To ask whether we could ever go back to what it was like in the 50s-70s?

[myblueheav3n]

I mean in a financial sense more than anything, although I know it wasn’t perfect. I only have a very superficial understanding of it all, but as far as I can tell:

• Affordable housing, and a lot of social housing for those who couldn’t buy.

• Liveable wages for unskilled jobs and good opportunity to work your way up in whatever your profession was. Plenty of work available for young people.

• Education was worth a lot more, e.g. now a university degree is minimum for a ‘decent’ job, and not even that is really guaranteed either.

I had more but after thinking about it for a while they’ve slipped my mind In general it seems like it was better, and people who grew up during these periods generally did well for themselves.

The only part of the period that it would be good to return is an evening about 9 months before 19 June 1964 where a man called Stanley could have had a 'tommy tank' instead of sex and the world would be a much better place.

@myblueheav3n
It was seen as Socialism then. Many doctors/dentists were against it and saw it as a threat.

@Brefugee

There’s no strikes but that’s because that’s because you’re lucky to get an unskilled job at all.

There are no strikes because the people who would most benefit from being union members have been persuaded by those who benefit most from having a non-unionised workforce that unions are Bad.

Spot on.

The fifties were awful. Dirty towns, boring diet, outside toilets. By the seventies material life had improved but attitudes not so much. Sexism was still the norm never mind homophobia. Single mothers were shamed and children labelled "illegitimate".

I understand what you mean financially. I think people were better at living within their means until credit became widely available. In the sixties, if you couldn't afford it you didn't acquire it. So most people had a lot less than they have now.

Your point about education is interesting, but even though women could get degrees, and degrees were valuable because less than a tenth of the workforce had them, many were persuaded into "suitable" careers such as teaching or nursing.

Wow. You're really looking through some rose-tinted spectacles here myblueheav3n

"Affordable housing, and a lot of social housing for those who couldn’t buy."
And a lot of that housing was pretty awful! A lot of pre-50s housing often didn't have an inside toilet, the kitchens were tiny and central heating was rare (unlike draughty windows). There was still slum-clearance going on, with whole areas being bulldozed and communities scattered to new housing estates on town outskirts without shops and with inadequate public transport.

"Liveable wages for unskilled jobs and good opportunity to work your way up in whatever your profession was. Plenty of work available for young people."
Liveable? Yes, if your idea of living involves an overcrowded badly heated bedsit with a dull and monotonous diet. Opportunity was for men, the reason they could work their way up was because women would be fired upon marriage, opening up their jobs to be stepped into. And yes, plenty of dead-end jobs for young people.

"Education was worth a lot more, e.g. now a university degree is minimum for a ‘decent’ job, and not even that is really guaranteed either."
Only 5% of people used to go to uni when I left school in the late 70s. Is that what you mean by 'worth more'? Of course, most of us left school at 16 and quite a fair number without qualifications, fitting us only for the dead-end jobs. Anyone who needed support for e.g. dyslexia didn't get it. And of course, anyone with physical disabilities or learning difficulties went to a 'special' school, where they were as likely to be warehoused as they were to be educated.

"In general it seems like it was better, and people who grew up during these periods generally did well for themselves."
No, it wasn't better. It really wasn't, not for the working classes anyway (and I doubt the middle classes were much better off either). Some people did well for themselves, as some people always do. Most people scraped by, but presumably that wasn't covered in whatever source you have for your sweeping (and incorrect) generalisation.

YABU

Get rid of your rose tinted goggles and actually do some research instead of posting nonsense

Theres a fantastic book I've read 'Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes" I think the author is Virginia Nicholson. Definitely worth a read, it debunks a huge amount of the nostalgia and romanticism of that era and how things really were for women
Really opened my eyes.

I get the impression some of the people commenting here weren't actually there.

Pretty well everyone and everything is materially better off than they were then. Technology for ordinary people has advanced incredibly. TV was small and black-and-white, if you could get a phone it sat in the hall attached to the wall by a wire and only allowed you to call other people on it. The real cost of many things was much higher, making things like cars, washing machines and central heating the preserve of the middle classes.

But, as my late DM often used to point out, you had a much better chance of getting a job for life with a decent pension, and a much better prospect of having somewhere to live which (by the standards of the time) was decent. This was the time when, after the war, whole swathes of worn-out victorian houses were coming down and people were being rehoused in places that were much better -- the tower blocks generally proved pretty disastrous but only the really big places built them on any scale. People could and did get jobs fairly easily. There was an optimism that things would only get better.

Perhaps it was in hindsight something of a house of cards which fell apart in the early 70s.

So while we have gained a lot, we have lost good some things too. Somehow I doubt that they can ever come back, which, to me, seems sad.

No, we couldn’t go back.

And I don’t mean to be rude, OP- but you’re talking from a place of total ignorance. The 1950s-1970s were an absolutely shit time in which to be poor, old or female.

Until the 1990s rape within marriage was not illegal in this country.

