‘Remember snoek?’ asked my husband, as if I were old enough to be his mother. In 1947, ten million tins of this distinctive-tasting fish, Thyrsites atun, were imported from South Africa to take the place of sardines. The Conservatives complained in Parliament that the Labour administration’s austerity diet was damaging the health of British people. It was more likely that people simply felt put upon, developing a dislike of the very name snoek, which had been favoured officially as preferable to the alternative snake mackerel.
We tend to identify austerity with Attlee (1945-51), though the word as a political ideal had been introduced under the coalition during the second world war. Austerity had a counterpart in utility, the designation for clothes and furniture made in accordance with official allowances of materials. ‘Frankly, Meadows, can you see me in a utility suit?’ ran the caption to an Osbert Lancaster cartoon in 1942.
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