A far cry from Kensington. Muriel Spark 1988 175pg

  26/4/24 This is a conscious exercise in looking back and about the publishing world. In the post WW2 period.

 To a bad writer she had to look in his face and tell him exactly what she thinks about his urinating frightful prose. When you speak the plain truth out aloud how to survive the consequences. Post War London comes back to life the novel is distinctly revival.

1954. I was comfortable in my fatness known as a  wonderful woman and enjoyed universal affection. A large women is definitely somebody. Then decided to be thin and right away I noticed that people didn't confide in me their thoughts so much.

Milly kept the rooming house, had met her husband in her native Cork. Katy the book keeper had survived the concentration camps of the 1930s in Germany.

With the austerity of wartime there was a shortage of paper supplies and printers, while the public were avid for books. When a couple were fighting the policeman said don't come between a husband and wife till there is a lull.

If it is widely believed you have money and wealth, this belief creates confidence and confidence makes  business.

Refugees brought their courage with them. They knew  far better how to tap the resources of post war Britain than the locals. The Poles sent home parcels of warm clothing. Poles had left a  world of beaurocratic tyranny. Business cannot be carried out unless people are honest. Survivors of death camps were known to inflict on themselves later in life that, that they had escaped.

1954 Roger Bannister beat the 4 minute mile record  and became a brain surgeon later.

A person who is a good vivacious talker, he is bound to be a good writer unfortunately is not the case.

Pisseur de copie is a hack writer as a urinator of Journalistic copy.

Cultured people are not necessary nicer people . suitable jobs can be found through the most unlikely people. People love coincidence, so  tell everyone you are looking for a job.

On this new job the coworkers were handicapped in some way either physically or other, but the were agreeable people. A doctor struck off the roll or an accountant with a stammer or a woman with a port wine birthmark on her face. A daughter of a mass killer  and  Nancy was fat. They sent out manuscripts to readers who were mostly retired but were readers with a certain amount of education and earned some money from this. She wonders how many good writers never achieves what they should have.

To become a writer you have to write like letters to a good friend who will read it over and over as you write the story develops itself.  Before you marry someone see what he is like when drunk.

The upper class could not live and would disintegrate  without the ordinary class  while they could live with out the upper class. On the top of the bus now 10 years after the war ended, in London there were few streets intact and houses were separated by areas of a bomb gap. London was still sooty from coal fires.

During the war women went into the Lands Army to work in agriculture as the men were fighting. V1 bombs fell from July1944.

In England love and hate are entirely different things. They are not even opposites, love comes in first from the heart, hate arises basically from principle.

Nancy now worked for a group of homosexuals who were US refugees from Senator McCarthy's political persecution and were in Highgate, North London. Americans were also becoming very much at home in France and Italy. Here she was tired of being Mrs. Hawkins and wanted to be Nancy. Everyone in this office used first names and as she had  lost weight she could reinvent herself. It was easier to work for gays than strait men. Homosexualism was still against the law and it made them more hysterical than today.

--------------------------

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark 1961 128pg  10/10/25

Notes on the historic perspective of this book

The book is about the 6 girls that are the Brodie set one of them later will betray Brodie, ruining her teaching career, but that she never will learn which one. This starts in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1933.

The PM Stanley Baldwin (in office between 1924 to 1929) did not last long but his picture was on the wall in Miss McKay's class as his slogan was Safety First but truth and beauty comes first, she says.

She was engaged to Hugh at the beginning of the war but he fell in Flanders.

They walk past "idle" people waiting for the dole she says you call them unemployed. "Mussolini has put an end to unemployment" In history Edinburgh owes a lot to the French.  Boys were keen on the poetry of Auden and Eliot and supported the Republic side in the Spanish Civil War.

James Hogg , Scots poet from 1770 to 1835

In the 1930s their were legions of women aged 30 and upwards  teachers in war bereaved spinsterhood. Miss Brodi considered Edinburgh as a European capital the city of Hume and Boswell. Many school mistresses earned their keep and lived with aged parents.

They discuss Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 to 1882) was the painter and poet who was a close friend and key influence on writer Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837 to 1909)

For Senior school should they take the Modern or the Classical, with better grades they got into the Classical but the Modern made more senses as they learn Spanish, French or German instead of Latin and Greek. Better to get a job with or in any case most of the girls would be getting married and a modern language was more useful. All the girls learn piano.

Miss Brodi took them to see Anna  Pavlova in ballet 1881 to 1931 (error as we are in 1933)

She went to church on Sunday morning and did a rote of the Protestant denomination but to her the Church of Rome was based on superstitions and was only for people who did not want to think for themselves. Yet she went to bed with the singing master and loved Italy.  She was forced to retire at the end of summer 1939 on the grounds that she had been teaching  fascism. Sandy saw the canvasses in Mr. Lloyds studio with all the Brodie portraits and decided she had to put a stop to it and remembered the picture of troops marching in black shirts on the wall. By now she had become a nun as sister Helena in the Catholic church whose ranks had found quite a number of fascists worse than Miss Brodie.

 

£. A History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr 2008 602 pgs. (Depression till 1963)

   16/4/24

This book is a social History of Britain from the end of the WW2 till the book was written. . 

I only made notes on the period ending in 1963 the first 230 pages.

   I needed an understanding of the 1950s when I was a kid and my Dad returned from 5 years of war to home in Johannesburg , South Africa.

