Rationing

Food rationing is Socialism in action, real hard hitting Socialism. It happened in England during the Second World War. It might have been justified by the realities. The Germans were trying to starve us into submission by attacking Atlantic convoys.  Recall that the Germans surrendered to Montgomery on 4 May 1945. The next spring planting was in 1946. Harvests could and should have been improving in autumn 1947 at worst. People voted in a Labour government. People got more rationing, worse rationing as their reward. Labour carried  on Rationing in the UK; it ended on 4 July 1954. They wanted rationing, they wanted power, they wanted control.

The Wikipedia informs us that rationing was good for our health. This might be true. It also alleges that we were getting more food than we really needed. That does not accord with my mother's recollections. Also that there was "growing public anger at rationing, scarcity, controls, austerity and government bureaucracy" It does not quite say we are ungrateful plebeians who didn't know how to run our own lives properly but that is the attitude, the message lurking in the background.

Something that the Wikipedia does not mention but James Morton does is that rationing was a major bonus for the Crime industry. People suddenly could not get what they wanted or needed. Free Traders stepped in to fill the gap. In Gangland Bosses: The Lives of Jack Spot and Billy Hill Mr Morton tells us about The Fortunes of War on page 82 et seq. Millions were made by entrepreneurs, by thieves. See more at the Black Market In War Time ex Wiki. More is at London in the blitz - How crime flourished under cover of the blackout. There were some 20,000 deserters out there who had no papers, who needed food etc. They were drawn into crime perforce.

Socialism starts with sympathy for the weak, poor, downtrodden then briskly becomes Resentment & hate. It has an arrogant attitude to those it controls, demanding that they live by socialistic rules. The Nanny State soon becomes the Bully  State. Self-righteous bores who know how to run our lives better than us like it. Puritans would have understood perfectly. In fact the current oppressors are their intellectual descendants. Hiram Maxim, a New Englander said that the Puritans went to America so that they could worship the Lord, their God as they saw fit and prevent others doing precisely the same. Hiram was right; tolerance was not on their agenda. See e.g. Religion Gets Oppressive. Sounds similar?

Rationing is, like Nationalization, a technique used to enforce Socialism, a deeply nasty Legitimising Ideology.

 

Rationing in the UK ex Wiki
Political reaction
In the late 1940s the Conservative Party exploited and incited [ Is the Wiki taking it down the middle? NO! - Editor ] growing public anger at rationing, scarcity, controls, austerity and government bureaucracy. They used the dissatisfaction with the socialistic and egalitarian policies of the Labour Party to rally middle-class supporters and build a political comeback that won the 1951 general election. Their appeal was especially effective to housewives, who faced more difficult shopping conditions after the war than during it.[32]

Timeline
25 October 1951: United Kingdom general election, 1951. The Conservatives came back into power.
February 1953: Confectionery rationing ended.
September 1953: Sugar rationing ended.
4 July 1954: Meat and all other food rationing ended in Britain.

The system was open to exploitation & exploited it was. One deeply corrupt criminal working it was Sidney Stanley, a Jew from Poland, a very effective liar, thief and cheat. James Lucas, a writer who served for real tells us in his book, Shoulder Arms at page 39, in effect that Stanley was an outstanding black marketeer.

 

Council Houses ex Wiki allegedly included Homes fit for heroes houses (1918-1923). The Wiki gives us no reason to believe its claim.

 

Nationalization ex Wiki
Nationalization was one of the major mechanisms advocated by reformist socialists and social democrats for gradually transitioning to socialism. In this context, the goals of nationalization were to dispossess large capitalists, redirect the profits of industry to the public purse and establish some form of workers' self-management as a precursor to the establishment of a socialist economic system.[4]

In the United Kingdom after the Second World War, nationalization gained support by the Labour party and some social democratic parties throughout Europe. Although sometimes undertaken as part of a strategy to build socialism, more commonly nationalization was also undertaken and used to protect and develop industries perceived as being vital to the nation's competitiveness (such as aerospace and shipbuilding), or to protect jobs in certain industries.

A re-nationalization occurs when state-owned assets are privatized and later nationalized again, often when a different political party or faction is in power. A re-nationalization process may also be called "reverse privatization". Nationalization has been used to refer to either direct state-ownership and management of an enterprise or to a government acquiring a large controlling share of a publicly listed corporation.[citation needed]

 

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1946/apr/04/world-food-shortage

World Food Shortage
Attlee spoke in Parliament about a world food shortage in 1946.

 

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/549165/The_Urban_Working_-_Class_Household_Diet_1940-1949.pdf

The Urban Working - Class Household Diet 1940-1949
Is a Government publication telling us that we had food, that things were getting better and weren't we lucky to have rationing. Did politicians believe it? Housewives did not.

 

Food Supply and Nutrition in the Netherlands during and Immediately after World War II on JSTOR
Most of their food was imported so there were problems.

 

Sidney Stanley, Jew ex Wiki
Sidney (or Sydney) Stanley
( Solomon Wulkan, alias Solomon Koszyski,[1] alias Stanley Rechtand,[2] later Schlomo ben Chaim[3]) (1899/1905[4] – 1969) was a Polish émigré to the UK who became a dubious businessman of precarious ethics before claiming to be a contact man, able to influence politicians and civil servants in return for cash bribes, claims that led to a great scandal and investigation by the Lynskey tribunal of 1948. There is also evidence that Stanley spied against the UK for the armed nationalist activist Irgun organisation. Stanley was ordered deported, but had lost his Polish nationality, and as a result was a stateless person. Stanley was then placed under heavy restrictions and police surveillance. In 1949, he evaded police and fled to France and thence to Israel, where he was granted citizenship through right-of-return. There he lived out the remainder of his life in relative obscurity.