Voices of Postwar England

Hello and welcome to Voices of Postwar England. This website focuses on the history of the working class in England since 1945. In particular, it showcases the life history of working-class people in Liverpool and Coventry since 1945. As it grows, we’ll include links and material of interest to people wanting to research their family history, labour history or social history. Explore the site to learn more about life in England in the 1950s and 1960s and how it compares with today.

National awards for working-class theatre company

I was delighted when Manchester-based MaD Theatre Company have received two prestigious awards in one week. I became a fan after seeing their production of ‘She’s Just Nipped Out for Fags’ in 2007, and a devotee of actress Jill Hughes, who blends Vera Duckworth’s wit with Joan Rivers’ panache. MaD’s last production, Angels with Manky Faces (based on Andrew Davies’s bestselling book The Gangs of Manchester) was selected for a Inspiring Voices Award by the Media Trust. The award recognises MaD’s groundbreaking work in giving people in working-class neighbourhoods a voice through its use of digital media. For more details, check our ‘People’s History’ page on this blog.

Jill Hughes, actress and co-founder of MaD, told me that ‘this is fantastic recognition for our work, and that of Andrew Davies, in showing that ordinary people’s history is important, and accessible. We knew we were on to a winner because ordinary people’s history is so often hidden from view and yet it is rich, fascinating and really entertaining. Now lots more people can find that out through watching our films on youtube and checking out all the genealogy sites and blogs around about local history.’

MaD also received an award from the O2 Community Foundation for its forthcoming project ‘Performing for change’. This will help pay for costumes and props for the company’s 2010 shows which will hopefully be in Liverpool as well as Manchester – and may travel further afield too. Watch this space for more details of how to book!

Is council housing a bad thing?

Today I had a conversation with Libby from O2’s Community Foundation, because I was referee for a funding application that MaD Theatre Company had lodged.  MaD works with young people living in working-class neighbourhoods in north Manchester. Libby was telling me about a similar initiative in Maidstone, Kent, based on, in her words ‘one of those 1960s estates that seems to have inherited – or maybe caused – so many problems’.

Libby’s words, and her uncertainty about who was to blame for those problems, made me think about council housing.

As the credit crunch bites – if a crunch can bite – we’re hearing about schemes to help home owners hang onto their houses. What the government and the Conservative opposition don’t seem to be contemplating is an expansion of council housing. Council estates – which not all council houses were, or are, located on  - are often portrayed as ’sink estates’. Yet the memories on this site suggest people welcomed council housing as a more secure, better-maintained form of housing than privately rented accommodation. What those who moved to estates like Speke or Kirkby in Liverpool found, though, was that they didn’t have many amenities like shops or libraries or schools or parks. These amenities only became more scarce as the years went by and Conservative governments demanded public spending cuts.

I don’t know what historians should focus on – the problems that people living on these estates have had to contend with, or the fact that, despite the problems, many of them carved out satisfying lives and have happy memories of the communities they made there. But we do need to highlight social housing as a crucial issue, even if politicians ignore this.

Most British people identify as working class

Although politicians tell us we’re all middle class now, most British people still prefer to call themselves working class. Surveys by pollsters Ipsos MORI shows that over half of all British people consider themselves to be working class. The major two reasons they give are similar to those offered by the people whose stories are showcased on this site – that they have to work for a living and that they feel themselves to be ‘ordinary’.

For more details see the latest Ipsos MORI survey here.

Angels with Manky Faces – a must for local history buffs in the north-west

Our site features histories from people who are still alive – how do historians find out about people who died long ago? Check out the play Angels with Manky Faces, at Manchester’s Dancehouse in November if you are interested in seeing how one historian collaborated with celebrated theatre company MaD in dramatising ordinary life in the 19th century city. See www.gangsofmanchester.com for more details.

News from Nowhere bookshop needs your support

Go into the history sections of most major bookshops and look for social history, oral history, working-class history.

You will find very little between the military histories and lives of monarchs. Some general social histories, maybe – but most of them give little space to the the people who actually built the cities, fought for an 8 hour day, suffered poverty, and made the modern teenager.

News From Nowhere Bookshop is different. This independent bookshop on Liverpool’s bohemian Bold St. is a not-for-profit community business. They have a policy of taking the kinds of books other booksellers turn their noses up at. And they’ll supply any book for you – if it’s in print – regardless of whether you live in Liverpool or not, through mail-order.

