After nine years of post-war rationing a national treasure is born

For the county’s children who grew up amidst the blackouts and air raid sirens, VE Day marked the start of a strange new world which probably did not make a great deal of sense to them.

What would follow was years of becoming acclimatised to a way of life where a loud bang did not necessarily mean immediate danger. Rationing continued for another nine years until 1954, a consequence of the conflict which would keep wartime conditions on people’s minds for a long time.

Dr Charlie Hall, a lecturer at the University of Kent, believes rationing actually became even more difficult when the war ended.

“Bread was never rationed during the war, but in the aftermath they had to introduce bread rationing,” he said.

“In part this was because Britain became responsible for occupying a part of Germany where people were very close to starving.

“So in order to have enough grain to produce enough bread to keep this part of Germany plus all of Britain going, new rationing had to be introduced.”

As life moved on, people began to understand what they wanted out of a post-war society.

Under Prime Minister Clement Atlee, the NHS was born, providing a public service which would proudly serve and protect every member of the nation.

The push towards a public healthcare service can be charted directly back to the war, when the government had become responsible for healthcare in many parts of Britain

The uncertainty of the world quickly returned, as it was clear America and the Soviet Union were ideologically opposed and trying to bring their own separate influences into post-war life.

And so began the Cold War, a conflict that defined the decades after the end of the Second World War.