Affluence, Class & Women, 1951-1964 (AQA A Level History: Component 2: Depth study): Revision Note

Rising living standards and consumerism

Rising wages and the end of austerity

• From 1952, most signs showed that Britain's economy and living standards were improving

  • Average male weekly wages rose from £8.30 in 1951 to £15.35 by 1961

  • Private savings increased sharply

  • Food rationing ended completely in 1954

• Farmers benefitted from generous government subsidies

  • These subsidies helped to keep food prices low

    • This meant that people could buy more with their wages

Housing and the new towns

Shoppers in Broad Walk, The High, Harlow by Penny Mayes, CC BY-SA 2.0

• Much of Britain's housing was old, overcrowded or damaged by the war in 1951

  • Pre-war slums were cleared, and new towns were built, including:

    • Harlow in Essex

    • Kirkby on Merseyside

  • Stevenage, Crawley, Corby and Cwmbran had been planned by Labour in the 1940s

• Slum clearance also caused social disruption

  • Long-established working-class communities were broken up

    • Residents were moved and dispersed across different areas

• Home ownership increased, helped by cheap mortgages

  • However, council and private tenants still greatly outnumbered homeowners throughout the 1950s

The consumer boom

• The consumer boom became the clearest sign of growing affluence

  • Televisions, washing machines, refrigerators and new furniture were often bought through hire purchase

  • Buyers paid a deposit followed by monthly instalments with interest

    • This allowed families to use goods before they had finished paying for them

• Advertising grew rapidly after ITV launched in 1955

  • Glossy adverts appeared during and between popular programmes

• Car ownership rose by 25% between 1957 and 1959

  • Motorway construction began with the Preston bypass in 1958

  • Around 1,200 miles of new or improved main roads were completed between 1957 and 1963

Leisure and holidays

• Television changed how families spent their evenings

  • The number of households owning a television rose by 42% between 1957 and 1959

  • By 1960, there were ten million television sets in use

  • The televised coronation of 1953 caused the first major rise in television purchases

• Holiday camps reached the height of their popularity

  • Around 60,000 people holidayed with Butlin's each week

  • Foreign holidays remained a luxury

    • Fewer than 2% of the population took them

• Home-based hobbies, such as DIY and gardening, also became more popular

  • Television programmes increasingly reflected these interests

Approach: This extract comes from Alan Sillitoe’s novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, published in 1958. It presents the everyday comforts available to a working-class family, including steady work, cigarettes, leisure spending and television

The source is useful for showing how post-war affluence could feel at household level. However, it is fiction, so it cannot prove how widely these benefits were shared. It should be compared with evidence on wages, housing and consumer ownership

The impact of affluence on society

A more comfortable, more private life

• Affluence changed how people used their time as well as how they spent their money

  • Rising car ownership encouraged new housing to be built further away from towns and cities

    • This increased commuting, as more people travelled between their homes and workplaces

  • Leisure became more centred on the home

    • Families increasingly spent their evenings watching television

  • Cars gave people greater freedom over holidays and leisure

    • Families could travel more easily and visit a wider range of places

• Many people linked rising prosperity to the Conservative government

  • This helped the Conservatives present themselves as the party of economic success

Affluence was uneven

• Not everyone benefitted equally from the new prosperity

  • Poverty remained in inner cities and industrial areas

  • Low-paid workers and council tenants benefitted less from consumer credit

    • They were less able to afford goods bought on hire purchase

• Some critics described the 1950s as materialistic and shallow

  • They believed people had become too focused on buying possessions

  • They argued that greater comfort had been achieved at the cost of stronger values or a sense of purpose

Contemporary doubts about the boom

• Some people living through the period doubted that the economic boom would last

  • In Stan Barstow's novel A Kind of Loving (1960), a character describes employment and booming business as "a fool's paradise"

    • This suggests that the apparent prosperity might be temporary or unstable

• These doubts existed alongside genuine improvements in living standards

  • Criticism of the boom did not mean that rising wages and greater consumer ownership were unreal

