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February 2003 Update

Peace After 1945

After the shared effort of fighting and helping to win the Second World War, people in Britain were more prepared to help each other, with money spent on new shared resources such as the National Health Service. Another attempt to share between rich and poor, perhaps less successful, was the supply of free school milk to all pupils, every day, to give them regular nutrition. Some pupils hated this.

"I... remember every day at recess there were little bottles of milk handed out to all students. They were in huge crates siting outside in rain, sun or whatever weather. You can imagine the state of the milk. I hated that milk and was constantly getting into trouble for refusing to drink it. Eventually, my mum and Mr. Hunter came to the agreement that I didn't have to have the milk. It saved all the hassle, I suppose. To this day I hate milk and won't drink it." (Susanne Nixon, now McMillan, 1948-55)

One of the editors' wives had a similar experience at a school in Glasgow, and still won't drink milk.

Many other people liked the free milk, though - you could always skip it if it smelled bad or had frozen solid in cold weather!

It was eventually stopped in the 1970s and poorer children in some towns (not necessarily Ayr) were thought to be less healthy as a result.

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