A WORLD REINVENTED
It wasn’t just daring new cars for 1948. Everything was changing, mostly for the better if you were British
THE SANDS OF GLOBAL geopolitics weren’t so much shifting in 1948 as being whipped into a storm, the effects of which we all still feel today.
The big regroup saw the state of Israel founded in the Middle East, to the ire of Arab populations in the region, and Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated during his attempts to stop internecine violence as Pakistan separated from India. Meanwhile, apartheid rule began in South Africa.
On top of that, in July 1948 the Western Allies sprang into action with the Berlin Airlift after the Soviets blockaded the city to try and drive Brits and Americans out of the divided former German capital. Although they backed down in 1949, some 277,000 planeloads of food, fuel and medicine were flown in over 11 months. And as the Cold War unfolded, Czechoslovakia was deftly pulled behind Russia’s Iron Curtain.
If you’d gleaned all this via then hugeselling but now-defunct daily newspapers such as the News Chronicle and Daily Sketch, or the BBC Home Service, you might have concluded the global conflict had barely ended at all. More positive was the launch of the World Health Organisation to combat global diseases, such as the rising menace of polio, while the United Nations adopted its Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In Britain, the Labour Government was making good on its ambitious plan for free healthcare for everyone, and the National Health Service came into being in July. Sylvia Beckingham, a 13-year-old with a liver condition, became the first patient treated under the new system. The Government also nationalised the country’s regional train companies to form British Railways, and brought the entire electricity generation and grid system into public ownership. National Service increased from 12 to 18 months.
This was some years before rock ’n’ roll arrived and so, even though the vinyl 33⅓rpm LP record was invented this year, ‘pop’ music was dominated by crooners such as Frankie Laine and winsome singers such as Anne Shelton and Dorothy Squires. People spent their money on going to the pictures to enjoy films such as The Red Shoes and The Road To Rio; 1948 saw 1.5-billion UK cinema admissions, the second-highest ever after 1946. There were just 100,000 TV sets in Britain, mostly owned by the superwealthy, so the BBC’s 68 televised hours of the 1948 Olympic Games held at London’s White City made little impact on the general public. Japanese and German athletes were banned, though the 100 metres saw the Olympics’ first photo finish.
Silverstone, a former airfield, hosted Britain’s first post-war Grand Prix race where the Maseratis of Villoresi and Ascari came first and second respectively, with Bob Gerard’s ERA third, while Alfa Romeo and Ferrari stayed away. A 19-year-old Stirling Moss showed promise after setting fastest practice lap in the British GP 500cc support race. On the roads, though, rationed petrol meant most drivers could only get enough to fuel 90 miles of driving a month.
There were technological innovations aplenty this year but most – transistor radio, Velcro fastenings and the Polaroid camera – would be a while coming to consumers. Not so one of the first instant crazes of the year: the word-game Scrabble.