Hirohito and the making of modern Japan by Herbert P Bix 2001 582 pg

April 2024  Parts of the book  the Introduction

Post 1915 the racialist ultranationalist of the" Imperial Way" that had powered Japanese aggression disintegrated .

The Meijj Constitution of 1889 was grafted to an absolutist system of power and ascribed to the sacred and inviolable emperor enormous military and civil powers. Imperial Rescript on Education also prevented a true constitutional monarchy from evolving, but actually the authority resided in the cabinet. 

Between1925 and 1945 the led to repressive responses to dissent at home and to rising nationalism

1931 an insubordinate young officer fearing that Chiang Kai-shek campaign would reunify China in defiance of the Emperor began a campaign in Manchuria thus railway rights in these areas were divided into Japanese and American Spheres of influence.

1922 Nine power treaty was supposed to guarantee Chinas territorial integrity and the 1928 Kellogg Briand Pact.

 1920s Hirohiito  abandoned the party based cabinets and presided over a balance of powers amongst the elites the military the parliament and business community. This was designed to fortify the throne by entrusting power to elderly admirals.

1936 A bloody mutiny the largest ever ,resulted in murder of Hirohito's closest advisers. This was suppressed and the Emperor to on greater decision making power 

1919 Japans proposal for a racial equality at t he Paris peace Conference. Australia, the US and Canada all had discriminatory and humiliating immigration policies.

1924 Congress Immigration Act gave quotes against genetically inferior Eastern European Jews , Italians and Japanese. Some Japanese considered that immigration had declared war on Japan.

1930 Tokyo's withdrawal from the League of Nations and encouraged Japanese elites to reconstruct a national policy.

In China Chiang's  forces were weakened but this failed to bring a victory to Japan. Japan was now pinning it last homes on Moscow's mediation.

1941 Hirohito was deeply involved in planning the US attack. The military leaders , Hirohito and the Court Group all contributed to Japans defeat. On report say that it was not the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but that Russia was about to enter the war against Japan that finally bough the capitulation. Consider that Japan's last hope was for Russia to mediate. Truman carefully avoided inviting Stalin to sign.

1945  Feb14th  Prince Konoe Fumimaro pleaded with Hirohito to surrender immediately he was brushed aside.

Late July there were few Japanese cities left to be destroyed with bombs and incendiaries.

All the good that came with the restoration of peace is attributed to Hirohito assisted by the occupation forces.

Douglas Mc Author relied on the emperor to legitimize extensive occupation, reforms and further his own political ambitions.  The emperor could have been indicted at the International Military Tribunal in Tokyo.

1947 National Constitution drafted by Mc Author stripped the monarch of power diminished his authority and redefined him as a "symbol emperor" Okinawa became an American naval base to dominate the pacific.

1951 When Macarthur was fired by Truman for taking a political stand on Korea General Mathew Ridgeway replaced him 

1989 Hirohito  Died  56 year old Crown Prince Akihito succeeded him. Akihito said my generation has lived for a long time with out war and I have no need to reflect on war. They visited China in 1982

1989 End of Cold war

2000 China's spectacular economic was based on its huge underutilization of its population and formidable manufacturing capacity..

2001 PM Kolzumi Junichtra of Japan

2001 When America went to war against Iraq PM Kaifu Toshiki supported the oil sanctions and provided substantial finding  because of Japans need for oil.

Spratly Archipelago here china build artificial island to bolster her claim to most of the South China Sea.

The Nuclear policy of Kim John Un is a defensive reaction to Washington's long standing policy of regime change.

China is determined to prevent the Kim regime collapsing into chaos.

2007 the Japan house of representatives accepted responsibility for the comfort women or sexual slavery practices by the Imperial Armed Forces during their occupation of the Asian island.

2014 The truth behind Japans involvement in WW2 came with the official release of Hirohito's biography. This is in 18 volumes. The monarchy never hesitated from a foreign power protecting it against communism. 

2019 Nurihito became Emperor of Japan as his father abdicated.

The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert 2003,288pg to reedit

 The  story of Eustace Conway and about rural America   6/5/24

1961 Born in South Carolina his house was next to an original old world forest that had not yet been developed.  His mother taught him to camp, fish build a fire handle wildlife and weave grasses into rope. He read books on Davy Crocket and Wild world Wisdom how to sew buckskin. American History goes - there was a frontier and then there was not. Nostalgia for Buffalo Bill Wild West show and Frederick Remington's art. Reading Jack London can give you the itch to travel.

1818 a British observer noted that every American considers that its impossible for a foreigner to teach him anything. Challenged of a new worlds virgin wilderness was unhindered by class or urban squalor.

1824 German born Gottfried Duden travelled to the West to find suitable homestead places for German families interested in immigrating. This was a time when Ohio farmers were constructing a 230 mile canal without a licensed engineer.

1850 The English travel writer described the rugged men she encountered. American bough the hype of what was an American Man, and by 1890 the American frontier suddenly closed. We were taught that resourcefulness  is next to godliness. Much inspired by the poems of Walt Whitman.

1883 Teddy Roosevelt boasted his rugged experiences in a buckskin shirt and horsehide chaparajos.

 

Things like fast food are  bringing poorer health, we seem to have the same disregard for our bodies as we have for natural resources .There is not difference between winter and summer if you can eat strawberries every day. People have fallen out of step with natural cycles. In nature everything is connected, circular. The planet is circular and so is the passage of the sun as well as life cycles of plants and animals. The civilized world is scarier than the woods.

1804Thomas Jefferson knew Meriwether Lewis well, he commissioned the Lewis and Clark expedition to investigate the Louisiana purchase lands.

