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00:00Our British history is rich with tales of wealth and power and all that political nonsense.
00:10The glamour of our kings and queens. The jewels and furs and charisma.
00:16And all those heads being chopped off.
00:21But what about the real people who made everything happen?
00:24Red Buller.
00:29I'll discover what they ate.
00:31It's a bit stussy.
00:33The challenges they faced.
00:35Stuff this for a game of soldiers.
00:37And how they built Britain.
00:39That's straight as a die.
00:41I'm going to uncover the extraordinary lives of some of history's ordinary people.
00:49Romans.
00:50It's quite a weight on my head, I have to say.
00:54Edwardians.
00:55Breathe in, madam, breathe in.
00:571950s.
00:58Put the needle on the record.
01:01Ooh, really soft brakes. Takes ages to stop it.
01:04And the middle ages.
01:06There's the executive model inside the house.
01:10Whatever.
01:11History from the bottom up.
01:14This time I'm going back to the 1950s.
01:27It was a time of optimism.
01:31As Brits picked themselves up from the Second World War.
01:35We had a new young queen and celebrated hopes of a brighter future with the Festival of Britain.
01:42When I was a kid in the 1950s, it never occurred to me that it was a particularly special decade.
01:49As far as I knew, it was just the way the world had always been.
01:53I had no understanding that, for the older generation, there'd been a terrible depression, followed by a ghastly war.
02:04And I certainly couldn't imagine life without the NHS.
02:07July 5th, the new National Health Service starts.
02:10But it was just getting going.
02:12And the early 50s saw a massive recruitment drive for nurses.
02:16They came from across the world, from the West Indies to Ireland.
02:20Part of an unprecedented period of immigration that bolstered both the NHS and the impoverished British economy.
02:28Mary Powell had dreamt of becoming a nurse since she was a small girl growing up in Ireland.
02:37She couldn't afford tuition fees, but in Britain, the training was free.
02:43In 1952, a week before her 18th birthday, Mary packed her things and left Ireland behind her.
02:51She flew from Dublin to Northolt Airport, just outside London, and then got a bus to Putney and her new home.
02:58This was despite furious resistance from her mother, who thought that England was some kind of ungodly hellhole.
03:08As a staunch Catholic, she was dead against Mary living in a Protestant England.
03:13From the windows of her London bus, seeing bomb damage still being repaired,
03:18Mary must have wondered whether it actually was a bit of a hellhole.
03:22She eventually arrived at the rebuilt Putney Hospital to start her three years of training.
03:30The NHS was amazing, offering a high level of care.
03:33But the world that Mary walked into was as regimented and as ruthless as an army,
03:39run by an all-powerful general, the Matron.
03:43I should like to see you in my office when you go off duty.
03:46Yes, Matron.
03:48Everything that Mary's Matron said was law, and her loyal officers were the sisters who ran the wards.
03:54Matron behaved like some sort of colonial officer.
03:58She ruled from her office with a rod of iron.
04:04Matron's powers even extended to the nurses' private lives.
04:08It was she who decided what time they went to bed and made sure that there was no one else tucked up with them.
04:14And if a nurse ever did decide to get married, well, that was it.
04:18She had to leave the profession.
04:20It wasn't actually illegal to get married, but any nurse would first require the permission of the hospital board and, you guessed it, the Matron.
04:30No, I'm sorry.
04:32Debbie Quinn is a practicing nurse and knows Mary's story.
04:36So she arrives on the first day. What kind of environment would she have been confronted with?
04:43I mean, the wards that you would have trained in would have been what we call the nightingale wards.
04:47The long wards with the table in the middle.
04:49Very, very, very strict.
04:51Just when I thought I was really being good.
04:53Sister ticks me off for being too slow.
04:55Sends me to matron.
04:57I don't like your attitude, nurse.
04:59That's mutual, then, because I don't like yours.
05:02You didn't.
05:03No, but one day I will.
05:05Your first experience on the wards is very much about the cleaning, about the tidying up.
05:10It would have been a lot of cleaning bedpans, making sure the area is clean and sterile.
05:18What would the environment that she worked in have been like?
05:21They would have been woken up very early, between half five and six o'clock.
05:25They would have been expected to have made their beds, get everything straight, get themselves into their uniform,
05:30which was a lot more complicated than where we are today.
