You probably think you know what life was like in Britain after the war. But what myths do we tell ourselves about the pre-digital world? From coal to contraception and ID cards to school beatings, Ros Taylor delves into the truth about British postwar life in Jam Tomorrow. From the makes of Oh God, What Now?
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The Lionesses’ Euro victory captivated English football fans – but this success was once unimaginable.
In 1921, the English Football Association banned women from playing on any of its pitches, a ban that would remain in place for 50 years. Who were the women who fought back? How did they defy all odds to get the women’s game to where it is today?
In for Ros Taylor, Jade Bailey talks to Jean Williams, visiting professor at the University of Reading, about the early pioneers of women’s football, the ban that prevented them from playing, and reasons to be optimistic about the women’s game.
“It’s really important that women’s football began as a professional entertainment, in the same way that men’s professional football was at the time.”
“In 1921, the FA says that no club that is affiliated with the FA should allow women to play on their grounds, which is every professional and amateur club in the country.”
“The business model of women’s football totally changes, and it invents a myth that women’s football isn’t as spectacular as men’s, and because people live with that myth for 50 years it still influences what we have today.”
“For me, female-owned, female-run, and feminist values are the future of women’s football.”
Buy Legendary Lionesses: The England Women's Football Team, 1972-2022 through our affiliate bookshop and you'll help fund Jam Tomorrow by earning us a small commission for every sale. Bookshop.org's fees help support independent bookshops too.
Written, presented and produced by Jade Bailey. Original music by Dubstar. Artwork by Jim Parrett. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Jam Tomorrow is a Podmasters Production.
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Rationing: Milk and no honey
Season 3 · Episode 3
Tuesday, August 13, 2024 • Duration 40:34
Mock cream. Lord Woolton Pie. For 14 years the government put draconian restrictions on how much Britons could eat. Each meal had to be carefully planned and every scrap of food eked out to avoid waste. But at the end of it, Britons were healthier than ever before.
Was it the best of times or the worst of times? Turned out it could be both — depending on who you were. And the rationing that kept Britons fed played a part in the deaths of millions of colonial subjects in India.
Ros Taylor talks to Lizzie Collingham, author of The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food, about rationing, wartime diets and the Bengal famine.
• “The poor were basically living on a diet of cheap white bread and sugary tea. When the war came along people got the opportunity to go into war industries and earn more money – and rationing ensured that everyone had access to meat and milk.”
• “The middle classes did very well on Dig for Victory, because they grew themselves all the things they missed, like asparagus and peas and lettuce.”
• “It was a calculated decision to export hunger to the colonies.”
Written and presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Jade Bailey. Voiceovers by Seth Thévoz. Original music by Dubstar. Artwork by Jim Parrett. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Jam Tomorrow is a Podmasters production.
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The Marshall Plan: Uncle Sam to the rescue
Season 2 · Episode 3
Tuesday, February 20, 2024 • Duration 39:20
After the War, Britain was broke and broken – even broker than France. America was faced with a stark choice: invest billions in a shattered Europe or watch its citizens go hungry, or worse, Communist. So how did the Marshall Plan come to be? And what sort of Britain did it rebuild beyond the Welfare State?
Ros Taylor talks to Benn Steil, director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, and military historian Dr. Steph Hinnershitz about the aid package Britain needed, but wants to forget.
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• “A rubble heap, a charnel house, a breeding ground of pestilence and hate.” – Winston Churchill describes Europe after the War
• “We grossly underestimated the destruction to the European economy by the War… Millions of people in the cities are slowly starving.” – William L Clayton, 1947
• “The State Department knew that if it didn’t prop up Britain and take over her security responsibilities, we might be headed towards a Third World War.” – Benn Steil
Written and presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Jade Bailey. Original music by Dubstar. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Jam Tomorrow is a Podmasters production
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Ten Pound Poms: Did the Australian dream pay off for British migrants?
