Tony Robinson's History of Britain (2020): Season 2, Episode 3 - 1950s - full transcript

Our British history is rich
with tales of wealth and power

and all that political nonsense,

the glamour of our kings and queens,

the jewels and furs and charisma,

and all those heads
being chopped off...

(METALLIC CLANG, SCREAM)

..but what about the real people
who made everything happen?

(GASPS)

(BABY CRIES)
(YELLS)

I'll discover what they ate...

It's a bit... stodgy.



..the challenges they faced...

(GRUFFLY) "Stuff this
for a game of soldiers!"

..and how they built Britain.

That's straight as a die.

I'm going to uncover
the extraordinary lives

of some of history's ordinary people.

Hut!

Romans...

It's quite a weight on the head,
I have to say.

..Edwardians...

Breathe in, madam, breathe in.

..1950s...

Put the needle on the record.

Ooh, really soft brakes -
takes ages to stop it.



..and the Middle Ages.

There's the executive model
inside the house.

(APATHETICALLY) "Whatever."

History... from the bottom up.

(BIRD TWITTERS)

(SWING MUSIC)

This time I'm going back
to the 1950s.

It was a time of optimism...

..as Brits picked themselves up
from the Second World War.

We had a new young queen

and celebrated hopes of a brighter
future with the Festival of Britain.

When I was a kid in the 1950s,

it never occurred to me that
it was a particularly special decade.

As far as I knew, it was just the way
the world had always been.

I had no understanding
that, for the older generation,

there'd been a terrible depression
followed by a ghastly war.

And I certainly couldn't imagine life
without the NHS.

NEWSREEL: July 5, the new
National Health Service starts.

But it was just getting going

and the early '50s saw a massive
recruitment drive for nurses.

They came from across the world,
from the West Indies to Ireland,

part of an unprecedented period
of immigration

that bolstered both the NHS
and the impoverished British economy.

Mary Powell
had dreamt of becoming a nurse

since she was a small girl
growing up in Ireland.

She couldn't afford tuition fees,

but in Britain,
the training was free.

In 1952, a week before
her 18th birthday,

Mary packed her things
and left Ireland behind her.

She flew from Dublin to Northolt
Airport, just outside London,

and then got a bus to Putney
and her new home.

This was despite furious resistance
from her mother,

who thought that England
was some kind of ungodly hellhole.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

As a staunch Catholic,

she was dead against Mary living
in a Protestant England.

From the windows of her London bus

seeing bomb damage
still being repaired,

Mary must have wondered whether
it actually WAS a bit of a hellhole.

She eventually arrived
at the rebuilt Putney Hospital

to start her three years
of training.

(FLOURISHING MUSIC)

The NHS was amazing,
offering a high level of care,

but the world that Mary walked into

was as regimented and as ruthless
as an army

run by an all-powerful general -
the matron.

I should like to see you
in my office when you go off duty.

Yes, matron.

Everything that Mary's matron said
was law

and her loyal officers
were the sisters who ran the wards.

Matron behaved like
some sort of colonial officer.

She ruled from her office
with a rod of iron.

Matron's powers even extended
to the nurse's private lives.

It was she who decided
what time they went to bed

and made sure that there was
no-one else tucked up with them.

And if a nurse ever did decide
to get married, well, that was it -

she had to leave the profession.

It 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.

No, I'm sorry.

Debbie Quinn is a practising nurse
and knows Mary's story.

So she arrives on the first day.

What kind of environment
would she have been confronted with?

The wards
that you would have trained in

would have been what we call
the Nightingale wards,

the long wards
with the table in the middle.

Very, very, very strict.

Just when I thought
I was really being good,

sister ticks me off for being
too slow, sends me to matron.

"I don't like your attitude, Nurse."

"That's mutual then," said I,
"because I don't like yours."

You didn't.
No, but one day I will.

Your first experience on the wards
is very much about the cleaning,

about the tidying up.

It would have been
a lot of cleaning bedpans,

making sure the area
is clean and sterile.

What would the environment
that she worked in have been like?