05:33You know, you're talking of a dress, you're talking of cuffs, you're talking of an apron, proper hats.
05:38Hats we got rid of in the 1990s.
05:43To begin with, trainees weren't trusted to treat real patients,
05:46but had to practise endlessly on a dummy called Araminta.
05:51This is Araminta, or should I say, one of Araminta's friends.
05:56This is a medical dummy, like Mary would have used when she was in training.
06:02This is how she would have learned about the human body, and in particular, how to administer medical procedures,
06:09like giving an injection, or a bed bath, or an enema.
06:14Although it looks as though you've just had one, love.
06:17Inside her were models of all the important organs.
06:22After three months in the classroom, the day came for Mary to apply her learning to a living, breathing human being.
06:30Give the man his injection. Stop fussing and get on with it, said the sister.
06:36Sadly, the actual patient wasn't available for our filming, but the following did actually happen to a real person.
06:42Mary was terrified.
06:44She picked up the kidney-shaped dish and the syringe, and gingerly moved forward.
06:53Mary had been provided with a thick antibiotic mixture that had to be injected right into his bottom.
06:59She tried to stay cool.
07:02Mr Brown, she said, I'm just going to give you a tiny injection.
07:06Would you mind rolling over onto your side and dropping your pyjama trousers?
07:11And then BAM! She administered the injection.
07:15But it didn't go into the muscle as it was supposed to, and his bottom swelled up.
07:21Mary was in floods of tears. She thought she'd get the sack.
07:28But all the sister said was,
07:30Toughen up, pal.
07:34Mr Brown eventually recovered and told Mary,
07:37Never mind, it could have been worse.
07:40But worse was to come.
07:42Mary also had to learn to support the consultant's surgeons during operations.
07:47And found their bombastic attitude a little alarming.
07:53Portheps.
07:54Portheps.
07:55Scalpel.
07:56Scalpel.
07:57Spleen.
07:58Yes.
07:59Cracking game of golf with Carruthers on Sunday.
08:01There's the gallbladder.
08:02Leg coming off.
08:03Dirty nurse.
08:05Her first role as a student nurse in theatre was what was known as the dirty nurse.
08:11What's this expression, a dirty nurse?
08:14In theatres, obviously, for infection control, you want to keep instruments clean.
08:20And when they're dirty, you want them to go away.
08:22You don't want them to be near a clean area.
08:24Your clean nurse would be the nurse that passes all the clean equipment to the consultant.
08:28The dirty nurse removes the dirty stuff, so the dirty swabs, the dirty instruments,
08:32possibly limbs, whatever.
08:34Nurse. Dirty nurse, this is for you.
08:37Just coming.
08:39Mary felt she was born to be a nurse, but it was an enormously draining job, both physically
08:46and emotionally.
08:48Mary worked a 12-hour day plus time for meals.
08:53She wasn't allowed to live outside the hospital until she'd qualified.
08:58Mary lived in a nurse's home with the other trainees in the hospital grounds.
09:02They all got on really well together, but they were paid just £10 a month.
09:08Most of which they spent on what they called therapy, which meant fags and cider,
09:13and occasionally being able to save a few pennies so they could go on a girls' night out.
09:19They'd sneak back to the nurse's home long after the matron's curfew.
09:28So how did they get back in?
09:30Well, they did a deal with one of the nurses who'd stayed home,
09:34that she would always leave the window open just a little bit.
09:39So you'd get this cue in the early hours of a Sunday morning of all these giggling, tipsy nurses,
09:44all trying to get in together, back into the home.
09:49And fortunately, they usually got away with it.
09:53You'll notice I said usually.
09:56There was one occasion when they arrived back so late
10:00that the nurse on the ground floor had gone to bed.
10:03Luckily, a window in the toilets was still open.
10:07Mary was the first to squeeze in.
10:10But unfortunately, she landed right on top of a consultant
10:14who happened to be sitting there using the lav.
10:18And then on one night out, it happened.
10:21What's your name? Brian, actually.
10:24She met Brian, the salesman.
10:26Little did she know what a dramatic chain of events meeting Brian would trigger.
10:32Mary was crazy about Brian,
10:34and she wrote an excited letter back to Ireland
10:36to tell her sister just how much she loved him.
