History of England 1-6

The training itself was if anything harsher than that imposed in wartime – there was an illusion to protect, along with the remains of empire. Dangers there were, whether roaring or skulking, and the still renowned British military was needed to face them. But in any case Britain needed its youth to be healthy, if they were not to end up like Teddy boys, shiftless and disobedient. In the event, the Teds flourished under national service. The hair was a problem, of course, but it could be hidden. In fact, the style was the only real objection of the training officers. One observed: ‘We’re a proud lot in the Airborne and feel that these modern fashions that a few of the chaps like rather lets (sic) the mob down.’

Other contemporaries were less predictable. Among the few who mourned Eden’s departure deeply were four young men whose brand of humour created at a stroke the modern alternative tradition. Eden’s consonants, snipped off by his protruding front teeth, had been succeeded by the languorous vowels of Harold Macmillan, which were far less susceptible to imitation. The Goons, the lords of Fifties radio comedy, must have sighed in disappointment at the gently genial new PM. They came together above a fruiterer’s shop in Shepherd’s Bush, and their backgrounds were as difficult to represent as the new age itself. Michael Bentine was an Old Etonian, Peter Sellers a Jewish boy from Muswell Hill, Harry Secombe was a Welshman, and Spike Milligan had been born in India, his father an army captain.

Unlike many later comedians, the Goons had no interest in innuendo, or indeed in sexual matters of any sort. It was comedy in the tradition of Ben Jonson or the Restoration playwrights, with the difference that the types shown by the Goons were all not merely eccentric but palpably insane. The nation had excitement and opportunity, but too little in the way of salutary madness, which now the Goons unveiled. To get life insurance, all one had to do was to ‘get deceased’, for example. And the names were a feast. Denis Bloodnok, always blaming his wind on ‘curried eggs’, tells us nothing and suggests everything. And it was comedy for radio, for airwaves that could carry at last something more bracing than cheerful propaganda and interminable organ music. The voices, whether shrieking or whining, bellowing or wheedling, filled the home with brisk and contrary winds of every sort.

A forgotten irony lies in the notion of the post-war consensus, since in truth it had been developed under both Labour and Tory auspices. By the mid-Fifties, however, notions of a grand ideological confrontation existed only as fodder for journalists. The belief that the state must support its citizens if it is to demand anything of them had been tacitly absorbed by all parties. The post-war consensus was at last in place. The only question was whether it could hold its own.

Nationalization of services was almost complete by the mid-Fifties. To return the means, and the fruits, of production to the producers had been the grand mission. But how much had really changed? The children’s book series Thomas the Tank Engine by Wilbert and Christopher Awdry spanned three decades but began in 1945. The anthropomorphic engines have a fond mentor in the rotund shape of the Fat Director, Sir Topham Hatt, Bt. In the tale of James the Red Engine, the Fat Director becomes the Fat Controller. Clearly, nationalization has struck. It had been a project advanced as much by Conservatives as by socialists, and it was not always easy to see how the central cast had altered. The Fifties saw a gradual acceptance of the post-war settlement. Government cooperation with the union movement continued, and even accelerated, under the Conservatives. At this point, all appeared to be in agreement.

With widening education, however, came a certain unease. Was to be educated to accept the thirty pieces of silver? Such a notion would have seemed strange a hundred years earlier, when an education was a source of pride for many of the working class. But the working class was itself in transition, culturally and racially. The word ‘minority’ also changed its meaning in the Fifties. Before, it had usually referred to the Welsh or to women; now it turned outwards, to signify the immigrant. The notion of a ‘white’ England was most often a chimera; there had been black communities in England long before the Windrush generation, just as there had been black servicemen in the war. And as for the empire, the English knew it as something in the papers – now they learned of it through their neighbours.