They would have been woken up
very early, between 5:30 and 6:00.

They would have been expected
to have made their beds,

get everything straight,
get themselves into their uniform,

which was a lot more complicated
than where we are today.

You know, you're talking of a dress, you're
talking of cuffs, you're talking of an apron.

Proper hats.
Hats were got rid of in the 1990s.

(BRIGHT, SWIRLING MUSIC)

To begin with, trainees weren't
trusted to treat real patients.

They had to practise endlessly
on a dummy called Araminta.

This is Araminta, or should I say
one of Araminta's friends.

This is a medical dummy

like Mary would have used
when she was in training.

This is how she would have learned
about the human body

and in particular,
how to administer medical procedures

like giving an injection
or a bed bath or an enema.

Although it looks as though
you've just had one, love.

Inside her were models
of all the important organs.

After three months in the classroom,

the day came
for Mary to apply her learning

to a living, breathing human being.

(AS MATRON) "Give the man
his injection, stop fussing

"and get on with it,"
said the sister.

Sadly, the actual patient
wasn't available for our filming

but the following did actually happen
to a real person.

Mary was terrified.

She picked up the kidney-shaped dish
and the syringe

and gingerly moved forward.

Mary had been provided
with a thick antibiotic mixture

that had to be injected
right into his bottom.

She tries to stay cool.

"Mr Brown," she said.

"I'm just going to give you
a tiny injection.

"Would you mind rolling over
onto your side

"and dropping your pyjama trousers?"

And then, bam,
she administered the injection.

But it didn't go into the muscle,
as it was supposed to,

and his bottom swelled up.

Mary was in floods of tears.

She thought she'd get the sack,

but all the sister said was...

"Toughen up, Powell."

Mr Brown eventually recovered
and told Mary,

"Never mind,
it could have been worse."

But worse was to come.

Mary also had to learn
to support the consultant surgeons

during operations...

..and found their bombastic attitude
a little alarming.

(AS DOCTOR) Forceps.
(AS NURSE) Forceps.

Scalpel.
Scalpel.

Spleen.
Yes.

Cracking game of golf with Caruthers
on Sunday.

There's the gall bladder.
Leg coming off.

"Dirty nurse."

Her first role as a student nurse
in theatre

was what was known
as the 'dirty nurse'.

What's this expression
a 'dirty nurse'?

In theatres,
obviously, for infection control,

you want to keep instruments clean,

and when they're dirty,
you want them to go away.

You don't want them
to be near a clean area.

Your clean nurse would be the nurse

that passes all the clean equipment
to the consultant.

The dirty nurse removes
the dirty stuff, so the dirty swabs,

the dirty instruments,
possibly limbs, whatever.

(AS DOCTOR) "Nurse! Dirty nurse!
This is for you."

(AS DIRTY NURSE) "Just coming."

Mary felt she was born to be a nurse

but it was an enormously draining
job, both physically and emotionally.

Mary worked a 12-hour day
plus time for meals.

She wasn't allowed
to live outside the hospital

until she'd qualified.

Mary lived in a nurses' home
with the other trainees

in the hospital grounds.

They all got on really well together.

But they were paid just £10 a month.

Most of which they spent
on what they called therapy,

which meant fags and cider,

and occasionally
being able to save a few pennies

so they could go
on a girls' night out.

(JAZZ MUSIC)

They'd sneak back to the nurses' home
long after the matron's curfew.

So how did they get back in?

Well, they did a deal with one
of the nurses who'd stayed home

that she would always leave
the window open just a little bit.

So you get this queue in the early
hours of Sunday morning

of all these giggling, tipsy nurses,

all trying to get in together,
back into the home.

And fortunately,
they usually got away with it.

You'll notice I said 'usually'.

(OWLS HOOT)

There was one occasion
when they arrived back so late

that the nurse on the ground floor
had gone to bed.

Luckily, a window in the toilets
was still open.

Mary was the first to squeeze in

but, unfortunately, she landed
right on top of a consultant

who happened to be sitting there,
using the lav.