10:39Perhaps she'd forgotten how they'd feel back home
10:42about the very idea of seeing someone from Protestant England.
10:45One day, Mary was summoned to the matron's office,
10:50and she was astonished to find her mother and brother sitting there.
10:54Apparently, her mother had heard scandalous stories about Mary and an Englishman.
10:59So naturally, she'd rushed over to rescue her daughter and bring her back to the safety of Ireland.
11:06The problem was, she could.
11:09Mary was 20, but this was the 50s, and you weren't officially an adult till you were 21.
11:14So there was nothing the matron could do to stop her mother taking her away.
11:20What a disaster.
11:22It was 1954 and Mary's final year of training.
11:26And now, her dreams of becoming a nurse and a life with Brian were in tatters.
11:31Back in Ireland, Mary was confined to her room, a prisoner in her own home.
11:38Her mum kept the door locked and plied her with tablets, which made her very woozy.
11:45She tried to write to Brian, but her dad burnt her letters.
11:49Brian tried to write to her, but a friend of her dad's at the post office intercepted them.
11:54And then one day, there's a knock at the door and Brian's standing there.
12:00And he says, can I come in?
12:03And all hell breaks loose.
12:05Mary's mum comes rushing in and tells him to get out of here because he's a heathen swine.
12:10And Mary's going, why didn't you write?
12:12And Brian's going, I did. Why didn't you write?
12:15And Mary's going, I did.
12:17And then suddenly, Mary's dad's there with a shotgun, which is pointing right between Brian's eyes.
12:23And Mary's going, don't shoot. Don't shoot.
12:25And Brian's going, I'm not going anywhere till Mary tells me to.
12:29And Mary thinks, oh, no.
12:31He's going to have his face shut off. What am I going to do?
12:34And she says, Brian, go back to London. I never want to see you again.
12:40What a palaver.
12:43Brian left.
12:44And that would probably have been the end of it.
12:46But then something happened that would change everything.
12:49Something quite catastrophic.
12:54On December 2nd, 1955, there was a huge train crash at Barnes in London.
13:01Mary's hospital in nearby Putney was overwhelmed with casualties.
13:06One of the senior nurses sent her a letter, and it was addressed to her parents.
13:13So they opened it, and for some reason that Mary never quite understood, they let her read it.
13:19And it was a plea for her to come back to London to help.
13:23And presumably her mum and dad thought she wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
13:29But with the help of one of her sisters, who bought her a plane ticket, she went through the lounge window and escaped.
13:37She returned to Putney Hospital.
13:44Mary threw everything into nursing the casualties.
13:49She passed her exams, and then she married Brian.
13:52But she did so in secret, because nurses weren't allowed to get married.
13:57If they found out that she had, then she'd have had to leave her job and become a housewife.
14:02After all, this was the 1950s.
14:06No one did find out, and Mary kept working as a nurse until 2013, when she finally retired at the incredible age of 79, and settled down to write her autobiography.
14:25With the war well and truly behind us, the government stopped recycling metal for the war effort.
14:31But there was still a pressing need to recycle to support British industry.
14:38There are thousands of houses all over the country with attics or lumber rooms just like this one.
14:42Full of broken or discarded articles made of iron or steel.
14:45Useless to the owner, but valuable as scrap when it goes to the furnaces of the country's steelworks.
14:50So there was a niche to fill.
14:52An opportunity for the rag and bone men.
14:55Hurry up, you lazy nag.
14:57But they were being run ragged.
14:58Oh, give me a break.
15:01Reinforcements, though, were on the way.
15:04Having just returned from fighting Rommel in the desert,
15:07Manchester's John Bibby was looking for work.
15:11Apart from being a war hero, and there were plenty of those about,
15:15one thing John had in his favour was that he was as strong as an ox.
15:19And he didn't fancy working indoors, so he applied to be a tatter.
15:24In other words, he'd become a rag and bone man.
15:36It may not sound all that, what's the word, aspirational to us,
15:40but back in the 1950s, there was something of a rag and bone man renaissance going on.
15:52Why rags and bones?
15:54Well, rags and old clothes and old bed clothes had always been needed for stuffing mattresses and making carpet underlay,
16:03and bones were good for glue and fertiliser.
