Why were people happier then?

[rov1100]

On a morning show Len Goodman shows how life was in the 1950's. Everyone seems happy and except for the skirmishes of the Mods and Rockers all seemed to enjoy life.

[Kromovaracun]

"Many have said that times and people where not happier in the 50s, but they have not informed us if they ever lived through those times."

I didn't live through them, but I haven't claimed to talk about the decade from personal experience - all I've really done is apply critical reasoning to the claims that they were better.

My point is, for the reasons I outlined above, that it would be ridiculous of me in 30 years to claim that the 2010s were great purely because I and most of the people around me are currently having a pretty good time of it. That would plainly be quite irrational. Likewise, claiming the 50s were wonderful because you personally were happy is quite irrational. At the very least, the claim needs backing up by other things - which aren't derived from personal experience.

Also, not many people in the thread have argued that the '50s were worse because people were materially less well-off - most people have argued in some form or another that that is why people were happier.

[TheOtherHalf]

I watched most of the programme before going to work. I think children in the 50s like me (B1952) were happier than those of today. We didn t have much, but we didnt moan like the kids today or have tantrums. We grew up with lots of second hand items, clothes, toys etc, but we didnt mind. We were just grateful to get things and none of our family of 13 have ever been in trouble with the law. Kids today, if they want something, they would sometimes steal it, or the money to buy it.

I would hate to be a kid growing up today. I havnt any gchildren yet, but I feel sorry for them already. Most of them wont know what childhood really is.

Having said all that, My MIL born in 1916 often says how she had a fabulous
childhood, so we will just have to see what they say in 30 years time if we are still around

[woofgang]

I did live through them...born in 1953...times were not happier. Kids who moan or present mega christmas lists and so on have been taught to do so at least in part by their parents. (no offence but you know its true)

[Kromovaracun]

^ Yes, that's a good point. The baby boomer generation which grew up in the 50s did go on to become oddly materialistic, didn't it?

[bentaxle]

Well they dragged me into the RAF to do my national service in 1950 and I wasn't happy about that

[FredPuli43]

Ah, yes the War.Not like today. We had things then we have lost now:, everyone helping their neighbour, comradeship, rickets, the Luftwaffe....
Seriously when I was young (born 1947), there were people who talked like that but ignoring the bad bits!

It's all very well saying the kids could play in the streets; almost nobody had a car, so there was no traffic; that people were less acquisitive, and wanted less; they hadn't got the money, that's why and there weren't the things to buy; or that people hadn't got guns; everybody could get a gun, and the denizens of Soho seemed to have any gun they wanted. The answer to the visitor's question "But isn't Soho dangerous?"was "No, it's safe; the gangsters only kill each other, they won't hurt the punters who come for the many prostitutes and the dives. It's bad for business!"

1950s Britain was like a different world. Rationing didn't stop until 1954 or so, when sweets went off ration. What we regard as basic were luxuries; cars were very expensive as were TVs and air travel was only for the rich. And the class system was all- powerful.

And as for health. Polio was still rampant as were other conditions we have eliminated.Even TB existed. Dentistry was primitive. Abortion may be still debated by some now, but then it was backstreet. The Pill hadn't been invented.

What's to like about the 1950s ? Then was only better when compared with the War!

[FredPuli43]

^^ Meat and bacon rationing ended in 1954. Sweets must have been obtainable, because of more sugar being available, about a year earlier. I can remember my father bringing great jars of sugary sweets to the vilage, school for all the children in 1952/3. The significance, of course, escaped me.

[echokilo]

An 87 year old relative of mine recently referred to his childhood as "the good ol days", but had previously told me of a childhood in proverty, with hunger, shared washing and toilet facilities (somtimes between 8 households), cramped conditions, poorly paid work etc ............... so when I asked if they were really the good old days, he conceded that they weren't really - it was just that life was simpler and less stressful then as you just accepted your lot and got on without. Also less gadgets, less to go wrong, less hassle x

[anotheoldgit]

FredPuli43

I am sorry but even at the end of the 50s you would have been only 12, hardly old enough to speak with any experience of the times.

Yes there were bad bits, but nothing in comparison to today. the Luftwaffe were long gone, and yes there were certain diseases that are not around today, but today there are diseases that were not around in the 50s.You said "Even TB existed" yes perhaps so, but it has also made a comeback.

People were more sociable, no many owned a car but that was no big deal, bus and train travel was affordable to all, and people had not forgot how to put one foot in front of the other, as they seem to have done today.

You said "Gangsters only kill each other" well not many actually did, and they faced the hangman's noose if they did, in fact murders were very rare, and those who did murder became household names Christie, Ruth Ellis, George Haigh, Neville Heath.

You also said "The Pill hadn't been invented". Perhaps not but even so there wasn't the huge numbers of children born into one parent families, or vast numbers of under-aged girls giving birth to children as there are today, even though we now have the 'Pill'.

I still maintain that in comparison with today the 50s were the good times.