And then, on one night out,
it happened.

(AS MARY)
"Alright? What's your name?"

"Brian, actually."

She met Brian, the salesman.

Little did she know
what a dramatic chain of events

meeting Brian would trigger.

Mary was crazy about Brian

and she wrote an excited letter
back to Ireland

to tell her sister
just how much she loved him.

Perhaps she'd forgotten
how they'd feel back home

about the very idea of seeing someone
from Protestant England.

One day, Mary was summoned
to the matron's office

and she was astonished to find
her mother and brother sitting there.

Apparently, her mother had heard
scandalous stories

about Mary and an Englishman.

So naturally, she'd rushed over
to rescue her daughter

and bring her back
to the safety of Ireland.

The problem was she could.

Mary was 20, but this was the '50s,

and you weren't officially an adult
till you were 21.

So there was nothing
the matron could do

to stop her mother taking her away.

What a disaster.

It was 1954
and Mary's final year of training

and now her dreams of becoming
a nurse and a life with Brian

were in tatters.

Back in Ireland,
Mary was confined to her room,

a prisoner in her own home.

Her mum kept the door locked

and plied her with tablets,
which made her very woozy.

She tried to write to Brian
but her dad burnt her letters.

Brian tried to write to her

but a friend of her dad's
at the post office intercepted them.

And then one day,
there's a knock at the door

and Brian's standing there

and he says, "Can I come in?"

And all hell breaks loose.

Mary's mum comes rushing in
and tells him to get out of here

because he's a heathen swine.

And Mary's going,
"Why didn't you write?"

And Brian's going,
"I did! Why didn't you write?"

And Mary's going, "I did!"

And then suddenly
Mary's dad's there with a shotgun,

which is pointing
right between Brian's eyes.

And Mary's going,
"Don't shoot, don't shoot!"

And Brian's going, "I'm not going
anywhere until Mary tells me to."

And Mary thinks, "Oh, no.
He's gonna have his face shot off.

"What am I going to do?"

And she says,
"Brian, go back to London.

"I never want to see you again."
(DOOR SLAMS)

What a palaver.

Brian left and that would probably
have been the end of it.

But then something happened
that would change everything.

Something quite catastrophic.

On 2 December 1955,

there was a huge train crash
at Barnes in London.

Mary's hospital in nearby Putney
was overwhelmed with casualties.

One of the senior nurses
sent her a letter

and it was addressed to her parents.

So they opened it and for some reason
that Mary never quite understood,

they let her read it.

And it was a plea for her
to come back to London to help.

And presumably,
her mum and dad thought

she wouldn't be able to do
anything about it.

But with the help
of one of her sisters

who bought her a plane ticket,

she went through the lounge window
and escaped.

She returned to Putney Hospital.

Mary threw everything
into nursing the casualties,

she passed her exams
and then she married Brian,

but she did so in secret

because nurses weren't allowed
to get married.

If they found out that she had,

then she'd have had to leave her job
and become a housewife.

After all, this was the 1950s.

No-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.

With the war
well and truly behind us,

the government stopped recycling
metal for the war effort,

but there was still
a pressing need to recycle

to support British industry.

NEWSREEL: There are thousands
of houses all over the country

with attics or lumber rooms
just like this one,

full of broken or discarded articles
made of iron or steel,

useless to the owner,
but valuable as scrap

when it goes to the furnaces
of the country's steelworks.

So there was a niche to fill,

an opportunity
for the rag-and-bone men.

"Hurry up, you lazy nag!"

But they were being run ragged.

(AS HORSE) "Oh, give me a break."
(WHINNIES)

Reinforcements, though,
were on the way.

Having just returned from fighting
Rommel in the desert,

Manchester's John Bibby
was looking for work.

Apart from being a war hero,
and there were plenty of those about,

one thing John had in his favour
was that he was as strong as an ox

and he didn't fancy working indoors

so he applied to be a tatter.

In other words,

he'd become a rag-and-bone man.

