The war had been a time of shortages – even of food. Britain is a small country with lots of people, and normally buys from overseas much of what it cannot produce for itself. In wartime it could not do that, so people had to have less. As a result, goods had to be shared out evenly. This was called rationing.
At the end of the war Britain had little money left. It had spent it on waging war. So it could not buy things from overseas and shortages continued, and even got worse for a few years. This went on until 1954.
