Social developments

• • visible signs of war damage
  • much of their social life was looking to the past
  • regional and class loyalties were strong
  • 'baby boom' children lived in a different way to their parents 


  What was society in Britain like after the war?
• • run-down and needed modernising
  • need for housing development to replace war damage and to deal with the decay of housing stock
  • pre-war slums were cleared and new towns built like Harlow in Essex. Slums clearing meant that traditional communities were broken up.
  • Men's weekly wages went up £8.30 in 1951 up to £15.35 10 years later. SO more private savings
  • Home ownership: increased due to cheap mortgages but people living in council houses and rented accommodation were outnumbered compared to private owners. 


  Living standards:
• New affluence signs seen in an increase of ownership of consumer goods such as washing machines, refrigerators, TVs and furniture. Consumerism increased due to the expanding advertising industry after ITV launched in 1955 and people were exposed to glossy adverts. 


  Consumerism:
• Between 1957 and 1959 the number of households who owned TVs rose by 32% by by 1960 there was 10 million TV sets being used. Around 50% of the population watched TV in the evening. 


  Leisure activities:
• • People had more time to develop hobbies like DIY and gardening, TV programmes reflected these. 


  Time:
• • Car ownership: rose by 25% between 1957-59, creating demans for new roads to be built. It also meant more people could go on holiday in the UK and that houses started being built outside of towns.
  • Holiday camps: very popular during this time, 60,000 people holidayed each week with Butlins as people got paid time off work and had more disposable income.
  • Foreign holidays: only enjoyed by 2% of the population 


  Cars and holidays:
• • Deferential and conformist society who had strong class loyalties as there was an ingrained respect for authority.
  • 1951 election: 65% of the working class voted for the Labour party and 80% of the middle class voters voted for conservatives.
  • Suez: exposed lying and manipulation of government and society was less willing to respect the Establishment

  Class:
• Establishment:

  People who had informal networks that were connected to social and political elites. These were people with influence who 'knew people thta mattered'. Wealth was less important than background and connections.
• • Showed by coverage of Profumo Affair.
  • Satire boom in the 1950s such as the Private Eye
  • Critics believed Britain was held back by the ruling elite as it blocked talent from people outside that group.
  • Angry young men: used arts to attack the behaviour and attitudes of the established upper and upper-middle class. 


  Decline in deference:
• The Angry Young Men movement emerged in response to the perceived lack of opportunity for talented individuals due to the dominance of the establishment. They criticized the behavior and attitudes of the upper classes through literature, theatre, and film. However, some critics argue that the establishment continued to hold significant power and influence despite these challenges.
• Position of women:

  • Housewives: ideal woman was a wife and mother.
  • Average age of marriage: 21 and 75% of all women were married.
  • Only 1 in 5 women went to work in 1951.
  • Mass Observation Survey: 1951, captured the typical day of a woman during that time which included cooking, taking care of their children, laundry, shopping and running errands like the post.
• Paid to women which was aimed to ensure women did not need to work. Welfare state was concerned with maintaining the nuclear family and full employment for men. 


  Family Allowance:
• • Mortgages and banks in men's names.
  • By 1964, number of working women rose, most married women stayed at home.
  • Trade unions not supportive of women as they believed it would lower wages as well as the belief that it would be damaging for the children if they go to work.

  Financial dependence of women:
• These were mainly for the middle class such as the equal pay for teachers (1952) and civil servants (1954). 


  Improvements for women in the workplace:
• • Between 1957-59 number of households who had washing machines rose by 54% and fridges by 58%. One Hotpoint washing machine was called 'The Liberator'.
  • Second-wave feminism argued that women were unfulfilled and trapped by the homemaker role. 


  How did new labour-saving devices help women:
• • Elizabeth II coronation in 1953, put an emphasis on the commonwealth.
  • Windrush generation of 1948. This was a wave of Afro-Caribbean immigrants (492 of them) who were seeking work in Britain.


  What caused a change in social tensions in attitudes towards immigration:
• By 1958, about 210,000 commonwealth immigrants settled. 75% of them were male who were working to support their families back home, largest number of these came from the West Indies. 


  Immigrant population in Britain:
• It was pretty mixed, some people tolerate them and wanted to 'get along' and others were outright racist. It was interesting however as emigration was higher (1.32 million Britons) compared to immigration (676,000) in the 1950s. The same was true for the 1960s, there was 1.25 immigrants and 700,000 more that left Britain. Attitudes started to shift towards the end, to the more hostile end of the spectrum and gangs in Nottingham of white youths in 1958 formed, with riots breaking out in the first year as well. 


  Attitudes towards immigration:
• Leader of Britain fascism who stood as a Union Movement candidate in the 1959 election for Kensington North, supporting the idea of repatriation. 


