I was a working class kid in the fifties living on a rough council estate on the south coast,some of my memories are …
Married women generally did not work but housework was much more labour intensive,no hoovers,laundry done by hand,daily shopping trips and no ready meals.
Virtually everyone smoked(None smokers were considered a bit odd),beer was weakerand pubs had restricted opening times.
Most working class people didn’t have bank accounts and were payed in cash weekly.
Just about everything was closed on a Sunday(Which was also bath day)and the two T.V. channels that we had(in black and white)had to have religious programmes on between I think five and seven P.M in an effort to bore people into going to church but I never actually knew ANYONE who was a church attender.
Sunday was also the day of a roast dinner.
Dogs were allowed to roam free and to crap more or less where they liked.
You had corporal punishment in schools and if you were mouthy to an adult he/she was quite entitled to thump you round the earhole even if he/she was a complete stranger.
You didn’t tell your parents because they were quite likely to clip you themselves for being cheeky to a grown up.
Alot more adults used bycycles to travel as cars were normally for posher people.
Even though I lived on a rough estate bikes were NEVER EVER chained up and the house doors were never locked.
Milk was delivered daily to the doorand except for department stores shops tended to be small and specialist(Grocers,butchers,fishmongers etc.)
My mum used to leave the money for tradesmen in an envelope pinned to the front door when she was out and it was never stolen.
My memories were that there seemed to be very little choice or variety in goods and services and that life was generally a lot more boring albeit safer ,then
Our local fish & chip shop in NZ was still doing this until the 1990s at least, and I completely agree with you- the fish & chips did taste better. It’s hard to explain to someone that hasn’t experienced it, I guess.
All forms of rationing finally came to an end in 1954, with meat rationing the last to go.
Britain was emerging from the post-war Austerity, social boundaries were beginning to relax (but wouldn’t really do so until the 1960s).
National Service was still on, but was coming to an end.
Credit was hard to get, and the government continually played with the rules and terms of credit (especially hire-purchase) in an effort to pull the levers of the economy. ‘Stop-Go’ was the derisive name coined for this by the Labour Party.
IIRC from Peter Hennessy’s book, someone said that “60% of politics was agreed upon between the two parties, [the Liberals were negligible at this period] and most of the rest was nationalisation”. This was the era of 'Butskillism" a compound word composed of the names of two leading politicians who were on opposite sides but agreed on most economic matters.
Shortage of housing was still a problem, many people who couldn’t afford to buy had to rent often miserable places, or lived [unwillingly] with one set of parents. The New Towns were being built to try to solve these problems, with mixed success.