Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

106 Chapter Eleven Cricket and Society in the 1940s We have a Tolstoyan ‘war and peace’ view of the 1940s; 1945 acts as a vast watershed in the popular mind. Although it would be callously wayward to forget the distress and suffering of the war years, there was, domestically, something of a continuum. Ten or so years of a Collectivist structure and mind-set made for a more complete decade on the home front. In brief, it was a combine of what has been called ‘War Socialism’ and ‘the Silent Revolution’ of 1945/51. Britain handed itself over to its government lock, stock and barrel, with the central statute of the 1939 Emergency Powers (Defence) Act ensuring a comprehensive range of control over lives, property and material. The Civil Service doubled to 700,000 and much of this officialdom was retained post-war. Wearing and tedious as this often was, the public was supportive of the war aims and kept a strong sense of social stability. A.J.P.Taylor’s kind but correct opinion was that ‘the British people came of age...tolerant, patient and generous’. 1 If one may select a cricketing metaphor, Britain emerged as one of the victors having lost heavily on the first innings. From a morale viewpoint, and compared with the enemy, matters improved as the war drew on. The United Kingdom was the only European combatant country not occupied and in part destroyed by a foe. Aside from the brief if hideous V1 and V2 rockets afflicting the London area late in the war, the major bombing was over by late 1941 with many areas scarcely affected. There was a dissonance between expectation and actuality. The official forecast had been that there would be 600,000 dead blitz victims in the first two months of the war, whereas the total for the entire conflict was 51,000 civilian deaths. To put that in context, Germany suffered 1.5m civilian deaths, while in a mere eleven weeks in 1944 from D-Day to the Liberation of Paris, 70,000 French civilians were killed by bombing and bombardment. In this relatively pacific clime, the chief upbeat common denominator for the decade was full employment. There was still an overhang from the depression of 1m out of work in 1939 - but by the end of 1940 everyone had a job, the beginning of what was to be the only lengthy period of full employment in British economic history. It has been statistically shown that during these years Britain was the most efficiently organised and productive industrial state ever known. This deliberate essay in public ownership, social welfare and fiscal severity was sustained after the war during the Labour Government’s time in office, Planning was the key. It was frequently said in so many words that we had planned for a well-earned