16:06But the problem with all that kind of stuff was it was pretty stinky and unpleasant.
16:11So, what a rag and bone man like John really wanted was metal.
16:21But many of these recyclers still called themselves rag and bone men.
16:27And even inspired a TV hit.
16:30You dirty, dirty old man.
16:32When I was a kid in the early 50s, sometimes I'd be hanging around outside the house,
16:41and this horse and cart and bloke would come down the street,
16:45and he'd be going,
16:47Heelry! Heelry!
16:50And I had no idea what Heelry meant until my dad later told me it was any old rags.
16:56It was the rag and bone man.
16:58And it was exactly the same with John.
17:01Every morning he would arrive at 8 o'clock sharp,
17:04and pick up his cart from scrap merchants,
17:07and he'd go round Chawton and Stratford going,
17:11Rag Booah! Rag Booah!
17:14Which was, of course, rag and bones.
17:19John rented an old hand cart from Atkinson's scrap yard for three shillings a week,
17:24one of 17 they had.
17:26He now had to make enough money to pay for that,
17:29and look after his wife and two kids.
17:33John was a tough short geezer with curly hair,
17:37and he always wore a double-breasted suit.
17:40Not the most practical item of apparel,
17:44but he liked to be smart and do his job well.
17:47He also wore a trilby.
17:50Now, why did they go out of fashion?
17:53He was known as Flash John.
17:56John began his day by prowling the deserted streets of Manchester,
18:05up and down, until eventually...
18:08Ah!
18:09Here we go.
18:11Nice bit of schmatter.
18:16He didn't even stop for lunch.
18:18Although sometimes he'd get a couple of pints of milk from the milkman.
18:23Cheers.
18:27Eventually, he'd find a couple of old bikes or an ironing board or whatever.
18:33To be frank, he preferred heavy iron to light steel.
18:37He made more money from it, but he was never picky,
18:40because if you were, it might undermine customer relations.
18:45More coats and some shoes.
18:47He just kept going all day until his cart looked full.
18:51Well, that would have been enough for most people, but not for John.
18:55Besides, he just had a tip-off.
18:57The people at number four were having a clear out.
19:01A reporter in the Manchester Guardian recorded John collecting
19:05an old gas stove and what seemed to be the greater part of a motor car,
19:10a wireless, a dining room chair, a mattress and a settee.
19:17Now, do it!
19:20Next, he just had to wheel it all back to the scrapyard.
19:25John returned to the yard at nightfall.
19:27All the stuff was weighed up.
19:28He got a pound for the sofa and a pound for everything else.
19:32Total, two pound.
19:36Which was actually about the average wage for the time.
19:40At last, John's gruelling 12-hour shift was done
19:44and he returned home to his tiny flat above a shop
19:48and to the person he called the best wife in the world.
19:52He'd be ready to go again in the morning.
19:54Maybe have a bit more luck next time.
19:56What a man.
19:58I don't think the Nazis stood a chance against someone like Flash John.
20:09The end of the war saw three million men return to Britain
20:14looking to resume their lives.
20:16Which meant that the women who had taken traditionally men's work
20:20were now expected to step aside,
20:23sweetened by the promise of a brave new future in the kitchen.
20:27A bit like those glamorous Americans.
20:31America was leading the consumer boom
20:34and Brits wanted some of it.
20:35But the reality was harder for the ordinary family.
20:39Rationing was still in place until 1954.
20:42Money was tight.
20:44From some of the films at the time,
20:47you'd think that the 50s was a great step forward for women
20:51in terms of domestic technology.
20:53But was it really?
20:55Not if you were a working-class woman like Doreen Turner.
21:01Here she is getting married to Ron in 1948.
21:05Having fought at Dunkirk, Normandy and Arnhem,
21:10Doreen's husband slotted back into a career making tractors.
21:14Doreen, though, had to jack her job in
21:18and think about home-making instead.
21:20Unusually for a working-class couple,
21:24Ron and Doreen shelled out to get their own place.
21:27They had a nice terraced house in Nuneaton,
21:31three bedrooms, one for Ron and Doreen,
21:34one for the boys and the other for all the girls.
21:37But they were very short of money, so they had a lodger.
21:40And he slept downstairs in the front room.
21:47The house still had an outside loo and coal fires,
21:50but no heating at all in the bedrooms.
