Looking Back, with Eric Leaver

IF THE thought of shopping for Christmas grub is already driving you nuts, think what nightmare it was 50 years ago when Britain, almost bankrupted by the war, was beset by widespread rationing and hardship.

It was so bad that, in that third Christmas of peacetime, anyone wanting a pound of walnuts or brazils to go with their festive spread had to pay 10 shillings or more - almost a man's daily wage.

Despite a call by small shopkeepers for the country's stocks of scarce Christmas nuts to be sold through normal channels, the Ministry of Food put them up for auction instead.

It reaped £750,000 profit - equivalent to more than £16 million today - for the state's depleted coffers but it meant that, in the shops, nut prices went crackers and soared to five times what they would have been.

But the outrage hardly mattered to Food Minister John Strachey. He was already the least popular man in the starved country - except with black market racketeers who were making a killing selling commodities in short supply at sums way beyond their officially-controlled prices.

Even potatoes had gone on ration that winter, joining bread - another item that was never rationed even during the worst of the war that had ended two years before - as yet another basic foodstuff "on points." There were even fears that the fortnightly bacon ration would be cut to two ounces.

Surveying a food situation worsening from day to day and the struggle that East Lancashire housewives faced in providing a decent Christmas dinner, the Northern Daily Telegraph's editor asked where all the country's spuds had gone - as half the country's crop that year had "disappeared."

He provided the answer himself, pointing to an October speech by Cabinet minister Ernest Bevin which hinted that potatoes might have to be rationed. A scramble for spuds ensued and, said the paper, eventual rationing came too late to prevent big purchases, "some probably with a view to subsequent black market dealings." In turn, the potato famine caused a run on other vegetables, leading MPs to demand price controls be slapped on them. As it was, sprouts were costing up to 10 old pence a pound that Christmas and cabbages the same amount each. But if furnishing the trimmings for Christmas dinner was a strain on the housewife's purse, what of the most important item on the menu - the turkey?

Mr Strachey promised that 2,230 more tons of turkey would be available for the nation's Christmas Day feast than the year before. His Christmas "bonus" that year also included an extra sixpence (2p) worth of carcase meat for adults and half that for children; there would be four ounces of chocolates and sweets for everyone and an extra pound of sugar.

And he reminded people that they were allowed to save up one week's meat ration so that they could have a whole half-crown's (12p) worth during Christmas week and vegetarians who surrendered their meat and bacon coupons could have an extra six ounces of cheese in return.

But the Northern Daily Telegraph's reporters found that, in East Lancashire, the Christmas bird had flown. Meat traders were demanding the immediate removal of the price controls on poultry - turkey was 5s 3d (28p) a pound, goose 4s 3d (23p) and chicken 4s (20p) - and rabbits, warning that, otherwise, few people would get their traditional fowl.

"We are perturbed at the black market prices," said a spokesman.

But a Burnley trader said people were prepared to pay any price to get a bird as local turkeys were impossible to obtain at anywhere near the controlled price. It was, said the newspaper's women's editor, the worst Christmas yet for turkeys, and butchers across the region agreed that it was also going to be one without pork.

Indeed, such was the scarcity of table birds, when a dozen ducks disappeared from Darwen's Bold Venture Park, people put two and two together - but got five. The council had had them destroyed because they had become ill.

"They were useless for eating," said the parks superintendent.

There were plenty of apples, oranges and grapefruit available, but, in Blackburn, no bananas - as the ship carrying the town's allocation was diverted to a southern port.

People could only slaver at memories of the seasonal feast that East Lancashire folk could enjoy in the so-called Hungry '30s.

Then, for 17 weeks' contributions, totalling £1 4s 5d (£1.22), one Christmas club's subscribers got a 7lb turkey, one large fat rabbit, lb of steak, lb of chops, lb of sausage, a half-pound Christmas pudding, 5lb of potatoes, 1lb of onions, 2lb of carrots and turnips, 1lb of flour, a tin of pineapple chunks, a one-pint jelly, a packet of cream crackers, 1lb of best peas, 1/4lb of tea, lb of currants, a packet or salt and a packet of Bisto.

A Northern Daily Telegraph reader complained that the Government had failed to stop the black market spiv "who is robbing his neighbours and even their little children of their food" and had failed to distribute food fairly so that "rich, idle people want for nothing while workers have to exist as best they can on meagre rations."

But it was not just food that was hard to find at Christmas, 1947. Spirits were "almost unobtainable." Whisky was controlled at 31s (£1.55) a bottle, but "non-quota" scotch was selling at up to £4 a bottle and one producer took the unusual step of advertising his brand - to say it could hardly be had...due to "shortage of supplies and the need for greater exports in the national interest."

Cigarettes and better quality sweets were hard to get and mistletoe was in its shortest supply for 40 years.

The basic petrol ration was cancelled that winter so most motorists had to lay up their cars.

Less beer was likely to be available in the New Year and it would taste a "little different" as the Government cut brewers' sugar supplies. The domestic coal ration, on which most East Lancashire homes depended, though set at 30 cwt for the six winter months from November was cut to just four bags a month by coal merchants due to "reduced supplies." Some areas also experienced gas cuts and district-by-district power cuts began to hit homes during the mornings at times of peak industrial demand.

Logs and peat were advertised as alternatives for the domestic grate and the Northern Daily Telegraph's women's editor advised that "a few handfuls of twigs gathered from the roadside can make a very respectable Christmas blaze."

Clothes and textiles were rationed by coupons - it took six to buy a shirt - and readers were told that they could make an acceptable Christmas gift of a pair of gloves from coupon-free felt. But even more hardship on the clothes front loomed as the accelerated peacetime release of men from the armed forces meant that the Government would have to find an extra 300,000 "demob" suits in the coming six months - and that would mean one million fewer yards of "utility" cloth for the civilian market.

But among the few items that were more plentiful were the toys in Santa's sack. They were also more varied and better-made than the year before and even steep prices did not prevent a rush to fill Christmas stockings.

Even so, all thousands of East Lancashire folk wanted to do that Christmas was escape from the everyday austerity. They went in droves to hotels in Blackpool where the festivities promised to be "on a bigger scale than any Christmas since before the war."

But Santa did not forget the stay-at-homes. Eighty pensioners living alone in Accrington received food parcels sent from Australia and, thanks to the early arrival of the trans-Atlantic liner, the Mauretania, on Christmas morning postmen in Blackburn and Burnley delivered 10,000 parcels of "off-ration cheer" to homes in each town - in the form of food parcels, weighing 15lb each, sent by relatives and friends in the United States.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.