skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Born in the mid-60’s to parents who were teenagers at the time of the Second World War I seem to have grown up in the shadow of that conflict. And not just because of family war-stories. I think everyone of my generation grew up with the Airfix kits, reading “Commando” comic books, playing ‘war’ in the playground and watching the black and white films on a Sunday afternoon.
Even today, 70 years after, turn on cable TV and I can guarantee that at just about any time of the day or night there will be a couple of documentaries on the war. And in the week where we celebrate (?) the outbreak of war, Vera Lynn is back in the charts.
Why does it have such a strong hold on us?
Well it wasn’t just the movies that were black and white. Like no other conflict before or since it seems like a ‘just war’. Historical context* will quite correctly qualify that with Britain’s attempts to cling on to empire in the East, and with the cynical division of Europe as a prequel to the Cold War. But Nazism and the Holocaust are the trump cards that make it a war that had to be won. And won not by professional armies but by entire nations.
This makes it unique; the Great War before it had something of the same character, but few can now see any moral basis for the conflict - so when we remember it we do so only as tragedy. And wars since 1945 have been scary Cold War spill-overs like Korea or last throws of empire like Vietnam (or the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan). In any case whatever their morality, the nature of modern warfare is now such that it is unlikely we will ever see mass-conscription and People’s War again.
Perhaps it is precisely because of this we still hark back to the Second World War; with the ambiguities and ideological vacuums of own times the war years provide a more certain moral compass. That, and the living memory of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
NB * If you want this context - have a look at this piece by Peter Taafe or the debate over at Socialist Unity - what I am taking about here is our enduring perception of it as a People's War - which is in many senses as important as the reality.
That’s not as eccentric as it sounds – the graveyard has long been a favourite lunchtime spot with locals and there are even picnic tables there. If it’s not much of a traditional graveyard – it’s not much of a traditional church either. Most of the old building burned down in 1940 during the Blitz and although the new building still operates as a church it is just as much a community centre.
I found my gaze wandering to the small war memorial and my eyes rested on a group of three identical surnames, presumably relatives. It’s not the first time by any means that I’ve seen this on a war memorial; but perhaps subliminally with the news of the death at the weekend of the death Henry Allingham - the oldest surviving Great War veteran – it seemed particularly poignant.
Back at work, using the Commonwealth War graves Commission website I was able to look up within minutes the three sons of Samuel Garraway, printer, and his wife Katherine:
Killed 03.08.1916 Private Wilfed Garraway of the Royal Fusiliers.
Killed 12.02.1917 Private Sydney Garraway of the Queens' West Surreys.
Killed 18.08.1917 Rifleman Gilbert Garraway of the Rifle Brigade.
A random discovery. Unimaginable. Commonplace.
The anniversary today of the Bethnal Green tube disaster. The worst incident of civilian casualties in the Second World War when 173 people were killed during an air raid in 1943. Fearing for public morale the affair was effectively hushed up and it is only recently that local residents have taken up a campaign to commemorate the victims.
It wasn't actually enemy action that caused the deaths but panic amongst the crowd going down the steps into the station after the warning sirens had sounded - ironically a panic induced by the unfamiliar sound of a new anti-aircraft weapon being fired in a nearby park. But the whole story of the use of underground shelters (and Bethnal Green was not the only disaster) belies the mythology of the 'spirit of the blitz' and cheerful cockneys.
The truth is that at the start of the war the government had made little provision for public air raid shelters. In fact some thought that they would be bad for morale and would discourage people from continuing their normal business in the face of bombing ( the same logic that said parachutes would be bad for pilot morale in the First World War). In the early raids the police actually locked the gates at tube stations to prevent people from taking shelter there.
This was perceived as a class issue - many better-off Londoners had private shelters built in their gardens. Notoriously lavish shelters were built in some of the West End hotels and gentlemen's clubs. Communist MP for Stepney Phil Piratin led an occupation of the Savoy Hotel shelter to expose these double standards. In fact the campaign for public shelters that led to the opening of the tube stations was largely led by the Communist Party. More so than most, Communists would have had memories of the horror of aerial bombardment of cities in the Spanish Civil War.
Equally they would have been aware of the double standards of the wartime patriotic rhetoric. Far from the mythology that has since arisen, Churchill and the royal family were jeered and booed when they visited the East End in the early days of the Blitz. And the Queen Mother's famous comment about being able to look the East End in the eye after Buckingham Palace was bombed (whilst the royals were secure in their shelters) was literally all too true.
Born in the mid-60’s to parents who were teenagers at the time of the Second World War I seem to have grown up in the shadow of that conflict. And not just because of family war-stories. I think everyone of my generation grew up with the Airfix kits, reading “Commando” comic books, playing ‘war’ in the playground and watching the black and white films on a Sunday afternoon.
