EU Referendum


Media: The Shelter War (3)


13/10/2012



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Churchill's first broadcast as Prime Minister to the British people was on 19 May 1940, when he told his listeners that the news from the front was uniformly bad. The Germans had broken through the French defences at Sedan, and everywhere the French forces were reeling under a devastating barrage from land and air.

At this point, the full extent of the disaster was not known, and Churchill could not yet know that the battle was lost. He thus spoke of "stability" soon being reached on the Western Front, whence "the bulk of that hideous apparatus of aggression which gashed Holland into ruin and slavery in a few days will be turned upon us".

"I am sure I speak for all", Churchill declared, "when I say we are ready to face it; to endure it; and to retaliate against it - to any extent that the unwritten laws of war permit".

"There will", the Prime Minister continued", "be many men and many women in the Island who when the ordeal comes upon them, as come it will, will feel comfort, and even a pride, that they are sharing the perils of our lads at the Front -- soldiers, sailors and airmen, God bless them -- and are drawing away from them a part at least of the onslaught they have to bear".

At a distance of more than seventy years, the myth endures that Churchill was indeed speaking for all – a united nation. But, in this, the third of our series on "The Shelter War", we can affirm that this was very far from the case. Three days later, this cartoon in the Daily Worker (below) took a very different view of Churchill's "comfort", warning of the consequences to come from years of neglect of what were known as "Air Raid Precautions" (ARP) and, in particular, the refusal to provide deep shelters.

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Following on from last weekend, where we continued to explore the provenance of the idea of a "People's War", we dig deeper into the "hidden war" of September 1940, which we've now come to dub "The Shelter War".

Long before the September, though, the situation was deteriorating, and with it the dawning finally came that the Battle of France was lost. In his famous "Finest Hour" speech of 18 June, Churchill told the nation, via the House of Commons, he expected: "that the Battle of Britain is about to begin".

On 29 June, however, the Daily Worker was writing in terms that, "The real Battle for Britain has already begun". Said the paper:
It is being fought in the mass campaign to drive out the friends of Fascism from power, and instal a new Government of the People, which shall place effective power in the hands of the working people, the true representatives of the nation. The outcome of this political struggle will determine the fate of the British people.
Thus it was that there were two wars being waged, one against the Nazis, and the other by the people (or a small segment of them) against their own government. And it was this second war, that was to take on an entirely new dimension with the start of the London Blitz on 7 September 1940.

As the bombs fell, far from the passive, stoic population of myth, a significant number of people in the East End was at times a seething, angry mob, held down only by force of arms. Some of this we discovered from a hitherto unpublished (and unused) source, the Metropolitan Police War Diary.

The entry for 10 September 1940 tells us that: "On evening of 9th (before the raid) some 5,000 persons attempted to rush the entrance of the new Tube Station at Bethnal Green (which was then still under construction) – order restored by Police and Home Guard".

We actually learn more of what appears to be this incident from the Daily Worker, of 7 October, which refers to the then Home Secretary Herbert Morrison and the praise given to his belated decision to "open the Tube extension at Bethnal Green as a shelter for several thousand people". The paper then goes on to say:
The fact that three weeks ago the local people forced their way into the tunnel to secure shelter and were then dtiven out by the authorities, was not mentioned.
This may even be a different incident, but the evidence is there to suggest that there was conflict, on a significant scale, between local people and the authorities. 

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One day after the Police Diary entry, on 11 September, we then see the Daily Worker run a lead editorial headed: "The People Must Act" (above). This is an explicit call to action, not only by the paper but by the Communist Party. 

"The people are seething with anger and are demanding action", the paper says. "The time has come for a great united campaign of action supported by the wide masses of the people and embracing all sections of the Labour and trade union movements".

Despite this, though, the rest of the media was silent, leaving the Daily Worker to rail against "the frivolity of the Press and the authorities". It warned that: "Moments of extreme crisis are approaching".

Read the "popular" Press, the paper said, "and note how the mass demand for shelters is carefully suppressed. It is on everybody's lips, but it never gets a mention in the millionaire Press. All of Fleet Street's sob-sisters (of both sexes) are on the job of whooping up morale. Only when a calamity happens, such as an air raid or a pit explosion, do they discover that the workers are brave, calm and self-reliant".

That evening, Churchill broadcast to the nation, his first time since the start of the London Blitz, five whole days previously – five days of silence from the Prime Minister of a country, the capital of which had sustained the greatest assaults in the history of air warfare. 

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Conveyed by the BBC, the rhetoric was, of course, top quality. "Every man and woman will therefore prepare himself to do his duty, whatever it may be, with special pride and care … With devout but sure confidence I say that God defends the right", he declared, phrasing triumphantly paraded by the Daily Express the next morning. 

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God may have been in place, doubtless the same God invoked by Berliners under attack from the RAF. But there was no other protection.  This, the Daily Worker reported the same morning (above), with the headline: "Heavy bombing on people of two capitals", noting that "the huge civilian population of the two capital cities, London and Berlin, are suffering the most savage slaughter and destruction ever seen in the world …".

The damage to Berlin, at that point, was being grossly exaggerated – its time was to come. Nevertheless, the point made by the cartoon (below), which the paper published on Friday 13 September, was accurate enough.  Despite the import of hundreds of heavy anti-aircraft guns to the capital, there was at this stage of the war no active defence against the night bomber. 

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Eschewing the propaganda embraced by the "popular" press, which had majored on the noisy but entirely ineffectual anti-aircraft barrage laid on with purpose other than to impress the people of London, the Daily Worker recorded the first in a series of actions to be taken by the London Communist Party (below). 

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Led by London Communist Leader Ted Bramley, a deputation that afternoon was to present demands to No. 10 Downing Street, calling for better shelters and "full relief" for the wounded and homeless. At the same time, the London District Committee of the Communist Party issued a proclamation under the heading: "They need not have died". A mass poster parade through Central London was also organised.

That day, a bomb fell on Buckingham Palace. The following day, 14 September, the "popular" press was overtaken by front-page accounts of how a German aircraft had made a "deliberate" attack on the Palace. Of the Communist shelter campaign, apart from the Daily Worker, not a single newspaper mentioned it. 

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Returning the favour, the Daily Worker refused to report the Palace bomb. Instead, it interviewed Dr C. K. Cullen, a well-known East London doctor, living in Poplar. 

He vigorously condemned "the Government's lack of provision for meeting the immense problem of housing the thousands now without homes as a result of the week's raids". "The East End", said Cullen, "is seething with indignation at the sunshine stories and tongue-in-the-cheek flattery of the capitalist Press, while nothing is done to cope with the problem of the refugees".

By contrast, the Daily Express had US journalist H R Knickerbocker report his "considered opinion" that "no people ever stood up better under cruel punishment, that they will never surrender to mere pain and terror".

"Hitler", he wrote, "will not achieve either his two possible objectives - which are first, through killing and maiming the population, so to intimidate them as to bring a mass demand for peace at any price; second, through dislocation of communications, railroads, docks and public utilities, to starve and demoralise the people and the armed Services until invasion can be attempted". 


Part 1 of "The Shelter War" here
Part 2 of "The Shelter War" here.
Part 4 of "The Shelter War" here.
Part 5 of "The Shelter War" here
Part 6 of "The Shelter War" here.