Quote:
Originally Posted by steeljack
Will disagree with you on a couple of points , if people were living in such misery and explotation in the "bad old days" how do you explain the rise of the seaside resorts like Blackpool, Morcambe etc. in Lancashire and other similar resorts along the Yorksire coast , these weren't built just for the "Bosses" they were designed and built around the same time the building boom of terraced streets in the Mill towns for the skilled working masses.
Re. the "poverty" of the housing stock at the time , I'm thinking most of the Mill workers who were drawn to work in the cotton towns appreciated the chance to live in a terraced house with an outside lavatory (most probably a tippler type) much better than the one room mud hovels most of the migrating mill workers who came from in Scotland and Ireland ,and looking back took a damn sight more pride in them than they do today,
I'm thinking if you look back through various threads which mention the older Big Houses(Villas/Mansions) where the big bad nasty bosses lived you can see that in Accrington many were in areas adjacent and abutting terraced streets , which seems a bit more democratic to what we see today .
My own opinion is the "rot" started in the days after WW2 , British industry carried on using the same old crap machinery and methods as had been in use from the turn of the century , example ...Germany had to re-build its entire steel industry , what hadn't been bombed was shipped east as reparations to the Russians , so what did the enlightened British politicians do ... they sold the Germans brand new steel plants ,built in antiquated British plants , then wondered why the German industry was more efficient than the British, same thing happened with other industries, post-war politicians cut the throats of the British workers to "create" the social society we see the results of today.  |
...and I'll counter disagree right back, even though I'm still half a sleep.
Re: the seaside resorts.
Besides mentioning the date Bolton won the first F.A. Cup at Wembley, I was refering to a time pre-workers rights, and before holiday entitlements were given, which directly gave rise to the resorts on the coast.
Housing. The phrase used was 'relative poverty', meaning our housing needs are much higher today, than then. With many of us still living in the housing stock that was built for those workers, but we now benefit from bathrooms, central heating/running hot water, and don't have to break the ice on t'tippler, when we need to spend a winter penny.
If you think life today isn't better than it was for our great-great grandparents, you're living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
'They were poor....but they were happy.'
Utter balderdash.
You can't be truly happy, when at the back of your mind there's the fact that if you've no work, for whatever reason, your children will starve.
This is not the case in the U.K. today.
We also talked in the car about Bullough's making the machines for places like India, who were then in direct competition to Lancashire's cotton mills, which is similar to you comment about Germany. If England hadn't supplied those countries, someone else would. There would still have been overseas competition, who could under-cut Britain because of a cheaper workforce.
Now I really must go and see if there's any coal left in t'coal 'ole, so I can light a fire, after I've been down the yard t'smallest house, then I can have a cuppa for my breakfast.