21:53Historian Dr Ray Ritchie can fill me in on 1950s women's lifestyles.
21:59She also happens to be Doreen's great-niece.
22:02Is this kitchen like the one that she would have done all her work in?
22:07It's probably a lot more colourful
22:09than the one she'd have done her work in.
22:11So you may have had, like, one cabinet like this,
22:13but actually a lot of it would have been from a much earlier period
22:16because not everybody in the 50s had a 1950s kitchen.
22:19But people started to add things,
22:20so you might have started with an electric iron
22:23and then maybe a twin tub, but not an automatic washing machine.
22:27So that still involved quite a lot of labour,
22:28not as much as a dolly and a mango would have done,
22:31but, you know, still quite a lot of work.
22:36Doreen didn't even have a twin tub,
22:39let alone a fancy refrigerator.
22:41The meat was stored in the pantry meat-safe.
22:44Food went off really quickly,
22:45so she'd have to go shopping every day.
22:49Ron's wages only covered the essentials.
22:52So the catch was,
22:54if Doreen wanted all the latest labour-saving appliances,
22:58she'd need to work twice as hard and get a job.
23:02See that Debenhams?
23:06It used to be JC Smith's,
23:08and that was the biggest department store in Uneaton in the 1950s,
23:13and it's where Doreen worked.
23:15It was like a 50s fantasy.
23:18Ground floor, food hall, washing machines and cooking appliances.
23:24First floor, clothes in all the latest fashions.
23:29To entice consumers to part with their cash,
23:32a new concept was introduced, buying on credit.
23:36Now nothing was beyond reach.
23:39Now go on, you know you want to.
23:42Doreen struggled,
23:45but she was determined to juggle her job with looking after five kids,
23:51so they could enjoy the fruits of the 50s too.
23:54As a kid, my whole life was about reading.
23:59Puffin books, the heirloom library, and toys.
24:03Fuzzy Felt, Meccano, the magic robot which span round and round,
24:07and you asked it a question, and it pointed at the answer.
24:11Absolutely brilliant.
24:12Seemed like there was a new toy on the market every week.
24:16But the pressure on Doreen must have been immense
24:19to buy at least some of these things for their kids.
24:22I mean, who wouldn't want I spy sports cars?
24:28The dream for Doreen's family
24:30was to get just one of the magical consumer items
24:33that were constantly being advertised.
24:35Eventually, they felt sufficiently well off
24:38to be able to afford to rent a brand new machine
24:42which would transform their lives.
24:45Not a shiny washing machine.
24:48One of those.
24:50A telly.
24:52I wonder what's on.
24:54Doreen and her family joined the mushrooming TV audience
24:59who enjoyed just one channel,
25:00with 21 million tuning in to watch the Queen's coronation.
25:05Amazing.
25:06I could wash it all day.
25:08It'd be better when there's a picture.
25:10But the new contraption did nothing to help Doreen in the kitchen.
25:14So, sometimes, a family might decide to go for a television
25:18when they didn't have a washing machine,
25:20which to us might seem, well, like, the wrong way round.
25:22But it was about family entertainment.
25:24You could all sit around the TV at night and enjoy that.
25:28If Doreen had any time left after finishing all her chores, that is.
25:33With five young children to look after, it was no easy feat.
25:37Housework was often a thankless task.
25:39But Doreen took pride in her career,
25:42something she found especially rewarding.
25:46Doreen was considered unusual in her commitment to her job,
25:50that she really enjoyed it,
25:52and it was part of her life that she valued,
25:54rather than it just being a means to an end,
25:56that she wanted to earn some money.
26:01Look at this fantastic crockery.
26:04We used to have exactly the same stuff at home.
26:05It actually celebrates all the new things that people could buy.
26:09There was a coffee table and a cheese knife
26:12and a nice new sofa.
26:14But for Doreen, it wasn't really all these things
26:18that she could either buy or at least hope to buy,
26:22all this marvellous new stuff.
26:24It was the new friendships that she could make
26:27and the places that she could go to.
26:28In the 1950s, manufacturers retooled to supply the increasing demand
26:43from ordinary Brits, hungry for American-style luxury.
26:46Leading the way was American giant Ford,
26:50which transformed its Dagenham factory into the biggest in Europe,
26:55employing 50,000 workers to make one in three cars sold in Britain.
