大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Joanna and Chessie from Bodsham Primary School and has been added to the website on behalf of Mr. John Hewes with his permission and they fully understand the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

MY RATIONING HARDSHIP
These notes are really relevant to the situation after the 1939-45 war but the central paragraphs might be of interest.
The country was very hard up after nearly six years of war when alot of money had been spent gaining victory over the Germans and the Japanese, and even in 1948 our lives were still affected by this in many different ways.
In 1939 food began to be rationed, because so much was imported.
We couldn鈥檛 obtain any from the rest of Europe because by early 1940 the Germans had conquered France and were in fact just across the channel from us. Alot used to come by sea from the United States and Canada, particularly wheat for baking bread. Also the fruits like bananas and oranges, which grew in warmer countries, had to come by sea. This was not easy because the German Navy had built a large fleet of submarines which they positioned in the Atlantic to attack ships coming to England. Cargo carrying ships don鈥檛 sail fast and could easily be attacked by submarines lurking in wait for them. To protect them, ships would sail in convoy escorted by royal navy ships. It was not easy, particularly in bad weather because of their slow speed and even when escorted by war ships and with some protection from the air, which was then only possible within the range of airfields in the UK, many ships were torpedoed and many merchant navy seamen lost. Because we were fighting a war we also needed the materials, like steel and timber and other things, with which to build the aircraft, vehicles and the tanks and guns as well as the petrol which we couldn鈥檛 get from the Middle East through the Mediterranean, and so it had to come from the North American oilfields. These had to be given priority with the main staples like wheat.
The result of this was that all foods were rationed. Everyone was given a Ration Book. This has pages with coupons in them for each week and they had to be cut out by the shopkeeper when you went to buy meat or bread or butter or sugar. Because most sugar had to be imported sweets also were rationed and I think that we only had four ounces each per week. Even in 1948 the year you are looking at we were still on rationing for many things. In fact it didn鈥檛 stop completely until 1954.
I had gone away to University in 1947 and had to take my Ration Book there. We had our meals in Hall, which were never very big, although adequate. I can remember that we used to have whale for dinner about once a week and we were given out butter rations at the beginning of the week and it was up to us how we ate it. It was only a small piece. I think that it was about a quarter of the pack, which we bought from the shops. You can imagine that it didn鈥檛 go far.
Clothes were also rationed and you had to hand in your coupons whenever you went to buy a suit or a shirt.
During the war, petrol was rationed and there was only a little allowed for each car and so you could never drive very far. This was easing by 1948 but because no private cars had been built between 1939 and 1946 people who needed a car for work got them first. I remember the excitement when my father got a new ford popular to replace the ford eight, which we had since 1937.
In the house we didn鈥檛 have televisions. A service had started just before the war but that stopped and was only just starting again but people generally hadn鈥檛 got them, certainly not outside of London for some years. In fact it wasn鈥檛 until 1953 that my parents bought one in time for the Queen鈥檚 Coronation and that only had a 9鈥� screen!! We used to go to the cinema most weeks. There were a lot more cinemas then than there are now. Although colour films were appearing most of them were in black and white. You still see some of these being shown on television now.
People hadn鈥檛 been able to travel abroad during the war and by 1948 some people had begun to go to the Continent, but mainly people still went on holiday in England. I know I was very excited in 1949 when I decided to go to France with two friends from college. We hadn鈥檛 much money so we hitchhiked down to Dover to catch the ferry. Roll-on Roll-off ferries hadn鈥檛 yet come in and I still have a picture of a bus being lifted by crane from the dock and placed on the deck of the boat. In fact later in 1951 when I went to Germany with my parents, our car was driven onto a large net and then hoisted into the ship for the crossing to Holland.
All this seems very different from now when we have those big ferries sailing from Dover carrying hundreds of lorries and cars in them, not to mention the way you can drive on to a train at Folkestone and be whizzed under the Channel in half an hour.

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