Elizabethans

Just as young men going into the Army would face bullying rituals, dramatic haircuts and parade-ground square-bashing designed to erode their individuality, so too, in thousands of factories, young apprentices would be subjected to initiation ceremonies designed to humiliate them and above all ensure that they knew their place.

In general, today’s norms are more about blurring and ignoring difference than about reinforcing it.

The Britain of 1952 was a society in which the vast majority of people felt they had a place. They might have resented that place or they might have biddably ‘known’ their place. Yet however much they may have chafed against their position in the social spectrum, people understood that certain norms of behaviour were expected – at work, in the family, in streets and in towns and villages.