  Oswald Moseley:
• The government was reluctant to use legislation against immigration to control it against countries who once had been a part of the British Empire or somehow close to it. Labour strongly opposed the act but they did not repeal it after 1964. 


  1962 Commonwealth immigration Act:
• In the 1950s, this was the first time that teenagers were recognised a a group of people, as they had more time due to the rise in labour-saving devices (girls didn't have to help their mom with chores and boys stayed at home due to the end of National Service after 1960). They dressed differently to their parents, listened to different music and hung out in coffee bars rather than old tea houses. 


  Young people:
• • Survey in 1959: 5 million teenagers in Britain, 10% of population.
  • Made them more visible and economically important they had money to spend on fashion and records.
  • Teddy boys: more popular youth culture subgroup. They were seen as worrying, unfortunately, as they were seen as delinquents.
  • Quickly replaced by Mods and Rockers who were influenced by the rise of Rock stars like Elvis Priestley.

  Teenage population:
• Due to censorship being lifted and social taboos some TV shows such as Taste of Honey (1958) was about a young unmarried woman who become pregnant after a relationship with a black sailor. 


  Support of new British Society:
• Backlash against the new, 'immorality and depravity' led by Mary Whitehouse, who were supported by parts of the national press. 


  Opposition to the new British Society:
• There was a greater availability of credit which was provided by banks or financial companies which allowed people to borrow larger sums of money. Loan repayment was split up into small chunks over a long period of time on 'easy terms' which meant people were able to buy things they couldn't before. 1950-65 sales of private cars rose from 1.5 mil to 5.5 mil.


  Financial credit increase
• Between 1951-54 Macmillan reached the target of 300,000 new houses built annually and although the pace slowed after that between 1951-64 there was around 1.7 new houses built. 


  Housing achievements
• It got rid of all rent controls on landlords which put 6 million properties on the market but because rent rose to really high numbers, it was difficult for people who warned less to access this.

  
  

  Rent Act
• A society in which people are encouraged to be home-owners, as ownership of property is a necessary part of democracy. This fed in nicely with the 'never had it so good' period declared in 1957.


  Property-owning democracy
• It rose rapidly to over half a million in the mid 1950s, rising towards the end of the 50s. 1954: 387,000 and 1962: 566,000.


  Unemployment
• • The selection process was psychologically dubious and unreliable
  • Selection was socially divisive as it separate groups from each other
  • Greater share of public investment went to the better schools which means the other schools didn't improve at all
  • Records showed that bright students performed the same on an academic level in comprehensive and grammar schools. 


  Arguments for comprehensive schools
• • Now that grammar schools were abolished, in deprived areas, there was no alternative from the worser schools in these areas
  • wealthy parents has a choice to a better off area so their kids go to a better school, poorer parents did not so it wasn't selection by ability but by income.
  • pupils put into 'sets' which means they separated children in the schools themselves

  Arguments against the comprehensive system
• • Expansion of universities
  • emphasis on scientific education
  • 12 existing colleges of advanced technology should be given the same status as universities
  • larger grants to be given so no students would be deferred due to a lack of income 


  Robbins Report 1963
• • WW2 had broken up class divides as everyone from different backgrounds had to fight together.
  • introduction of welfare state and it's acknowledgement in 1951 showed that the wellbeing of the whole population was a national concern
  • affluence blurred class lines as the rise in disposable income meant more people could afford the luxuries. 


  class
• • upper: traditional aristocracy and gentry
  • middle: trade and other professions as such
  • working: workers for wages in industry or land
  • it is important to note that there were grades in each class so social mobility was more likely

  How was class divided
• By mid-1950s employers (some) extended their recruitment to some of the immigrant population such as Textile Firms in London and the North of England were eager to take workers from India and Pakistan. 


  Employers and immigrants
• Restaurants would have signs like 'no blacks' outside of them as well as 'no coloured' signs outside of boarding houses and on factory gates and some people believed that immigrants were coming to Britain purely for the benefits and that it was 'swamped by waves of immigrants'


  Racism in public
• A racist organisation formed in 1957 in Notting Hill and modelled Oswald's group from the 1930s


  White Defence League
• • severe prison punishments placed on the 9 white leaders who were found guilty of inciting the attack of groups of white people on black-owner properties. 


  How did the government respond to the Race Riots in 1958
• • sexual jealousy of white men of white women who were going out with people other than them
  • anger of white people that immigrants were willing to do the lower wage jobs
  • bitterness in rising rent prices that was blamed on immigrants 


  Salmon Report: reasons for the riots
• • some earned good wages which made them feel like they don;t have to listen to traditional authority
  • due to consumerism being targeted at them, they were made to feel special and different
  • scandals of establishment bad example
  • satire boom


  why were people more antisocial in this period: