Today Generation: The "O" level....

I've been looking over the blog entries for the last few weeks..... I have rambled on rather haven't I (diagnosis: I really ought to get out more..).

Any road up; The other week us Today Generation folk were sent another e-mail from the new production team; this time asking us to give thought to a number of comments/statements/queries from an historian.

Well, yours truly had a think - but was at a loss as to how to approach this....
So, being pretty unimaginative, decided to rephrase the bits sent to us as if they were exam questions. So here they are; the Today Prog. "O" Level questions (the "o" is, of course, supposed to stand for old.... Yes. I know we probably only class as middle-aged, but I'm clutching at straws here dear reader. Tolerance please).


PAPER ONE:FAMILY -
Question 1)The image of the family in the 50s was strong - a family Britain. Discuss the change from the traditional extended family in the 50s and 60s to the small nuclear family now, considering whether slum clearances were partly responsible for causing a dispersal of people.

Given that there were no slums in our neck of the woods; small, smaller than average, basic houses & terraced cottages certainly, but most are still standing today (and fetching nice prices thank you very much) this is pretty unlikely.....

The diaspora of our particular tribe would seem to be largely due to social and economic changes for the better - i.e. changes in attitudes (the widening of same), increased social opportunities and material security/success, rather than mere physical displacement.

The extended family of my youth - with its innumerable aged aunts (particularly aunts), uncles, associated cousins, grand Ps. and hangers-on (honorary aunts with no blood connection) was pretty vast - but we certainly weren't living in each others' pockets (or back yards). We saw these folk at family rites of passage, occasional teas or formal "visits", but we were already pretty scattered geographically, even by the early sixties (from the Witterings at the coast, through West Surrey and East Hants. up to the southernmost reaches of London).

Scattered as we were already, there was no local ("village" or "estate") social pressure to show family solidarity and so family contacts just tailed off in the seventies. With the death of the older generation and as wider social circles beckoned and the increased opportunities for jobs away from home led folk away, the extended family just withered untended.

I would say that the biggest factors in the dissolving of our own extended family have been voluntary - and not forced by pressures from "outside" - for example:

i ) The breakdown of social barriers and easing of conventions: At school I was able to build a far wider social circle than seems to have been the case with earlier generations. Practically all social classes attended the local schools and mixed-in together. The same was true at grammar school - where there was a wider social mix than in our village.

[Irrelevant note: even though I was from a far lower draw than most of the boys at the grammar school I never encountered any social/class barriers or bias until my mid twenties - when "mockney" became fashionable and my normal Surrey accent suddenly became labelled "middle class" (leading to attempted bullying and even threats of assault because suddenly I was perceived as "posh").

Funnily enough this prejudice against perceived "posh" accents seems to be one of the few that people seem to consider reasonable nowadays - even to the extent that it is apparently thought acceptable to joke about having such a prejudice at otherwise strictly PC local-government equalities seminars]

I would say that this mixing of all sorts - and the fact that we all pretty much sounded the same and all wore pretty much the same (school uniform) meant that the number of potential friends and partners my peers had access to increased, compared to the world my parents grew up in. Later, we could also contact each other without the need for parental consent should we so wish.

Partly as a result of this wider social circle, gone was the idea of the family providing friends and a "marriage pool" - we made our own friends and chose our own girlfriends (or not), thank you very much. There was therefore no need to keep in contact with (or to be made to keep in contact with) cousins etc. for social reasons.

ii) The ending of the custom/obligation of maintaining family links; The expectation that one had an obligation to maintain contact, other than at funerals, christenings and the occasional wedding, simply evaporated with the grandparents.

Apart from our immediate cousins on my fathers' side I have not seen any of my other non-sibling relations for many, many moons - and probably would be hard-pressed to contact them if I needed to. If we have seen any of them at all over the last twenty-five years it would have been at funerals.

iii) Most influential of all to my mind is the removal of the need for an extended family in times of want, thanks to the Welfare State and general prosperity. As there was now a "safety net" (and as none of our extended family had influence or contacts or were in a position to help others with jobs or materially in any case) any factor of self-interest in maintaining contacts didn't exist.

With social restrictions, family obligations and self-interest/need being removed the natural disinterest of the young meant that the extended family has softly and silently vanished away.....

Nowadays, I see my parents, brother, sister, nieces & nephs. a handful of times a year (we also keep in touch by e-mail with one uncle & a cousin's family, both overseas), but that's about it....

I guess to sum it up; In my experience the extended family died not because of the break up of communities (slum clearances) or the growth of the nuclear family. It was going anyway, and was replaced by the nuclear family because we didn't need it and, in all honesty, didn't want it anymore...

Question 2) Do you feel that you differ from your mother and father? If so, how?

I believe that superficially I differ from my parents in many ways; I have always been interested in books, Art and drawing (although they may have been, given the opportunity). I am not as naturally gregarious and was never a teenager in spirit as them neither was I ever interested in fashion, music or peer culture in the way they were when they were young (my mother was really insistent that I ought to go out dancing etc and would have liked it if I had been more sociable). Maybe these are personality differences, not generational ones - but to be frank, I think a lot of this is down to the fact that, although basic in material terms, my life as a child was pretty good, free and easy. I had nothing to rebel against. I had no experience of the war or rationing. By my time there were no serious social conventions to breach (until the invention of Feminism) and no unpleasantness to escape, perhaps unlike their childhoods.

In many ways I am less conventional than my parents, but then I am also less conventional than my brother and sister (both married with kids). However, as I never felt there was an expectation on my parents part that I should marry or have a family this may not be relevant.

(Note: My experience was very unlike that of a contemporary of mine from a Yorkshire family, who felt he had to marry early or be branded "a poof" by the family. You can imagine what his dad made of me "Still unwed - at 25!!!" Actually he was really a very lovely, tolerant man - with a great sense of humour. We got on like a house on fire).

Unlike my parents in their earlier days(but like my siblings) I feel no significant need to maintain family ties or obligations to folk I don't like or wish to see.

The biggest real differences are due, I think, to the fact that I was lucky enough to go to a good, basic county primary school, and later a grammar school, rather than the local secondary. The latter fact, I believe, meant that any assumption that I would automatically go into some kind of manual/clerical/shop work following school was removed (the opposite assumption in fact being made - that grammar school boys didn't go on to do bricklaying, shelf stacking etc. and that they automatically had more options re. further education).

This simple fact meant that staying on at school after sixteen was an option for me, which it wasn't for them (my younger brother, grammar school again, even went on to University - first in our family).

It also led to my pastimes and interests being different from what they would have been, as different data and outlooks became available to me.

Basically, because of this simple chance - the chance of going to a different school - my brother and I had greater opportunities than my parents ever had - leading us to slip up into the middle class (our little sister however never had the opportunity to go to a grammar school - they were abolished in Surrey before she had the chance - and so that "progress" in that way never happened).

Also as a result, my brother's children will almost certainly go on to further education and already have "middle class" aspirations and hobbies. My sister's, thus far, do not seem to - although they are equally bright, lively, interesting and interested.

To again summarise: If I had to point to anything as being the major difference, I would say that it is this (though I hate such labels): my parent are are "working class", I am perceived (though just as much a wage-slave) as "middle class" - and have had "middle class" opportunities (thanks to the grammar school). In itself this is a pretty meaningless difference, but what this difference has done is to actually made me a "citizen of the world" in a way my parents never were nor will be.

Question 3) Examine the relationship between the more recent pressures on the nuclear family & the rise in divorce rates.

Not really my palaver this..... I can only talk of my own direct experience, but none of the nuclear families I know seem to be under any more external pressure than those I was aware of as a kid - e.g. genuine poverty, sickness, uncertainty over their future etc.. In fact, people on average seem generally wealthier and materially better off than they were when I was young. Housing is certainly better. Things are more stable economically. People have more opportunities. The only families that I personally know of that have had serious problems are the ones where kids (with more "stuff", more opportunities, more freedom than most of my generation) have gone off the rails...

There do seem to be plenty of self-created pressures though: the tendency to marry/start breeding before establishing yourselves financially, "need" to "buy" a home (as if any of us ever actually own it anyway), the drive for possessions (that end up possessing you), the kow-towing to fashion and trends - and the failure to guide their children away from those particular tyrants.....

However ,never having had experience of a family divorce I'm not really qualified to say much (the only divorce really close to me involved a friend who married early because of family pressure - and divorced swiftly afterwards - causing even more family upset than remaining single would have). All I will say is that, from my observations it seems to me that it is the trivialising of marriage, the ease of divorce, the lack of commitment (or the not realising what a promise actually is) and the lack of social pressure (and removal of stigma) that once would have meant people "sticking it out" when the dream turns out not to be perfect that is to "blame" rather than social pressure....

But as I say - I'm not best qualified on this as I have never intended to make a promise I don't believe I could keep (which, to me, is what marriage is).

Question 4) Families in the 50s 60s didn't engage in "frank talk." Could family meals all sat down together be torture? Now there's more emotional openness. Discuss.

We only really ate as a family at weekends. These meals were perhaps more formal than in some households today (if families still eat together, I wouldn't know).

However, to me the kind of self-indulgent emotional openness I have witnessed at some other families' dinner tables has been more horrific that any "torturous", staid 60s gathering I ever experienced. I am perhaps a tad old fashioned in some respects - and really would not like to live in a domestic version of the Big Brother household...

Paper Two: WORK -
Question 1)Consider and discuss the statement; "In 1957 the workplace was more stable, a full employment economy with benefits from the Commonwealth. You were "in a job (public or private sphere) for life." Global influences enter in the 70s 80s".

I was too young in 57 to really comment.. In the 60s and 70s my father's work was dependant on incoming orders to the family firm for which he worked. My mother too only had work when it was available.
Maybe there was an assumption of a job for life in the 50s & sixties, but that had certainly gone by the time I started work - my first redundancy was at 22 and all later ones were the result of the housing/building collapse of the late 80s/90s - which as far as I'm aware were caused by local factors (but then, what do I know...).

Question 2) Examine the effect on your life of changes in manufacturing (especially the Midlands, Scotland, Miners, Steel /Sheffield etc.) and of technology/ smoking in the work place …

Well, for a start, we're "all middle class now" aren't we (hah!).

Actually, if I am going to be selfish and blunt (and realistic) about this - and only look at how things have affected my life (i.e. my personal quality of life) - and ignoring my finer political/social feelings (despite the risk of coming over all Littlejohn-ish) the loss of the major manufacturing industries in this country has made very little difference..

My periods of scratching around for work have been unrelated to manufacturing ups n' downs and I have never lived or worked in an "industrial town", so that as far as my own employment and environment has been concerned, ebbs and flows in the manufacturing industries have been pretty much irrelevant - except when/if they affected the building trade.

However, in my experience as a consumer, manufactured goods now are a darn sight cheaper, more stylish and, in many cases, more reliable than when we did it ourselves here in the UK - so really, it looks like the loss of our manufacturing base has really been for the better....

Oh, and lots of jobs have been created in other, more needy countries, and this is brilliant; there is no shortfall in actual production due to inefficiency, few significant strikes, costs are lower (see above) - plus there are fewer people dependant upon agriculture alone "out there" - keeping them from starving and appearing forlornly my telly like they used to (as I say, I am deliberately looking at this with cold blinkers on - and not as the kind of reasonably caring, liberal minded, vaguely left-of-centre bod I actually am ).

The medieval business of grubbing-up coal has pretty much gone, along with the associated mess, unnecessary illnesses,deaths and disruptive political agendas of it's leader/s.

The TUC is a toothless background noise and there are fewer strikes of what were somehow (but not now strangely)"key" workers to derail the democratic process, prevent me from getting on with my own life or just to irritate me generally by clogging up the news bulletins.

Nope: I really miss industrial Britain not one whit....

Yes, I appreciate that communities have lost their reason for being there or have vanished, but there's nothing new there - history, and the vanished villages on the Downs close to where sit now, tell us that. But that hasn't affected me or mine,so what me worry?

Yes, the chickens will undoubtedly come home to roost in a generation or so, when the Developing World decides it has had enough of doing the dirty jobs thank you very much and wants to move into "service industries " too - undercutting us into becoming an economic eunuch as a by-product (we have seen the start of the trend with call-centres and some financial services already). But, again, nothing new there. You can't buck "progress". You learn and you adapt - if not, you go under (but hopefully I'll be dead n' gone by then).

