Round and Round: Life on Blackpool Prom

On the first August Bank Holiday weekend after the war ended, nearly 700 trains arrived in Blackpool. On that one Saturday in 1945, over 250,000 people arrived in Blackpool mostly by train and charabanc (charter bus) and some by car. Many people could not find hotel rooms that weekend, so thousands of war-weary families very happily slept on the promenade and the sands. The war was finally over.

It seemed like the whole of the North of England was there to celebrate the war’s ending and life returning. Especially those people from industrial cities such as Liverpool and Manchester. Due to being ports and manufacturing centres, those cities had suffered the most bombing in the north.

The decade after the war was Blackpool’s hectic heyday, reaching 17 million visitors a summer at its height. It was said, during the post-war years, that there were one million beds for visitors in Blackpool.

The Blackpool promenade was a pent-up post-war den of supply and demand.

There are three piers in Blackpool, the most of any seaside resort in Britain. Central Pier is at the centre of what is called the Golden Mile, the busy promenade and entertainment front between the North and South Piers. Just after the Second World War, with rationing at its height (food, clothing, coal, gas, electricity and petrol), the Golden Mile in Blackpool was the black-market capital of the North of England.

In June of 1942, when I was born, the world had dramatically changed and German U Boats had severed many of the shipping lanes to Britain. As a result, there was only a six-week food supply left in Britain. Scarcity of food and other daily items left families in distress. The December of 1941, entry of the US into the war slowly began to increase the supply convoys. However, the UK government used rationing and coupons until the 1950s to manage limited food supplies.

It was probably the summer of 1946, when I first experienced Daddy Day Care on the pier. Dad took me with him when he went to work every morning during the summer season.

About halfway up on the north side of Central Pier, Dad had a tiny stall against the pier railings. It was a sparse model of small business enterprise. At the back of the stall, Dad erected a half dozen pyramid towers built with empty, shiny, upturned vegetable cans. Customers lined up on the other side of the stall and took turns trying to knock all the cans over in one pyramid. They paid my dad, got three tennis balls, and if they knocked over all the cans in the pyramid, they won a prize. The prize was one cigarette. There were queues – only of men – all day, seemingly wanting to show their skills.

Now those queues might seem a bit strange today, but you have to remember that the six-year long war
had just ended. At that time, much of the retail food in Britain was either distributed through ration books (each family had a ration book allocation) or through coupons as for petrol (gasoline). Cigarettes and liquor were not rationed, but they were exceedingly hard to find (and were costly) in shops.

In those days, most men were addicted to cigarettes, but there were few places to buy them except on the black market. It was well worth trying your luck at Dad’s stall, even to get just one cigarette. Some of the contestants preferred just to pay the black-market price to buy cigarettes from Dad and forego the skill part of the deal. Dad had access to the black market due to a number of attributes.

I’d be off again, going round and round until sundown.

Blackpool had a large Gypsy population living mainly in the South Shore area that Dad had been a part of for decades.

In the middle of the severe rationing, the South Shore Gypsies ran a large untracked cash economy that could provide or hide any manner of food, booze, cigarettes or petrol. There were a few gangs that also operated black markets on the promenade.

Blackpool was also near a large number of US air bases, where many airmen made a fortune on the black market selling their records, cigarettes, booze, petrol supplies, and even their cars. The millions of people who came to Blackpool on holiday brought with them their ration books and anything else that could get a good sale on Blackpool’s black market.

The sellers stood all along the Blackpool front, making their pitch to the millions of passers-by. The Blackpool promenade was a pent-up post-war den of supply and demand.

In the middle of Central Pier was a roundabout (it’s still there) made up of half a dozen little kiddy cars all at the end of colourful metal arms. The chap that ran the roundabout would wait for a couple of kids to get on, and then he’d push a bar that drove a wheel up and down that started the cars going round and round for a few minutes. As the cars went around, the contraption also lifted the arms up and down so not only were you going round and round, also up and down at the same time. In Carny* slang, this type of roundabout was called a “galloper.”

I learned much later in life how much the black market played a major role in my daily life. The roundabout man made a special deal with my dad for which he received cigarettes. Whenever we arrived on the pier, Dad could sit me in one of the little cars. Once the roundabout man had a few paying customers, we all went round and round and up and down. After the ride, the paying children got out and I was left there. I soon realized, however, that as soon as a few other paying kids got on board, I’d be off again, going round and round until sundown.

My brother and I were taller and larger than most of our schoolmates. I believe a part of that is due to our father being able to get almost anything on the black market. Dad was always able to get black market meat and fish for our family to eat. Our diet was better and stronger than the diet set by the ubiquitous ration books that every family was limited by.

“With food rationing, you’d be daft to miss a pre-paid dinner.”

Every now and then, Dad would come over and give me something to eat and drink. He’d also make sure I’d go to the toilet when needed. Then back I went into one of the little cars to wait for more paying kids to turn up. Often, Dad had time to wave to me as we turned, so I’d look for him every time my kiddy car went past his stall.

Going round and round lasted until about 5pm. At that point, all the holidaymakers headed for their boarding houses where the landladies put dinner on the table at 5.30pm sharp. With food rationing, you’d be daft to miss a pre-paid dinner. Nightly, during the summers of the postwar years, over 250,000 holidaymakers would stream back to their boarding houses and all sit down to their dinners at the same time.

