‘A Society for People’

Extract

Those who grew up in the war, as I did, could not fail to be aware of the lowering of social barriers and of the popular support for social reform. Whether by eating in communal restaurants and sleeping in air raid shelters, accommodating evacuees and the victims of the, blitz, joining in firewatching and civil defence, doing holiday work on farms or serving in the armed forces, people were obliged to meet, and get to know, many others of different class, occupation and background. They had a common interest and a common purpose. One of my most vivid memories is of the shock felt by the middle classes in Black-pool upon the arrival of families evacuated from the Liverpool slums. As in many other places, people came to understand for the first time how the other half lived, and what the years of unemployment had wrought. Here were two nations confronted.