatist – assuming universal misery and want’. In any case, tapping into her deep cynicism of all things political, Helen was convinced, ‘If it’s any good, it won’t be implemented.’ That was her husband’s sentiment as well. During a ‘violent discussion regarding Beveridge’ on 6 December, he contended that the plan was a ‘good thing’. The only problem, in his mind, was that it would never be properly implemented – the government and trades unions would ‘whittle it down to nothing’.

  Having mysteriously lost the use of her left arm, due, the doctors thought, to the violent concussions
caused by the aerial bombings she had so often endured, Alice Bridges spent most of November in hospital dealing with various ‘experimental’ tests, treatments and recuperation. But when she finally returned home in early December, she was keen to continue the weekly discussion group she had been attending for over a year. The group debated the Beveridge Report and she ‘flabbergasted’ them with her view that the ‘Conservatists’ would have to adopt the plan if they wished to remain in power, for, she argued, the ‘great Insurance Societies’ would lead the post-war world. Natalie Tanner could not be so sure. She listened to Sir William’s radio address and thought it ‘sound’ and full of ‘pious aspirations’, but ultimately, she thought, the government was too conservative ever to allow it to come to fruition. Furthermore, there was a fundamental flaw in Beveridge’s plan: ‘You can’t build socialism on capitalist foundations,’ Natalie argued.

  Indeed, Beveridge did not propose dismantling capitalism, but rather he wished to simplify and humanize social insurance. Sir William’s plan sought to rationalize and yoke together all earlier sources of social insurance under one umbrella. Previously, no less than seven government departments administered and paid out benefits to various populations such as injured war veterans, widows, orphans, old age pensioners, workers injured on the job, disabled civilians and the unemployed. The destitute fell back on demoralizing means-tested public assistance managed by local authority committees.