Family Britain, 1951-1957

by David Kynaston

  What of society at large? There seems to have been at this crucial time, just as the economic constraints were starting to loosen, remarkably little consultation, but the strong probability is that the great majority of people preferred houses to flats just as much as they had during the wartime surveys. In Crawley New Town, for instance, the development corporation responded to popular feeling in the early 1950s by downgrading the proportion of flats from 15 per cent of the town’s total accommodation to 2½ per cent. In Liverpool, John Barron Mays found in his study of an inner-city police division that ‘a great many of the police disliked tenements for aesthetic or other reasons not connected with crime’, with almost half of them believing that flats ‘were breeding grounds for juvenile gangs’. Two of Coventry’s councillors did tell the press in May 1953 that flats were ‘at long last’ becoming popular among Coventrians, but offered no supporting evidence. They would not have convinced Gladys Langford, who the previous November had spent an afternoon walking around Hackney, where she ‘grieved to find Woodberry Down so altered’:

  It was a most attractive spot – a residential district with the New River & the Reservoirs and their tree-d surroundings to give pleasing views. Now huge blocks of flats, ugly little shops and ludicrous maisonettes scar the mangled roads. Two of the blocks with grey stone look like replicas of Pentonville Prison. Trees have been cut down, the stumps look like rotten teeth in a neglected mouth. There is nothing attractive left. A ‘new comprehensive school’ is being built. I am sure the character of the residents of London must ultimately be affected – and adversely at that – by such hideous communal life.

  ‘Poor old London!’ she plangently concluded.30

  It is tempting to leave it at that, but ultimately the reality was more complicated. There was indeed much modernity – certainly much Modernist architecture – that was widely disliked by an instinctively conservative society. Yet that same society wanted not only as rapid a solution as possible to the housing crisis but also an easier, more convenient, less laborious everyday life, above all in the home, whether in houses or, if need be, flats. ‘Went to the “Press” Pre-view of the Ideal Home Exhibition at Olympia,’ Macmillan noted in his diary on 2 March 1953: ‘We have an extremely good Ministry of Housing exhibit – better than last year. We showed 2 ‘‘People’s Houses’’ (one 3 bedroom, one 2 bedroom). One of these is the new ‘‘open’’ design, which will (I think) be popular in the South and with young people. It gives them a large sitting room and dining room and “lounge” all in one room, from wh the stairs go up. (This in place of the old “front parlour” where no one ever sat and which was reserved for the “corpse”) . . .’ Macmillan’s populist instincts were, as was becoming increasingly the case, spot-on. A certain type of light, bright and functional modernity was indeed very acceptable, even positively attractive, especially to the young and especially in a ‘service’ rather than an ‘industrial’ broader context. If it had shown rather more humility, not to mention some of that despised ‘humanism’, the Modern movement, from Le Corbusier downwards, might be remembered a little more fondly than it is.

  Furthermore, it is at least arguable that the great drive towards flats and high-rises in the provision of public housing could have been less disastrous than turned out to be the case. ‘Libra’, living in a corporation flat in Glasgow, explained to the local paper in March 1953 that the problem was essentially twofold: first, ‘a serious lack of effective insulation against sound’, which imposed, especially when children were involved, ‘a severe strain upon neighbourly relationships’, and second, ‘official laxity in enforcing regulations for the common good’, with examples including no enforcement of the rule against the keeping of dogs; no sanctions against the use of balconies for ‘the beating out of rugs or for hanging out the family washing’ even though ‘probably most tenants deplore practices that suggest Tin Pan Alley rather than a decent residential area’; no ensuring of privacy for ground-floor tenants in their small, often assiduously cultivated front gardens; and ‘no official encouragement’ for tenants wanting to tidy up ‘the common paths and rear areas’. In short, ‘the activities of an anti-social minority appear to be officially condoned’.31 Zero tolerance worked at Warner’s holiday camp on Hayling Island; perhaps it should have been tried elsewhere.