Prologue

Anybody who experienced the years of shortages, queues , rationing  should not  dismiss the triumph of shopping and consumerism. PM Neville Chamberlin's peace in our time made him a national hero, until Hitler turned him into a national fool. Clement Attlee and Arthur  Greenwood, were solid for fighting on and not negotiating with Hitler.

 The War changed Britain physically and industrially. The parliament in 1945 was the same one elected in 1935 a Commons frozen in time.

Green England's grip on the national imagination should not be under estimated, but he global economy of cheap grain from the US prairies between 1830 and 1940 resulted the workers leaving the countryside forever.

1933 with the depression a quarter of the British workforce was unemployed. Every town had different trades, Staffordshire pottery, Leicester boots, socks and typewriters. Nottingham female workers in lace, Bradford wool and was strongly influenced by German Jews, Coventry cars  and Sheffield cutlery, Dundee jute. Coal was still primitive pick digging and was a mass of underinvested companies.

Before the war 60,000  German Jews arrived in England .William Beverage set up the Academic Assistance Council to help Jewish refugees from the Nazis, with public donations 2600 escaped to to UK and later 20 of those won Nobel prizes. Irish were arriving and they found jobs as there was such a scarcity of workers. Ireland was neutral during the war. By the end of the war 120,000 Polish soldiers who did not want to return to their Russian occupied homeland remained.

American movies and music arrived long before the GIs. Chain stores selling brighter clothes and more American influence. There was a yearning for a government that worked to end unemployment. The war made democracy fashionable. Even when the war ended the Brits were fighting somewhere. Greece, Cyprus, Palestine , Korea , Malaya ,Iraq, Ireland, Falkland. These maintained a level of patriotism in the 'silent majority'.

British government both Labour and Tory duly got rid of the empire and refocus as a junior partner in the cold war.

Britain's performance providing for the wellbeing of its people, brought employment , a safety net, and brought people out of poverty, despite the ferocious economic conditions.

Recently we have seen the retreat of faith and ideology replaced by consumerism.

During the war 256,000 men died  and 60,000 civilians as opposed to the million lost during WW1 in action.

Britain after the War

1945 Never has military success be so personally associated with one civilian leader, and Churchill was at his peak with triumph. Many Tories believe that the military foisted socialism on the troops . Of 22 MPs killed fighting only 1 was not conservative. The Labour conference is remembered for its youthful delegates including Roy Jenkins  and Denis Healy and they gave out a blueprint of what they intended to do after the end of the war. Churchill campaign was against sinister  socialism conspiracy and the British Gestapo it would established. This suggestion was grossly offensive. All Churchill could offer seemed suitable for post the Boer War. He also realized that better Labour deal with the disappointments to follow the war.

Clement Attlee, Herbert Morrison and Ernest Bevin were the 3 prominent Labour leaders. Attlee went straight to the Palace where the fiercely conservative king handed him control. Attlee would become the nation changing PM in modern time. He changed the health and welfare structure of the country and the UK became more dependent on the US ties. He understood  early that the dying imperium meant that the Brits were no longer a world power.

1946 Families were so crowded many in homes of parents, or sibling and then 45,000 the moved into the abandoned army camps. Of a total of 60 million ,38 million had changed address during the war and 75,000 new homes were needed.

1945 Sept. Truman ended the Lend Lease program, resulting in Britain not having enough $ to feed the county.  The Brits were victors but circumstances were more like losers. They had been early to enter the war and the manufacturing economy was not for export but for munitions. By the end of the war effort everything including food was coming from the US. Maynard Keynes went to American and wanted a $ 6 billion interest free loan and  only got $3.75 billion at 2% which was finally paid off in 2006.

Labour had to deal grapple with the Indian Independence crises in Greece, Cyprus, Palestine, demobilization. 

Ernest Bevin was the most influential Trade Union  leader and Labour leader. He is remembered for stopping the Exodus from landing Palestine in 1947 to appease the Arabs as the British needed Arab oil.    In the first year after the war Labour passed 70 bills. They were Patriots first and Socialists second. Labor would used the lessons from war to work in peace. They understood that they had to turn the waning empire into a free association of independent democratic states.

The Admiralty now ended and it became part of the Defense Ministry. Of 8800 people working for the navy at the end of the war only 1800 ere left 2 years later.  Dockyard ship builders were now all needed to build housing. The US had proved that the navy needed aircraft carriers and so most naval ships were sent to the scrapheap or converted to other uses.  

1947 The King was no longer Emperor as India was independent. It was a clever move sending Lord Mountbatten  a Royal not a politician to be the last Viceroy. They never managed to keep India whole whereas if they had given it Independence before the war might have. 55000 British had to return home. In the 30s there were 8000 Indians in the UK  10% of them doctors and there were no Indian restaurants.

1947 Winter was the bleakest 3 months ever. Everything froze and the power stations which produced 90% of electricity from coal which froze in heaps. Winding gears on the mines froze up and everything had to be rationed even bread which had never been rationed in the war years . This later gave Tories ammunition to turn Labour out. Roads and railways were blocked by snowdrifts and Vegetables were frozen till the weather warmed up.

The £ went into free fall as the world changed them for $.

What was happening in Palestine with the Irgun attacking the British caused anti-Semitic outbreaks in the UK with a synagogue burned .

1947 The Royal Wedding of Phillip and Elizabeth brought a lot of color to peoples lives. Phillips remaining 3 sisters were not invited they had all married Germans even Nazis. The wedding was a big radio event and later seen at the cinema.

