Angels With Dirty Faces: Strategies of ‘Normalization’ and ‘Equity’ in the Immediate Post-War Era

Abstract

A major restructuring of BOAC, sweeping leadership changes and rapid growth dramatically changed the face of Britain’s airlines in the post-war era and influenced their gendered character. Restructuring saw the airline divided in two, with the separation of European and transcontinental routes, respectively, to a new British European Airways and a truncated BOAC.¹ In both airlines senior management positions changed hands over the next five years before a pattern of leadership was established. Rapid growth saw BOAC grow from just under 19,000 at the war’s end to around 25,000 by 1947. BEA, in the meantime stood at close to 6000 employees, as many as were employed by IAL and BAL combined in 1939 (see Figure 5.1) (British European Airways, 1947a; British Overseas Airways Corporation, 1950a).

[The] suppression of sexuality is one of the first tasks the bureaucracy sets itself […] Moreover, in modern times, individual organizations inaugurate mechanisms for the control of sexuality at a very early stage in their development […] Today we are presented with a situation in which human features such as love and comfort are not seen as part of the organizational life […] Human feelings including sexuality have gradually been repulsed from bureaucratic structures […] The desexualization of labour, for this is what is entailed, involves the repulsion of many human feelings out of the organization and out of its sight.

(Burrell, 1992: 73–74)