Degrees counted for a lot because barely anyone except upper middle class and upper class people got to study for them. When I saw upper middle class I mean children of doctors, barristers and bankers - it was out of the reach of millions, even if you were brainy.

Sexual harassment of girls and women was rife, as was paedophilia as we now know. Most women got forced out of the labour market as soon as they got pregnant.

House prices may have been low, but interest rates were eye wateringly high, as was (at times) inflation and unemployment.

They were not better times to live in than we live in now, and if you think they were then you’re a bit of a fool. Learn your own history.

Still, we’ve No Deal Brexit around the corner, so you’re probably about to get a taste for it.

You would like the standard of living to drop? More children living in poverty? Lower life expectancy?

Shops closed before 6 and did not open at all on Sundays, except for newsagents. Pubs closed between 2.30 and 5.30 each afternoon including at weekends.

I cannot imagine many people wanting that to return.

Pretty well everyone and everything is materially better off than they were then in absolute terms yes.

poverty is measured in relative terms so unfortunately yes we still have whole swathes of poor people and families experiencing poverty

physically buildings have internally changed , no longer an outside cludgie as standard

Opportunities are limited for wc and poor people, mobility is decreased

I particularly agree about good opportunity to work your way up in whatever your profession. I was born in the 1950s, and I know many people of my age who qualified as accountants, civil engineers, social workers etc by leaving school after A-levels and getting jobs where they could continue to train while they worked. One of them went on to become CEO of a large local authority.

These days, you can only follow these careers if you get a degree and shedloads of debt. Bloody sad, and puts a lot of bright kids off.

This was true for a while but has changed quite a lot over the last 5-10 years for some professions. For example all the Big4 have big school leaver programmes now and many professional organisations have apprenticeship schemes.

There was a lot wrong in society in the 70s but we've regressed from then in many ways since.

I totally agree with this. I started my working life in the 70s and it was a very different time to now, but I for one enjoyed it and would go back in a heartbeat. People didn't work the crazy hours they do now, weekends were for family/sport/leisure time. I much preferred my 70s life to the one I have now.

We wouldn't last a minute.

All those unskilled jobs with liveable wages needed a 6 day working week with much longer hours than we're used to.

But working classes could afford to buy houses and it was easier to get a job. I was a child in the 70s and my dm wasn't oppressed and joined the OU

My parents were NI Catholics in the 1950s so there was the problem with council housing.

I get what you’re saying - I suppose the question is whether we could cherry pick the good aspects of those times (to the extent they actually were good and we aren’t looking back with rose-tinted specs), disentangling them from their social and economic context, and reproduce them here in 2020.

I think the answer to that question is probably not because I suspect that the positive aspects you talk about were propped up by the negative aspects.

I wasn’t around in the 50s, 60s and 70s. But something that brought home to me what a different and in many ways socially dark time the 60s were was reading about the Aberfan disaster. Everything about what happened, and the way the survivors, the victims’ families and the community were treated afterwards - the rank injustice of it all - was a damning indictment of our society at the time.

Or the way so many perverts got away with sexually abusing children in schools or children’s homes because no one believed children and there was a culture of silence.

When I got married in 1983, the personnel department of the bank I worked for sent a form for me to fill in. The assumption was that you would give up work and would leave immediately on marriage, and you had to actually specify that you weren't resigning, and wanted to remain in your job.

Affordable housing, and a lot of social housing for those who couldn’t buy

Grim schemes, houses with no central heating

Liveable wages for unskilled jobs and good opportunity to work your way up in whatever your profession was. Plenty of work available for young people.

Only get paid if you are healthy, and on the whim on your employer.

Education was worth a lot more, e.g. now a university degree is minimum for a ‘decent’ job, and not even that is really guaranteed either.

Leave school with no qualifications at all if you were not in an exam stream.

Op have you watched call the midwife? In my experience it is a good representation of life in 50s/60s.

What you're really trying to say is that you'd like a proper Socialist government. No sign of that happening any time soon unfortunately.

Laughing at the people thinking jobs/wages were good back then. It was the 60s and 70s when most of our major industries were winding down and closing up. In many cases, because the unions were too strong so wages were unrealistically and unaffordably high. People think it was Thatcher who killed off UK manufacturing, but it was in its death throes before she came to power. Workers were OK, IF, and only IF they still had a job, but shipyards, mills, coal mines, factories etc were closing down at an alarming rate. I remember the 70s - our towns two largest employers (textile industry) were scaling right back and major redundancies were announced almost monthly from one or other.

Ignoring the societal issues as you have requested, and focusing on housing, my leaning is pretty left wing on this. I would want huge state investment in council housing (not council estates mind) and for private property portfolios to be hugely restricted. Ok, allow people to rent out one or two houses, but beyond that landlords should be taxed like any other business and held accountable for the impact they have on our communities.

Employment - universal basic income.

Education - an NES along the lines of the NHS and access to lifelong learning.