The question spoke about "my life"; so that's me answer..

Question 3) Technology:

I've dealt with this elsewhere (IT mainly).

Question 4) Smoking:

Never have. Never will.

Never made a difference to me wowork wiseapart from me having to weave through people cluttering up the doorways into offices & kicking through the litter of fag ends).

Used to hate it in pubs mark you, before the introduction of air circulation (eyes used to react + the smell after - ugh.. And I still recall the "yuck" factor the first time I snogged a girl smoker).

Actually, to the point for once, smoking was only ever been allowed in one place I've actually worked, and that was in the office of a small, private company - and only the owner and his dad smoked anyway.

Drinking, however, is a different matter. When I first stated work drinking was an almost an extension of work - and de rigeur in some places. Three pint lunchtimes were quite normal. Now, if I drink any alcohol at all - even have a half of shandy -in my own time, and then go into work, I can be sacked.

PAPER THREE: LEISURE -
Question 1)Around 1957 the Radio Times changed the order of its listings, TV now came before Radio. Discuss this, and examine the proposition that at the same time there was a decline in visiting the cinema.

Well, my brother & I used to go to Saturday morning pictures, but other trips were pretty few & far between. To be frank, taking out the Sat. stuff, I probably go to the cinema as much or more now than in the 60s (but then, I hardly watch TV these days).

In my opinion TV stopped us kids playing outside, more than it affected cinema trips (which cost money). Can't answer for the 50s though.

Question 2) "Leisure used to be simple. Stats show the working class dominated and was focused around football/ rugby/cricket. Following the decline of the working class came motor cars. With more travelling further afield possible & football crowds went down in number". How does this statement differ, if at all, from your own experience?

My brother & father used to go to see Woking play occasionally, and my brother played - but the assumptions posited sound very Northern/Midlands/urban focused to me....

None of my friends were serious football fans - at least not to the point of going to matches. There were knock-abouts in the local Rec., we had token "loyalties" (I was supposed to support West ham and my brother Chelsea; but I don't recall ever sitting through a whole match - even on telly) and we collected the World-cup medals from the petrol stations and cards with players on from bubble gum or tea packets; but that was really the extent of our interest. There were much more fun things to do..

Question 3) "Holiday camps for the masses transformed over the 5 decades to favour more individual holidays". Discuss in relation to the holidays of yourself, family and friends.

Not the case with us (again). We were not great holiday people...

Our earliest holidays were just day trips - mainly Sunday School outings to Littlehampton or to see relatives. Later, with the car, we went as a family down to Hayling Island (and at least once with some friends of my parents and their family), but this was to stay in funny little private chalets rather than to holiday camps (not least because the camps were a bit too pricey for us at first).

Later on we occasionally went to Butlins (Bognor and Clacton), I would say about three or four times in all, but our holiday practice never really underwent any significant change at all over the years. Even today, my parents and sister's family still go down to Hayling for their annual break.

However, holidays, though a welcome change, were not what could be called great escapes; we usually simply relocated - although I was taken off by our grandparents on my mother's side a few times: Torquay - and once to Jersey!!! Practically abroad!!

When I got older, I didn't always go down to the coast with the family, but spent the time at home - and once I left home I pretty much gave up on holidays altogether for a while (I was doing enough travelling at work, thank you very much). In fact, most years, I didn't even use up my annual leave entitlement. My dad would probably have been the same, were it not for the family.

As my jobs allowed me a reasonable amount of free time or flexibility, holidays were pretty much irrelevant. There would be rare trips away with old school mates or newer friends (packages to Spain & a holiday in Ireland in the mid eighties) but otherwise holidaying for me meant being at home, reading or hobbyising.

It was not until my late twenties when hardened-traveller Joan got me back into the globe-trotting habit. Since then I have been to places my parents (and the younger I) would never have dreamed of going to.

As far as the question goes, we're talking about Midlands/Northern/urban masses again - not my background or experience...


Well - I've failed that one (wandering off subject, not answering the question etc. etc. - and worst of all, sounding like a columnist from the Daily Wail!!!).