Those of my generation, born during the war years, lived through a Golden Age, a period of peace, and though we did not perhaps realise it at the time, one of relative and rising prosperity. On a teacher’s salary my parents could own their home and educate me outside the state system though at the price of foregoing car ownership. From a fee paying grammar school the route was easy to University, free of tuition fees and with an ample Local Authority grant for living expenses; no student loans for us! And then a job for life with a publicly owned utility and an index linked final salary pension.
The years after 1945 saw the cold war, an uneasy period of peace between nations with the world divided into Eastern and Western spheres of influence, dominated respectively by the USSR and USA. By tacit agreement neither trespassed on the territory of the other, though there was some testing of boundaries and each policed their own empire. Borders were occasionally tested as in Korea and in Vietnam, but the nuclear deterrent prevented outright conflict for nearly fifty years. Not since the days of my great grandfather had there been such tranquility in the world
These years, free of costly conflict were a time of rising prosperity in both West and East, each according to their own economic systems. Britain despite the crippling overhang of costs from the war, and the perhaps unwise decision to repay debt to America participated in this, with steadily rising wages and salaries and an eventual abundance of consumer goods on which to spend them. Those who in 1946 had endured bread rationing could now buy a computer! Jobs were easy to find in the mid-sixties and I chose one the three offered, in a state owned utility company, where I remained until retirement, progressing up the promotion ladder to a modest level. Pension contribution was then compulsory, but brought the benefit of final salary salary linked pension indexed to inflation.
A Golden Age by anyone’s standards? But was it?
It was also a time of social disintegration, the camaraderie of the war years giving way to a “consumer society”. The urban villages of the heavy industrial age being replaced by the suburban housing estates, materially far superior, but socially divided. Villages of geographical proximity and physical dependence of the “Coronation Street” years being replaced by villages of common interest, such as sport, or music. The term “social isolation” was coined and the care or the old became a burden on society, rather than a duty of the young.
Stress at work tended to arise from lack of challenge, and very often lack real purpose; many well of the well qualified felt unfulfilled and under utilised.
Life lost much of its adventure, times were easy for the professional class; jobs were for life backed by the “cradle to grave” social care system. My father’s generation and my grandfathers fought wars, faced horrendous risks; mine saw the rise of the “health and safety” obsession which has it seems rendered us a timid generation, afraid to let our children play outside lest they be molested or become casualties of our ever safer roads. Risk, little understood, has to be avoided at all costs, even the cost of our liberty. The purchaser of a single lottery ticket is more likely to become a millionaire than be killed in a terrorist outrage, but we docilely surrender political liberty and our privacy to avoid even this minimal risk.
A Golden Age, well maybe not twenty-four carat!
Fluter1 