The Tribune reference can be found in the edition of 27 September 1940 headed: "The People of the Tubes". Journalist Anthony Hern supplied the text (above - click to enlarge), writing of the people who had been "driven underground into an atmosphere that rapidly became foetid, undergoing physical hardship and foregoing privacy in order to get away for a night from the menace of the Nazi bomber".

"The movement started in the East End", wrote Hern, "soon after that area had had its first appalling visitation. It became clear then to the workers of the East End that, whatever Sir John Anderson might have to say for himself, deep shelters provided the only effective protection from the bombs that rained from the skies".

"And so these people from the East End, who have been slapped around by the representatives of wealth and privilege for generations, took things into their own hands. They invaded the tube stations, buying tickets which legally entitled them to entry to the platforms. They then illegally took possession".

"It is an old lesson of the working class struggle", Hern added, "that if enough people break the law together, and stand solidly against the possible action from the authorities, these authorities are powerless". And so it was, in which context Hern called the take-over of the Tubes, "the biggest working class demonstration London has seen". 

This was by no means the full extent of the confrontation, as this working class victory became part of a longer campaign to force the government to provide bomb-proof shelters, which it subsequently agreed to do. That campaign was then used as a springboard to launch a "People's Convention" in January 1941, calling for the replacement of Churchill’s administration with a "People's Government", and an end to the war with Germany. In that endeavour, it failed.

Central to these struggles was the Communist Party of Great Britain, which was extremely active throughout the country in 1940, alongside the Union movement. Yet apart from the official organ of the Party, the Daily Worker, little of this was recorded at the time, owing to the intervention of the censor and the willing self-censorship of the "popular" Press.

So thoroughly were the events of the months from September 1940 through to January 1941 later excised from the record that, when it came to the 726-page official history of Civil Defence during the Second World War, reference to them is almost completely absent.

Author Terence H O’Brien gets to page 530 before blandly informing his readers that the Government’s decision not to provide "bomb-proof" shelter for the citizens of Great Britain "was still often being challenged" in the autumn of 1940.

Only then do we learn of "the deep shelters agitation", a phenomenon which is only briefly discussed in earlier chapters. At this point, though, O’Brien tells us that this mysterious property "naturally received stimulus from the attacks".

So "natural" is this that the official historian feels the need only to make a passing reference to the fact that it is "entangled with politics" and "especially with Communist Party activities".

Despite this, he might have said – for that was the truth of it – this "agitation" was "gaining support from the more moderate Press and from many inspired only by desire for the public safety". By October, we are then told, "the whole question" – of deep shelter provision – "had to be urgently reviewed".

Thus concealed in plain sight is one of the most fascinating and least told stories of the Second World War – what I have come to term "the Shelter War". But, at least, the minimal references in the official history prove that the events occurred. They are not a figment of the imagination.

During this period, the people of the East End and elsewhere in London went to war with their own Government, the Government of Winston Churchill – and won. But so deliberately has this episode been airbrushed from history that it is no wonder that so few people have the first idea of what really went on.

Further evidence comes from the extract taken from the front page of the Daily Worker on 24 September 1940 (at the top of this piece). The text quoted by the newspaper can be taken as accurate – the words were spoken on the BBC and replicated by the Guardian and even The Times.

What makes this a very modern story, though, is that it goes beyond the simple narrative about long-distant events. It is another example, of many, of how the historical record is distorted. And you can see why it had to be.

The very last thing the establishment wants us to remember from the Blitz are Hern's comments: "It is an old lesson of the working class struggle, that if enough people break the law together, and stand solidly against the possible action from the authorities, these authorities are powerless".

That such a major event as the forcible occupation of the tubes, in which hundreds of thousands participated, can disappear from mainstream history books, tells us something of how facts are recorded (not), how the media operates and how history is written.

Those are the lessons for us today. It is said that history is written by the victors – but that is too simplistic. By-and-large, history is written to create establishment myths which are designed to keep us "plebs" in our places. Thus, when the plebs win a famous victory, history has to be re-written in the Bognador style, to remove any traces of it ever having happened.

To the masses, therefore, the great call should not be to "arise and cast off your chains", but "arise and cast off your history". Our histories are our chains.

Part 2 of "The Shelter War" here.
Part 3 of "The Shelter War" here. 

COMMENT THREAD