by escotregen » Tue Jul 08, 2008 4:22 pm
Dugal we will have to agree that we have different perceptions on all of this. You say that baffle wall and reinforced closes were well-established before the bombing started. In fact such measures were woefully inadequate and were as much as anything to reassure a fearful civilian population - a bombed tenement collapsing on you was an odd sort of 'protection'. They were akin to the later generation of officials who advised you to ‘Stay and Protect’ in your own home in the event of a nuclear attack – gesture activities to keep the civilians at least out of the way in the context of lacking the capacity to do much else.
You say that “One must bear in mind again, that these people in municipal authority were coping with something the vast majority of them had never experienced.”. Well, quite – but it’s a bit much to make such an assertion, and then assert that, “When it comes to preparedness, I firmly believe our authorities in Glasgow performed wonders!”. Either they knew and so were prepared or they were not.
I would have to do more research before commenting more on your assertion that; “The city, through the schools, evacuated an enormous number of children from Glasgow to safe places all over Scotland, before the war even got under way. This massive exodus was all accomplished by and large in one day!”. I can only say that that does not tally with what I have read previously about the need to suddenly relocate hundreds of families, including children, after the start of the raids in Glasgow’s Western areas and Clydebank.
Certainly one of the most moving testimonies I read was of an elderly man in the 1990s describing how as a boy he was the only survivor among a group including his mother, baby sister and the woman and kids from across the landing who were all cowering in his living room when the close received a direct hit. Another testimony was about a wee girl who the day after the start of the raids found herself billeted on relatives in Lanarkshire who she hated so much she escaped from and walked all the way home to Dalmuir!
I think you repeat a serious error in history that Roxburgh made, when you say that “Before the war the closest thing Glasgow's leaders had to enlighten them what an air raid would be like came out of H.G. Wells' books”. That is wholly untrue. Europe outside the Axis powers witnessed aghast and horrified in the 1930s at what happened in Spain (there was, after all, the Guernica massacre and the assistance lent by the Luftwaffe to Franco) and in the extensive Japanese air-raid experimentation and ‘success’ in China. In particular, Glasgow's left movement had a proud part in the International Brigade in the Spanish civil war and the brought the true horrors back home with them.
As early as Baldwin’s Tory Government of the mid inter-war period he came out with the famous/infamous “the bomber will always get through”. Indeed, the knowledge and expectation of what the bombing would do was a large factor in defeatist thinking particularly among the upper classes in the UK. My interpretation is that they knew and they were ill-prepared –how much did they prioritise protection for the civilians? A Roxburgh says ‘there were other priorities. Hmm...
As for the Anderson shelters not being in short supply, we had an entertaining and informative previous run-through here on the scams and deals folks got up to to acquire shelters. You say that “After the Blitz, shelters were partly furnished by the people 'up the close' who were served by it, and taken much more seriously.” I’m sorry Dugald but I cannot agree with that perception- especially since you state after the Blitz. There were some cases, undoubtedly, at the outset of hostilities when this was the case – and doubtless much promoted by the propaganda officials.
But the mundane reality was that people greatly detested the shelters. They were generally crude and basic and as often as not overcrowded when needed – and remember that was in an era when scabies, fleas etc. were not uncommon; keeping your personal space and privacy was a fundamental public health art for both the poor and the better-off. You didn't want to be sitting cooped-up with all sorts for hours in an unhealthy, fearful and darkened atmosphere; that was the reality of the nonsense about the ‘spirit of the Blitz’.
What I do know from my interviews of wartime civilians veterans in the Rutherglen and Maryhill areas, is that after the Blitz, there was popular agitation to have the shelters demolished and removed because they had became insanitary and the ‘venues for other dirty doings’.
In revising and re-interpreting the ‘official approved popular’ version of what happened in WW2 bombing in Glasgow, we need to remember that overall it was Whitehall that ran things. Whitehall is of course London, and two episodes say a lot about their mindset and what they really thought of the civilian population. They were capable of a lot worse than the episode you doubt regarding the “account of the ARP Service abandoning a living boy in the debris of a bombed building because there was no light”.
The first point was that the working class East Enders of London at the height of the Blitz had to take over the deep Tube shelters by sheer weight of numbers. The authorities who had made little other provision for them (despite what you may say about the supply of Anderson shelters) were threatening prosecution and force to keep them out. A strong factor in the Establishment’s motives were preoccupations about the ‘hygeine problem’ that the ‘working class sort’ would pose by gathering in the Tube.
The second episode was how evacuation was still going on when the Blitz started. I cannot quickly source the details of the incident, but this was the one where all the school kids from an East End Borough were all brought together one afternoon for urgent evacuation after a nights bombing. Due to a massive cock-up on the part of the Borough and London Transport officials, there was wholly insufficient buses made available, with the result that the kids were all crudely billeted (i.e. herded) into the local school for the night. Almost inevitably, there was worse bombing that night and the school took a massive direct hit.
The causalities of dead school kids were in the hundreds, but could never be fully determined. That was partly due to the carnage, but it was also due to the unseemly rush of officialdom to have the whole thing brushed over, cleared, hushed up – and literally buried. No one was brought to account, no recompense or admission was ever made by the Borough or higher officialdom. It was just a few years ago that the was recovered. I believe that a memorial was erected there last year?
I really believe that it’s important that we show the victims, the survivors and the often-unsung true heroes of those times, the respect of striving after the facts and true history. Both of which the authorities of the day and today misuse and misrepresent for their own purposes.