General Chat

"Of course it would take time to remove Rationing. Not only were manufacturing bases ruined, the raw materials were in short supply. It’s not possible to click your fingers and grow/produce extra food especially as Britain and other countries were supplying Germany with rations – Berlin Air Lift 1948-1949? "

This is the line that the Atlee govt. put out but it found little support ( probably because it was untrue) and consequently the Tories returned to power in 1951 ending of most rationing very soon thereafterwards.

"“Shiver with Shinwell, (the Minister of Fuel and Power), and Starve with Strachey” became a popular catchphrase during the disastrous winter of 1946-1947 while Tommy Handley in his radio programme “ITMA” satirized him as “Mr Streakey”. "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBbpe-8-j_0

There were no facilities in 1939-1945 which might be called "significant manufacturing bases" for food as there nothing remotely like a supermarket or much in the way of processed food. The only raw materials which the Brits imported in bulk for consumption were wheat and tobacco. Evenso throughout the war bread had not been rationed! Lab rationed it in 1946. This was to save the cost of $US imports of wheat. Using British wheat to make brown bread had not apparently been considered. Why not? During the war the short seas had been unfished and could have supplied a good chunk of the country's needs very quickly without costing foreign exchange. Instead Labour put every possible obstacle in the way.

My father had it down as Labour's creed "from each according to his means, to each according to his needs". fwiw GF owned a string of butchers from Woodford to Southend in South Essex and had no difficulty in obtaining supplies of meat 1945-50 much of which came from relatives' farms in the east Midlands. Perhaps that is why Labour nationalised trucking in 1947 "control the commanding heights of the economy" aka screw you I'm alright jack. My GF brother lost a large trucking company he had built up over 25 years, the trucks were scrapped (!) but the site is used for HGVs to this day. Lack of trucking certainly pinned farmers and butchers down. They resorted to bribing the local commissar and using smaller vehicles.

For sure the UK had a first rate sterling crisis but starving the country was not the way to fix it. Rationing had stopped in France from 1945. English farmers had geared up to supply the BEF and Americans invading the continent. From May 1945 that market disappeared and they found themselves with a large surplus which they could not sell due to rationing. They got around it in large part due to the "black" market aka free enterprise. Labour had intended to bankrupt the farming industry and put the land into state ownership and establish collective farming.

The UK contribution to the Berlin air lift was neglible (b.a.) as we did not have any suitable air transport. Most of the US supplies were flown in using the ubiquitous Douglas Dakota.

We did supply something like 100 steam engines to France plus railway and mining engineers as the country could not extract and use its own coal. Supplies of coal to France & Germany were not enough to make any difference to UK home supply - there was insufficient transport to do so. It looked good in newsreels though.

Most of the help to Germany came from the USA. France was not much inclined to help Germany instead hauling as much machinery etc from its Occupation Zone into France as possible. The Brits were similarly engaged around Hamburg.

"Draconian food rationing was not absolutely essential after the war. Savings could have been made in other areas of the external accounts. For instance, tobacco was prominent in Britain's imports from the USA at the height of the dollar crisis. This poison was not rationed, apparently because of its morale boosting and revenue raising qualities. Clearly, if less had been spent on importing tobacco, the British would have been able to enjoy a slightly more appetizing diet. There were other highly questionable drains on the balance of payments after 1945, such as the cost of occupying Palestine, Greece, Germany, and those parts of the empire that did not produce a dollar surplus. Certain uncontrolled outward capital flows, for instance to South Africa and Australia in 1947 (*), also put strain on Britain's capacity to import basic foodstuffs. In other words, rationing was necessary because the government and its supporters preferred to allocate resources to the maintenance of tobacco supplies and Britain's status as a world power than to the provision of a wider choice of food. Whether or not this ordering of priorities was in the best interests of ordinary people is a matter of opinion."

https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=4364

(*) At Bretton Woods the Yanks rang rings around the Brits and forced a wildly overvalued currency to become convertible. No surprise then when other govts sold off their sterling holdings. Therein lay the root of most of the UK's recurring debt problems right up to Wilson/Healey.