(JAUNTY MUSIC)

It may not sound all that -
what's the word - aspirational to us,

but back in the 1950s,

there was something of a rag-and-bone
man renaissance going on.

Why rags and bones?

Well, rags and old clothes
and old bedclothes

had always been needed
for stuffing mattresses

and making carpet underlay,

and bones were good for glue
and fertiliser.

But the problem
with all that kind of stuff was

it was pretty stinky and unpleasant.

So what a rag-and-bone man like John
really wanted was metal.

(SHOUTS)

But many of these recyclers still
called themselves rag-and-bone men.

And even inspired a TV hit.

"You dirty, dirty old man."

(GROANS)

When I was a kid in the early '50s,

sometimes I'd be hanging around
outside the house

and this horse and cart and bloke
would come down the street

and he'd be going...

(CALLS IN LOCAL DIALECT)

And I had no idea what...
(CALLS IN LOCAL DIALECT) ..meant

until my dad later told me
it was 'any old rags'.

It was the rag-and-bone man.

And it was exactly the same
with John.

Every morning,
he would arrive at 8:00 sharp

and pick up his cart
from the scrap merchants

and he'd go round Chorlton
and Stretford

going... (CALLS IN LOCAL DIALECT)

..which was, of course,
'rag and bones'.

John rented an old hand cart
from Atkinson's scrapyard

for three shillings a week,
one of 17 they had.

He now had to make enough money
to pay for that

and look after his wife and two kids.

John was a tough, short geezer
with curly hair

and he always wore
a double-breasted suit,

not the most practical item
of apparel,

but he liked to be smart
and do his job well.

He also wore... a trilby.

Now, why did they go out of fashion?

He was known as Flash John.

(SULTRY MUSIC)

John began his day by prowling
the deserted streets of Manchester,

up and down until eventually...

Ah! Here we go.

Nice bit of shmatter.

He didn't even stop for lunch.

Although sometimes, he'd get a couple
of pints of milk from the milkman.

Cheers.

Eventually, he'd find a couple
of old bikes or an ironing board

or whatever.

To be frank, he preferred heavy iron
to light steel,

he made more money from it.

But he was never picky,

'cause if you were, it might
undermine customer relations.

More coats and some shoes.

He just kept going all day
until his cart looked full.

Well, that would have been enough
for most people, but not for John.

Besides, he'd just had a tip-off -

the people at number 4
were having a clear out.

A reporter in the Manchester Guardian
recorded John collecting

an old gas stove, what seemed to be
the greater part of a motor car,

a wireless, a dining room chair,

a mattress and a settee.

Now do it! (GROANS)

Next, he just had to wheel it
all back to the scrapyard.

John returned to the yard
at nightfall.

All the stuff was weighed up,
he got a pound for the sofa

and a pound for everything else.

Total - £2.

Which was actually about
the average wage for the time.

At last, John's gruelling
12-hour shift was done

and he returned home
to his tiny flat above a shop

and to the person he called
the best wife in the world.

He'd be ready to go again
in the morning.

Maybe have a bit more luck next time.
What a man.

I don't think the Nazis
stood a chance

against someone like Flash John.

(JAUNTY MUSIC)

The end of the war
saw 3 million men return to Britain

looking to resume their lives.

Which meant that the women who had
taken traditionally men's work

were now expected to step aside,

sweetened by the promise
of a brave new future in the kitchen,

a bit like those glamorous Americans.

America was leading the consumer boom
and Brits wanted some of it.

But the reality was harder
for the ordinary family.

Rationing was still in place
until 1954. Money was tight.

From some of the films at the time,

you'd think that the '50s
was a great step forward for women

in terms of domestic technology.

But was it really?

Not if you were a working-class woman
like Doreen Turner.

Here she is, getting married to Ron
in 1948.

(WALTZ MUSIC)

Having fought at Dunkirk, Normandy
and Arnhem,

Doreen's husband slotted back
into a career making tractors.

Doreen, though,
had to jack her job in

and think about homemaking instead.

Unusually for a working-class couple,

Ron and Doreen shelled out
to get their own place.