1948 The country cheered up with the Olympics in London which was a triumph even though Britain won few medal she was now back. Athletes were put up in empty army camps.

1948 Washington now realized that demoralized west Europe was in danger of Soviet advances and brought in the Marshall plan. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and western Germany received aid.

Before the war 60% of Britain was working class. The war softened class differences with middle class women working in factories. Public school boys sent to work in coal mines. (Bevin Boys) Labour's Welfare State would now require hundreds of white collar workers. Parkinson's Law work expand to fill the time available. More children stayed at school now to 15 and even to 18. However the education reform was  meant to help working class children , but first helped the middle class. There were too few teachers and a shortage of school furniture. Public Radio started bring music and literature to a wider audience.

Public school education still remained the key for anyone who wanted to go into the City or civil service.

Public housing outpaces private housing but there was very little material available and surplus  percepts from airplanes started being used even for shoes. Aluminum was available for furniture and air force material was dyed and used as couch covers.

Cosmetics were not available and cities all smelt of coal smoke. Many wore coats to hide their rumpled baggy clothes and all wore hats A make do ethos and when  teenagers outgrew their pants and ankle's showed.

Wartime rationing had increased the health of the working class and by 1945 children were growing taller. Rationing was as complex as moving armies around and there  was an expansion of school meals. Meat continued to be rationed till 1954.  

1948 Culturally there were a lot of Christian theme with the work of TS Eliot who won the Nobel prize for books  like Murder in the Cathedral . CS Lewis his tales of Narnia were Christian allegories'. Divorced people were not welcome in court and smut and pornographic books were considered foreign. 

1948 National Health NHS was implemented. Labour created the NHS and brought in welfare payments and state insurance "from the cradle to the grave" they nationalized coal and steel. They demobilized a vast army and changed the armament factories back to peaceful purposes. School leaving age was raised to 15 and sent troops to the Korean War.

Churchill and William Beverage never got on and when Beverage during the war nagged about the Welfare state he was told to do research on what was needed . He wanted to slay 5 giants poverty, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. He brought out the Beverage Report. A 100,000 copies of it were sold and it was spread amongst the troops. Churchill said it would be too expensive to implement but it boosted morale of the troops.

 400, 000 German POW were in UK when the war ended and they provided 25% of agricultural workers. Officer were kept to de Nazify them. They had wanted to keep them till 1948. By the end of 1947, 250,000 were repatriated and the last returned home in Nov.1948, 24 thousand chose to remain in the UK.

Consumerism was regarded with disdain by ministers for American influence, but would erupt.  Movies from Hollywood  were taxed to encourage British cinema. Wonderful comedy movies were produced in this period at Ealing studios. There were 4,600 cinemas in the country at its peek. The British film industry was turning out a steady stream of movies of every genre, but was not able to compete with Hollywood. From 1957 to 1985 there was a box office tax on movie goers to subsidize British movies. Michael Balcon a Jewish entrepreneur was moving the British cinema ahead.

For protein horses were butchered. Whale meat, and tinned snoek were imported from South African the snoek (not a canning fish) turned powdery and was sold off as dogs food. South Africa was prepared to take £ while the $ for food from the US where in short supply.

Soldiers left the army with demob. suits hats and ties, and shoes showing prosperity was postponed. These suits were produced like army uniforms.

London theater carried a whiff of Oscar Wilde as Ivor Novella, Noel Coward, John Gielgud, Terrance Rattinger  Beaton were all gay, Later on a number of the Cambridge spies were found to be gay which brought a lot of suspicion onto all gays. Homosexualism was long illegal but was not prosecuted unless acts with children occurred. Attacking homosexuals helped sell papers.

 Because nothing new had been written for post war Shakespeare plays were put on and had a big comeback. Look back in Anger was a play by a new your writer John Osborn, Lawrence Olivier approached him and asked him if you could write a play for him.  Osborn was bowled over, and this was Olivier's shrewdest move.

Harold Pinter Birthday Party baffled the public and almost failed till it was rescued by one review sending Pinter on to the greatest career.

The Cold War shaped post war Europe. Disorganized British industry could not compete with German organization. The the 1949 Marshall plan raised the economy by a tenth.

All the top Labour leaders and Tories were ill from long working hours and dying at a relatively young age from cigarettes and alcohol while Churchill with cigars and whiskey had great longevity. I'll heath and botched operations resulted in Gaitskell , Edan and Macmillan succumbing.

1949  Labour produced NATO as a way to deal with Washington.

1951 Cultural  Festival  was a great  success for the Labour party a  farewell and a flourish that marked to end of the Hungry forties.

1953 Ian Fleming first James Bond book Casino Royale. The  defection of the Cambridge spies did a lot of harm to the Conservative party and MI5 and Ian Flemings books were to restore that confidence with James bond capable of everything and his up to date gadgets. The movies were later made by Hollywood money  and were a great financial success. Bond was supposed to have been a  Public school boy but Sean Connery who acted the first 5 movies was a Scott of working class background.

-----------------

1951 The Tories took over to a Land of Lost Content . Tories were grey conformist and gave 13 years of misrule. Of the 16 all males in Churchill cabinet only 2 were not public school boys, and later with Macmillan 35 of 85 minister were related to him. Churchill was only interested in war and the Cold war and tried to bring the powers together to negotiate after Stalin died. he first used the word "summit". After the war he was not adverse to a fully political united Europe. 

1952 the pound under Chancellor of Exchequer was cut free and floated boosting British exports for a short while.

