Media: The Shelter War (6)
Sunday 28 October 2012
The reason why this error is so important, as I have averred, is that it represents the establishment habit of re-writing history, a long line of distortions and myths which serve only to reinforce the supposed moral supremacy of our "ruling classes", in an attempt to legitimise their claims to hold power over us.
This is very much Harrogate Agenda stuff, because the one unalterable thung about our nation is that there are more of us "plebs" than there are rulers, and they only way they can exert power is by "consent", which relies in turn on establishment myths which stake out their rights to usurp our power.
The point about the Second World War, therefore – and in particular the London Blitz – is that it really did represent a significant display of "people power", so much so that the ruling classes were forced, at times, to conform with the wishes of the people, in order to get the cooperation of the people in fighting the war.
No better example of this can be seen than in the Shelter War, where – as we have seen over the five preceding parts – successive governments decided on a specific policy for the protection of people from air raids, embodying a stubborn refusal to permit use of Underground stations as shelters.
But what is so remarkable about this is that, seventy-plus years ago, the epic struggle of the people of London (and especially the East End) has all but been airbrushed from history.How completely that has become the case can be seen from a striking scene in the 2010 historical drama The King's Speech, in the wailing of sirens shortly after the declaration of war on 3 September 1939 – triggered by the mistaken identity of an RAF training flight.
At that point in the film, crowds are seen calmly descending into the Underground. And so much is sheltering in tube stations part of our perceptions of the London Blitz, that this scene is taken as entirely natural, not even challenged by the professional historians who were critical of other parts of the film. Yet it never happened.
Far from being a natural occurrence in the early part of the War, we now know that taking shelter in tube stations was actively discouraged by the government. During early air raids, some station gates were even locked and guarded. When desperate Londoners rushed the tubes to gain shelter from the Nazi bombs, armed troops were used to evict them.
Such events occurred in September 1940, a full year after the scene depicted in The King's Speech, leading to a series of confrontations between the people of the East End and the Government, and the eventual take-over of the tubes, described by Tribune magazine as "the biggest working class demonstration London has seen".
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 were not then provided. 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.
Central to this struggle 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 Press.
But so thoroughly were the events of the months from September 1940 through to January 1941 excised from the record that, even when it came to the 726-page official history of Civil Defence during the Second World War, any 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 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 the record 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, it 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.
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".
But now that such a major event as the take-over of the tubes, in which hundreds of thousands participated, seems to have been airbrushed out of the mainstream history books, this says something of how facts are recorded, and how history is written.
That is the lessons for us today. It is said that history is written by the victors – but that us too simplistic. History is written by our rulers, to create the establishment myths which are designed to keep the "plebs" in their place. Thus, when the people win a famous victory, history is re-written in the Bognador mould, 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 have become our chains.
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Richard North 28/10/2012
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