They had a nice terraced house
in Nuneaton,

three bedrooms -
one for Ron and Doreen,

one for the boys
and the other for all the girls.

But they were very short of money
so they had a lodger

and he slept downstairs
in the front room.

The house still had an outside loo
and coal fires,

but no heating at all
in the bedrooms.

Historian Dr Rae Ritchie can fill me
in on 1950s women's lifestyles.

She also happens to be
Doreen's great-niece.

Is this kitchen like the one that
she would have done all her work in?

It's probably a lot more colourful

than the one
she'd have done her work in.

So you may have had like one cabinet
like this

but actually, a lot of it would have
been from a much earlier period

because not everybody
in the '50s had a 1950s kitchen.

But people started to add things.

So you might have started
with an electric iron

and then maybe a twin tub, but
not an automatic washing machine.

So that still involved
quite a lot of labour,

not as much as a dolly
and a mangle would have done

but, you know,
still quite a lot of work.

Doreen didn't even have a twin tub,
let alone a fancy refrigerator.

The meat was stored
in the pantry meat safe.

Food went off really quickly so
she'd have to go shopping every day.

Ron's wages
only covered the essentials

so the catch was if Doreen wanted all
the latest labour-saving appliances,

she'd need to work twice as hard

and get a job.

See that Debenhams?
It used to be JC Smiths.

And that was the biggest department
store in Nuneaton in the 1950s

and it's where Doreen worked.

It was like a '50s fantasy.

(ELEVATOR BELL DINGS)
Ground floor -

food hall, washing machines
and cooking appliances.

(ELEVATOR BELL DINGS)
First floor -

clothes in all the latest fashions.

To entice consumers
to part with their cash,

a new concept was introduced -
buying on credit.

Now nothing was beyond reach.

"Oh, go on. You know you want to."

(LOUNGE MUSIC)

Doreen struggled

but she was determined to juggle
her job with looking after five kids

so they could enjoy the fruits
of the '50s too.

As a kid, my whole life
was about reading.

Puffin books, the Heirloom Library
and toys.

Fuzzy-Felt, Meccano.

The magic robot
which spun round and round

and you asked it a question
and it pointed at the answer.

Absolutely brilliant.

Seemed like there was a new toy
on the market every week.

But the pressure on Doreen
must have been immense

to buy at least some of these things
for their kids.

I mean, who wouldn't want
I-Spy Sportscars?

The dream for Doreen's family

was to get just one
of the magical consumer items

that were constantly
being advertised.

Eventually,
they felt sufficiently well-off

to be able to afford to rent
a brand-new machine

which would transform their lives.

Not a shiny washing machine,
one of those -

a telly.

I wonder what's on.

Doreen and her family
joined the mushrooming TV audience

who enjoyed just one channel,

with 21 million tuning in
to watch the Queen's coronation.

(AS MAN) "Amazing.
I could watch it all day!"

"Be better when there's a picture."

But the new contraption did nothing
to help Doreen in the kitchen.

So sometimes the family might decide
to go for a television

when they didn't have
a washing machine,

which to us might seem
like the wrong way around,

but it was about
family entertainment.

You could all sit around a TV
at night and enjoy that.

If Doreen had any time left after
finishing all her chores, that is.

With five young children
to look after, it was no easy feat.

Housework was often a thankless task

but Doreen took pride in her career,

something she found
especially rewarding.

Doreen was considered unusual
in her commitment to her job,

that she really enjoyed it and it
was part of her life that she valued

rather than it just being
a means to an end,

that she wanted to earn some money.

Look at this fantastic crockery.

We used to have exactly
the same stuff at home.

It actually celebrates all
the new things that people could buy.

Look, there's a coffee table and
a cheese knife and a nice new sofa.

But for Doreen,
it wasn't really all these things

that she could either buy

or at least hope to buy
all this marvellous new stuff.

It was the new friendships
that she could make

and the places that she could go to.

In the 1950s, manufacturers retooled

to supply the increasing demand
from ordinary Brits

hungry for American-style luxury.

