Daily Graphic dated Wednesday February 9th 1952
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I think Health and Safety would have a thing or two to say
about this way of travelling!
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The American owned ship the ‘Flying Enterprise’ left Hamburg
on December 21st 1951 bound for the New York. As well as a cargo of mainly pig-iron there
were 10 passengers aboard. The ship was caught in a severe storm on Christmas
day, which damaged the hull and by the 28th it was listing at 45
degrees so an SOS was sent out. The following day all those onboard except Captain
Kurt Carlsen were evacuated. For the next 13 days the World’s media watched
while the tug Turmoil tried at first to get a line to the ship and then to tow
it to safety, but on the 10th January 1952 Captain Carlsen abandoned
ship, the tow lines were released and the Flying Enterprise sank.
The exact make up of her cargo has never been fully
disclosed. It has been rumoured that, although the manifest said ‘pig-iron’,
she may have been carrying zirconium destined for the US nuclear submarine
program.
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Winston Churchill had been re-elected as Prime
Minister the previous October and the main purpose of this visit to Washington
was to re-new the ‘special relationship’ that had been created between the UK
and the USA during World War II. It was during the meetings between Churchill
and President Truman that they agreed to allow the US to use British bases for
the ‘common defence’ of the two countries.
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The 56 year-old King George VI had been diagnosed with lung
cancer and had had an operation to remove a lung in September 1951. Despite
this offer, which wasn’t taken up, the King had less than a month to live and
died on February 6th 1952.
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“Spare the rod and spoil the child” used to be the motto of
all right thinking parents in the 1950’s, including mine. As a family, we moved
to Becontree (more precisely Beacontree Heath) when I was 7 and I don’t
remember meeting any kids that exercised ‘free expression’ – at least not when
there was an adult around.
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This can’t be the 1950’s Britain of Everest, Norman Wisdom,
What’s My Line, standing for the National Anthem at the end of the cinema show,
PC George Dixon, kids wearing Davy Crockett hats, and the Goon Show. But of
course its those coloured people with their strange ways, jazz music and reefer
cigarettes – “if they can’t live like civilised folk they should go back to
where they came from” was the commonly held view.
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This was the ‘Cold War’ with ‘Reds under Beds’ and the ‘4
Minute Warning’ a seemingly real threat. As with most knee-jerk Security
measures it didn’t do a lot of good though as the Portland Spies could have testified
if they hadn’t been too busy sending secret messages to Moscow.
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Well someone must have taken heed because the
Irish are still there, and here, and everywhere.
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Gilbert Harding was a TV personality (what would now be
called a ‘celeb’ by those who can’t complete a word let alone a sentence) and
he earned the title ‘rudest man on TV’. Not that he had a lot of competition.
1950’s BBC was all terribly decent and well spoken and, for a lot of the time,
‘live’, so Harding’s unscripted outbursts were exciting and refreshing to many
viewers, but unfortunately a lot of others complained. He died of an asthma
attack outside Broadcasting House in 1960.
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“I have a flat round thing with a hole in the middle – is
this a record?” An example of a dated joke that no one under 40 would
appreciate. Anyway this run down of the latest groovy platters throws up some
familiar (to us oldies) names – Joe Loss, Pearl Carr, Jimmy Durante, not to
mention Erich Kuntz. The name that jumps out for me though is Josh White and
his ‘Free and Equal Blues’. White was an accomplished blues singer and
guitarist who moved from the South to New York and became a favourite of the
Liberal white audiences at folk concerts and political rallies. He was
black-listed by the anti-communist House Un-American Activities Committee and
spent most of the 1950’s in Europe. He was re-introduced to American TV audiences in 1963 at the request of John F Kennedy.
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