That was my daily life from four to six years of age during every day of Blackpool’s long summer season. Time with Dad was however, not over at 5pm. Dad shut down the stall while the roundabout man closed down all the little cars. The roundabout man took me out of the car and handed me over to Dad. Both their workdays were over and the roundabout man got his daily allocation of cigarettes. They both walked back to where the pier met the promenade and Dad started walking hand in hand with me to The Manchester. Well, not Manchester, but The Manchester Hotel. That was the name of a Blackpool pub, a five-minute walk south from Central Pier along the promenade.

For all my life, The Manchester Hotel has been one of the biggest pubs in Blackpool. In those days it was one of the top spots on the seafront, where those who worked on the Golden Mile had a drink after work and before going home. The Manchester was filled with the towns’ hidden grafters*: bingo attendants, bookmakers runners*, buskers*, carny men*, gang members, donkey handlers, gypsy palmists, smudgers*, stall holders, street and con artists, and the entire motley crew of unknown people who lived craftily off the 15 million people who came to Blackpool every summer season.

Countless quick marriages in the North began with a very slow waltz in a Blackpool ballroom.

None of these people at The Manchester were listed on the census and they all lived in the shadows of the post war cash economy. Nonetheless, they were the grease that made the Blackpool front go. Dad with his Didicoy* past fitted right in.

My dad would park me in the most southerly seaside doorway of The Manchester. Every time I go to Blackpool these days, I check to see if the doorway is still there. It is. The landlord would break off a piece of Callard and Bowser’s Butterscotch Toffee and ask me to hold out my hand. “You can have this,” he’d say, “but only if you suck it slowly and you never bite into it. Promise me,” he’d say. “Yes,” I’d reply holding that treasured toffee in my child’s hand.

Dad would then go into The Manchester and spend some of his tin can money on a couple of pints while I sucked the Butterscotch Toffee slowly, sitting alone on the doorstep. At least I could see the sea and watch the horse drawn landaus* go by. Every now and then, Dad or the landlord would come out and check on how I was doing and if I was still sucking. If they came out and found that I had finally sucked the toffee away, I was given another piece of toffee with the same admonition.

Around about 6:30 pm, Dad’s Manchester time was done and he’d pick me up to go around the corner to the tram stop, where Lytham Road joined the promenade. Trams are synonymous with Blackpool as it has the oldest continuing tram line in the world. During the season, Blackpool had a great tram service, and in five minutes that tram took Dad and me all the way to our stop at the top of Rosebery Avenue next to the Arnold School and right where Coco lived.

Coco the Clown, the most famous clown in Britain, lived on our street at #1 Rosebery Avenue, right next to the tram stop. Coco was the star of the Blackpool Tower Circus then, and later with the Bertram Mills Circus. What a lucky kid I was to live on the same street as Coco the Clown! Many years later, when the Bertram Mills Circus came to town in Boston, Lincolnshire, Dad took my brother Philip and I to Coco’s caravan. Coco greeted us all as long-lost friends and neighbours. Coco gave us front row seats at the circus, then stood in front of us during his performance and slowly bowed theatrically all the way to the ground. In front of over one thousand people, the most famous clown in Britain bowing to the Thompson boys! Was that ever a precious moment in a child’s life!

Once off the tram, Dad and I would walk down to 37 Rosebery Avenue to be home by 7 pm, just in time for dinner with Mum and my baby brother Philip.

I cherish the memories I have of growing up in post-war Blackpool. For my parents, those were years of hope and happiness compared to the dark dismal days of World War II. During the war my father had been a fireman in Greater Manchester and Blackpool. He had seen his share of the ruins of 1,000 bomber German blitzes.

My parents now revelled in a world without war and the mood transformed the childhood of my brother and me. Both of us were conceived during the war but grew up in peace.

To the war-ravaged North of England, especially the heavily bombed cities of Liverpool and Manchester, Blackpool was a shining light of working-class camaraderie. People loved being part of the ever-festive crowds on the promenade and the conga lines on the dance floors. The Tower Ballroom and the Winter Gardens Ballroom were home to tens of thousands of romances. Without fear, it was a treasured time for love. Countless quick marriages in the North began with a very slow waltz in a Blackpool Tower Ballroom.

I cannot forget the shared communal value of what post-war Blackpool meant to me and millions of northerners.

During the war, Blackpool and locations such as the Tower Ballroom were used as a training site for some of the 600,000 airmen from the UK, the US and the allies who prepared for D-Day and the freeing of Europe from the Nazis.

In particular, Blackpool audiences laughed gustily at the comedians who made fun of Hitler and rationing. People had waited six long years to celebrate and going off to Blackpool was where people could collectively let off steam. They had gone through the war together, now they were going to whoop it up together.

At the end of the war Blackpool was every day like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. People wanted the best for each other; they wanted to be with their families and loved ones, and they wanted to dance the night away in the Blackpool Tower Ballroom or scream as loud as they could on the Big Dipper at the Pleasure Beach. I cannot forget the shared communal value of what post-war Blackpool meant to me and millions of northerners. Cushti Bok, Dad and thanks Mum.

*Dad ran away from home when he was 14 and went to live with the Gypsies who live on the “Common” in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire. The Gypsies still live there. Until he married our mother, Edith Una Clayton, at age 35, he had lived over 20 years with the Gypsies.

NorthernLife Sept/Oct 22