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This story was gathered, written and submitted to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Peoples War by Bruce Logan

My father has always condemned wastefulness, especially when food was concerned. I questioned him about this, and it turns out that his attitude was formed by the food-rationing policy that existed until the mid-1950s.
‘The Second World War meant that rationing was imposed on the British population, including in Northern Ireland,’ he explained. ‘It was better-organised than during the First World War, and was imposed quite quickly.’
The idea of rationing was that whatever food was available should be shared, and the important things should be shared equally.
‘Meat, for example, was a weekly ration determined in terms of moneys worth. Other types of food were determined by a points system, which allowed people a choice but imposed an overall limit.’
‘Two ounces in a week’s not much,’ a line my father often quoted to me when I helped myself to butter at dinner time, is a quote from his Aunt Miller. It refers to the butter ration, something incomprehensible today.
Since my father lived on a farm, his family had unlimited butter and eggs. They were able to supplement their meat ration with the occasional chicken. Bread and potatoes were not rationed during the war. However, in the immediate post-war era (1946-7) there was rationing of bread. This was because there was famine in Germany, and the British Government had a responsibility to import food for the civilians in the British Occupation Sector there.
Retail Price Maintenance was introduced. During the First World War there had been profiteering, but during the Second World War there was smuggling. Tea, whiskey and confectioneries were illegally imported from the Irish Free State (to become the Republic when the 1936 Constitution was ratified after the war).
Certain luxuries disappeared altogether, which explains my father’s pedestrian tastes (though he loves oranges and tomatoes). ‘Bananas were not seen again until after the war. Also, there was a Government prohibition on the manufacture of Ice Cream!’

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