Carlymichelle raised this question in a recent post;
Re: So aside from the potentially lethal wish-list of the NSPCC ...
« Reply #159 on: Today at 09:11:35 AM »
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stephen do you think some of the mcann supporters are older and were taught the stiff upper lip as children? i have always wondered because of my generation ( born 1979 so almost the 80s) we question everything and dont take everything as face value is it a generation gap? or is it the internet has helped our ability to think for ourselves ??
This interested me because I was born in 1944, so I'm well placed to have an opinion. I think my generation began the process of 'making up your own mind'. My outlook was poles apart from my mother's, born in 1903. I questioned everything she accepted, and rejected a lot of it. My generation had full employment, so didn't fear 'the boss's' power as my mother did. Her generation still feared the Workhouse, mine didn't. Her generation were very aware that they needed to be seen as respectable because of the spectre of 'deserving and undeserving' poor, echos of which still remain today. We had better education, not just the minimum like my mother had. She had no choices. At twelve years of age she went to school in the mornings and to the weaving shed in the afternoons. At 14 she was a full-time cotton weaver working from 7.30am to 5.30pm. I asked her once what it was like. Her answer consisted of one word 'slavery'. She automatically respected her 'betters' I respected those I considered worthy of respect. My mother lived in fear and towards the end of her life she told me she had always envied me because I didn't.