Season 2 · Episode 2
Tuesday, February 6, 2024 • Duration 33:08
Ros Taylor’s exploration of Britain’s postwar identity crisis continues. After the War, Britain was broke and broken. Between 1947 and 1981 over a million Britons left for a new life in Australia, some for just £10 passage. Ros looks at the lives of the ‘Ten Pound Poms’, their conflicted identities, the legacy of the racist ‘White Australia’ policy… and how a country that was once desperate for (white) migrants became a role model for immigration hardliners who wanted a points-based system in the UK.
Subscribe to Jam Tomorrow for a new episode every fortnight.
• “The ‘White Australia’ policy was designed to keep Australia white and English-speaking… It was Gough Whitlam’s reforms that made Australia more accepting of diversity.” – Prof Catherine Cole
• “The Ten Pound Poms didn’t just change Australia. They’re changing Britain now.” – Ros Taylor
Written and presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Jade Bailey. Voiceovers by Eliza Davis Beard and Bryan Kassulke. Original music by Dubstar. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Jam Tomorrow is a Podmasters production
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Contraception: Where there’s a pill, there’s a way
Season 2 · Episode 1
Tuesday, January 23, 2024 • Duration 44:16
A new fortnightly series of Ros Taylor’s exploration of the post-War promises Britain made to itself… and whether they were kept. In this edition: the quest for cheap, easy-to-access, stigma-free contraception wasn’t the simple progression to female freedom that you might think.
The wartime emancipation of women – not just into work but into “fraternisation” with American servicemen – created a stereotype of “loose” women and racist judgment against Black GIs. Birth control in the 50s was dangerous and hard to obtain. And one of the key advocates of the Pill was Enoch Powell.
With new interviews and archive material, Ros explores the long and winding road to women’s control of their own fertility… and whether our new obsession with “wellness” might be taking women backwards.
(Listener note: this edition contains contemporary quotes from the 40s and 50s featuring antiquated racial language).
• “Since no ‘decent’ woman was having sex outside marriage, it was unthinkable to promote ways of avoiding pregnancy.” – Ros Taylor
• “When it came to sex, most of the risk fell on women. And yet ‘loose’ women were blamed for luring men – and spreading disease.” – Ros Taylor
• “Women’s sexual desires were never taken into account on contraception, only men’s – and the pill didn’t really change that.” – Dr Claire Jones
• “The Pill recast the whole choreography of relationships.” – Mary Kenny
Written and presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Jade Bailey. Voiceovers by Imogen Robertson and Seth Thévoz. Original music by Dubstar. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Jam Tomorrow is a Podmasters production.
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Podmasters presents a brand new podcast - This Is Not A Drill
Season 1 · Episode 8
Friday, December 1, 2023 • Duration 10:08
From the producers of Jam Tomorrow - a brand new show looking at the tectonic shifts in global power occurring right before our eyes, called This Is Not A Drill.
Presented by ex-BBC News host and Washington correspondent Gavin Esler with a series of co-hosts including Oz Katerji, This Is Not A Drill takes a look at the expanding threats to global stability from Ukraine to the Middle East to China; exploring the dangers, corruption, conflicts and power struggles happening around the world. New episodes out every Wednesday.
If you enjoy the show and want to subscribe, visit https://listen.podmasters.uk/TINADjtfd?at=1001l39LM
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I.D. Cards: Show me who you are
Season 1 · Episode 7
Wednesday, June 21, 2023 • Duration 39:48
A Jam Tomorrow special: Identity cards. What happens when principles come up against panic? When a high minded determination not to collect private info runs up against a society which depends on data? Ros Taylor charts the history of “show us your papers” from wartime security concerns to football hooliganism, benefit fraud crackdowns, Blairite control freakery and our modern obsession with asylum seekers.
Speaking to experts including New Labour ID card advocate Liam Byrne she finds that this is one post war nightmare that could return. Is State ID coming whether we like it or not?
We’ve got more Jam Tomorrow specials coming over the summer. Follow us so you don’t miss any.
