Lifting the Lid on a baby boomer´s memory box

One boy's life and times

An introduction

I love my children and grandchildren and together we share the same world. There is however a big difference between us. While they are natives of this world, I feel like a temporary resident. I am a little out of place, or more accurately, a little out of time. The transformational changes that are so evident in everyday life, like sophisticated technological advances and changing social norms, take some adjusting to. I find myself alternating between being delighted, baffled, or, on occasion, frustrated. Familiar things from my childhood remain but now seem different. For example, factories still operate, and shops are stocked ready for sale. The big change is that things seem to happen with so little human involvement. Goods continue to be produced, and business is still transacted, but now these processes are unfettered by the world’s different time zones and outdated concepts such as ‘normal working hours’. Despite these apparent 24/7 operations, it is sometimes difficult to speak directly to ‘real’ people. When making purchases over the internet, I have myself been asked to confirm that I am not a robot!
Of course, life has been made simpler in many ways by technology, and for those willing to participate, it offers platforms for shopping, banking, and communication. Live news feeds offer immediacy, making the way in which I once received news seem pedestrian. The downside is that live news produces simultaneous comments, some of which may be ill-judged, leading to cyber bullying and unfounded conspiracy theories. The technology itself disregards national borders while drawing together a digital community into a global village of trading and communication. This produces the mixed blessing of denting parochial and nationalistic perspectives of the past, but at the expense of eroding long-held values and local cultures. An exponential change in part driven by technology has taken place within this country in terms of values, attitudes, and expectations from when I was young.
I have inhabited a vastly different world from the present one. I was born into a simpler place and time, an era that pre-dated moon landings, personal computers, mobile phones, and the use of the internet. When I was born not every household owned a car, a telephone landline, or even a refrigerator. I lived in a world that went by in a less complicated, seemingly more innocent way. This was a world where news, business and conversations were slower, more measured but by comparison limited. Friends were fewer, certainly, when compared with the count on Facebook, but they required the commitment of personal interaction. Adults networked by chatting to those around them in a queue, on a bus or waiting in a doctor’s surgery. My early knowledge and views were shaped by listening to conversations in the street, over the dining table, at school, during Sunday school lessons and at the ‘Common’, a patch of greenery at the end of the road.

Growing up you get used to hearing the sage sayings of adults. One was ‘there’s no time like the present’, which was meant to stress the opportunity for taking immediate action. In retrospect, the phrase could have been taken literally, the fifties and sixties were unlike any other period of history. It was a time that now seems quirky, lacking sophistication and dated, yet seismic changes were going on while I went about day-to-day life. Like fellow ‘baby boomers’, I lived through a unique slice of time. The world I knew as a child was markedly different from anything that had gone before.

This was a period of huge change and achievement, with much to celebrate. As a society we had harnessed the potential of electricity, acquired clean water, benefitted from penicillin and other medicines, and established the National Health Service (NHS). Rationing was finally being shaken off. The First World War, 1914–1918, was meant to be a war to end all wars. Such optimism was not well placed as another world war was being fought against the same enemy a little over twenty years later. Emerging from these conflicts on the winning side there was a new opportunity for lasting peace. To this end, a Western European alliance of nations, now known as the European Union (EU), offered potential for not only security but also trade. Crime rates were down, housebuilding by both the public and private sectors was a reality, and successive governments were committed to a general policy of full employment. Despite high personal taxation, there was an undeniable truth in the words of a Prime Minister of the period that, as a nation, we had ‘never had it so good’. A step change in technological advancement was taking place and consumerism was starting to take hold. For the right price new types of appliances for the home could make cooking, cleaning, and washing less of a chore. The cinema and theatre as sources of entertainment could, for a fee, be supplemented by ownership of a radio or television set. For those whose pockets were not deep enough, there was credit in the form of the hire purchase (HP) agreements. The ‘never, never’ promised jam today and the maxim of ‘never a lender or borrower be’ belonged to an earlier generation. For the first time ever there was widespread ownership of a revolutionary form of personal transport, the motor car.

