CHRISTMAS, 1939 - FOOD BANK XMAS, 2014 in the late 1970s, I worked with a veteran of El Alamein, Charlie. He told me that when he enlisted at the outbreak of war, the army had had to lower its physical examination requirements for all recruitment. They had to do so, just as they had done prior WWI, because the majority of working class recruits, owing to the fact of their weak physical state from the ravages of poverty and malnutrition, would not have got them in if the army had kept to peace-time examination criteria. The army needed men, however malnourished and physically starved. Integral to the first part of their training was to feed up their bodies. Charlie told me that for the first time in his life, at 23, he sat down to three nourishing hot square meals a day, and everyday. Indeed, during the first few months of training, he put on weight rapidly and his body strength continued to strengthen even after Charlie was posted to Cairo. After the war, de-mobed British soldiers didnt want a return to the poverty of the pre-WWII, 1930s. They certainly didnt want the constant malnutrition they suffered through their childhood, revisited on their own children. They saw in Labours dual post-war settlement of the Welfare State and NHS, a relief from poverty, want, infirmity and poverty related diseases, that had plagued their communities in pre-war Britain. Just as the ConDemns want to get back to public spending levels of the 1930s, the burgeoning food banks, the surge of people being admitted to hospital with severe malnutrition, the escalation of rampant child poverty, and even with Rickets raising its ugly head again, are all telling portents that Camerons Elites are rapidly getting society back to the 30s.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 00:40:24 +0000
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