  ‘Britain in the Skies’ was the title of a triumphalist account on BBC television on 22 April 1953 of the British achievement in aviation – an achievement that now included the Vickers Viscount airliner, which had just entered commercial service. In 1996, after more than 40 years of staunch flying, it was justly recalled as ‘the greatest British commercial airliner, blazing a trail with its four Rolls-Royce Dart turbo-prop engines and opening European air routes to millions of tourists and business travellers’. In the early 1950s, though, almost all the popular focus was on the more glamorous, longer-range Comet. Ten days after the broadcast, on Saturday, 2 May – exactly a year after the Comet’s hugely publicised inaugural scheduled flight from London to Johannesburg – a BOAC Comet on the Singapore–London service took off from Calcutta at 11.00 a.m. GMT bound for Delhi, with thirty-seven passengers (half of them coming to Britain for the Coronation) and a crew of six. After only six minutes there was complete radio silence amid reports of a severe thunderstorm.

  In Coventry, at noon that Saturday, Lord Silkin formally declared Broadgate House open. A particular design feature of the clock on the building’s bridge were two models, of Lady Godiva and Peeping Tom, which would come out when the clock struck the hour. A few minutes after noon, they were pushed out manually for the large crowd below to see; but at 1.00, when the clock struck for the first time, the figures stuck – an embarrassing moment. It did not, though, upset the local and visiting dignitaries enjoying a splendid lunch and sonorous speeches in the building’s restaurant. None more sonorous than that of Councillor E. M. Rogers, chairman of the Planning and Redevelopment Committee. ‘Here in Coventry there is going to be probably a unique example of town planning and civic design, as carried out in this century,’ was his bold promise. And, after claiming that it was the first time since the Georgian era that a new town centre, designed as a unified whole, was to be produced, he reached for the architectural stars: ‘What Princes Street gives to Edinburgh, the Parade to Leamington, the Royal Crescent to Bath, Broadgate and the precinct will give to Coventry.’ The local evening paper agreed. Not only was Broadgate House itself ‘a massive symbol of Coventry’s triumph over adversity’ – which was why when ‘ordinary people look at it . . . they rejoice to see it’ – but it was also the start of something special: ‘Let us make no mistake about it. When this great work is finished the centre of Coventry will be a show place.’32

  It was also Cup Final day. In the ‘Gambols’ strip-cartoon in that morning’s Daily Express, George was asked to settle an argument between his wife Gaye and her friend Polly about who had won the Cup the previous year. This led to Gaye sitting up in bed in tears. ‘Besides it doesn’t matter who won the Cup,’ she tells the back of George’s head (on the pillow, trying to get some sleep). ‘It’s the fact that you sided with that woman against your own wife . . . Sniff . . .’ Elsewhere in the paper, Desmond Hackett’s preview began: ‘Stanley Matthews, incredible indelible, 38-year-old master footballer, was in such a tough, fighting mood last night that he convinced me it must be Blackpool to beat Bolton.’ This was Matthews’s third and (everyone once again assumed) final chance to win a cup-winner’s medal, and, as Geoffrey Green put it in The Times, his ‘presence in a victorious side at Wembley is as eagerly awaited by a man in the street as Gordon Richards’ first win in the Derby’. That morning Paul Gardner, a middle-class neutral with a ticket in his pocket, listened in a ‘sleazy little café’ near Euston Station to one confident Blackpool fan surrounded by his mates. ‘It’s Stan’s year, lads, it’s Stan’s year, I bloody know it,’ he declared. ‘I bloody told you so when we beat ’uddersfield, I bloody knew it then, and I’ll tell you now, bloody Bolton are
n’t gonna stop him. Who’ve they bloody got? Banks [Ralph Banks, the Bolton left-back]? He’s a big ox, Stan’ll make ’im look bloody daft, he’ll wish he’d stayed home with the missus . . . How about anoother coop here, lass?’