From 1945-48 France dealt with similar problems (a) by availing themselves of Marshall plan loans (b) dropping rationing from 1945 together with massive import tariffs esp on food inc USA (c) letting the currency collapse. This all came to a head in 1948 but that is another story. Our gallic cousins did not have to worry about bread and butter.

"Rollo – are your 3 rellies centenarians or are their details opened in error? There is an option to have them ‘closed’ if you/they/ nok choose.
"

The youngest was born in 1939 - I went to his wedding.

I have not got the faintest idea just how FMP decide on whether 39 Reg. records are open or not. I don't give a fig they can open all of them for all I care - most of the information is avaiable from other public domain / FH sources anyway. I'm certainly not forking out though.

As I didn't use the method when they gave the TNA number I can't guarantee the result is the same as before.

Have put the conversion on the Genealogy Chat thread 1939 Register is Announced

http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards/board/genealogy_chat/thread/1355773?jump=1355773

found my dads name , with "another person", my mum, and one other, presumably me,,,,,,,

Can you talk that through, with examples, please Ken?

Chris in da condo, you can work out the TNA number from the URL of the preview pane.

Rollo – are your 3 rellies centenarians or are their details opened in error? There is an option to have them ‘closed’ if you/they/ nok choose.

My mum used to say that it was ‘strange’ how some council employed families had roast pork – she reckoned that the meat was reared on Hackney Marshes and bought/supplied as back-hander’s.

Of course it would take time to remove Rationing. Not only were manufacturing bases ruined, the raw materials were in short supply. It’s not possible to click your fingers and grow/produce extra food especially as Britain and other countries were supplying Germany with rations – Berlin Air Lift 1948-1949?
............

chris in da condo - apparently at some point. the ref nos will reappear. This is as per a conversation on FMP facebook page.

"As you mention in your post, we're working on that section of the search and it will be back as soon as possible. We appreciate its importance to a researcher, and so will have it up again as soon as we can. Thanks
Like · Reply · 23 mins" (so repeated today c 12:24)

Results from the free searching of people in the first few days showed the TNA piece and item number. This you could then use to see other people living in the neighbourhood. This must have been an oversight by FMP as that info has now disappeared and the loophole closed. A pity because it was a useful free tool.

On a cursory search I have found three relatives alive and kicking one in the UK and two in Oz with their records marked open.

I have also found that the wife of another rellie was registered both at her future husband's home under his name and 200 miles away living with her mum under her maiden name. I guess that was fairly common!

The old style register with NI nos of the form AANNNNNNZZ has hopefully been updated since the 1990s as a lot of living people are included on it including myself!

During the blitz 1941 my father was serving with the police in the East End of London. He told me that the Ration Cards caused no end of trouble. A primary cause was that the details on the cards were incorrect in some way such as spelling of names, wrong address, wrong date of birth. There was a full ration of jobsworths who took it on themselves to cancel ration cards for such reasons as wrong address (bombed out, failed to notify), east european name spelt incorrectly and so on.

The register of 1939 then is a moment in time of the British people before the weft and warp of civilian life was ripped apart never to be mended. Don't rely on it too much as a pointer to your rellies 1940-45 especially if they lived in a large city.

It is often commented that the quantities of ration food were very small and few people today would be able to work very well half starved. Well there was a thriving black market run by the "spivs" ( see Dad's Army ), restaurants and cafes were (amazingly) not subject to ration, people could and did ( and were encouraged ) to use their gardens and allotments to produced food not only veg but pigs and chickens. The food produced was supposed to be reported but most of it wasn't. Those serving with the navy and RAF were not subject to rationing.

Theatres, restaurants and clubs in the West End around Soho just carried on as usual for the most part ignoring any bombing raids.

The excruciatingly slow progress of Atlee's government 1945-51 in getting the country back to a civilian basis and the persistance of food rationing long after the war are a major reason why very old people in the UK to this day are so hostile to the Labour party. In France food rationing ended in 1945 except for a short lived attempt to re institute bread rationing.

I've used the free search successfully to check my parents and maternal grandparents .............. and was quite surprised to see both my brother and uncle in full view, as both were born after 1915.

However, both died around 1990/91, and the fact hat the Register was used as the basis for the NHS and was continuously updated into the 1990s explains that!