• “Every decade or so there’s been a problem where somebody says the ID card is the solution.” – Jon Agar
• “If you are from a marginalised group you know we already live in a papers, please society.” – Rob Ford
• “Yes, people are happy to unlock their device is using biometric data. That’s not the same as the government storing everybody’s name or face on the database.” – Edgar Whitley
Written and presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Jade Bailey. Voiceovers by Imogen Robertson. Original music by Dubstar. Lead producer: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Jam Tomorrow is a Podmasters production
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Choice: The buck stops with you
Season 1 · Episode 6
Monday, February 20, 2023 • Duration 39:18
Season finale: Since the War, Britons experienced an explosion of choice in food, services, work, utilities, even belief and sexuality. But did ever-increasing choices really lead us to the promised land? Why are we lost in a maze of competing phone contracts, train fares, and “options” from schools and hospitals – where choice is bewildering and meaningless?
In the last episode of this season, Ros Taylor finds out how choice and competition shaped the post-privatisation world from rail to energy to education – and where it let us down. Does more choice make people more empowered or just more fearful? And how do you run a society when you can choose your own truth?
• “Choice has liberated people and made life worth living. But in public services, it hasn’t worked so well…” – Ros Taylor
• “Parents who looked at more schools were more likely to find the whole thing stressful – and worry if they’d made the right choice.” – Aveek Bhattacharya
• “How do you incentivise a public service to do the best it can? The idea was to introduce some fake competition.” – John Appleby
• “When people feel fearful and insecure, their appetite for choice shrinks.” – Ros Taylor
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Written and presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Jade Bailey. Voiceovers by Imogen Robertson. Original music by Dubstar. Lead producer: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Jam Tomorrow is a Podmasters production.
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Belief: Heaven up here
Season 1 · Episode 5
Monday, February 13, 2023 • Duration 39:58
The post-war dream was anchored in ideas of Britain as a Christian nation. Now we’re a polyglot country of different faiths and none. Can religious belief still tie Britain together? Should we want it to? Ros Taylor looks at the Church of England’s journey from its unifying role in the Second World War to its search for a new identity in a world of charismatic evangelicals, shifting sexualities and new ethnic communities. Does the CofE have to change or disappear?
• “Donating to the church collection isn’t enough. Some of us want a side of social justice with our sermon.” – Ros Taylor
• “The Church of England is essentially about the feeling of being English… and that’s been squandered by the clergy.” – Linda Woodhead
• “We think of London as the most socially liberal city in the country – but it’s actually the most socially conservative. And a major part of that is the type of Christianity and Islam followed by migrants.” – Tomiwa Owolade
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Written and presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Jade Bailey. Voiceovers by Imogen Robertson. Original music by Dubstar. Lead producer: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Jam Tomorrow is a Podmasters production.
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Class: The old school ties that bind
Season 1 · Episode 4
Monday, February 6, 2023 • Duration 43:19
Britain’s class system is rigid and incomprehensible – and education keeps it that way. Why do so many of us think we’re working class when we’re not? Why do we still believe in making it through hard work, yet hate social climbers?
After the War, we told ourselves we were on the way towards a classless society. Ros Taylor talks to people as diverse as campaigner and educationalist Melissa Benn and class commentator Peter York to find that decades of meddling with education and work only entrenched class power. How do we get out of the class trap?
“The top universities say that anyone can get in if you’re good enough… The problem is, you might not realise it unless you’ve been to the right kind of schools.” – Ros Taylor
“There’s British plutocracy and British poshocracy… but in Belgravia you will find precious few British achievers.” – Peter York
“The freedoms that academies were promised don’t really exist now… the whole thing was a hugely expensive time and energy trap.” – Fiona Millar
“Should we stop talking about the Upper Classes at all and be honest about who really holds wealth and power in Britain?” – Ros Taylor
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Written and presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Jade Bailey. Voiceovers by Imogen Robertson. Original music by Dubstar. Lead producer: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Jam Tomorrow is a Podmasters production.
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