  A few hours later, just before ‘The Coronation Cup Final’ got under way, the Queen came on to the pitch to meet the teams. ‘As if she bloody cares, one lot’s the same as t’other to her,’ said a fan near Gardner. For those not at the ground, there was television coverage of the whole match, watched by 7.7 million adults (almost half of them looking at the sets of friends or relatives) and innumerable children. The commentator was Kenneth Wolstenholme, a Bolton fan who manfully managed to stay neutral. Raymond Glendenning was his counterpart on the radio, where a further 7.7 million adults had to wait until the second half for coverage. Among them were Nella Last, very far from a sports aficionado. She and her husband had driven out from Barrow to a local beauty spot, but while he went for a short walk she stayed listening to the car wireless. ‘He was back soon after 4 o’clock. I said “I’m wrong, poor Stanley Matthews isn’t going to win a Cup Final after all – one of the broadcaster men said ‘Bolton is the winner’ – and they have 3 goals to Blackpool’s 1”.’ It was indeed 3–1 to Bolton, but in the Royal Box Princess Margaret saw the Blackpool chairman Harry Evans with his head buried in his hands and sought to console him: ‘Don’t worry, you will win.’

  The fightback duly began. ‘Soon,’ related Nella, ‘we were gripped by the intense excitement as the teams equalised. My husband said “there’s still a chance” but we agreed it was that of a snowball in a hot stove! – right to the very last minute.’ In that very last minute, she and her husband listened to Glendenning at his most magisterially impartial. ‘Matthews on the edge of the Bolton penalty area,’ he almost screamed, ‘dribbling right in, past his man, two yards out, squares it, hit it somebody, yes, it’s there, it’s there, Perry has scored, Perry has scored number 4, laid on by Stanley Matthews, Blackpool have scored number 4 . . .’ Near Barrow, as all over the country except in one Lancashire cotton town, it was a wonderful, unforgettable moment. ‘I found myself clapping heartily – & I laughed aloud at sober working men who had been listening in, & near parked cars, doing a kind of little jig!’ It only remained for the referee to blow the final whistle, Matthews to be hoisted aloft by his teammates, and the Blackpool captain Harry Johnston to collect the Cup. ‘Congratulations on a jolly good show,’ the Queen told him as she handed it over.

  That evening, the word from BOAC was that officials were still clinging to the hope that the missing Comet had come down on an emergency landing ground. Next morning, though, the wreckage was found 30 miles from Calcutta. The general assumption was that the accident had been caused by an extraordinary tropical storm, and Sir Miles Thomas, chairman of BOAC, announced that the Comet services would continue without interruption. It was a no-panic approach praised by the press, with Monday’s Express calling for ‘determination to go on proving to all men that these new British planes are not only the fastest and most comfortable, but the safest too’.33 Barely four weeks before the Coronation was no time for the nerve of the new Elizabethans to falter.

  11

  A Kind of Farewell Party

  ‘I found myself alongside the Duke,’ noted Raymond Streat as four days after the Matthews Final he once again accompanied the Queen and Prince Philip to the British Industries Fair, this time including the ICI stand. ‘A Terylene man stood beside him on his other side ready to offer any information. The Duke said, “Ah, Terylene. Yes, I remember, this is the new invention. Somebody showed it to me and gave me a shirt.” The man beamed and said, “Yes, sir, when you came down to our factory.” The Duke said, “Yes, I remember now, and you wanted me to wear it, and I did wear it. Very interesting – clammy, isn’t it?” ’ By now Philip and his wife, like millions of others, were counting the days. The rest of May 1953 had its share of interest – sudden death for Leading Aircraftsman Ronald Maddison, a volunteer in one of Porton Down’s secret nerve-gas experiments; equally sudden death for Accrington Stanley’s left-back, Bill Robinson, shot by a jealous husband; a notable Tory win in a by-election at Sunderland South; sharp controversy in Coventry about the new Godiva clock, generally viewed as a needless modern gimmick – but the all-consuming date ahead was Tuesday, 2 June.1

  As in the case of the royal wedding six years earlier, it had taken a while for public opinion to warm up. ‘I think the Coronation is a good thing,’ a 15-year-old girl at a West London grammar school had told Mass-Observation in March. ‘It revives all the pageantry and colour of the past centuries. It gives us something to think of and be proud of.’ Most of her classmates, though, were more critical:

  Although I am looking forward to the Coronation very much, I do think that too much money is being spent on it.

  Some people are getting too excited and will make it a regrettable day if they don’t cool down.

  There are too many silly songs and jokes on the wireless about this Coronation year.

