The Britain of my father's generation, was a lot less complicated than it is today.

 

The Home Guard

My Dad died in 2015 and would've been 100 next September 2026. He was called up as the war was coming to an end and he spent his army service in Britain. He was told that they were going to be used to fight the Japs.

Britain today, is not the country that my father or the elderly gentleman, on Good Morning Britain, grew up in. Before he was conscripted, my father was in the Home Guard aged 17 and that would have been, in 1943. He told me that on one occasion he was asked to go and check on an ammunition dump in the town where he lived. My father and another young man, were issued with two .303 Lee Enfield rifles and both were given five rounds of live ammunition. Can you imagine doing that today with a 17-year-old youth, who doesn't know what discipline or respect is? I believe that today, suicide is now the biggest killer of men in Britain, aged under 50.

For most of his adult life, my father drove articulated lorries, and he was never required to sit a driving test in his life, nor was he ever unemployed. He said that when he started driving there was no requirement to sit a test. He said you bought a car and if you could prove you hadn't a knock within six months, they gave you a driving license.

The Britain of my father's day, was a lot less complicated than it is today. Despite his age, I never heard my father ever grumble about the way in which he thought Britain had changed. He just got on with living and tried to adapt accordingly. He used to say to me that there was good and bad in every kind and just treat people as you find them. 

Those young lads who fought in WWII, were fighting the Nazis and Hitler. It's thanks to them that we never finished up with a Nazi jackboot stomping on our faces and a Europe dominated by Fascist dictators.