Eustace liked reading about the Indian wars, he didn't  have friends and had not time for kids who spent time watching TV. The children were more like his apprentices. He showed them how to catch snakes and find food for his turtles. Eustace's father was a mountain man who knew everything about hunting riding. He was and engineer and academic.

He got to know the Indian tribes and Eustace's picture appeared in the press with his successes in completions and Indian dances .He was presented with the National Youth Award from the Smithsonian.

His parents never got on and family advised his mother  to leave the marriage but she never found the courage. Divorces was a mortal sin. Despite what his father would do or say about him, he would be a Man of destiny. His mother would go to the library and bring him piles of biographies of Washington , Daniel Boone , Davy Crocket, Lincoln, Kit Carlson, John Fremont, Andrew Jackson , Geronimo , Red Cloud and Sitting Bull.

Wagon trails going west were filled with young boys who had left home for a number of reasons. They were drawn to the frontier due to bad relationships or tough fathers.

When he finished high school he took some books, his hand made teepee and split. He lived around Gastonia N. Carolina. for a while in Tennessee he worked as a nature educator for disabled kids.

 Eustace Conway who at 18 walked the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia surviving on what he hunted and gathered with a friend. They caught crawfish and trout, killed rattlesnakes. They came to a small town where there was a family who keep the common hog and they took charge of it but ate all the food over meant for it, perfectly good food.

Eustace refused to go to church and studied every religion he could get books for of and found that god is only available in nature. In James Ferrimore Coopers Dear Slayer Natty never marries as he would have to give up his world of solitude.

He met Donna on the trail and he slipped into her tent He taught her about every plant or rock that passed .Frank bowed out of the challenge but Donna joined him. He finished hiking the trail in Sept 1981 it took him 4 and a half months. He found that if he went to the garbage outside a supermarket  could find wrapped whole steaks and plenty of food just passed the sell by date that was perfectly wholesome to eat.

He met Alan York later who said lets hike across Alaska but the kayaked instead. After that he went to rural Mexico to study pottery and weaving and flew to Guatemala to see the most privative people.

He later went back to collage as he had good grades. He went to Gaston Community  College and then to Appalachian State University in Boone , North Carolina. 1984 Graduated with honors He majored in English and Archaeology and started teaching all  over the south in public schools. When he travelled on the road and found a roadkill animal if fleas were still jumping on it it was fresh enough to cook and eat.

People went hunting and didn't even want the meat. Every place he set up camp got sold out and developed into neighborhoods .Bulldozers will keep coming till every tree is gone and there is no safe place.

America has always lent herself to visions of Utopian plans . Sir Thomas More, Tommaso Campanella , Francis Beacon, Rabelais , Montaigne , Hobbes, but these men never turned dreams into reality

The Amanist came in 1842 to the US . The Shakers also flourished. New Harmony was founded in Indiana in 1925, but by 1900 most of Americas idealistic communities had vanished 

1960s the communes that were set up folded because of drug abuse, disorganization apathy resentment and bankruptcy. Eustace hated drug use. Hog Farm thrived for 25 years because of its visionary leader Hugh Romney.

There are second growth forests forest that have taken over after being cleared more than a century ago.

Eustace bought 1000 acres in woods by an unspoiled basin and created Turtle Island, he was not merely a hermit or a hippie but a survivalist. The basic needs of humanity food clothing shelter transportations sexual pleasure are all available for cash. 

 He gave summer camps there to teach kids how to be a man. He felt he knew a better way of life for all Americans. The neighbours were hog farmers and it was ideal but he needed $80,000. He had to renew his relationship to his father got the loan and paid it back in a year. He went on punishing speaking tours. His first camp was 1989. He gave lessons on survival to even adults and kindergarten kids .Later he bough the peaks of each hill that surrounded the valley.to guard his watershed. Eustace got his brothers to work for him as councilors in the camps, he taught you can do anything you believe you can do. This is a last parcel of the American frontier .He was overbooked by clients and had more work than he needed. He couldn't hold on to his staff. He helped children become fit or even roll hoops or use the simplest tools. A young women Segal had served in the Israeli military and thrived in his system.

Most American don't want to live off the land but get a thrill from Eustaces assurance that you can.

Davy Crocket knew how to use the back woods charisma to become a Congressman. He released his heroic memoirs to coincide with the 1833 elections. Daniel Boone late became a real estate speculator and developer. Kit Karson had dozens of adventure novels written about him. 

Eustace was less convinced that his talks were having any effect. His girlfriend for 15 years Valerie said she loved him but I lost my identity in his. We should have concentrated on our relationship and less on our goals.  He had accomplished much but was not able to keep a wife and have children.   Eustace wanted absolute love and absolute control

He owned 10 horses and said it is easier to feed yourself than a horse.. in 1995 he got the notion to ride a horse across America and did this in 103 days. He went with his brother Judson. They called themselves the Long Riders. They rode from Alabama to California. The mass media had done away with local dialects Appalachian children spoke different to their grandparents. The ride became a parade and people from miles came to see them. People warned them not to go through the Apache Reservation but they did and were welcomed. They were met by mayors and minister and people all wanted to do what they were doing. They read Cormack McCarthy Books along the way.

Mules used as packhorses are brainy and can be malicious.`

Today in the US, some wives earn more than husbands and women are increasingly in control of their biological and economic destinies thus the mans role has changed.

eustasy is a geological world meaning a world wide change in sea level.

Many of the tribes today have massive windfall profit from the casinos on their reserves.

In 2013 the North Carolina passed a law allowing special building codes for privative structures for his Turtle Island.

John Muir the naturalist was also a man about the frontier and there is a blog entry  about him also

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.

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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.

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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.

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 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.