Life however was not lived under permanent blue skies, there was something of a permanent, sinister shadow, some might say a very dark cloud. A ‘Cold War’ between two rival political ideologies, capitalism and communism, was raging. Far from being just a noisy disagreement, there was a deep mutual distrust and a real fear of the threat of mass nuclear destruction. As well as stockpiling weapons, the Cold War also spawned intriguing tales of spy networks and secret agents. A space race between the two sides got underway unofficially to confirm which ‘ism’ had superiority.
Aside from a fear that the nuclear button might be pressed there was much for the nation to wrestle with. Britain may have emerged from the Second World War victorious a decade earlier, but it was nearly bankrupt. The Americans were owed billions of pounds and were now calling in their debts. Any sort of economic progress was inevitably impeded by this burden, indeed, governments feared real hardship and secret plans to avoid starvation were considered necessary. The magnitude of our indebtedness meant that the country was by necessity politically tied to its transatlantic paymaster. Then there was the legacy of once being a colonial power. At its peak, one in four of the world’s population belonged to the British Empire. (A huge map on the wall of my classroom evidenced as much with great swathes of countries coloured pink.) Running an empire came at a cost both financial and moral. Now immigration from the Commonwealth was becoming a source of social tension in some parts of the country.

These are some of the headlines from the world of ‘then’. I lived through it all in a kindly subculture on a new suburban Black Country estate. Experiences of childhood, early relationships, family and how you are raised all help shape your moral code, what you believe and ultimately who you are. Societies are built on stories such as mine. Reflecting on these stories helps me make sense of my place in a world I once lived in and how today’s world has been shaped by the past. It was a Danish philosopher of a century earlier who observed that life can only be understood backwards but must be lived forwards.
Certain trivial items and customs have faded completely from use over the years. I can remember Smiths crisps being sold as unsalted, but packets came with a small blue packet of salt inside. Then there were toys that were just plain dangerous, including lead soldiers, Meccano construction kits with sharp metal edges and toy cannons that fired match sticks with far too much power. Children’s toothpaste was different. Gibbs toothpaste was sold in a round metal tin and had the texture of brittle boot polish, and significantly came in a choice of pink and lime green colours. The big autumn event for children was always November fifth, when the thwarting of the 1605 gunpowder plot to blow up parliament was celebrated. In addition to the sale of fireworks, bonfires were lit, and this tradition carries on normally in back gardens, rarely at organised events. We often went to a distant cousin’s home whose daughter Wendy celebrated her birthday on that day. No bonfire was complete without a scarecrow-type effigy of Guy Fawkes (one of the gunpowder plotters) being placed on the top of the bonfire pile. In the run up to the big night, children would lay their guys on the floor in prominent places such as street corners and outside pubs and ask passers by, ‘A penny for the guy?’. Coins and loose change could be exchanged for fireworks for the big night. This practice seems to have died out completely, being replaced by the American imports of trick-or-treat and Halloween celebrations. I could recount many more examples; I am just illustrating the fact that I lived in a world that is now fast disappearing.

This is my story of an unremarkable upbringing in Britain of the nineteen fifties and sixties. My reminiscences might be considered overly personal, nostalgic, or sentimental. They are, however genuine and echo everyone’s story who lived through this period of history. For those much younger it is an opportunity to open the lid on a time capsule or open a door into another world. This is my attempt to sketch a ghost before it disappears from the room.