27:00Roy Nightingale was thrilled to get a job there.
27:04During the war, Roy was captured by the Germans
27:09and forced to work in a Nazi labour camp as a miner.
27:13He had to work really hard, otherwise he'd have been shot.
27:16So the idea of working here at Ford's must have been a dream.
27:20Roy lived with his family in a flat in a rundown four-storey house
27:28in New Cross, South London, one of the poorest parts of the city.
27:32Daughter Jean was a child at the time.
27:35There was one loo on the ground floor
27:38and that had to service all four levels
27:41and a lot of the rooms rented out were to, you know,
27:44people like the railway workers
27:46and they would go out on the lash on a Saturday night
27:48and, of course, on Sunday morning it was, like,
27:52pretty horrendous and Mum used to have to clean it all up.
28:01The Ford factory was a miracle of manufacturing.
28:04Iron ore went in at one end,
28:06shiny new cars were dispatched from its own docks at the other.
28:10Roy's first job was in the foundry,
28:13casting engine blocks from massive lumps of iron.
28:15The engine block is at the centre of the engine
28:19where the petrol's ignited in its cylinders.
28:22If he thought this was going to be easy,
28:24he had another thing coming.
28:28It was less of the American dream
28:30and more like a living nightmare.
28:34Working in temperatures of 50 degrees
28:37while inhaling thick metallic dust,
28:38Roy and the team could only work for 30 minutes at a time.
28:43Your dad's work was pretty tough, wasn't it?
28:46Yeah. Yeah.
28:48And because of his experience in the war,
28:50he didn't mind the graft.
28:52It was to provide for the family.
28:54So he was happy to do that.
28:56He took one day off when he was really ill with flu.
28:59That was the only day he ever took off.
29:01He was religious, he used to get there early,
29:02he would be the last to leave.
29:04But he also had a great sense of humour.
29:06So he was never miserable or grouchy.
29:09But yes, the work was hard.
29:12Apart from the heat,
29:14it was ear-splittingly loud and very, very dirty.
29:20Roy's overalls would get so filthy
29:22that it would take his wife Rose two days of scrubbing
29:28and wringing them in a wash tub like this,
29:31which of course made her hands all chapped and cracked
29:34just to get them ready for work again.
29:41But Roy never really saw his pay packet.
29:45What was this business about the pay packet on paydays?
29:48Mum always went down to Ford's Friday lunch times
29:50to pick up Dad's wages, which was always paid in cash.
29:54Yeah.
29:55Because she didn't trust my Dad.
29:57Because the men would often spend it in the pubs
30:00or down the bookies.
30:02She knew by them keeping hold of the cash
30:04that it would go on the right things, i.e. food and rent
30:06and all the rest of it, you know.
30:08But I think it was standard practice.
30:11Roy survived the foundry
30:13and got a job on the production line.
30:17On the plus side, he could breathe the air
30:19without putting his life in danger.
30:22From the downside...
30:25Working on the production line was mind-numbingly dull.
30:29Roy had to learn to work like a robot,
30:32doing exactly the same set of actions
30:34time and time and time again.
30:36So first, he'd have to go and pick up his components,
30:40which would take him ten seconds,
30:41and then he would walk back with them to the car.
30:45Another ten seconds.
30:46Get ready.
30:47Five seconds.
30:48Execute the job.
30:50Ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum.
30:52One minute, five seconds.
30:54Ready to start the whole thing all over again
30:56and again and again and again,
30:58remorselessly for eight hours.
31:01To get them through the day, the men would daydream.
31:04Smith is on the board.
31:06Some relived entire football matches.
31:09And scores.
31:11Roy preferred to escape to his beloved garden.
31:15He just had to keep going till the next break.
31:17The next break.
31:22They had two half-hour breaks
31:24and the toilet breaks were strictly supervised by the foreman.
31:29You had two minutes.
31:31Absolutely not anymore.
31:33If you went on any longer, the foreman would look at his watch
31:36and then he'd issue you with a warning.
31:43And this was the result.
31:45The Ford console.
31:48One of the great Fords of the 1950s.
31:51Isn't it absolutely gorgeous?
31:53Look at those lines.
