IT has of course happened before: lockdown or its equivalent and for much longer; for six years to be exact.
From 1940 to 1946 British factories were roaring with overtime. There was only one problem: nothing they produced was for domestic consumption. Tins of meat or vegetables and guns were their only products and they were for our vast military abroad. There were clothing factories but they only produced military uniforms. My father did get one: an ill-fitting khaki thing which he got from the Home Guard, along with a Sten gun. I played with it behind his back and he took it with him on a military motor bike when he went to teach Morse code to troops in Aberdeenshire.
Rationing was extremely strict for food, clothing, household goods and much else. I had an aunt who bought ration books from a poor family and she was despised and shunned. So too was a neighbour who stole coal from another’s coal box. My sister did get her white wedding dress. But she made it from parachute silk.
My cousin was not so lucky. My uncle had brought home from the Somme in 1918 a cherished kilt and his daughter wanted to turn it into a coat. He refused and they didn’t speak for three weeks.
My family only had only one holiday. A week in Strichen. It lasted for three days and I was glad. I had slept on the floor and it rained every day.
There was the bombing, of course. Three of our distant neighbours were blown to bits with their houses. And there were the dreaded telegrams: my friend Donald came in tears in June, 1944. His brother had been killed on the Normandy beaches. We sat on my doorstep and cried.
And on it went. Nobody went out at night. The blackout was total, there were no streets lamps and torch batteries were too precious. We listened to the radio and my father traced the war on a huge map glued to our longest wall.
At last it ended in May, 1945, but not really. Clement Atlee became Prime Minister and he had a great knowledge of John Maynard Keynes, who devised a scheme to get two million troops back to work along with their civilian counterparts.
Rationing had to continue (till 1951) because our international debts had to be repaid with our own exported output.
At last we were free. During the war and for years after we had been in our gardens to “Dig for Victory”.
Now we must do the same.
James A Findlay, Edinburgh EH3.
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