THE BACK STORY




Chapter One


No place like home

There is a place where a meandering Cherry Tree Avenue joins Maple Drive and Greenside Way. Almond Avenue and Lilac Avenue dissect the lazy loop of the road like tributaries to a mighty river. Road names such as these may conjure an image of a rural idyll, a quiet, green hamlet festooned with multiple varieties of trees. The reality is different. These roads form part of Yew Tree Estate, a community of some twelve thousand souls. Despite the naming policy, when it was first built the Estate was devoid of trees apart from a few on the common ground at the end of the road. Instead of tree-lined pavements, residents looked out on tar-encrusted telegraph poles and lampposts of concrete. This is where I was born and grew up.
Long ago there was a sliver of time where everything changed forever, a period when the physical and social landscape of the nation was indelibly redrawn. Sometime in the eighteenth century, a heady combination of imagination, innovation and inventions combined to herald in an era now known as the Industrial Revolution. The capital of entrepreneurs and the creative insight of inventors may have driven industrialisation, but it was powered by the exploitation of the potential of steam power, fossil fuel reserves and the labour of ordinary working people. Rural, agricultural life and homemade wares gave way to the efficiencies of dark factories. The revolution brought with it immense wealth for factory owners, mass-produced textiles and metal products, and crowded towns. Even today, eight out of ten people in England live in an urban environment. The Yew Tree Estate I once knew was neither country nor was it urban. It was in fact a purpose-built suburbia where the Black Country conurbations of Walsall and Sandwell touch.
Nothing could point to, highlight, underline, and double-underline Britain’s industrial heritage more than the Black Country. The area was already long known for its metalworking industries and rich seams of coal and limestone. Advances in manufacturing technology, and the capability of new machinery offered the potential for exponential growth in these and other activities. The first commercially useful steam engine was built in the area, but there was still a need for the country’s most landlocked region to get products to market. The answer lay in the development of an efficient canal network that offered unhindered transport of goods and materials. The breakthrough happened in 1769 when canal engineering genius James Brindley’s vision for linking Birmingham city centre with the coalfields of the Black Country was realised. Bypassing the frustratingly slow and expensive delivery by horses on unreliable roads, the canal offered the brass, iron, and tool makers of Birmingham access to cheap and efficiently delivered consignments. The price of coal plummeted, and the Black County had a shot in the arm with a direct link to a hungry market. The extent of the network joining Wolverhampton and the eastern part of the Black Country to Birmingham to the south eventually grew to 174 miles of navigable water. By the nineteenth century, the Black Country had become known as the ‘workshop of the world’, with the region’s products being exported to every corner of the globe.
At its height, the sheer scale and intensity of industrial activity in this area was captured in a famous description of the landscape being ‘black by day and red by night’. It was not just mass production, there was a rich diversity of products, and certain towns became associated with world-class excellence in certain items. Brierley, for instance, boasted fine-cut glass crystal while Walsall had a thriving leather trade that included luxury items; it was also where the world’s first readymade riding saddle was produced.
It is tempting to romanticise the period as a golden age where the country prospered, and solid working-class people were able to earn an honest living. The reality was that, for the majority, times were hard and life was a grind. Indentured workers were, in some cases, little better than slave labour. There was a poor standard of housing and dangerous working conditions, where hours were long, and men, women and even children were mercilessly exploited. In addition, a toxic combination of coal mines, iron foundries, glass factories, brickworks, and steel mills made for high levels of air pollution, leading to illness and shortened life expectancies. The grimy landscape itself was scarred by abandoned mines that had become exhausted or unprofitable. The unsightliness of the landscape led the author J. R.R. Tolkien, who lived in nearby Birmingham, to include a fictional place called Mordor in his books. Mordor was a black land, a place of shadows. Legend has it that the curtains on Queen Victoria’s rail carriage were closed while the train passed through the area. The eyes of a blue blood royal were averted from the endeavour of blue-collar existence. Heaven forbid that the Queen’s eyes should be sullied by the sight of where her people laboured, loved, and lived.
By the time the Victorian period ended in 1901, canals were less significant. The development of road and rail produced an improved transport infrastructure, and the whole region was connected by public transport. In addition, individuals found the liberation of increased mobility through bicycles, while the few motor cars that were about were the preserve of rich enthusiasts. Telephones were still in their infancy and gas-powered lighting dominated.
One feature of the Black Country was the growth of workers’ dwellings quite close to factories, meaning that housing and industry coexisted cheek by jowl. The few thousand dwellings that grew up on Yew Tree Estate fifty years later were different. West Bromwich County Borough Council had created a modern solution to the housing crisis. This was suburbia, a commuter satellite for the aspirational. Young couples (married, of course), could escape house sharing with in-laws. With hard work to meet monthly mortgage or weekly rent obligations, they could raise 2.4 children together and live happily ever after. At least that was the dream. In the process, children born on the estate escaped a traditional Black Country environment but still became encultured by a shared heritage, sense of humour and dialect. Within this diaspora, there was a coming together of two tribes, Walsall people, and West Bromwich people. Some looked towards Walsall town centre when planning a shopping trip, while others favoured equidistant West Bromwich. Ours was a Walsall household, and the delivery of the broadsheet-sized weekly newspaper, the ‘Walsall Observer’, on Fridays confirmed as much.
By the time of my birth in 1956, the Black Country was coming to terms with deindustrialisation while starting to shake off some of its industrial blackness. The passing of the Clean Air Act in the same year forced the use of smokeless sources of heat and energy. Coal as a pollutant may have declined, but now there were petrol and diesel exhaust fumes to contend with thanks to the growth in ownership of far from green motorcars and motorcycles. Across the country large-scale building projects were underway to replace the half a million homes destroyed by German bombing during the War. Then there was the cramped back-to-back housing to deal with. One MP bluntly described them as ‘lice ridden: rat ridden lost hell holes’.
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