Approach: This comment appeared in The New Statesman in 1960, looking back at the 1950s. As a left-wing journal, it presents the decade as unequal and morally shallow

The source is useful for showing that affluence was strongly contested at the time. However, it is a hostile opinion piece, so its language is deliberately sharp. It is stronger as evidence of criticism of the decade than as proof that poverty had worsened

Approach: Jennifer Worth wrote this memoir long after the 1950s, recalling her work in the East End of London. She describes poor housing conditions, including outside toilets, limited bathrooms and the absence of television

The source is useful for showing that affluence had not reached all parts of Britain. However, it is shaped by hindsight and focuses on one very poor area. It should be compared with wider national evidence

Class and 'the Establishment'

A deferential society in 1951

• Britain in 1951 was largely deferential and conformist

  • Many people accepted the authority of politicians, employers and social elites

  • There was strong pressure to follow established social expectations

• Social class shaped voting more strongly than any other factor

  • At the 1951 general election, an estimated 65% of working-class voters supported Labour

  • An estimated 80% of middle-class voters supported the Conservatives

What was the 'Establishment'?

• The Establishment was an informal network linking Britain's social and political elites

  • It included:

    • aristocrats

    • politicians

    • civil servants

    • judges

    • bishops

    • diplomats

    • senior military officers

    • leaders of business

    • the media

  • Its members were overwhelmingly male and privileged

  • Family backgrounds and personal connections often mattered more than wealth

• There was a recognised route into positions of power

  • Many members attended the most exclusive public schools, including Eton

  • Most went to Oxford or Cambridge universities before entering influential careers

  • Because many had attended the same schools and universities, these connections became known as the 'old boys' network'

• Conservative governments appeared closely linked to the Establishment

  • Harold Macmillan's government included a duke, the heir to a barony, a marquess and three earls

  • Sir Alec Douglas-Home had been the fourteenth Earl of Home before giving up his peerage

The critics of the Establishment

• Social scientists argued that Britain's ruling elite was holding the country back

  • Richard Hoggart published The Uses of Literacy in 1957

  • C.P. Snow published The Two Cultures in 1959

  • Anthony Sampson published The Anatomy of Britain in 1962

  • They criticised deeply rooted attitudes, Britain's 'class-ridden' society and its lack of social mobility

• Critics repeatedly made similar arguments against the elite

  • They claimed it valued arts education more highly than science

  • They argued that it prevented talented outsiders from reaching positions of power

  • They believed that members of the elite protected one another and concealed their mistakes

  • They wanted Britain to be led by people who had earned their positions through ability and achievement

• The angry young men criticised the Establishment through plays and novels

  • John Osborne's controversial Look Back in Anger appeared in 1956

  • Other writers included John Braine, Alan Sillitoe and Stan Barstow

    • They wrote about ordinary life in direct, everyday language

Approach: This extract comes from John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger, first performed in 1956. The play reflects frustration with class, social expectations and the limited opportunities available to some younger people

The source is useful for showing the mood associated with the angry young men. However, it was written to provoke an audience, so it does not measure how far society had changed. It is best compared with evidence that class divisions still remained

The decline of deference

• Deference began to weaken from the later 1950s

  • The 1956 Suez Crisis raised suspicions that the government had misled Parliament and the public

    • This damaged public trust in political leaders

  • The rise of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) from 1958 encouraged people to challenge authority

  • The Profumo Affair and the satire boom also weakened respect for the Establishment

• However, the class system itself was not broken

  • Criticism changed attitudes more quickly than it changed the structures of power

  • The same schools, universities and personal networks continued to supply many of the people at the top

