The Spirit of '45
(JAZZ)
This is a tremendous moment.
The war is over.
I cry a little.
I think of my dearest friends,
of those men fighting
in the services I've known.
Piccadilly was already
a seething mass of people.
was crowded with young people,
mainly from the Forces.
People were everywhere.
On shop fronts, up lamp standards,
singing and shouting.
I can remember my father taking me
to school one day.
There was a house absolutely flat
on the floor
and a woman standing outside and saying,
"I only washed my windows yesterday."
The nurses' home was hit in 1940.
Then again in 1941,
and it was completely destroyed.
The main surgeon, Mr Grey, he was killed
and quite a few
of the doctors and nurses.
And two wards of maternity
with about 50 babies and mothers
and other casualties as well.
I always... Every 3rd of May,
I could go over it again.
# When we go strolling
in the park at night #
# All the darkness is a boon #
# Who cam if we're without a light #
# They can't black out the moon #
# I see you smiling
in the cigarette glow #
# Though the picture fades too soon #
# But I see all... #
# Kiss me once
Then kiss me twice #
# Then kiss me once again #
# It's been a long, long time #
# Haven't felt like this, my dear #
# It's been along... #
Underlying our joy and thankfulness,
there is one uneasy question.
What about the future?
What will happen now'?
Will we, the people
who have won the war,
drive home our victory against fascism
By defeating our pre-war enemies
of poverty and unemployment?
I think the expectation was,
'We are not going back
to the Britain of the 1930s."
'We're..." It was "never again".
It wasn't only "never again" about war.
It was "never again"
about that kind of peace
where everything was run by rich people
for rich people.
The mood among
the people that I was with
was that basically it was them and us.
The officers were
on one side of the barrier
and we were
on the other side of the barrier.
People were all very much afraid
that what happened
would happen after the second, which was
enormous poverty and adversity.
I mean, I worked with people in the last
war who, basically between the wars,
had gone long periods
without any jobs at all.
I don't think people were greedy
for a lot of things those days.
They just wanted to live peaceful,
have a job,
have children and have a home life.
I think just everybody wanted a good
home life with their families, you know.
I was born 87 years ago
in the slums of Liverpool
a street called Mellor Street.
I was one of eight children.
And we slept five in a bed.
In my bed there was three lads
and two girls.
We got into bed of a night
with a bed full of vermin.
When I say full of vermin,
I mean the bugs.
The fleas were in hundreds in the beds.
And we got in the beds.
There was nothing we could do about it
because they were in the building,
behind the wallpaper,
in the skirting boards.
And we just got in that bed
and lived with them.
And next morning
when we went to school,
we would have the cane
Every Monday morning,
we were meant to take the bundles
up to the pawn shops,
which were in the city area.
And I'd get on the trams
and the tram conductor would say,
"Dalgleish is the next stop."
"Browns. I'll be at Browns
giving a good price today, ladies."
And when it got to the terminus,
he'd say, "All away, Poverty Park
And it really was a poverty park.
The '30s for me, I can remember
quite vividly, was no shoes on my feet.
Having spoonfuls of malt,
this horrible malt,
when we went into school
to try and stop the rickets.
And coming home from school
coming from somewhere.
Then all we used to have was a bowl
of com flakes or something like that.
Coming home in the evening,
you'd probably have a big, big plate
full of swedes and potatoes
with no meat.
They didn't have a carpet on the floor.
And when we used to visit,
they'd scrubbed the floorboards.
And if they'd just scrubbed
the floorboards,
paper down on the floor.
My grandfather's suit had to go
into the pawn shop on the Monday,
in order that they had
some money not only to live,
but also for the youngest son,
vino had a kidney complaint,
to pay for his doctor's fees.
Then they'd get it out again
when he got his money on a Friday,
so that he could wear his suit
to go to the pub.
Bread and jam
They talk about bread and dripping.
You had to have beef to make dripping,
so the chances of having dripping
were remote.
It was more often than not
bread and jam.
three children died
between the ages of...
...two and four.
Two died at the same time.
And I can recall
putting two coffins across our knees
in a one-horse coach...
...and the one-horse coach
taking us to the cemetery.
And as I recall,
them two coffins went on top
of other coffins at the cemetery.
The other thing
was the long periods
when, because of the militancy,
they closed the pit down altogether
and we had to go
picking coal off the tips.
My grandfather and my father,
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