Leading the way
was American giant Ford,

which transformed its Dagenham
factory into the biggest in Europe,

employing 50,000 workers to make
one-in-three cars sold in Britain.

Roy Nightingale
was thrilled to get a job there.

During the war,
Roy was captured by the Germans

and forced to work
in a Nazi labour camp as a miner.

He had to work really hard,
otherwise he'd have been shot.

So the idea of working here at Ford's
must have been a dream.

Roy lived with his family in a flat
in a run-down four-storey house

in New Cross South London,
one of the poorest parts of the city.

Daughter Jean
was a child at the time.

There was one low
on-the-ground floor

and that had to service
all four levels.

And a lot of the rooms rented out
were to,

you know, people
like the railway workers.

And they would go out on the lash
on a Saturday night.

And, of course, on the Sunday
morning, it was, like...

..pretty horrendous and Mum
used to have to clean it all up.

(MISCHIEVOUS MUSIC)

The Ford factory
was a miracle of manufacturing.

Iron ore went in at one end,

shiny new cars were dispatched
from its own docks at the other.

Roy's first job was in the foundry,

casting engine blocks
from massive lumps of iron.

The engine block
is at the centre of the engine

where the petrol's ignited
in its cylinders.

If he thought this was going to be
easy, he had another thing coming.

It was less of the American dream
and more like a living nightmare.

Working in temperatures of 50 degrees

while inhaling thick metallic dust,

Roy and the team could only work
for 30 minutes at a time.

Your dad's work was pretty tough,
wasn't it?

Yeah, yeah, and because
of his experience in the war,

he didn't mind the graft.

It was to provide for the family,
so he was happy to do that.

He took one day off
when he was really ill with flu.

That was the only day
he ever took off.

He was religious, used to get there
early. He'd be the last to leave.

But he also had
a great sense of humour.

So he was never, like,
miserable or grouchy.

But yes, the work was hard.

Apart from the heat,
it was ear-splittingly loud

and very, very dirty.

Roy's overalls would get so filthy

that it would take his wife, Rose,
two days of scrubbing

and wringing them
in a wash tub like this,

which, of course, made her hands
all chapped and cracked,

just to get them ready for work
again.

(JAUNTY PIANO MUSIC)

But Roy never really saw
his pay packet.

What was this business
about the pay packet on paydays?

Mum always went down to Ford's
Friday lunchtimes

to pick up Dad's wages,
which was always paid in cash.

Yeah.
Because she didn't trust my dad.

Because the men would often spend it
in the pubs or down the bookies.

She knew by then,
keeping hold of the cash,

that it would go
on the right things -

ie, food and rent
and all the rest of it, you know?

But I think
it was standard practice.

Roy survived the foundry
and got a job on the production line.

On the plus side,

he could breathe the air
without putting his life in danger.

On the downside...

..working on the production line
was mind-numbingly dull.

Roy had to learn to work
like a robot,

doing exactly the same set of actions
time and time and time again.

So first, he'd have to go
and pick up his components,

which would take him 10 seconds,

and then he would walk back with them
to the car, another 10 seconds.

Get ready. Five seconds.

Execute the job. Pa-dum, pa-dum,
pa-dum, pa-dum, pa-dum.

One minute, five seconds.

Ready to start the whole thing
all over again and again

and again and again,

remorselessly, for eight hours.

To get them through the day,
the men would daydream.

(AS MAN) "Smith is on the ball."

Some relived entire football matches.
"He scores."

Roy preferred to escape
to his beloved garden.

(WHIMSICAL MUSIC)

He just had to keep going
till the next break.

(BELL RINGS)

They had two half-hour breaks

and the toilet breaks were strictly
supervised by the foreman.

You had two minutes.
Absolutely not anymore.

If you went on any longer,
the foreman would look at his watch

and then he'd issue you
with a warning.

And this was the result.

The Ford Consul, one of the great
Fords of the 1950s.

Isn't it absolutely gorgeous?
Look at those lines.