The position of women

The 1950s ideal

• Women were still seen mainly as housewives

  • The ideal woman was expected to be a wife and mother

  • 75% of all women were married

    • The average age of marriage was 21

  • Only around one in five married women were in paid work in 1951

• The welfare state was based on the idea of the nuclear family

  • Men were expected to have full-time paid work

  • Women were expected to depend financially on their husbands

    • Family allowance was paid to the mother, who was assumed to be at home caring for the children

    • Mortgages and bank accounts were usually held in men's names

A woman's day in 1951

• In 1951, the Mass Observation Survey detailed a day in the life of women based on 700 working-class housewives in London

• The survey of the women's day was broken up into morning and afternoon/evening

Morning

• Got up; washed

• Cooked and ate breakfast

• Dressed baby

• Cleared breakfast

• Tidied and swept nursery

• Made children's beds

• Put baby out in pram

• Got dressed herself

• Made own bed; tidied bedroom

• Tidied bathroom; cleaned basin; polished floor

• Cleaned out fire grate; tidied living room

• Tidied kitchen; washed up breakfast

• Laundry: hung out washing

• Took out rubbish

• Brought in coal

• Went out to shop

• More laundry

Afternoon/evening

• Started to cook lunch; cleaned hall while lunch cooked

• Ate lunch; washed up lunch

• Ironing

• Brought in washing

• Tidied self and baby

• Fetched child from school

• Tea

• Wrote letter

• Went to post

• Cleared tea

• Bathed children and put them to bed

• Washed up tea

• Cooked supper

• Supper

• Sat and knitted

• Read evening paper

• Went to bed

Women and paid work

• Paid employment remained uncommon among married women, especially mothers

  • Trade unions often opposed women entering paid work

    • They feared that a larger supply of workers would allow employers to lower men's wages

  • Many people believed that working mothers harmed their children's development

• The number of women in paid work had increased by 1964

  • However, expectations about women's main role as wives and mothers remained largely unchanged

• Equal pay was introduced only in a small number of mainly middle-class professions

  • Civil servants gained equal pay from 1955, phased in by 1961

  • Teachers followed on the same phased timetable

Affluence in the home

Australian Women's Weekly, 27th February 1952, p. 4. Advertisement for Hotpoint model CF-P clothes washer, Australian General Electric.

• Labour-saving appliances changed the nature of domestic work

  • Between 1957 and 1959, the number of households with a washing machine rose by 54% and refrigerators by 58%

  • One Hotpoint washing machine was advertised as 'the Liberator'

  • Without these appliances:

    • washing could take an entire day

    • food often had to be bought fresh each day

• These appliances saved time, but they did not change women's expected role

  • Women were still usually responsible for housework

  • Some women reported feeling increasingly unfulfilled by lives centred on the home

• Second-wave feminism was beginning in the United States

  • It argued that women were restricted by the traditional homemaker role

  • It reached Britain in the later 1960s

How far did affluence transform British society?

• This question compares the clear improvements in living standards during the 1950s with the social structures that remained largely unchanged

Affluence transformed British society

• Average male weekly wages nearly doubled between 1951 and 1961

  • Food rationing also ended in 1954

• Hire purchase allowed working-class families to buy more consumer goods

  • These included televisions, washing machines, refrigerators and cars

  • For many families, these goods became affordable for the first time

• Slum clearance, new towns and rising home ownership changed where and how people lived

• Television, cars and holiday camps created a new mass leisure culture

  • More people shared similar forms of entertainment and leisure

• Deference declined

  • Social scientists and the angry young men openly criticised the Establishment

• Labour-saving appliances reduced the time needed for domestic work

Change was limited

• Affluence was uneven

  • Poverty remained in inner cities and older industrial areas

• Most people still rented rather than owned their homes

• Class continued to shape voting, education and opportunities

  • Social mobility remained limited

• The Establishment remained powerful

  • It continued to dominate politics, the civil service, the legal system and the media

• Women's position changed very little

  • The ideal of the housewife remained strong

  • Equal pay reached only a small number of professions

• Some contemporary critics argued that Britain had become richer without changing its underlying class and gender divisions