BBC NEWS | Magazine | 10 not-so-great things about the 1950s
1. Post-war austerity was characterised by outside lavatories, central heating was rare and many houses were without televisions or running water.
My gran lived in a back to back (2 rooms) with a long drop loo in a shared yard. We had a long drop too in the 40s. No tv until 1955
2. Racial discrimination was widespread, with signs saying "No blacks, no dogs, no Irish" commonplace. Tensions boiled over with the Notting Hill riots in 1958.
Women didn't have equal pay and I was refused a loan of £1000 in 1970(despite a good salary)Credit cards didnt exist until 1960s
3. Food rations until 1954. Fruit was a luxury, chicken or sweets a rarity. Queues outside butchers lined the streets. Petrol was rationed in 1956-57.
At least the rare chicken dinners you got tasted like chicken should
4. Smog, or peasoupers, were thick and yellow, made worse by coal fires. Some have described the fog as a "yellow wall" outside the front door. Parents gave children scarves to wear over their noses and mouths and street lamps were still gas.
This caused that awful practice of your mum spitting on her hankie and rubbing the smuts off you face
5. Britain was humiliated in the Suez War and its influence on world events greatly diminished.
6. Bomb sites littered British streets, while air raid shelters, unexploded bombs, gas masks and seaside defences provided a reminder of the horror that had gone before.
I remember my gran giving me a frog which she showed me would jump over a stick - it jumped into the air raid shelter on our street and was lost forever.
7. The Cold War intensified throughout the 50s, with tensions illustrated by the Soviet invasion of Hungary and the McCarthy witch hunts in the US.
When local factory sirens went off we thought it was the famous 'four minute warning' - I still have a copy of Protect and Survive somewhere
8. Sporting humiliation arrived when England's football team lost 6-3 to Hungary at Wembley, the first ever defeat to a non-British team at home.
9. Smoking prevalence among UK men aged 35 to 59 was 80% in 1950, and half of deaths of middle-aged men were caused by tobacco.
Upstairs on buses was always thick with smoke too
10. Sexual expression was frowned upon and even criminalised. Homosexuality and abortion were banned throughout the decade and unplanned pregnancies stigmatised families.
Pregnant unmarried girls often resorted to suicide
So times weren't so good after all were they?
Every age we have lived through has its good and bad sides.
Want to add to my comments on each of the 10? and air your memories here?