It's quite likely
that Roy was actually involved

in making this very car.

He didn't have one of them himself,
he had a Ford Popular,

which was a bit cheaper,
but he was very proud of it.

Cheaper car ownership
transformed weekends.

No longer reliant
on public transport,

Brits enjoyed family daytrips.

Ford's allure was delivering
the American dream on a budget

for cash-strapped Brits.

There was something for everyone,

from the flashy Consul
to cheaper family cars

such as Roy's Popular

and this '50s Anglia.

(FUNKY MUSIC)

A classy number.

Yay.

Nought to 50 in 24 seconds.

What a car!

I get a lot of admiring looks.

Ooh, really soft brakes,
takes ages to stop it.

(GROANS)
Almost like turning a tractor.

One feature about this car

is that the windscreen wipers
go faster the slower the car goes.

And if you wanted a heater,
you had to pay extra.

Lovely motor.

I'd forgotten how underpowered
these cars were compared with ours.

The acceleration is like
dooka, dooka, dooka, dooka, dook.

And now Roy's whole family
was going places.

Life changed for Roy's family

thanks to one of the specially
designed new towns.

(SPRITELY MUSIC)

It was to be the largest government
housing project of the century -

eight new towns built to solve
the chronic housing shortage.

This one was Basildon in Essex,
very handy for Dagenham.

They now had a whole house
all to themselves.

What was that like?
Beautiful.

I remember getting off the train
and the first thing that hit you

is the air
and also the green and cows.

And I remember thinking, "Wow."

And the house that we got -
lavatory, bathroom,

hot and cold running water.

It was marvellous.

Roy continued to work in nearby
Dagenham till his retirement.

Your dad worked at Ford's
for over 30 years, didn't he?

Yes, he did.
And he was given a clock.

What sort of clock?
One of these carriage clocks.

I felt aggrieved at the time because
I felt he should have got a car

because that was the least
he deserved.

They were very lucky to have him.

(REGAL MUSIC)

The 1950s saw Britain's place
in the world change dramatically

as its remaining empire
began to disintegrate.

But 3.5 million of the empire
subjects had fought in the war

for what they called
the Mother Country

and still felt close to Britain.

One of them was Allan Wilmot,
who served in the RAF.

But his job didn't involve
flying planes,

he used a boat to rescue airmen who
ditched into the English Channel...

NEWSREEL:
There's a British Spitfire.

..which was actually
a very dangerous job

because search and rescue teams were
often targeted by German warplanes.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC)

Having constantly put his life
at risk, survived the war

and played his part
in the downfall of Nazi Germany,

Allan was demobbed and returned home.

All the way back to Jamaica.

(CALYPSO MUSIC)

Allan's great passion was music
and he was a fine singer.

But it didn't make him a living.

Even 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.

So Allan decided to risk everything
and return to Britain.

Second time around, though, things
couldn't have been more different.

People would come up to him and say,
"Oi! What are you still doing here?

"Don't you know the war is over?"

He suddenly found that his relationship
with the people of this country

had really changed.

Now on civvy street, despite
the large number of vacancies,

Allan found that being black made it
extremely difficult to get work.

Back then, it was perfectly legal
to refuse people work

because of their ethnicity.

Allan couldn't even find
anywhere to stay.

Landlords really did put up signs
saying

'No blacks, no dogs, no Irish.'

This, of course,
would be illegal today.

That kind of attitude makes you
wonder what some Brits thought

they'd been fighting Hitler for
in the first place.

Allan was so desperate
for somewhere to stay

that he'd catch
the last underground train

and sleep in a carriage overnight.

(ANNOUNCEMENT CHIMES)

(AS ANNOUNCER) "All rooms have an
excellent view of Hounslow sidings.

"There is no minibar available."

Then he'd travel back the next day

to continue his slog
in search of work.

(ANNOUNCEMENT CHIMES)

"Welcome to Waterloo Station.

"Washing facilities are conveniently
located in the gents'."

When he did eventually find work,
it was menial jobs.