  I think that the distribution of seats is unfair, and that the ‘spivs’ are wrangling the seats as they do at the Cup Final.

  In my opinion too much fuss, and much too much money is being spent on the Coronation.

  A month later, the temperature slowly rising, M-O had asked some Bexley residents about their plans for the big day:

  Well, now, if you want my opinion I think that anybody what’s getting up at six in the morning to sit in a £5 seat wants their brains testing, do you agree? I should have thought there was better things to do, and better ways of spending what little we have, myself. Of course a lot of people are paid to go, in case enough don’t turn up to make a show – I don’t know I’m sure. (59-year-old widow, working as an office caretaker)

  I shall spend Coronation day quite quietly. I can see myself going to bed and there won’t be all that noise going on with the bulldozer outside, so I shall be able to sleep peacefully. I’m so tired of the noise of men hammering, it will be so peaceful. I’m very thankful for the holiday for that reason. (74-year-old woman)

  If I’m not working I think the best thing to do will be to make friends with someone with a television set a week or so before and then drop in casually like, and most likely they’ll let you have a look. (32-year-old baker’s roundsman)

  Well, I’d very much like to go, but my husband won’t hear of it; he says I’d be a fool to go pushing in all those crowds. He says, what’s the point of having television if I go up to town? So I expect we’ll just look in, but I must say I yearn to go and see it in the live flesh. (42-year-old wife of builder’s foreman)

  The 55-year-old wife of a clerical officer struck a rare religious note: ‘I shall spend a good bit of the day on my knees, praying for that poor soul. She’s so young. I don’t think she knows what she’s let herself in for. But she’s got that beautiful husband beside her – hasn’t he the loveliest face?’

  May was a month of mounting anticipation. ‘Everyone is hoping that either this glorious weather will hold for the Coronation, or that it will rain soon, and get it over,’ recorded Madge Martin in Oxford on the 12th. Across the country plans for Coronation street parties and celebrations were well under way, though in New Malden, Surrey, it emerged that some organisers had been told by parents that they did not want their offspring to mix with common children, prompting a People headline on the 17th, ‘They’re much too posh for street party’. Class was also not forgotten in Brixton. ‘First Coronation decorations up in Vassall Road,’ noted Florence Speed two days later. ‘Paper strips with portraits of the Queen plastered on every window except one . . . All pure Woolworths.’ That same day in Manchester a middle-aged man in the textile trade told M-O that everyone he spoke to agreed there was a ‘Coronation fever about’, and a young working-class woman described how ‘it’s like the Christmassy feeling in the factory where I work’, with pictures of the royal couple ‘all over the factory walls’.2

  Two sometimes grump
y diarists agreed on the 21st that things were astir. ‘The Coronation fever is now growing daily and Keighley puts more and more decorations up each day,’ noted Kenneth Preston, while Anthony Heap in the capital described how ‘the main streets – especially those on the route of the Coronation Procession and subsequent royal drives round London – are rapidly being transformed into newly cleaned, freshly painted, gaily decorated avenues of festive colour’, adding that ‘the preparations for this Coronation seem to be on a much bigger and extensive scale than were those for the last one sixteen years ago’. All this was not to everyone’s liking. ‘London is becoming increasingly hellish, swarms of people and a perpetual misery of traffic congestion,’ complained Noël Coward on the 24th. ‘The streets are chaos owing to the Coronation decorations. It will be a comfort when it is all over.’ Madge Martin, though, was closer to the norm on Saturday the 30th: ‘The enormous feeling of tension and excitement increases daily. How we shall miss it, when Tuesday is over.’ However, as she noted ominously on the Sunday: ‘Very cool, unsettled weather.’3

  One should not exaggerate the euphoria. ‘Would you mind telling me how you feel about the Coronation?’ an M-O investigator asked during May in working-class Fulham:

  They overdo it, it’s been going on so long. The press overdoes it till people get sick and tired. (M70)

  Neither one thing nor the other, I don’t mind it, but it doesn’t mean a lot to me personally. (F27)

  Oh rather thrilled, I’m excited to see the children enjoying themselves, we’ve had our turn. (F41)