1957 Private homosexualism was legalized between consenting adults above the age of 21.

 Every woman was  a housewife who wore corset and hats and never trousers. Men shirts were bought separate from collars. National service replaced conscription and lasted till 1963.

1963 there were 250,000workers in domestic service. There were major British companies in oil, tobacco, shipping and finance. People were openly patriotic and per capita the UK was the second richest country in the world.

Antony Edan had resigned from Chamberlains government because of appeasement in 1938 so he was welcomed into Churchills cabinet. Eden had a foul temper and a racist disdain for Arabs.  Sir John Glubb/ Glubb Pasha  was the head of the Jordanian army till he was fired by King Hussein in 1956 they wanted an Arab in charge of the army.

Antony Edan met Nasser briefly and lectured him in Arabic. Suez was supposed to return to Egypt in 1968 but Nasser took it in 1956. The discussions on the war in cabinet can't be known as no records were kept and notes destroyed. Large numbers of the public for the first time in history protested against the going to war.  Antony Edan Should have been a very good PM but as he had to wait so long to get the job he was too old

Alex Issigonis  a son of  Greek immigrant who fled  from Ottoman Smyrna  designed the Morris Minor car. With the petrol shortages after the Suez crises he was commissioned to design the Mini Minor. The unique thing of the mini was that its engine faced sideways to fit it into the bonnet space. It was sold for £350 and eventually 5 million were sold. It sales however only came after Lord Snowden and Princess Margaret were seen whizzing in it around London as well as other celebrates and it became an emblem of cool chic youthful impertinence but not a working class car.

Railway lines that never paid were cut and roads started being build and trucking was in private hands and roads and highways began to be build. Premium Bonds came  as in a form of motional lottery.

1956 P&O had 366 vessel and was the worlds largest shipping company. Triumph motor bikes were a big seller and Marlin Brando starred in The Wild Bunch on a 1954 Triumph. However after that Yahama , Honda and Suzuki entered the race of motor bikes.

1957 The treaty of Rome.  This was the beginning of the EEC Europe Economic Community a customs union between Belgium France Italy West Germany, Luxembourg and Netherlands. Britain could have joined but she believed she was more part of the British Commonwealth and  English speaking world.

1958 First parking meters introduced into London as well as yellow lines, roundabouts and flyovers. Ernest Maple did not promote the railways as  he had a conflict of interest he owned a motorway construction company. So the motoring age came about.

In periods when Labour was in opposition it fell into gangs that seem to tare itself apart.

1960 Macmillan speech in Cape Town "winds of change " was noted not because of what he said but because it took place in  a white supremacism South African parliament. The speed of  scuttling of Britain's possessions in Africa happened were remarkable little debate at home.  

The rules to immigration to Britain then were first be white, if not be small in number. West Indian migration did not come to open restaurants but to work for wages. It was mostly men sending home remittances. The NHS and London Transport  sent agents recruiting, drivers and nurses. The alternative was going to the US which closed down in 1952 to West Indians  

 Mandy Rice Davis was asked in court about Lord Bill Astor's denial of sex with her she replied "He would say that wouldn't he"  The assumption that the rich and powerful men were liars, this caught the nations mood.

At the start of the 60s France swapped the great Catholic families for the intellectual elites, German industrialist cooperated to assault world markets. In the US the grand Ivy league Collages joined with Washington and Wall Street.. Democracies elites required prestige to succeed by the  British elites failed the tests and Britain's output was growing more slowly.

1962 The Commonwealth Immigration Act limited immigration to 40,000 immigrants a year with rights of immigration of dependents. Irish Republic was a bone of contention as it had be neutral during the war but they still got a better deal  than the others. 50 thousand a year from India and Pakistan and 20 thousand from Hong Kong.

1964 As a result of the Profumo scandal Labour won by 4 seats in the election.

13 years of Tory rule were wasted according to Harold Wilson but this was followed by 15 years of Labour where modern  British  rose and failed.

 

1964 The Brits were considered well mannered and lawful, this was the year that execution by hanging ended.

1965 More than 8 thousand people were being killed on the roads. Barbra Castle Safety Act brought in breath analyses and seat belts because as soon as pubs closed in the evening the hospitals could expect drunk driver to arrive. Britain's roads after that were congested but safe.

__________________________________________________________

 Talk on what  Britain was like that led to the Profumo scandle. Given 30/5/24

Labour politician Richard Crossman reflected "There's a  legal world , the doctors world , artistic , dramatic , the political world etc. . Each is a discrete segment of British society but all converged in the Profumo Affair of 1963

Anybody who experienced the years of shortages, queues , rationing  should not  dismiss the triumph of shopping and consumerism.  

 The War changed Britain physically and industrially. The parliament in 1945 was the same one elected in 1935 a Commons frozen in time.

 

1933 with the depression a quarter of the British workforce was unemployed.    

Before the war 60,000  German Jews arrived in England .William Beverage set up the Academic Assistance Council to help Jewish refugees from the Nazis, with public donations 2600 escaped to to UK and later 20 of those won Nobel prizes.  By the end of the war 120,000 Polish soldiers who did not want to return to their Russian occupied homeland remained.

 There was a yearning for a government that worked to end unemployment. The war made democracy fashionable.  .  

 

Britain's performance providing for the wellbeing of its people, brought employment , a safety net, and brought people out of poverty, despite the ferocious economic conditions.

Before the war ended a few uniform factories went over to producing civilian clothes as people had nothing to wear.  Civilian uniforms. Soldiers left the army with demob. suits  showing prosperity was postponed.  