31:55It's quite likely that Roy was actually involved in making this very car.
32:00He didn't have one himself.
32:02He had a Ford Popular which was a bit cheaper.
32:05But he was very proud of it.
32:08Cheaper car ownership transformed weekends.
32:12No longer reliant on public transport,
32:13Brits enjoyed family day trips.
32:17Ford's allure was delivering the American dream on a budget for cash-strapped Brits.
32:23There was something for everyone.
32:25From the flashy console to cheaper family cars such as Roy's Popular.
32:29And this 50s Anglia.
32:31And this 50s Anglia.
32:39A classy number.
32:41Yay!
32:430-50 in 24 seconds.
32:45What a car.
32:46Oh, I'm getting a lot of admiring looks.
32:52Oh, really soft brakes.
32:53Takes ages to stop it.
32:55Oh!
32:57Oh, it's like turning a tractor.
32:59One feature about this car is that the windscreen wipers go faster the slower the car goes.
33:09And if you wanted a heater, you had to pay extra.
33:13Lovely motor.
33:15I'd forgotten how underpowered these cars were compared with ours.
33:22The acceleration is like...
33:25And now, Roy's whole family was going places.
33:31Life changed for Roy's family thanks to one of the specially designed new towns.
33:40It was to be the largest government housing project of the century.
33:44Eight new towns built to solve the chronic housing shortage.
33:49This one was Basildon in Essex.
33:52Very handy for Dagnum.
33:54They now had a whole house all to themselves.
34:01What was that like?
34:02Beautiful.
34:03I remember getting off the train and the first thing that hit you is the air.
34:07And also the green.
34:09And cows.
34:10And I remember thinking, wow.
34:12And the house that we got, lavatory, bathroom, hot and cold running water.
34:17It was marvellous.
34:23Roy continued to work in nearby Dagnum till his retirement.
34:27Your dad worked at Falls for over 30 years, didn't he?
34:29Yes, he did.
34:30And he was given a clock.
34:31What's with a clock?
34:32It's one of these carriage clocks, you know.
34:34I felt aggrieved at the time because I felt he should have got a car.
34:37Because that was the least he deserved.
34:38You know, they're very lucky to have him.
34:40The 1950s saw Britain's place in the world change dramatically as its remaining empire began to disintegrate.
34:56But three and a half million of the empire's subjects had fought in the war for what they called the mother country and still felt close to Britain.
35:03One of them was Alan Wilmot, who served in the RAF.
35:08But his job didn't involve flying planes.
35:12He used a boat to rescue airmen who ditched into the English Channel.
35:17There's a British Spitfire.
35:20Which was actually a very dangerous job because search and rescue teams were often targeted by German warplanes.
35:27Having constantly put his life at risk, survived the war and played his part in the downfall of Nazi Germany, Alan was demobbed and returned home.
35:43All the way back to Jamaica.
35:45Alan's great passion was music and he was a fine singer, but it didn't make him a living.
35:57Even though he was well educated, opportunities were few and far between as Jamaica was still a British colony and the top jobs were taken by white men.
36:07So Alan decided to risk everything and return to Britain.
36:11Second time round though, things couldn't have been more different.
36:16People would come up to him and say,
36:18Oi, what are you still doing here? Don't you know the war's over?
36:22He suddenly found that his relationship with the people of this country had really changed.
36:29Now on Sivvy Street, despite the large number of vacancies, Alan found that being black made it extremely difficult to get work.
36:37Back then it was perfectly legal to refuse people work because of their ethnicity.
36:43Alan couldn't even find anywhere to stay.
36:46Landlords really did put up signs saying no blacks, no dogs, no Irish.
36:51This of course would be illegal today.
36:53That kind of attitude makes you wonder what some Brits thought they'd been fighting Hitler for in the first place.
36:58Alan was so desperate for somewhere to stay that he'd catch the last underground train and sleep in a carriage overnight.
37:09All rooms have an excellent view of Hounslow sidings. There is no minibar available.
37:14Then he'd travel back the next day to continue his slog in search of work.
37:20Welcome to Waterloo Station. Washing facilities are conveniently located in the Gems.
37:27When he did eventually find work, it was menial jobs.
37:32In the evenings, he began to sing in the new Caribbean music clubs in London and started dreaming of a career in music.
