Post War Britain with David Runciman

Now this is one I am listening to.

And Now Win the Peace, Labour Party Poster, for the 1945 General Election 

It is the story of Britain after the end of the Second World War.

It covers all the great immediate moments from the victory of the Labour party and the rejection of Churchill just weeks after VE Day.

And goes on look at the Beveridge Report, the Soldier's Vote, Labour's Manifesto, Healthcare for all and much more.

"David Runciman tells the story of one of the biggest shocks in British parliamentary history: the 1945 election and the dawn of a new age".*

The programmes last just 15 minutes on BBC Radio 4 and runs to 20 episodes.

Location; BBC Radio 4

Picture; And Now Win the Peace, Labour Party Poster, for the 1945 General Election, The Labour Party

*Post War, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0lg93jb

Lost and found …… no 2 …. a bit of Hollywood behind the fuse box

I like silly history.

By which I mean the stuff that serious historians might well dismiss as trivial, but which offers up insights into how we lived and if you are lucky zips you off down all sorts of different twisty turny paths.

And this bit of cinema history does just that.

Last year Brian Norbury posted it on social media with the comment “Found behind a fuse board I was replacing. How did people rent films in 1944?”

Now as someone who rented old fashioned reel to reel films back in the 1970s I was drawn in, and while I thought there might well have been a market for such things in 1944, I thought it might be more likely that this was a trade paper for independent cinemas.

And a trawl of the internet revealed that the Daily Renter was “The most widely read Daily Film Newspaper in Great Britain" and “reaches every Producer, Distributer, and Exhibitor in the United Kingdom at the breakfast table every morning”.*

The same search brought up a link to The British Entertainment History Project which “has been recording the stories of men and women working in the UK film, television, theatre, and radio industries to ensure that information on their lives and experiences is preserved for future generations. 

These interviews tell us about the challenges these people had to overcome, the skills they employed, and the enduring human relationships they forged as Britain developed into one of the world’s major centres of the film and television industries.  

Consisting of more than 700 recordings so far, it is one of the most extensive audio-visual archives of its kind in the world. 

For students, researchers, and members of the public alike, it offers a unique insight and a link to a time when we made some memorable films and groundbreaking television programmes.”**

And one of those recordings was a fascinating sound interview with Harold Myers, who talked about his career as a journalist from the 1930s into the 1980s, writing about and for the cinema, including a stint on the Daily Renter.

So, having gone down several by ways I turned back to the fuse box edition of The Daily Renter.

It was published on Monday July 24th and carried pictures of 24 Hollywood stars, and to my surprise I could tick off a full fourteen who I not only knew but had seen at least one of their films.

Equally interesting was page 12 which featured Days of Glory, a new film in production by RKO, which the Daily Renter commented  “had discovered many potential stars” for the film.

It was released later in 1944 and told the story of a group of Soviet partisans  fighting the German invasion of USSR in 1941, and marked the film debut of Tamara Toumanova and Gregory Peck, as well as most of the other principal actors.***

I can’t say I have ever seen the film but occasionally clips do pop up and no doubt as the war continued through its fifth year and into final one,  Days of Glory might have been expected to be a tool in the propaganda battle.

Alas some critics complained it was too wordy and lacked enough action scenes, and according to one source the film recorded a loss of $593, 0000.***

So there you have it, leaving me just to thank Brian for posting his little bit of 1944 film history.

And after the story went live, Brian came back with two more pages which I couldn't resist including.

Ladies Courage had come out in February 1944, which told the story of the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron formed in the United States during World War II.

It received poor reviews from the critics and worse still when a group of WASPS pilots saw the film, they, were astonished at the soap-opera histrionics exhibited by the characters on screen and  immediately dubbed the film "Ladies Outrageous"

To which one article has added "More recent evaluations ranged from a lukewarm Leonard Maltin review - "Well-meant idea fails because of hackneyed script and situations' to noted aviation film historian Bruce Orriss, who dismissed the film as '... little more than an embarrassment to the members of this earnest group of pilots.'"****

Location; behind Brian’s fuse box

Pictures; pages from The Daily Renter, 1944, courtesy of Brian Norbury

*Advert for The Daily Film Renter, 1936

** The British Entertainment History Project,  http://historyproject.org.uk/content/about-us

***Days of Glory, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_Glory_%281944_film%29

****Ladies Courageous, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladies_Courageous

Laughing at our Brave New World ………

Now I have a lot of time for the first post war Labour Government.

And Now Win the Peace, Labour Poster, 1945

In quick succession after it was elected in 1945, it set up the National Health Service, created the Welfare State, and introduced measures to improve the conditions of women, children, and workers while reorganizing key infrastructure industries, creating bold new development corporations to construct new towns and started a huge house building programme.

But as exciting as these were, they were set against a post war world where money was tight, rationing remained in place, and Britain underwent the awful winter of 1946-47 which saw massive disruptions to industry and agriculture with closed factories and animals freezing to death in the fields.

And as ever when faced with such a testing time the British film industry set out to make people laugh.

All of which is the introduction to a series of films made during the 1940s and 50s which I have been revisiting,

Back then I was too young to have seen them, but now over 70 years after they were made, I am watching the best.  Some like Passport to Pimlico released in 1949 have become classics and are watched because they remain funny but also as a commentary on the period.  

Family Ration Book, 1946-47

In short, a small piece of Pimlico discovers it is part of Burgundy not Britain and so is not subject to post war rationing and a heap of other Government regulations.  

What follows is a comical take on how the new “Burgundians” react to their new freedoms, matched by the Governments’ harsh measures to restore the status quo by turning off supplies of water, electricity, and gas, as well as preventing supplies of food entering the area. 

Coupons for clothes, 1946-47

This leads to a mixed set of reactions from the wider public which at first seeks to take advantage of the end of rationing by flooding into Pimlico buying up everything from nylons to sweets, but then responds by trying to defeat the Government’s food blockage by throwing food parcels over the barriers, parachuting in pigs, and delivering milk via a hose and a helicopter.

Three years later and a year after the very successful Festival of Britain, the film The Happy Family sought to re explore the conflict between the little people and their Government, centering around the opposition by one family to the demolition of their home which is in the way of a vital road into the festival site.

It milks the same themes of rigid bureaucracy set against the individual, revisits the Government’s tactics of a food blockade and the direct action from the family when confronted with a police attack.  

Celebrating the Festival of Britain, 1951

But because this the film is set in the Britain of 1951, the direct action consists of pelting the authorities with over ripe vegetables and flour bombs, leaving the audience to note that “no one was hurt in the making of the film”.

But like Passport to Pimlico, a compromise is reached after a direct intervention from the Prime Minister and leads to the architects redrawing the plans so that the road goes on either side of the house.  

And in that "best of all possible worlds" the film ends with the family enjoying a day out at the Festival.

There were other films exploiting that period of the Brave New World, and in time I will go looking for them.

Location; London, 1945-1952

Pictures; And Now Win The Peace, Labour poster 1945, Clothes Ration book, 1946-47 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and The Festival of Britain emblem, designed by Abram Games, from the cover of the South Bank Exhibition Guide, 1951