In the evenings, he began to sing

in the new Caribbean music clubs
in London

and started dreaming
of a career in music.

Music and entertainment,
to a certain extent,

offered solace from what you would
experience on the streets every day.

(CALYPSO MUSIC)

Kevin Le Gendre
is an expert in black music.

The first black music I remember
as a kid, on the radio, was Calypso.

It's really important.

It's the heart and soul of
the Caribbean to a certain extent,

because it gives people
an opportunity to tell stories

about their daily lives.

But also, it's not just about
what happens in the West Indies.

You can write calypsos
about the royals in the UK,

and you can write calypsos
about coming to the UK.

Do we know whether Allan sang
or wrote calypsos?

I don't know whether
he wrote calypsos,

but he certainly got involved

with a great calypso singer
from Trinidad, who's Edric Connor.

Edric Connor, Lord Kitchener
and a number of Caribbeans

were part of the growing
West Indian music scene,

and that was where
Allan wanted to be.

So with his brother, Harold,
and a Jamaican friend,

they formed a band called
the Ken Hunter Trio.

They were actually pretty good.

They went on tour,
played various clubs,

but they didn't make much money.

(CALYPSO MUSIC)

It beat sleeping rough on the tube,

but he was restless.

Allan felt he was destined
for something bigger.

And then the opportunity came.

He and his brother got the call
to come down to the recording studio

and put the backing vocals
on a record.

(SWING MUSIC)

The call had come from Edric Connor.

Their recording went so well
that they formed a vocal group

called the Southlanders...

(DISTORTED HIGH-PITCHED MUSIC)

Oh, sorry, this is probably a 45.

Chipmunk remix.
'Tis, isn't it?

..and their popularity
began to take off.

(JAMAICAN ACCENT)
Put the needle on the record.

I think I remember the song.

♪ Yum, da-dum, dum, dum, dum... ♪

They were to have a string of hits,
including Alone, Mole In A Hole

and Put A Light In The Window.

♪ There's a house
♪ Da-dum, dum, dum

♪ On the corner
♪ Da-dum, dum, dum

♪ On the corner
♪ Da-dum, dum, dum

♪ Of the street. ♪

It's actually incredibly commercial,
isn't it?

We've been talking about, like, the
ethnicity of calypso and all that,

but this is a three-minute single
for a mass market.

Yeah, and it's basically
something which shows

just how influenced they were
by American models.

Those doo-wop-type harmonies.
Rhythm and blues, doo-wop.

This is something that would have
been part of their basic vocabulary.

♪ Gonna plant them fields,
gonna ring them bells

♪ Before I lose my nerve
I gotta ring... ♪

Is that Allan, that solo voice?
I think so.

But the interesting thing
is that you hear

how the Caribbean identity
comes through at that point

'cause he's not saying "ring those
bells", he's saying "ring them bells".

His accent is unmistakable.

♪ Tonight, tonight,
put a light in the window... ♪

The Southlanders
were also a great live act

and were soon supporting stars such
as Cliff Richard and Shirley Bassey.

While they were successful,
were they making a lot of money?

If you're talking about
having that status in society

and being accepted
by the mainstream, then no.

But he did have an E-type.
He 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.

But 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.

So you never know when...
Show business.

..when fame
is gonna catch up with you.

And 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.

What happened after that?

So the Southlanders, they kept going
until the early '60s.

And then they broke up.
Oh, tragic.

It's worse than the Beatles
splitting up.

Well, 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.

But Allan had had a blast, especially
after such a difficult start.

He did eventually
even manage to get a mortgage

through a Caribbean support group.

And in 1964, he married Joyce,
a nurse, also from the West Indies.

After the break up
of the Southlanders,

Allan eventually left
the music business

and returned to something a bit more
steady, if not nearly as exciting -

a telephone operator
with the post office.

Allan's is a wonderful story
of heroism and optimism and ambition

against all the odds.

Amazing to think how many people
his music must have cheered up

during the 1950s.

I rather think quite a lot of them
would have needed it.

(SOUTHLANDERS SING)