Eighty years ago this week the British public are told to tighten their belts another notch

 

The British government presented a stark picture of the future for the public in a debate on food supply. They would have to make further sacrifices on top of accepting the savage food rationing to which they were still subject. Wheat was in particularly short supply. The scale of sacrifice rather depended on the massive loan from the US which was still being arranged. Inevitably the problem was exaggerated for US consumption. The despatch of a whaling fleet to the Antarctic held some prospect of increasing the edible oil supply.  Rationing remained strict for several years; indeed it was tightened; bread, which had been freely available  during the war,  was put on ration. 

Sir Charles Vyner Brooke, the "white rajah" abdicated as the third rajah of Sarawak which had been in his family's hands since 1841, a relic of the free-booting days of the British empire. As a young man he had fought in two military campaigns; in one of these, one fifth of the Dyaks under his command died of disease. His father contemplated disinheriting him in favour of a brother who took more interest in administration. He had never relished his position and had abandoned most of his prerogative powers and granting a written constitution  in a deal which brought him one million Sarawak dollars.  Sarawak became a British Crown Colony but Brooked dervied no financial benefit.

Stalin practically declared the Cold War in a radio speech to the USSR in which he said that war was inevitable because of the "capitalist development of the world economy." National policy would focus on preparing for war.