The Baby Boomer Generation Read Free Page A

through to the mid-1960s, but the period immediately following the war is the time that most people associate with the birth of the baby boomers. It was these babies who were to become the innocent children of the fifties and the pioneering teenagers of the 1960s. Born to parents who had only known hardship and suffering for most of their lives, it was hoped that these baby boomers would grow up in a safer world that would be full of opportunity.
    The nation was eager to get started on rebuilding the country’s damaged and worn-out cities and to help create the new dawn that had been promised for us all. However, within two months of Churchill being hailed as the hero of the hour, the British public turfed him out of office. In the July 1945 general election, the people of the United Kingdom decided that the man who had led Britain so well in war was not the man to lead the nation in peace, and instead they elected a new Labour Government into office. Clement Attlee became the new prime minister with a mandate to change the face of Britain, to maintain full employment and greatly enlarge our system of social services. Our parents and grandparents had now started the ball rolling. Their aim was to create a better future for us baby boomers. They didn’t know where it would lead but they wanted their children to have greater opportunities and to strive for more than they could have ever hoped for.
    Britain in the 1940s allowed few opportunities for young people to better themselves and so their ambitions were usually simple ones: to get a job and put food on the table, the same as it had been for generations. Some managed to break out of the mould but those with limited education would more often than not become industrial workers doing some sort of manual work, which would usually mean performing the same tasks on just one machine for the rest of their working lives. There was plenty of work available but where you lived often determined the type of work you did. If you grew up in a mining village then from an early age you were destined to go down the mines. A grammar school education was a route to a profession, but for most working-class people the idea of developing a career was not something they even thought about. When kids left school at the age of 14 or 15 their only concern was to get a job and to keep it; it was both a matter of pride and necessity to be in regular work. Family members of working age were expected to contribute a sizable proportion of their take-home pay towards housekeeping costs. Many youngsters gave their pay packet to their mum at the end of each week and she would give them back a small amount of money each day to pay for their travel and get them through the day; the rest would go towards the housekeeping. Even highly motivated young people found it very hard to carve out a worthwhile career. British employers were not particularly efficient in the way they ran their businesses. It was all very traditional, following a well-trodden path handed down from the generations before. Managers didn’t go to business school but instead learned their skills through their own boss. This was a hopeless situation because most business leaders were ex-public schoolboys who had no management skills themselves. Nepotism was rife in business and there was a huge gap between management and workers. Men ran industry and they employed men for any skilled and managerial jobs, while women worked on assembly lines, did the typing, ran errands and made the tea. The poor management skills and the short-sightedness of untrained people at the top set the tone for the way British industry was run and helps explained why, as a manufacturing nation, we were achieving such poor productivity. Our manufacturing industry was providing lots of jobs and producing all the right things, but we could not efficiently produce enough. It was difficult for business bosses to see where they were going wrong; many had blinkers