I'm debating whether to pay to see my parents record, in the hope that it will tell me what my Dad did in WW2 ............. I know he was in restricted occupation but have never known what that was. The fact that he is at home on the Register did tell me that his secondment to London had happened later than I thought.

I've also found several other relatives living where I expected them to be living ......... not surprising as I did know most of them :-)



One little surprise that you might not expect is that the later continuous updating means that you will find women listed under a married name when the marriage had not happened until much later.

My great aunt is shown under her second married name with her first married name in brackets. Her first husband was still alive in 1939, and she didn't marry the second time until 1951.

I found that only because I was playing around with free searches, and tried a street search

Started looking yesterday but couldn't find my grandparents. Detective's comment about being born after 1915 explains that!

Found my elusive great grandmother but her age is 10 years off so debating whether to pay to get her date of birth or not.

Rose

Haven't paid to access it but on the free search I was able to discover one rellie wasn't where he might have been. It doesn't sound much but it narrows my search for a very elusive man a bit more.

There appear to be quite a few transcription errors.
I've put in 4 names so far - and two were spelt wrong.
Without paying, I've found my gg granddad was living with his daughter, son in law and a 'closed' person - or maybe they were living with him!

I have found my parents (living in the lower flat) and my grandparents (upper flat), but only by putting in their names.

If I put in the address there are lots of entries, but not them!! Presumably transcription errors, but I'm not paying just to see that.

Surely the household fee is worth it if it gives their dates of birth if that's what you want? It's cheaper than a BC and you may get more names/dob for your money.

I've applied to have my mother's record opened as I already had her death certificate (from 2003). The record will not give my anything I don't already know but I will let you know if they do open it. I applied on the 3rd Nov. and they say I would know within 10 days.

I had tried searching for my mother's name but nothing came up. I then did an address search as I knew where she was living but only my grandfather came up with 5 other residents closed. I assume this is either my parents and older brother and sisters, or if my father was away in the army then the other person is possibly my late uncle. I had thought that my grandfather only spent the last 6 months of his life living with my parents while he was ill but it seems he must have spent at least 18 months with them as he died in 1941.

Kath. x

Rollo
" If somebody shells out for a death cert and gets a record changed from closed to open does the open status then apply for anybody else searching on the same household?" As I understand it it does, though I've not tried it out as yet.

I've 'found' both sets of grandparents, but I knew where they were in any case, a couple of uncles, and more helpfully confirmed pretty much that a gt uncle did marry who I thought he had.

Yes, though it helps if you already know where to look.
Most of anything useful for checking out a tree can be found from the indexes (free) . All you get for an extra £ 7 is the actual address plus an image of the card.

It can be amusing - I found an uncle living with his future wife with wife under her married name 2 years before the marriage.

The open / closed status is inconsistent e.g. I found two uncles' entries as open ( ie deceased) when both are very much alive and kicking down under.

Taking the Greater London area (20% of England & Wales population) all of this data can be found online for those > 21 whether they are alive / under 100 in 2015 or not. It is rather inconsistent then to redact information which is in the public domain and available from other sources.

I am not aware if the Registration Act rushed through in 1939 contained any privacy restrictions as with the census. I doubt it as the Reg.Card database was used as a basis with which to set up the NHS in 1947. Maybe somebody knows but given that the Reg. card was needed in order to buy food, petrol etc. there is no reason wht the govt. needed to have promised anything.

So long as FMP charge £ 7 / household for which much of the information will be redacted I can't see it being much of a commercial success. Adding in £ 10 per person for death certs hardly helps. Freezing out the poss. of people seeing their own R.C. is perverse esp as anybody who wants can get (for a tenner) a birth / marriage cert for the same people!

FMP have apparently paid £ 20 M for the rights to this database. Given the restrictions it does not to me look a good investment.

If somebody shells out for a death cert and gets a record changed from closed to open does the open status then apply for anybody else searching on the same household?

The phrase "curate's egg" comes to mind.

Found my mother with two "closed" people (probably my brother and sister); dad not there, probably already in the Army. It confirmed my mother's DOB which, as her birth was never registered, was good.

Don't think I will be spending any more money on it though, the ERs give me most of what I want.