SEVEN YEARS OF IT

Evening Star, Issue 25994, 8 January 1947, Page 5

SEVEN YEARS OF IT

RATIONING AM) QUEUES IN BRITAIN NO DEMOBILISATION FOR HOUSEWIVES ANNIVERSARY WITHOUT CELEBRATION (From E. G. Webber, N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent.) (Rec. 12.5 p.m.) LONDON, Jan. 7. To-day is the seventh anniversary of the imposition of food rationingjn Britain, it is an anniversary which is unlikely to be celebrated or even remembered by the British housewife standing in fish, or meat, or vegetable queues in temperatures very little above freezing point, or walking through sludge and snow on just another of the innumerabble missions rationing imposes upon her. Theoretically, food rationing eliminated queues at the family grocer shop, ■ but in practice it substituted a multitude of supply missions, for austerity, like charity, begins at home. Very few grocers in Britain are in a position to hold stocks of points goods —extras like tinned meats, jams, fish, soups, coffee, milk, and so on. They receive their supplies week to week, and usually on different days of the week.. The housewife who is lucky enough to be in the shop when they are released gets them—one who arrives half an hour later will be met with the inevitable' ‘‘Sorry, madam,” if she is still on formal terms with her grocer, or “ Sorry, dear,” if it is one of those friendly snops where endearment is used with complete social impartiality. The points and ration system means that the zealous housewife who wants her share of whatever is available must keep her grocer almost literally under her eye. She must call in the morning, perhaps again in the afternoon, and keep on doing it. She may not have to queue at the grocers, but she will certainly have to do so for fish, meat, vegetables, and any infrequent amusements she may seek to enjoy. Tn the transient English summer and spring the queue is inclined to be a friendly place. All its members feel themselves impelled by a common purpose and endurance and this imbues a sociable spirit. There is nothing sociable about the English queue in the almost permanent English winter time. Yesterday was the coldest day Britain has experienced for the past five years and to-day snow, which fell over the greater part of the country, is still falling or is being churned into muddy sludge by the traffic of the city streets. Hundreds of thousands of women and children are standing in this sludge and snow waiting for the day’s rations. To-day many of them will he disappointed because there is another strike by market delivery men, but that is incidental. In the working class neighbourhoods and it is as well to remember that these greatly predominate—a very large number of these women and children still wear no stockings. The reason is not always that they cannot afford them, but that they cannot get them. EVEN CHILDREN QUEUE. At the week-ends most of the queues also contain a surprising proportion of children, many between the ages of five and 12 years. They are sent, firmly clutching mother’s purse, a note to the shopkeeper, and a large shopping basket, by parents who cannot leave their household chores. It is to the credit of the shopkeepers that most of the children are as fairly dealt with as if they were in full possession of their bargaining powers. . Infants in perambulators are another inevitable accompaniment of the queue. They accompany the shopping housewife, because they cannot be left at home. Moreover, perambulators in Britain carry a wide variety of contents beside babies. They are the housewives’ auxiliary transport. It would be unfair to the British husband to pretend that the full burden of queueing rests upon his wife. On working days ne queues for the bus, tram, or underground train, lunch, and cigarettes, and often at the week-ends he will be seen with the family shopping basket. ALMOST A HABIT. After, seven years it is alleged that queueing has become a British habit, and that, if two or three be gathered together, so long as they are in a file, others will inevitably form up behind them on the general assumption that it is better to be in a queue than out of it. This, of course, is exaggeration, for, in a thickly-populated country like Britain, there will always be queues for something. They are, after all, an indication of the orderly British spirit which prefers to take things as they come rather than clamour and stampede for them. Nevertheless, no one pretends they really like queues. Those who have seen people waiting for Laurence Olivier or the latest film see only one form of the queue. They do not see the hundreds of thousands of patient women who have been standing in Britain’s suburban queues for seven years in all the varieties of weather that Britain can provide, and who, since the battle of austerity still goes on, have no prospects of demobilisation. They, better than anyone else, can take to themselves the Miltonian dictum: “ They also serve who only stand and wait.”