Read Online Family Britain, 1951-1957 by David Kynaston - Free Book Online
Authors: David Kynaston
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Socialist government in this country, somebody in the Ministry of Education will have to start re-writing our nursery rhymes – such as “There was an old woman who lived in a queue”, and “Sing a song of sixpence the value of a pound” ’), Churchill was in Plymouth on Tuesday stoutly denying the characterisation of him as a warmonger (‘the opposite of the truth’), and, that same evening, Hill in Luton gave some female hecklers short shrift (‘All right, girls, shout as much as you like, but you won’t pick the Government’).
There was also, played out at schools all over the country, the ritual of the mock election. One such was at the County High School in Carlisle, where the candidates were all sixth-formers. ‘It was obvious from the beginning,’ recalled Margaret Forster (13 at the time), ‘that the appearance and popularity of these candidates were going to count more with us schoolgirl-voters than anything they said’:
The Conservative candidate was the most attractive but she wasn’t a good speaker. She was very pretty, with long, blonde hair, beautifully brushed, but her voice was rather squeaky and her manner solemn. She went on about Winston Churchill and how he’d saved us from the Nazis and how ungrateful we’d been not to vote him in after the war. The Liberal candidate wasn’t much better as far as the content of her speech was concerned, but she had a much louder and more forceful voice. She was very sporty too, in all the school teams, and made her party seem very healthy, the party for fit people who were not ‘stuffy’ like the Conservatives. The Labour candidate was just too emotional. She actually wept when she read out some newspaper report on how the poor were living in our big cities. This was, it seemed, the fault of the Conservatives even though they were not at the moment in government – Labour had done what it could but had only made a start and needed many more years in power to carry on the good work. Then there was the Communist candidate – small, ugly, bespectacled, scruffy, but what a brilliant speaker. Our entire system of government, she bellowed, was a farce. The rich got richer, the poor got poorer and nothing would change until outdated democracy was swept aside and replaced by the people as the state and the state as the people, one for all and no more class divisions, no more inequality . . . I went straight home and announced I had no doubts, I was a Communist.
Forster’s parents were deeply shocked, her father even walloping her for cheek, and in the end she gave her vote to the Labour candidate. It hardly mattered: ‘The Conservative won with the Liberal a close second and Labour a poor third. The outstanding Communist candidate got only three votes and I was ashamed not to have voted for her.’23
‘Polling Day & a fateful one for the Country,’ recorded Florence Speed in Brixton on the long-awaited Thursday. ‘If the Socialists are returned for a third time, it is goodbye to the Empire & to everything it has stood for.’ Three front pages that morning particularly caught the eye. The final Gallup poll in the
News Chronicle
had the Tory lead down to three and a half points; the
Daily Mirror
’s was a ‘Trigger’ special, complete with large drawing of a menacing gun and hand; and the
Daily Mail
featured a masterly cartoon by Illingworth, showing a middle-class couple at breakfast with a polling station visible through the window, the wife reading a paper with headlines like ‘Inflation’ and ‘Cost of Living Soaring’, and the husband getting up determinedly from the table and saying, ‘We Are The Masters Now.’ Among the diarists, Haines in Chingford voted Labour and then did her shopping (‘how they do keep you waiting’), while Lewis delayed until after work and also voted Labour, before going to the Odeon to see
Valley of Eagles
starring Jack Warner. Speed’s brother Fred was a polling clerk. ‘ “All I want is to see England
There was also, played out at schools all over the country, the ritual of the mock election. One such was at the County High School in Carlisle, where the candidates were all sixth-formers. ‘It was obvious from the beginning,’ recalled Margaret Forster (13 at the time), ‘that the appearance and popularity of these candidates were going to count more with us schoolgirl-voters than anything they said’:
The Conservative candidate was the most attractive but she wasn’t a good speaker. She was very pretty, with long, blonde hair, beautifully brushed, but her voice was rather squeaky and her manner solemn. She went on about Winston Churchill and how he’d saved us from the Nazis and how ungrateful we’d been not to vote him in after the war. The Liberal candidate wasn’t much better as far as the content of her speech was concerned, but she had a much louder and more forceful voice. She was very sporty too, in all the school teams, and made her party seem very healthy, the party for fit people who were not ‘stuffy’ like the Conservatives. The Labour candidate was just too emotional. She actually wept when she read out some newspaper report on how the poor were living in our big cities. This was, it seemed, the fault of the Conservatives even though they were not at the moment in government – Labour had done what it could but had only made a start and needed many more years in power to carry on the good work. Then there was the Communist candidate – small, ugly, bespectacled, scruffy, but what a brilliant speaker. Our entire system of government, she bellowed, was a farce. The rich got richer, the poor got poorer and nothing would change until outdated democracy was swept aside and replaced by the people as the state and the state as the people, one for all and no more class divisions, no more inequality . . . I went straight home and announced I had no doubts, I was a Communist.
Forster’s parents were deeply shocked, her father even walloping her for cheek, and in the end she gave her vote to the Labour candidate. It hardly mattered: ‘The Conservative won with the Liberal a close second and Labour a poor third. The outstanding Communist candidate got only three votes and I was ashamed not to have voted for her.’23
‘Polling Day & a fateful one for the Country,’ recorded Florence Speed in Brixton on the long-awaited Thursday. ‘If the Socialists are returned for a third time, it is goodbye to the Empire & to everything it has stood for.’ Three front pages that morning particularly caught the eye. The final Gallup poll in the
News Chronicle
had the Tory lead down to three and a half points; the
Daily Mirror
’s was a ‘Trigger’ special, complete with large drawing of a menacing gun and hand; and the
Daily Mail
featured a masterly cartoon by Illingworth, showing a middle-class couple at breakfast with a polling station visible through the window, the wife reading a paper with headlines like ‘Inflation’ and ‘Cost of Living Soaring’, and the husband getting up determinedly from the table and saying, ‘We Are The Masters Now.’ Among the diarists, Haines in Chingford voted Labour and then did her shopping (‘how they do keep you waiting’), while Lewis delayed until after work and also voted Labour, before going to the Odeon to see
Valley of Eagles
starring Jack Warner. Speed’s brother Fred was a polling clerk. ‘ “All I want is to see England
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