We’ve bought many books there for this project. Just going in and taking a look around gives us more ideas. This is where we discovered Lynsey Hanley’s excellent book Estates: An Intimate History (she grew up on one). It’s where we found out about the Belle Vale reminiscence group in Liverpool. The friendly staff really know their stuff, unlike some of the harassed staff in the bigger bookstores.

What’s more, News from Nowhere supplied the space for our exhibition in 2008 (see below for photos).

Why the plug? Sadly, News from Nowhere is under threat, due to this recession.  We know times are hard for everyone (unless you’re one of the fat cats) but if you can, please support this bookshop, because they’ve supported us. www.newsfromnowhere.org.uk

Ten Pound Poms

I’m currently in Australia - talking at various universities about the research that appears on this website, and using the time in between to write the book Hilary and I hope to publish about life in postwar Britain. While I’ve been here, I’ve heard a very different story to those featured on this website – the story of people who took the momentous decision to leave Britain as Ten Pound Poms between the 1940s and 1970s. Thousands made use of a scheme supported by the Australian government that offered free return passages for those Brits who agreed to remain in Australia for at least 2 years.

Al Thomson, one of the authors of the brilliant book Ten Pound Poms (Manchester University Press), says that those who left Britain had 2 major reasons for doing so – escaping poverty (especially those who left in the 1940s and early 1950s) and – by the 1960s – having an adventure.

Politicians’ talk of the ‘white working class’, or the ‘indigenous British’ forgets that immigration and emigration are a centuries-old part of Britain’s story – and that many ordinary British people have international networks of friends or family.  Thousands of people left Britain as Ten Pound Poms and this must have had a significant impact on the families and friends they left behind. Please share your experiences of that, or your experience of moving to Britain as a migrant from elsewhere, by getting in touch.

Whatever Happened to the Working Class?

BBC Radio 4 is currently running a series ‘Whatever Happened to the Working Class?’ which focuses on Manchester (because that’s the city where Sarfraz Manzoor, the presenter, went to university). As ever with these programmes, it is very much the presenter’s take on an issue that’s complex, with people’s narratives and stories distilled into media soundbites. And the answer is, surely, that the working-class never went away – so that’s dealt with that, then. But still worth a listen. The first prog went out on Feb 18 but is available on BBC Listen Again; the next is scheduled for Feb 24th. Listen out for Selina Todd talking about the research featured on this website.

Also featured in the BBC series is the MaD (Moston Active Drama) theatre company, who are a fantastic Manchester-based working-class theatre group. Many of the company are teenagers living in North Manchester, defying the usual stereotypes about apathetic hoodies – and bringing a proper disrespect for authority to their stage productions that offer far more insights into working-class life than the BBC series promises to do. If you’re in Manchester and fancy getting involved with MaD, their website is in our list of links.

Teenagers of the 50s and 60s profiled on City Talk Radio

Listen to the Duncan Barkes show on Thursday 12 Feb on Liverpool City Talk FM (9am-12noon) to hear Selina Todd talking about the lives of Liverpool teenagers in the fifties and sixties, based on the interviews showcased here on the blog.

Liverpool Lives profiled on BBC Radio

Make sure you listen to Thinking Allowed on BBC Radio 4 at 4pm on Wednesday February 4, when Selina Todd will be talking about class in Liverpool since the 1950s with Prof Bev Skeggs of Goldsmiths College, University of London, and presenter Laurie Taylor. This follows the publication of Selina’s article,  ’Affluence, Class and Crown Street’ – in the journal Contemporary British History. This looks at how life for Liverpool’s working-class changed in the 1950s and 1960s, with a rise in employment, the explosion of Merseybeat, and the growth of suburbia.

Love Lane Lives: a great insight into Liverpool’s forgotten history

Many people across Britain and further afield have had to deal with the consequences of workplace closures over the last few decades. Losing your job doesn’t just affect your budget – it can have devastating effects for your family and for entire communities. The Love Lane Lives Project is focused on the campaign by Tate and Lyle employees to keep Liverpool’s Love Lane sugar refinery open. Unfortunately, the campaign wasn’t successful, but the project testifies to the strength of group of workers, their families and friends in fighting for their jobs and their Vauxhall community. Check out the new website lovelanelives.com, which showcases the project. Although the workers lost their fight to save the refinery, their campaign has led to a film, archive and ongoing work to commemorate the Sugarland community. The website demonstrates how much we can learn from their experiences in planning for the uncertain consequences of the ‘credit crunch’.