Britain after the War

1945 Never has military success be so personally associated with one civilian leader, and Churchill was at his peak with triumph. Many Tories believe that the military foisted socialism on the troops . Of 22 MPs killed fighting only 1 was not conservative.  

1942William Beverage Report. He wanted to slay 5 giants poverty, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness.  A 100,000 copies of it were sold and it was spread amongst the troops. Churchill said it would be too expensive to implement but it boosted morale of the troops . All Churchill could offer seemed suitable for post the Boer War. He also realized that better Labour deal with the disappointments to follow the war.

Clement Attlee, Herbert Morrison and Ernest Bevin were the 3 prominent Labour leaders.  Attlee would become the nation changing PM in modern time. He changed the health and welfare structure of the country and the UK became more dependent on the US ties.   

1946 Families were so crowded many in homes of parents, or sibling and then 45,000 the moved into the abandoned army camps. Of a total of 60 million ,38 million had changed address during the war and 75,000 new homes were needed.

1945 Sept. Truman ended the Lend Lease program, resulting in Britain not having enough $ to feed the county.  The Brits were victors but circumstances were more like losers. They had been early to enter the war and the manufacturing economy was not for export but for munitions. By the end of the war effort everything including food was coming from the US.  Maynard Keynes went to American only got $3.75 billion at 2% which was finally paid off in 2006.

 For example when the Spitfire factory in Southampton burned down, but not the machines, Lord Beaverbrook arrived and said I want Spitfires. The nearby factories were informed that a machine would arrive with workers and the production was spread around.

    In the first year after the war Labour passed 70 bills. They were Patriots first and Socialists second. Labor would use the lessons from war to work in peace. They understood that they had to turn the waning empire into a free association of independent democratic states.

   Dockyard ship builders were now all needed to build housing. 

 

1947 Winter was the bleakest 3 months ever. Everything froze and the power stations which produced 90% of electricity from coal which froze in heaps. Winding gears on the mines froze up and everything had to be rationed even bread which had never been rationed in the war years . This later gave Tories ammunition to turn Labour out. Roads and railways were blocked by snowdrifts and Vegetables were frozen till the weather warmed up.

The £ went into free fall as the world changed them for $.

  

1948 Washington now realized that demoralized west Europe was in danger of Soviet advances and brought in the Marshall plan. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and western Germany received aid.

Before the war 60% of Britain was working class. The war softened class differences with middle class women working in factories. Public school boys sent to work in coal mines. (Bevin Boys) Labour's Welfare State and NHS would now require hundreds of white collar workers  More children stayed at school now to 15 and even to 18. However the education reform was  meant to help working class children , but first helped the middle class. There were too few teachers and a shortage of school furniture. Public Radio started bring music and literature to a wider audience.

Public school education still remained the key for anyone who wanted to go into the City or civil service. 

  Many wore coats to hide their rumpled baggy clothes and all wore hats A make do ethos and when  teenagers outgrew their pants and ankle's showed.

Wartime rationing had increased the health of the working class and by 1945 children were growing taller. Rationing was as complex as moving armies around and there  was an expansion of school meals. Meat continued to be rationed till 1954.  

 

1948 National Health NHS was implemented. Labour created the NHS and brought in welfare payments and state insurance "from the cradle to the grave" they nationalized coal and steel. They demobilized a vast army and changed the armament factories back to peaceful purposes. School leaving age was raised to 15.

    Ealing studios. There were 4,600 cinemas in the country at its peek. The British film industry was turning out a steady stream of movies from 1957 Michael Balcon a Jewish entrepreneur was moving the British cinema ahead.

For protein horses were butchered. Whale meat, and tinned snoek were imported from South African the snoek (not a canning fish) turned powdery and was sold off as dogs food. South Africa was prepared to take £ while the $ for food from the US where in short supply.

Soldiers left the army with demob. suits hats and ties, and shoes showing prosperity was postponed. These suits were produced like army uniforms.

The Cold War shaped post war Europe. Disorganized British industry could not compete with German organization. The the 1949 Marshall plan raised the economy by a tenth.

All the top Labour leaders and Tories were ill from long working hours and dying at a relatively young age from cigarettes and alcohol while Churchill with cigars and whiskey had great longevity. I'll heath and botched operations resulted in Gaitskell , Edan and Macmillan succumbing.

1949  Labour produced NATO as a way to deal with Washington.

1951 Cultural  Festival  was a great  success for the Labour party a  farewell and a flourish that marked to end of the Hungry forties.

After these Hungry Years

1951 The Tories took over to a Land of Lost Content . Tories were grey conformist and gave 13 years of misrule. Of the 16 all males in Churchill cabinet only 2 were not public school boys, and later with Macmillan 35 of 85 ministers were related to him. Churchill was only interested in war and the Cold war and tried to bring the powers together to negotiate after Stalin died. he first used the word "summit". After the war he was not adverse to a fully political united Europe. 

1952 the pound under Chancellor of Exchequer was cut free and floated boosting British exports for a short while.

 

 The Mini minor car was designed as an emblem of austerity after the Suez crises emblem of cool chic youthful impertinence but not a working class car.

 

 

In periods when Labour was in opposition it fell into gangs that seem to tare itself apart.

1956 Sexual Offences Act passed without committee or debate. This criminated activities that many though inoffensive. The legislators in the House of Lords were elderly males and women were excluded till 1958. It was assumed that a woman or pair of women out at night without a man were prostitutes. Marriage was seen as a social institution rather than a loving partnership for the good of the society rather than individual happiness.