[FredPuli43]

Aog, the 1950s were certainly happier when Neville Heath and Haigh were executed. That's because they were hanged in the 1940s (Heath in 1946, Haigh in 1949) ! We have to assume your memory is better on other matters.
None of the murderers you name were deterred by ther death penalty, were they? And Ruth Ellis, a sometime night club hostess, had a pistol to kill the lover who jilted her. All four would have been widely reported today. Heath was a sadistic sexual psycopath in the 40s, who murderedat least two women. Haigh was a murderer and fraud who dissolved his victim's corpses in an acid bath built for the purpose. Christie was a serial killer of women,in the habit of hiding bodies in and around his house and who who framed another man who was wrongly hanged. Ruth Ellis would probably have been acquitted of murder later, because she would have had 'diminished responsibility' reducing murder to manslaughter, a defence which didn't exist in 1955. We have the likes of the Yorkshire Ripper instead.
In the end, it's a matter of perception. You might ask anyone who is now of your age in the 1950s, particularly women, if they would be happier and prefer to be living in the 1950s knowing all you claim and all the historical evidence available. Since married women then could not even open a bank account without their husband agreeing, women now might find the situation a little strange. (Men might not find being compelled to do National Service a particular pleasure either, but that's another matter)
I'm sure my own parents (born 1913) were happier later than the 1950s, notwithstanding that my father was never called up (an engineer in a reserved occupation) and they were prosperous in the 50s

[HowardKennitby]

People were 'happier' in the past because they had lower expectations.

[EDDIE51]

Yes , we had things in the 50s that we don't have today
Like Polio and TB .

[starone]

The parents of the local school have just had a letter to tell them that someone in the school has TB and what to do should their child develop symptoms, Eddie, so it has not disappeared completely.
I have lived through many decades and my style of life has slowly got better. I know people look at the past and pick out the best bits, but personally I think it was the bad old days, not the good old days. And as for the war that was horrific, especially if you lived in a large city, worst of all in London when the bombers came over and then the doodle bugs. Whoever would call that the good old days must be mad. No benefits either and when I had my children, no child allowance. If you couldn't manage on what money you had you went without.

[EDDIE51]

People forget how widespread Polio was in the 50s. Every school even almost every class had Polio victims I certainly rember a few. I Started school in 1955.
Yes, TB has made a return but at a tiny fraction of the scourge it was in the 50s and there are effective treatments available now that did not exist then.

[askyourgran]

Looking back to the forties and fifties, there was no complicated technology in those days. Radio was the communication link then, we didn't have a TV until 1953. I remember going home at lunch time from school, and mum was expecting (again), my sister and I had to put the wet clothes through the mangle (it must have been Monday washing day). There was Polio and Smallpox for which we had to queue at the Doctor's surgery for the innoculation. My mum had to go in hospital with appendicitis she was there for two weeks with clamps holding the wound together. We didn't expect toys and sweets we knew times were hard and we were glad of what we could get. Not like todays children who have the choice of the next musthave. It would be impossible for anyone not living through those times to realise sitting on the cellar steps while the German planes flew over, and the sirens warning us, and the second all clear siren sounding. They were innocent daysin the sense that we hadn't the technology then and the ensuing problems that came with it. No mass immigration to deal with, no dole queues, no benefits of any kind, except free milk and orange juice for babies, cod liver oil and malt for schoolchildren with a 1/3 of a pint of milk at school each morning.

[craft1948]

I don't think you can pick any era as being 'golden'. I was born in 1948 and had a very happy childhood in the main, there were certainly not the pressures that children face today with regards to the right trainers or the most up to date mobile. As I said I left school in the 60's and could literally have the pick of any jobs, I once went for 5 interviews in one week and was offered 4 of the jobs, and again in that respect I feel very sorry for today's school leavers.
I was the first in my family to buy a house in the 70's but that was not so great with the mortgage rate reaching 17% at one time.
I have things today that my grand-parents could only dream of, but I've no idea if they've actually made me any happier than they were.

[EDDIE51]

No Mass Immigration askyourgran ?
1948 saw the first of the West Indian immigrants on the' Empire Windrush' it really took off in the 1950s though. The 1950s immigrants were the basis of the UKs large West Indian origin population today. Probably the UK's largest mass immigration in history !
They were regarded as heroes when they arrived ,coming to help fill the jobs left vacant by all the men killed in the war. What short memories we have !

[starone]

Yes, Eddie, you are quite right. The man who lives next door to me came from Jamaica in 1950. He is now 81 and is the best neighbour you could hope to have. I asked him once if his ancestors were slaves and of course the answer was yes. He comes in to sit with me at least three times a week. We put the world to rights over a cup of tea and for some reason, I cannot think why, the world is exactly the same when he goes back home.

[askyourgran]

I vaguely remember that EDDIE, but having said that I don't recall seeing many of them living where I lived, and I didn't live in a posh area of Leeds. Not on the scale of todays immigrants. We had a large Jewish population but not West Indian.

[EDDIE51]

A very large proportion of them came to London to work on the buses and tube, London Transport had terrible staff shortages as so many men had died in the war. Many of todays black Londoners are still decendants of those 1950s immigrants.