The birth-rate in Britain shot up in the years immediately following the Second World War and the children from the first wave of that baby boom grew up in a 1950’s Britain so far removed from the one we live in today that the way of life back then seems almost primitive to us now.
This was a generation of children who never developed a craving for chocolate and sweets because for most of their young lives such things were not freely available to them. These things were regarded as luxuries and an occasional treat to be eaten only in small quantities. Restricted access to sweet things was not for the good of their health or because they made their teeth rot, it was because up until 1953 the amount of sweet and sugary items you could buy in shops was restricted by post-war government rationing regulations, and so children had to make do without them.
It is commonly thought that wartime rationing ended immediately after the war but that’s not the case at all. In fact some forms of rationing got even stricter after the war, and this went on for several years. The country had been operating within a controlled rationing system for six years when the war ended in 1945 and it just wasn’t possible to turn volumes of supply back up to pre-war levels overnight.
Many of our working men had been away serving in the armed forces during the war and they were only returning home gradually. With this initial post-war shortage of labour and frequent strike action taken by key workers, Britain didn’t have the resources needed to handle any significant increases in food production. In addition to this, some of our crops were ruined by bad weather. There was also a huge increase in post-war demand for food in Europe, which affected the amount we were able to import. Imports were also adversely affected by industrial unrest at the docks and our dock workers striking.
Having gone through the entire six years of war without bread being rationed, bread rationing was imposed one year after the war ended due to heavy rain flooding our fields and ruining our wheat crops. The rationing of bread continued until 1948. As with bread, potatoes were not rationed during the war but due to the harsh weather conditions in winter 1946/47 they had to be rationed. Between 1945 and 1950, private use of petrol was rationed and was periodically made unavailable. Meat and all other food rationing finally ended in Britain in 1954, but shortages were still quite common, especially with cheese products. Petrol rationing was briefly reintroduced for a few months towards the end of 1956 and through to May 1957, due to the Suez Crisis.
It has been reported that housewives faced more difficulty in shopping after the war than they did during the war, but those post-war baby boomers didn’t grumble. After all, they knew no different - they had only ever known times of shortage, and things could only get better.
Paul Feeney is the bestselling author of A 1950s Childhood, A 1960s Childhood and From Ration book to ebook.