Dorothy Macmillan refused to be a downtrodden wife and determined not to be a doormat of live in a gilded cage and had a lover. One of the reasons that Macmillan never queried the private life of his collogues

1957 Private homosexualism was legalized between consenting adults above the age of 21.

  National service replaced conscription and lasted till 1963.

Improved condoms came out in the mid 50s changed sexual attitudes. Women wanted to work to gain independence even if the cost of paying a baby minder used the extra money.

6 Landlords

Lewis Silken won a maths scholarship to Wooster Collage, Oxford but the headmaster of his school decided that the son of East End Jews was unsuitable for university and kyboshed his chance.

There was the social exclusion of Jewish East Londoner and Frederick Raphael said; We tried being patriotic , we tried being philanthropic, we tried doing everything and it didn't do us any good, if they want to kill us they'll , kill us.

Banbury drapers, ironmongers and grocers had money for expansion but not the urge, they were sure of their social position. Whereas the developers were proud of being danger men, not public school boys trained by the number of buttons that should be fastened on blazers, or venerate spurious traditions.      Other Jewish landlords Charles Chlore , Jack Cotton

Peter Rachman was a holocaust survivor whose name inspired the hostile epithet Rachmanism. He started off by renting flats in his own name and subletting to prostitutes', and brothels. Flats were rented controlled at prices from 1939, this no longer applied if tenants were dislodged.  This was done by moving blacks into the area, these were people who could not find accommodation, he was their savior. . Rachman felt the same disclination and they had a lot of respect for him and liked him. The Landlords profited by this racial tension and it caused the Notting Hill riots in 1958. Rachman had been invited to Wards cottage on Cliveden and met Christine there. He died in 1962 of a heart attack.

7 Hacks

The Profumo Affair occurred when the press saw falling circulation, and were aggressively persuading stories. 

1955   ITV started commercial TV causing a sharp drop in paper sales especially for the Sunday press. By 1960 72% of the population had access to the 2 TV channels. This was undermining the old puritanism. TV started showing criminals , prostitutes', the sexually or socially marginalized interviews full face and it was abolishing shame.  Editors long knew that sex stories sold papers. Some papers used this Affair to promote their support of the Labour party. A successful paper had to be provocative and confident in its own importance. Reporters were not people who had been at Public Schools, so pilloried nepotism and the old school tie.

8 Spies

Later on a number of the Cambridge spies were found to be gay which brought a lot of suspicion onto all gays. Homosexualism was long illegal but was not prosecuted unless acts with children occurred. Attacking homosexuals helped sell papers.

1953  The  defection of the Cambridge spies did a lot of harm to the Conservative party and MI5 and Ian Flemings books were to restore that confidence with James bond capable of everything and his up to date gadgets. The movies were later made by Hollywood money  and were a great financial success. Bond was supposed to have been a  Public school boy but Sean Connery who acted the first 5 movies was a Scott of working class background.

Espionage cases continuously disrupted Macmillan's exercise of power. Sex class and official secrecy were taboos.

1951 The disappearance of Burgess and McClean both public school boys. Defection confirmed in 1956. " For years there has been in the Foreign Office a clique of perverted men, homosexuals that indulge in unnatural love for one another and are known to be bad security risks.

   

1962 the John Vasall  case. This was a prelude to the Profumo Affair. While a junior worker in the British Moscow embassy was passing on naval information to the Russians. He was a homosexual and was being blackmailed. Sentenced to 18 years in prison.  It was claimed that Lord Carrington the first lord of the admiralty knew there was a spy 18 months before Vassal was arrested. later in 1963 Crane brought out an article " How to Spot a Homo". Macmillan started blaming the press for his troubles and reporter Brenden  Mulholland and Reg Forster were arrested, antagonizing the press which was not good for him.

1962 the Cuban Crises. Ward was introducing Ivanov the Russian diplomat to the whole circle of his acquaintances.

 

  1960 Macmillan speech in Cape Town "winds of change " was noted not because of what he said but because it took place in  a white supremacism South African parliament.   West Indian migration   came to work for wages. It was mostly men sending home remittances. The NHS and London Transport  sent agents recruiting, drivers and nurses. The alternative was going to the US which closed down in 1952 to West Indians  

 

  Democracies elites required prestige to succeed but the  British elites failed the tests and Britain's output was growing more slowly.

1964 As a result of the Profumo scandal Labour won in the election.

13 years of Tory rule were wasted according to Harold Wilson but this was followed by 15 years of Labour where modern  British  rose and failed.

 

The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd 1977 294 pg.

This is a novel on China and Japan from 1903 till WW2   16/4/24

This is a Historic novel and very informative and easier to understand than a history book.

1903 and Mary Mackenzie  is taking a ship to her fiancé in Peking. She is from South  Edinburgh and is Presbyterian, she feels safe on the ship as the captain is Scots. The minister says a prayer and one for the King Edward VII. She is being escorted by Mrs. Caswell who objects to her chatting to men on board Mary tells her I am going to my husband to be and not to a nunnery . Mrs. Caswell later has a stroke in her cabin and Mary had to deal with it later she dies in Penang. This death has made Mary very adult.

