Can I ask some stupid questions about life in the 80s?

[rainyeastcoast]

What benefits were available to single parents? Tax credits didn’t come in till Blair’s government, that is correct isn’t it?

How did people collect benefits before direct payments and how were people paid, did it go straight into the bank?

Was corporal punishment quite common in schools, not just caning but shoving and so on?

I was around in the 80s but was very very young so don’t know!

At primary school c1980-82 I recall classmates being given the slipper.
It certainly worked as a deterrent for me.

C1988 at high school I remember having the board runner thrown at me and same teacher having one of the boys by his collar against the black board.

As a student in the 80's I 'signed on' to register unemployed in the summer holidays. Huge queues because we all needed to register on the last Friday of term.

Benefits were paid direct into my account, so long as I 'signed on' fortnightly. It was quite s social occasion , there were always friends in the same queue so we used the time to make plans for the weekend (pre mobile phone days when plans of where to meet were made in advance. )

Unemployment benefit over the summer, rent support all year round, a means tested grant and travel expenses to college paid each term. Oh, no uni fees either.

Didn't do very well out of the fare's fair initiative which reduced the travel expenses to £1 per journey, while I had been cycling and claiming bus fares.

International School abroad followed by girls only public school in the UK, no sign at all of physical punishment.

I was at secondary school until 87 and we most definitely had corporal punishment, though none at primary school. The girls would get the ruler, or if really serious the slipper and the boys the slipper and if really serious the cane. I was never hit, but knew many who were. I think we were one of the last schools to still have it and a few years after I left there was a massive fuss because it came out that the head used to strap the rulers together and use a football boot as a slipper . This was common knowledge to pupils and we just accepted that's how it was. There was a lot of casual violence in classrooms, board rubbers being thrown and I remember one teacher pulling a girl out by the ear. No one was hit in class, though, it went into a "referral" book and kids queued outside the head's office. It was a top secondary too with very good results and was considered very desirable to live in the catchment area!

A few people have mentioned being paid weekly in cash. This was still happening in the late 90s at a high street store I managed before leaving to have my son. I’d have to notify head office on Mondays of any staff absences in the previous week, printed wage slips would arrive by post on Thursday and I’d pay my staff on Friday. The cash to do that would come out of Friday’s takings.

I don't remember anyone getting the cage/slipper at primary school but I do remember it being in infrequent use at secondary.

I remember the queues at the post office and the books which were stamped on the half which wasn't pulled out.

I don't remember any actual incidents of corporal punishment at my early and mid-80s primary, but there were lurid tales from older children of the cane and the slipper (the latter allegedly being reinforced with metal and causing children to be covered in blood ). I suspect it wasn't actively administered at that time but had been in the recent past, hence the myths and legends. Our head was a terrifying old-school type, so I could well imagine him giving CP before reluctantly giving in to the signs of the times.

At secondary there was the odd board rubber-flinger (I remember one once hitting a boy, who was a real nuisance but in retrospect deeply unhappy, and him crying sort of high strangled sobs ) and teacher who believed in the inherent disciplinary value of making children stand on their chairs in class. Happened to me once in first or second year. I was rarely in trouble and extremely distressed by it - stood there crying on the chair while this dreadful man shouted at me (and the rest of the class via me as an example) over pretty much nothing.

Unemployed in the 80's.

Went to the Job Centre every fortnight to sign on. Waited in a queue. You then received a Giro in the post a couple of days later which you could cash at the Post Office. Watch the Full Monty to see how it was done

Another benefit was the Enterprise Allowance. You could become self employed and receive benefit. My DH bought a van and did deliveries. The Job Centre even used him on a couple of occasions.

Child benefit was collected from the Post Office using a book that was stamped each time you received payment.

Same for old age Pension.

Schools had the cane when I was at school. I believe punishment was on the knuckles. No one I know was traumatised by it - if you were naughty it was how you were punished. And that was that

Students could sign on and collect dole in the summer holidays and DH did that one summer only. He worked the others and had eight summers as a student as he did a PhD.

I remember boys being slippered the last time would have been 1981. Two boys had dangled a boy out of an upstairs window by his feet three storeys up. The deputy head who was ex army conducted the skippering. They could have killed that boy. Board rubbers were thrown by a couple of teachers.

The thing about school was, adults were gods. Their word was law. You did not challenge them, because everyone knew that children always lied and respectable professionals never did.

I worked for the DHSS in the 80's and was there for the changeover from supplementary benefit to income support.

You'd fill in a huge paper claim form then we'd do a calculation (that could take weeks!) and you'd get a certain amount as a single person, then an amount for your children.

We could make direct payments to your utility suppliers and also pay your mortgage after a certain period (interest only though, but I remember doing calculations on mortgage interest at 17%!).

This was all done by hand and everyone had a casepaper.

Once the benefits were awarded it would go to our finance department where the giros and payment books were prepared to be cashed at the post office.

There could also be deductions to repay crisis loans etc.
There were a lot of face to face interviews and all behind reinforced glass screens as we got so much abuse.