37:43Music and entertainment, to a certain extent, offered solace from what you would experience on the streets every day.
37:50Kevin Legend is an expert in black music.
37:57The first black music I remember as a kid on the radio was Calypso.
38:01It's really important. It's the heart and soul of the Caribbean, to a certain extent,
38:05because it gives people an opportunity to tell stories about their daily lives.
38:09But also, it's not just about what happens in the West Indies.
38:13You can write calypsos about the royals in the UK, and you can write calypsos about coming to the UK.
38:18Do we know whether Alan sang or wrote calypsos?
38:23I don't know whether he wrote calypsos, but he certainly got involved with a great calypso singer from Trinidad, who's Edric Connor.
38:30Edric Connor, Lord Kitchener, and a number of Caribbeans were part of the growing West Indian music scene.
38:39And that was where Alan wanted to be.
38:41So, with his brother Harold and a Jamaican friend, they formed a band called the Ken Hunter Trio.
38:49They're actually pretty good. They went on tour, played various clubs, but they didn't make much money.
38:54It beat Sleeping Rough on the Tube, but he was restless.
39:02Alan felt he was destined for something bigger, and then the opportunity came.
39:07He and his brother got the call to come down to the recording studio and put the backing vocals on a record.
39:12The call had come from Edric Connor. Their recording went so well that they formed a vocal group called the Southlanders.
39:24Oh, sorry, this is probably a 45.
39:28Chipmunk remix.
39:29It is, isn't it?
39:31And their popularity began to take off.
39:33Put the needle on the record.
39:35I think I remember the song.
39:38They were to have a string of hits, including Alone, Mole in a Hole, and Put a Light in the Window.
39:44There's a house on the corner, on the corner of the street.
39:52It's actually incredibly commercial, isn't it?
39:55We've been talking about, like, the ethnicity of Calypso and all that, but this is a three-minute single for a mass market.
40:02Yeah, and it's basically something which shows just how influenced they were by American models.
40:09Those doo-wop type harmonies?
40:10Do the blues, doo-wop. This is something that would have been part of their basic vocabulary.
40:15Gonna grand them steers, gonna ring them bells, before I lose my nerves, I got a ring.
40:20Is that Alan, that solo voice?
40:22I think so, but the interesting thing is that you hear how the Caribbean identity comes through at that point.
40:29Because he's not saying ring those bells, he's saying ring them bells.
40:32His accent is unmistakable.
40:34Tonight, tonight, put a light in the window.
40:37The Southlanders were also a great live act and were soon supporting stars such as Cliff Richard and Shirley Bassey.
40:45While they were successful, were they making a lot of money?
40:49If you're talking about having that status in society and being accepted by the mainstream, then no.
40:54But he did have an E-type?
40:55He did have an E-type Jag, and I believe that he was stopped by the police for driving his E-type Jag, which again reminds us of the perils of being black at that point in time.
41:05But I think the other part of that story, which is quite funny, is that when it became clear that he was a singer and an entertainer of note, one of the officers asked for an autograph.
41:18So, you never know when fame is going to catch up with you.
41:22And that in itself is a very important thing. It's like you can have status as an entertainer, but when it comes to civilian life, doing something basic like getting a mortgage, no, it didn't happen.
41:37What happened after that?
41:38So, the Southlanders, they kept going until the early 60s, and then they broke up.
41:43Oh, tragic. It's worse than the Beatles splitting up.
41:47Well, the Beatles were one of the reasons why the Southlanders probably split up, because the arrival of the Beatles and the Stones and the whole rock and pop movement basically did for those groups who were very successful in the 50s.
42:01But Alan had had a blast, especially after such a difficult start.
42:05He did eventually even manage to get a mortgage through a Caribbean support group.
42:11And in 1964, he married Joyce, a nurse, also from the West Indies.
42:18After the break-up of the Southlanders, Alan eventually left the music business and returned to something a bit more steady, if not nearly as exciting.
42:28A telephone operator with the post office.
42:30Alan's is a wonderful story of heroism and optimism and ambition against all the odds.
42:38Amazing to think how many people his music must have cheered up during the 1950s.
42:43I rather think quite a lot of them would have needed it.
42:45She reagent
42:51age
42:52Very interesante
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42:55He
42:56would have needed it.
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