Byes Bay 50 km from Hong Kong used to be a Pirate base. Island like the Great Nantuna (remotest part of Indonesia  and Sumatra are part of the Dutch Empire. The sun never sets on the British empire. She is warned that she is going to a place of sudden death  eg. floods. In preparing for the typhoon they close the inner steel portholes and block the ventilation ducts. None of the ships officers are in the dinning room. China's greatest river is the Yangtze the water is coffee colored and the banks are marshland.

Shanghai all the different Great powers have concessions there. People living on boats and trading from them.

Her fiancé Richard 25 years old is an army man. One gets around on rikshaws and pullers only live an average of 15 years and die of tuberculosis.  The ship were anchored at Wei Hai Wei a walled city and British territory taken after the Japanese withdrew in the 1898  war against China. On a 8 cabin ship they go to Tientsin and from there by train to Peking. Jesuits missionaries were on the ship going to convert the heathen.

Rajah James Brook was the white Rajah of Sarawak, Borneo from 1841. His descendant making a total of 6 Brooks ruled till 1946 when the British colonial office took over.

In Peking they lived in the Legation quarter the Boxers had been pacified, the Boxer rebellion 1889 till 1901, after that the Allied forces left.  They got married and lived  in a big house run by servants. She wanted to learn Chinese but Richard discouraged her from that. He was the 2nd son of an aristocrat which meant he would not inherit the title. 

If a Russian, Japanese war began Russia Tsarist army would have 3 times more troops but Japanese troops were better trained. The Brits would support the Tsar as he was a cousin their king.  In Peking the head of the Russian legation a count wore enough medals to have fought in 10 wars though doesn't look like a soldier type. The Japanese legation head had led a party of Japanese marines through Boxer filled streets to defend and relieve the Catholic mission. he was Count Kurihama and was leaving soon to go to war against Russia. Peking gave of a smell of rancid butter, perhaps from the fur rug you covered yourself with in the rickshaw. In the open market of meat and vegetables everything was covered with flies.  

Ben Nevis in Scotland  is the highest mountain in the British Isles and part of the Grampian range it is snow capped part of the year, it is an extinct volcano. However Japan is on the back of a huge dragon subject to uneasy dreams.

Some of the British legation were invited to meet the Empress Dowager Tsz'e including Mary ( she is now Mrs. Richard  Collingsworth) as she had just got married in China, to  and see  the sacred throne of the Manchu Dynasty. Out of date ships become discarded but the Summer Palace floating on its hill will endure forever. As a  sign of power finger  nails are never cut so the Empress can do nothing and has to be helped even to eat. The young Emperor is kept a prisoner by her.

Via the Trans Siberian Railway post now arrives very quickly. She has now given birth to a girl named Jane who is blond like her father.

1904 The Ginkgo is a geological link between conifer and ferns is found in China. Admiral Alexiev is the Tsars Viceroy in the Far East and the Russians are defending against Japanese attacks. The was is being fought on Chines territory. Japan is victorious over Russia at Liao Yang and the Tsars armies are in retreat on Moukden. The Empress would like the enter the war on Russia side but knows the French and British favour Japan.  While this war is on,  mail has to come by ship through the Suez.

While her husband is  away following the war, she has a relationship with Count Kentara Kurihama a Japanese diplomat and is now pregnant by him. The underwater cable at Port Arthur has been destroyed and no telegrams arrive from Richard.

1905 General Stessel the Russian in command of Port Arthur has surrendered the city.

Richard is paying for her to return home second class and says she is a whore. The father takes custody of Jane  She is supposed to go from Tientsin to Shanghai and from there on P&O back home.  Kentaro sends her to Japan, she is put onto a freighter at Tientsin and arrives in Shimonoseki Japan which is next to the Kanmon bridge that joins the biggest Island with Kyushu. Then taken to Nagoya, this is between Tokyo and Osaka. In Tokyo large section of the city are lit up by German engineers and there are electric trams along the Ginza.

A huge Russian fleet which included 11 battleships arrived after 7 months at sea,  and Admiral Togo destroyed it resulting in Total Russian defeat at the battle of Tsushima.

Mary gives birth by caesarean and the baby boy Tomo looks Japanese. She can't have another child as a result. The Sumida River flows through Tokyo. Kentara sent he a gift of money and flowery cloth which would only be worn by a courtesans' as a kimono, and  a symbol of a fish which is for a boy. She receives support as Kentars's second wife, who has a place in society.

The present crown prince Hirohito is not the son of the Empress but that of Emperor Meiji and a court lady.

Baroness Aiko  Sannotera who spoke a perfect English was in prison for staring directly at Emperor Meiji, she called on the Emperor to free Japanese women from slavery. She had joined the suffragettes during her stay in England. They say that she has been punished as the gods have made her barren and she suggested to her husband to try another woman who gave him  2 children.  Her grandfather had been assassinated as well as his wife and servant trying to protect him. He was finance minister and militants wanted more money spent on the army and navy. She considered Japan as feudalism in new clothes.

Russo-Japanese war ended with a peace treaty signed in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Mary worked at Matsuzakara dept. store in western women's fashion. An American elevator has been installed in the company. She met the wives of war profiteers who were receiving bad publicity in the press. Japanese women's bodies were not meant for the to model European fashion of the day and she had to design suitable fashions. There are lots of whale bones available and the make women corsets.

Korea has now become a permanent Japanese occupation or colony and Kentare is based there. Bicycles are now popular and the Baroness has a 3 speed bike. She considers the victory over Russia will swell Japan's ego and  will take on Britain next. she is not popular in Japanese ruling society.  Samisen a  3 string instrument and bamboo flutes are played.