Started nursery in 1982. I found my old nursery booklet, and in it they made it clear they did not smack the children. However, I remember kids in my class getting smacked on the hand in primary school, and later on at private school (late 80s- early 90s) boys getting slippered.
Benefits were paid in cash at the post office. You could also get an emergency grant from the DSS office paid in cash- friend received about £50 when he lost some of his stuff in a fire.
Weekly wages from my first job in a shop were paid in cash (late 90s). As a student it was great, you were only skint for a couple of days rather than a couple of weeks if you were paid monthly.

The slipper was definitely a thing while I was at school. I never saw it but I think a few of the boys got it.
I used to get paid for my job in cash. I often worked in the cash office giving out the envelopes on a Saturday. Enjoyed that.
Mum used to get the family allowance in cash from the post office. She had a book that got stamped.

My mum was a single parent but because she worked full time and we lived with my grandparents as far as I'm aware she only got family allowance. She had a book for that. I didn't get free school meals, probably because she worked. I remember my dad being unemployed, you used to get a giro book and went to collect it at the post office.

Could people work and claim benefits as they can now?

There was something called supplementary benefit. My DH was unemployed for a while so we both looked for jobs. I found one first but couldn't take it as it didn't pay enough and only the husband could claim supplementary benefit in the early 1980's, not the wife

The poor boy who got slippered in public for being pushed in the pond.
I'm at the school who used removal of lunch as a punishment!

I had my thighs hit with a ruler when I put my felt tips in my swimming bag (age 7) and had my knuckles rapped when I didn’t have a pencil. This was in the mid 1970s.

There was also youth opportunities scheme in early 80s . You got paid to go special college courses . I got paid 25 to do an office course .for 3 months . I learn to type on that course and that office life was not for me.
At the of 80s when working in old people home in liverpool it was the end of scheme. There were about 4 or 5 young girls who did 9 to 5 do most of care work .

“Drugs were also more easily available to school children then, too, hence the "Just Say 'No'!" campaign by 'Grange Hill', during the early '80s.”

I very much doubt they were more easily available than now. Smartphones mean all the kids today know exactly who has the local supply. Most normal kids in the 80s who didn’t come from dodgy families or who didn’t hang round dodgy types at the park etc wouldn’t have known the first thing about finding their local supply.

i signed on in the early 90s as NFA - No Fixed Abode. i didn’t declare an address as i was dodging the Poll Tax, so i just signed on as NFA and had to wait for giros to be handed out at about 1pm.

i cashed mine at the Post Office, but the pub i frequented used to cash them for regulars up to the late 80s. you could just sign to let someone else cash them, and it meant you could go straight from the dole office to the pub.

(i worked cash in hand in a pub, 3 shifts a week. one week, i signed on on the Thursday, and on the Friday, the man i signed on with came into the pub. i looked quite...alternative and he obviously recognised me.

i bought him a pint and he never said a word to the DSS about me. happy days)

I disagree, we knew where to get pretty much any drugs (south west London) and teens took a wider range of drugs than they do now.

@DinaCaliente

I left just around the time housing benefit was introduced. Prior to that, all money went direct to the claimant for them to pay. I do remember thinking that the biggest change was the effect it had on homeowners. Previously, they were entitled to their mortgage interest payments, plus a nominal amount towards insurance, from the first day of their claim. With the new hb, there was a waiting time -12 weeks? - before they would pay anything towards it. Considering that this was at the beginning of the right to buy scheme, many of our claimants were getting virtually all their mortgage paid and the new system would stop it.
At that time, people receiving supplementary benefit were not able to get free school meals or uniform grants because the benefit was supposed to cover all that.
We used to issue a lot of travel warrants for wives to visit their husbands in prison - they were entitled to one visit a month.
School leavers could sign on for benefits the day they left school, but that changed so that they couldn't get benefits until the first Monday in September, January and after the Easter holidays.
Private rents were often set by the Rent Tribunal.

I recevied child benefit in the 1980s (from when our first child was born and I think it went straight into the bank account). I did not receive any other payments - no housing benefit, child tax credits, no free or cheap nursery provision. We both worked full time and childcare was about 50% of each of our net salaries.

I think I remember some people got "family income supplement"

I just lokoed it up and see a Tory government by the way (not Labour) introduced it in 1970 and it topped up low incomes of families with children. I never got it nor did my parents.

I have a vague recollection that it and child benefit replaced a child tax allowance befoer that (which often just went to men) and which quite a few countries still have - the more children you have the more you can set against your tax bill (which would be great for middle earners today still but obviously helps rich and poor so was phased out). Child benefit usually went to mothers when it first came out as some very rich men did not even give their non working wives enough money to pay for food so the idea was a universal child benefit meant at least children could be fed something.

Oh and - not hitting but awful for me- I once asked for seconds of dessert at school meals (primary). We were really poor and it was a lovely lemon meringue dessert so I jumped at the chance to have seconds.
Got halfway and started to feel sick. They made me sit there until I’d eaten it.
Still remember that hot sweaty sicky feeling. And the embarrassment of having to sit there having been “greedy”.

I remember the awful way they picked teams in PE in primary school.two kids would be chosen to pick teams and they would each chose a person one by one to neon their teams I was always one of the last I be chosen horrible and humiliating