1935 was a quite exceptional and memorable year for the town. We celebrated King George V’s Silver Jubilee along with Grantham’s Centenary as a borough. Lord Brownlow, whose family (the Custs) with the Manners family (the Dukes of Rutland) were the most distinguished aristocratic patrons of the town, became mayor. The town itself was heavily decorated with blue and gold waxed streamers — our local colours — across the main streets. Different streets vied to outdo one another in the show they put on. I recall that it was the street with some of the poorest families in the worst housing, Vere Court, which was most attractively turned out. Everyone made an effort. The brass bands played throughout the day, and Grantham’s own ‘Carnival Band’ — a rather daring innovation borrowed from the United States and called ‘The Grantham Gingerbreads’ — added to the gaiety of the proceedings. The schools took part in a great open-air programme and we marched in perfect formation under the watchful eye of the wife of the headmaster of the boys’ grammar school to form the letters ‘G-R-A-N-T-H-A-M’. And, appropriately enough, I was part of the ‘M’.
My father’s position as a councillor, Chairman of the Borough Finance Committee, then alderman[2] and finally in 1945–46 mayor meant that I heard a great deal about the town’s business and knew those involved in it. Politics was a matter of civic duty and party was of secondary importance. The Labour councillors we knew were respected and friendly and, whatever the battles in the council chamber or at election time, they came to our shop and there was no partisan bitterness. My father understood that politics has limits — an insight which is all too rare among politicians. His politics would perhaps be best described as ‘old-fashioned liberal’. Individual responsibility was his watchword and sound finance his passion. He was an admirer of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. Like many other business people he had, as it were, been left behind by the Liberal Party’s acceptance of collectivism. He stood for the council as a rate-payer’s candidate. In those days, before comprehensive schools became an issue and before the general advance of Labour politics into local government, local council work was considered as properly non-partisan. But I never remember him as anything other than a staunch Conservative.
I still recall with great sorrow the day in 1952 when Labour, having won the council elections, voted my father out as an alderman. This was roundly condemned at the time for putting party above community. Nor can I forget the dignity with which he behaved. After the vote in the council chamber was taken, he rose to speak: ‘It is now almost nine years since I took up these robes in honour, and now I trust in honour they are laid down.’ And later, after receiving hundreds of messages from friends, allies and even old opponents, he issued a statement which said: ‘Although I have toppled over I have fallen on my feet. My own feeling is that I was content to be in and I am content to be out.’ Years later, when something not too dissimilar happened to me, and after my father was long dead, I tried to take as an example the way he left public life.
But this is to anticipate. Perhaps the main interest which my father and I shared while I was a girl was a thirst for knowledge about politics and public affairs. I suspect that we were better informed than many families. We read the Daily Telegraph every day, The Methodist Recorder, Picture Post and John O’London’s Weekly every week, and when we were small we took The Children’s Newspaper. Occasionally we read The Times.
And then came the day my father bought our first wireless — a Philips of the kind you sometimes now see in the less pretentious antique shops. I knew what he was planning and ran much of the way home from school in my excitement. I was not disappointed. It changed our lives. From then on it was not just Rotary, church and shop which provided the rhythm of our day: it was the radio news. And not just the news. During the war after the 9 o’clock news on Sundays there was Postscript, a short talk on a topical subject, often by J.B. Priestley, who had a unique gift of cloaking left-wing views as solid, down to earth, Northern homespun philosophy, and sometimes an American journalist called Quentin Reynolds who derisively referred to Hitler by one of his family names, ‘Mr Schicklgruber’. There was The Brains Trust, an hour-long discussion of current affairs by four intellectuals, of whom the most famous was Professor C.E.M. Joad, whose answer to any question always began ‘It all depends what you mean by…’. On Friday evenings there were commentaries by people like Norman Birkett in the series called Encounter. I loved the comedy ITMA with its still serviceable catchphrases and its cast of characters like the gloomy charlady ‘Mona Lott’ and her signature line ‘It’s being so cheerful as keeps me going.’
As for so many families, the unprecedented immediacy of radio broadcasts gave special poignancy to great events — particularly those of wartime. I recall sitting by our radio with my family at Christmas dinner and listening to the King’s broadcast in 1939. We knew how he struggled to overcome his speech impediment and we knew that the broadcast was live. I found myself thinking just how miserable he must have felt, not able to enjoy his own Christmas dinner, knowing that he would have to broadcast. I remember his slow voice reciting those famous lines:
And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’
And he replied: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’[3]
I was almost fourteen by the time war broke out, and already old enough and informed enough to understand the background to it and to follow closely the great events of the next six years. My grasp of what was happening in the political world during the thirties was less sure. But certain things I did take in. The years of the Depression — the first but not the last economic catastrophe resulting from misguided monetary policy — had less effect on Grantham itself than on the surrounding agricultural communities, and of course much less than on Northern towns dependent on heavy industry. Most of the town’s factories kept going — the largest, Ruston and Hornsby, making locomotives and steam engines. We even attracted new investment, partly through my father’s efforts: Aveling-Barford built a factory to make steamrollers and tractors. Our family business was also secure: people always have to eat, and our shops were well run. The real distinction in the town was between those who drew salaries for what today would be called ‘white collar’ employment and those who did not, with the latter being in a far more precarious position as jobs became harder to get. On my way to school I would pass a long queue waiting at the Labour Exchange, seeking work or claiming the dole. We were lucky in that none of our closest friends was unemployed, but naturally we knew people who were. We also knew — and I have never forgotten — how neatly turned out the children of those unemployed families were. Their parents were determined to make the sacrifices that were necessary for them. The spirit of self-reliance and independence was very strong in even the poorest people of the East Midlands towns. It meant that they never dropped out of the community and, because others quietly gave what they could, the community remained together. Looking back, I realize just what a decent place Grantham was.
2
Aldermen were indirectly elected council members — elected to serve a fixed term by the directly elected element in the council; a highly honoured position which has since been abolished.