Oswald Mosley's "troops" were often marching around Deptford and the East End of London, I'm probably the only one on this forum who remembers them, but this item is worth a read....... https://uk.yahoo.com/style/happened-children-oswald-mosley-apos-070000017.html
Sorry, I never saw that headline. Newspapers were a luxury we couldn't afford, only saw them if our fish & chips were wrapped in them!
Your family could afford 'Fish & Chips' Inky? …. how la-dee-da … we could only dream of fish & chips in our house....well when I say house...!
It was the monthly treat that my mother had saved up for AHLL Otherwise it was usually 'bread and scrape' quite often
We used to dream of having bread. We had used cardboard to eat our scrape off and dripping once a month. But we were happy.
I've tried over the last couple of years to explain how life was back in the 1930's to my grandchildren, but I feel sure they think granddad is making up a story. How lucky I considered myself to have an orange and a banana for my Christmas presents, whereas today, parents spend $500+ per child I've heard tell. My apology for wandering off the topic slightly.
No worries Inkblot. I'm only 50 but even some aspects of my early childhood seem like a different world to the youngsters in my family. We had open fireplaces in the house and a coal hole out the front, chickens in the back garden, an old upright piano in the living room that the aunts and uncles used to gather and sing songs around... But we had some modern luxuries too; inside toilet, magnificent old cabinet wireless and television sets, and a telephone of course.
I don't envy today's youngsters. They have far more mental health problems than any other generation due largely imo to being too cosetted. There was no such thing as the school run in my day, because kids simply walked to their nearest school, which was an important part of character development. There's also the epidemic of childhood obesity, which usually continues into adulthood. The education system only became a political football in the 1970's, and both parties are to blame for the ill effects of that. Then there's the internet..............................and climate change...........................no, not a great time to be young for a lot of kids.
I don't envy them the cyber-bullying so many of them have to put up with now either, and the pressure to conform to this fashion or that trend coming at them out of their smart phones every hour of the day and night. When I remember the old cartoon strips like the Bash Street Kids or even the Perishers, the carefree anarchic days they represent are seemingly so distant now. Depriving children of the right to go to school on Routemaster buses, to jump on and off wherever they like, ring the bell twenty times a minute and try to dodge the fare, is robbing them of a lifetime of fond memories. In 40 or 50 years time who is going to look back through rose tinted specs at their memories of the tacky plastic interior of mum's latest lease-hire Chelsea tractor.
Swings & roundabouts for the youngsters - they get far more material benefits these days compared to what we enjoyed as youngsters. I used to get pens and pencils for birthdays & an Action Man for Xmas. In comparison, I am now asked on a weekly basis to fund £40 rounds of Dark Fruits for teenagers I have never met.
My folks were so poor, one Christmas they gave me an empty Action Man box and told me it was the deserter edition.
The East End of London was a very politically active area at that time. My Dad was Chairman of the local Communist Party, which was quite big at the time. Eventually his activities as an agitator got him blacklisted, and he had to go up to Kilmarnock to get employment as an engineer.
On the wider point, children’s mental health (ie allowing them to have a happy childhood) is the responsibility of the parents. The Nanny State and the NHS should butt out.
Only if the parents have failed in the first place, or were never there at all. I don’t think we are going to agree (Hence why politics threads should stay banned)