Amongst the ruling class in society women are not seen with their husbands. Mary makes an effort to learn Japanese.

She wrote to Sir Claude Macdonald British Ambassador to Tokyo, who she knew from Peking, asking him for help as her son Tomo had been taken from her. She received a reply that her son was born in Japan and the father has full rights over him. Her son was adopted out to an aristocratic family as he came from Kurihama blood, illegitimacy  or that the mother is foreign is no problem  in Japan as he looks Japanese.

Kamakura is a holiday beach place south of Yokahama. A student of the Waseda University (founded 1882 as a liberal private collage) is teaching her Japanese and she is improving his English.

1902 -1923 Treaty of Alliance and Friendship between Britain and Japan, this was against Russia.

Japanese bows have different meaning depending on who you are, to men women , servants she says a book could be written on it. Kentaro's wife comes to get fitted for a dress  to go to England so she meets here. Kentaro is 1st Military Attaché in London.

Mary is appointed head of her dept. and the man she replaces is moved to toys, he commits suicide and in  a note writes that he is being replaced by a foreign women who has led an immoral life. The scandal doubles their sales and women come to stare at her. The store sets up a Christmas display of which she know little as  in Scotland Xmas displays are not seriously Presbyterian. An Edison phonograph (Invented in 1887) plays a Xmas song.

She was sent to Osaka (an industrial city ) to open the dress department but the husbands there didn't like their wives in western dress and after 7 month returned. She returned to the Ginza store and realized that the attitude in Japan had changed and anything done in the west can be done in Japan. In the end foreigners will have no role at all. Now Japan was no longer importing foreign cloth but producing it locally.

They needed western food for guests and she though of the delicatessen. It would be rather odd to serve Jewish food to a High Anglican household. She started teaching English at the missionary school.

Bob the American Banker now offered to finance her to open a store. Half the loan would be free but the bank would own 60% of her company. Eventually she agreed to them only owning 40% she would now have to work and work and not have a chance to read. 

1852- 1912 Emperor Meiji  died. He had adopted a constitution and a parliamentary system, instituted universal education, built railroads and installed telegraph lines, and established strong army and navy forces.  

Now General Nogi committed suicide as he could not stop the society deterioration caused by Western influence. He had been Japan's Wellington. Enormous bribes had been paid by Siemans wanting to sell wireless equipment and Vickers unholy alliance with Mitsui in a contract to build a cruiser. That Britain has to give bribes indicates that the British Empire is starting to crumble.

1914 August  John a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor and Mary became good partners. His wife back in the US told him that if he could leave her and their kids so long she does not need him. Off he runs to report on Europe as the war has begun. Japan was on the side of Britain and France in WW1. Tsingtoa is the German concession in  China and Japan occupies it immediately later takes the whole Kiaochow peninsula

1915 The Lusitania sunk and America comes into the war. Japan is able to occupy China without UN interference and takes southern Manchuria and parts of Mongolia.

In Yokahama Mary manages to buy a vacant house . After the sons of the owners had both died in the Russo- Japan war they had bled their wrists to death and the house thus was "haunted." She can see mount Fugi from her windows. Her business in Yokahama was doing well as tourists were arriving from the States and she paid rickshaws to bring foreigners to her and were relieved that someone could set them right after they had seen the store.  

He friend Marie died, she and Armond had been diplomats and lived in many countries. Armond   back to her a parcel of all the letters she had written to Marie. She also finds out that her husband Richard died in the war in 1918 and is relieved as he refused to divorce  her.

1923 The Great Kanto Earthquake destroyed most of Tokyo , not the Royal Palace and  140,000 were  killed. In the Ginzo  a fire  before the trapped people could be rescued. Also with a tsunami. Her friend Peter died leaving his house and land to her.

The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and it survived the earthquake. 

Her mother died and she received back all the letter she had written to her in the 20 years , they had been read even though he mother never wrote to her. She inherited her fathers library and asked for it to be sent to her.  

1928 Her legal and banking advisor said she should put her savings on the NY stock exchange but instead she build 2 three story blocks of  flats to rent on the property she owned.

Kentaro had been tracking  her over the years and his wife had died and offered to marry her. She was prepared to if  Tomo was acknowledged as her son, that is impossible.

 1543-1616  Tokugawa Ievasu reunified Japan after the Warring States or Sengoku period. He created a new government controlled by the Tokugawa family that ruled Japan until 1868. He ran an intelligent and liberal government but at the end of his reign he attacked foreigner and mascaraed 30 thousand Christians, He then cut Japan off the the outside world for 200 years They visit Ievasu tomb.

Japan was talking about the ABCD of encirclement by America , Britain, China and the Dutch. They didn't like the American Exclusion Act that branded Chinese and Japanese as unsuitable to land on US soil.

1941 She receives a letter from her daughter Jane who is 37 and her husband died in fighting in Crete. She has a son of 12 and daughter of 9. She can no longer afford to keep her home in Shropshire and has offered to share it with Mary.

The Ginger tree was completely burned in the fire but its roots come to life and sprout. 

After Pearl Harbour she is expecting to be interned as an alien but 2 policemen arrive at the house and politely tell her to pack 2 suitcases and is put on a Swedish neutral ship with diplomats leaving. It was Kentaro who arranged this.. At Singapore a Japanese Major comes and meets her in the ships lounge, He shows her pictures of his wife and children who were now regarded as her relatives. She will be acknowledged as an ancestor after her death. He does not believe Japan can win the war and he is a pilot.