They Also Serve Who Only Stand And Wait

Northern Advocate, 8 January 1947, Page 5

They Also Serve Who Only Stand And Wait

7th. Anniversary Of Rationing . . .

Today is the seventh anniversary of the imposition of food rationing in Britain.

It is an anniversary which is unlikely to be celebrated, or even remembered, by the British housewife standing in a fish, or meat, or vegetable queue in a temperature very little above freezing point or walking through sludge and snow on just another of the innumerable missions rationing imposes upon her. (Theoretically food rationing has eliminated queues at the family grocer shop, but in practice it has 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 from week to week and usually on different days of the week. GROCER UNDER HER EYE The housewife who is lucky enough fo be in a 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 oi those friendly shops where endearment is used with complete social impartiality. Points and the ration system means that a 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 and perhaps again in the atterncon and keep on doing it. She may have have to queue at the grocers, but will certainly have to do so for fish, meat, vegetables and any infrequent amusements she may seek lo enjoy.

(By E. G. WEBBER) (Spec.. 11.30 a.m. ) LONDON, Jan. 7,

themselves impelled by a common purpose and endurance and this imbues a sociable spirit.

There is nothing sociable about an English queue in the almost permanent English wintertime. Yesterday was the coldest day Britain had experienced for the past five years, and today snow, whidh fell over the greater part of the country, is still falling or being churned into muddy sludge by the traffic of city streets.

Hundreds of thousands of women and children are standing in this sludge and snow waiting for their day’s rations. Today many of them will be disappointed, because there is another strike by market delivery men, but that is incidental.

In 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. CHILDREN, PRAMS At weekends, most queues also contain a surprising proportion of children, many between the ages of five and 12 years. They are sent, firmly clutching mother’s nurse, a note to the shopkeeper and a large shopping basket, by parents who cannot leave their household chores. > It is to the credit of shopkeepers that most of them are as fairly dealt with as if they were in full possession of their bargaining powers.

In the transient English summer and spring, the queue is inclined to be a friendly place. All its members feel

at home.

Infants in .perambulators are another inevitable accompaniment of a queue. They accompany the shopping

housewife because they cannot be left

Moreover, perambulators in Britain carry a wide variety of contents besides babies. They are the housewives’ auxiliary transport. .It would be unfair to the British husband to pretend that the full burden of queuing rests upon his wife. On working days he queues for his bus, tram, underground train, lunch and cigarettes and often, at weekends, he is to be seen with the family shopping basket. 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 tile, othrs will inevitably form up behind them on the general assumption that it is better to be in a queue than out of it. BATTLE OF AUSTERITY This, ol' course, is an exaggeration, for in a thickly-populated country like Britain there always will be queues for something. They are, after all, an indication ot the orderly British spirit, which prefers to take things as they come rather than clamour and stampede for them. Nevertheless, no one pretends that they really like queues. Those who are seen in them waiting for Laurence Olivier or the latest film see only one form of queue. They do not see hundreds of thousands of patient women who have been standing in Britain’s suburban queues for seven years in all the varieties of weather Britain can provide, and who, since the battle of austerity still goes on. have no prospects of demobilisation.

They, better than anyone else, car. take to themselves the Miltonian dictum: ’’They also serve who only stand and wait.”