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00:00For the wartime newsreel cameras, the dancers wore gas masks, but the Germans never used
00:26gas against British civilians. Hitler's weapon against British civilians was bombs. Over
00:36two million homes were damaged, blasted, gutted, and beginning with London, whole cities were
00:43hammered. Fire and high explosives probed and tested the strength of the British way
00:50of life.
01:20For the wartime newsreel cameras, the dancers wore gas masks, but the Germans never used
01:27gas against British civilians. For the wartime newsreel cameras, the dancers wore gas masks,
01:36but the Germans never used gas against British civilians. In November 1940, the Germans shifted
02:01their attack from London. The first provincial city they hit hard was Coventry. The heart
02:19was torn out of a cathedral, out of a city. People were bewildered, and their leaders
02:30were bewildered, too, by the huge fire.
02:37On paper, Birmingham, Dunedin, Rugby should have come to the aid of Coventry, which they
02:45did, in fact. But on arrival here, they found that the couplings on the fire engine were
02:52dissimulated, mally up, and it meant, therefore, that cooperation broke down completely. Of
02:59course, in addition to that, you've got 360 fractures on the gas main, and all the other
03:05services went. All the water supplies were disconnected. If the firemen wanted to find
03:13sources, they simply were not there.
03:17The King visited Coventry with him, the Home Secretary.
03:22Herbert Morrison came, and the military folk wanted to establish martial law, and we had
03:27a stand-up fight on this. Alderman Bill Alleywell and myself said, no, this must be a civic
03:35exercise. The pressure was taken off, and virtually he and I, plus the region officers,
03:46conducted operations from then on. It was virtually a seven-week dictatorship.
03:53You see, there was nothing on the textbooks of civilian defence to indicate to local authorities
04:00how to behave in an emergency, calamity situation, such as we found on the morning of November
04:07the 15th.
04:10While Morrison, the Home Secretary, strove to correct the model by creating Britain's
04:13first national fire service, volunteers shored up the crumbling home front. Fresh evacuation
04:20hurried the children away as city after city passed through crisis.
04:25Portsmouth, Southampton, Sheffield, Bristol, Glasgow. Then Plymouth became the worst-hit
04:34city with seven big raids in March and April 1941. A quarter of its people, 50,000 trekkers,
04:41fled the city at night and slept out in the hills. This film was not shown in wartime
04:46Britain. The censored press could only hint at chaos. 30,000 people lost their homes,
04:54and many lost much more.
05:01When the sirens went to somewhere around nine o'clock, I think, I called my mother, and
05:08she came down the stairs. She said, I'll take Raymond. I said, all right, I'll take Sheila.
05:13And we called Mrs. Topp. That was the lady upstairs. And she came down with her three
05:17children. And we went in our respective cupboards. And I sat on a little tiny chair, and I put
05:26Raymond at my side. And I held Sheila in my arms. And after that, I didn't know anything.
05:36I must have come to in the cupboard, because I heard my father say, oh, I'm afraid your
05:41mother's had it. And then I said, oh, Sheila's all right. She's in my arms. And I went to
05:51touch my other child, and I couldn't feel him. And I must have lost consciousness again,
06:00because I was baid, I believe. Later, I learned that my mother was dead, and the two children
06:07were. And Mrs. Topp was killed, and her two children. She was expecting a baby any hour.
06:16Mrs. Vann's husband, a sailor, came home on leave next morning. There was her mother laying
06:21on the bed in the front room. We went across the road to her brother's place. He told me,
06:29children. I went up there. They were cold. Not a blemish on them. That's when I lost
06:42my temper. I said, instead of us dropping bloody paper, I said, we ought to be hitting
06:48them as soon as they're hitting us. Well, Mr. McGee, after all this, what do you think
06:52about us going over to Berlin and doing the same to them? I should think so, too. A bit
06:58worse than this, I hope, with a wicked bugger like his. I definitely do, sir. One and tenfold.
07:04I'm sorry for the women and children of Berlin, but what about the women and children of this
07:08country? This is what the authorised newsreels did show of Plymouth. Churchill's voice and
07:20presence did sustain morale. And in cabinet, he knew how to get his way. And if Henry V said,
07:30now, gentlemen, I've been into all this thing, and the channel is very tricky at the moment,
07:37and we can't get to reinforcements. The rate of sickness can't be replaced. The bridgehead,
07:45according to Hemley's infantry tactics, is too small. And in short, I feel there's nothing else
07:52but to launch an attack up on half-turbine. He didn't say that. He said, once more,
07:57under the breach, dear friends. Winston had that extraordinary power. But Churchill's speeches
08:05rang less true these days. Almost worse than bombing, U-boat attacks on merchant shipping
08:10cut Britain's food supplies. The Germans were on the rampage everywhere. We cannot tell what
08:19the course of this fell war will be, as it spreads remorseless to ever wider regions. We know it
08:28will be hard. We expect it will be long. We cannot yet see how deliverance will come, or when it
08:37will come. But nothing is more certain than that every trace of Hitler's footsteps, every stain of
08:46his infected and corroding fingers will be sponged and purged, and if need be blasted from the surface
08:56of the earth. He may spread his course far and wide and carry his curse with him. He may break
09:05into Africa, or into Asia. But it is with us, here in this island fortress, that he will have to reckon
09:16and settle in the end.
09:20Wah! Topey! Wah! Topey! Wah!
09:23Now beholding me, an L.D.V. for bottle, I'm just yearning. Doing my best like all the rest, to keep the home fires burning.
09:32Each evening's different starts. Open down the street I march. I'm guarding the home of the home guards.
09:39Guarding the home guard's home. All day long, steady and strong, doing what I'm told and I can't go wrong.
09:45All the ladies are fond of me, but last night one of them gave a shout when she saw me pulling my beanie
09:51while guarding the home guard's home.
09:55The home guard had been founded a year before, on exercises its members played at fighting.
10:02You are a new corps. A corps with its traditions to make. But you have already got your motto.
10:09And your motto is, kill the Bosh. In the course of your duty, you may have the luck to come in contact with the enemy.
10:21If you do, one of your duties is to shoot when you see a sitter. And shoot to kill.
10:28The British still lived in fear, not just of invasion, but of the foe at home.
10:35Fear of listening spies.
10:42And fear of enemy aliens.
10:46In the summer of 1940, the press had screamed, intern the lot.
10:51And almost all of them, Germans, Austrians, refugee Jews, left-wing exiles, had passed through verminous transit camps,
10:58interned without trial.
11:01I was interned just like that, you know, fetched by the police, without knowing anything beforehand.
11:09Two policemen came and fetched me.
11:13Although they did not know it, they were bound for Liverpool, for embarkation.
11:18People standing lining the streets, you know, and throwing stones at you, spitting at you, shouting spies, you know.
11:29And that was horrible.
11:33Everyone thought, well, it will be a concentration camp like it is in Austria or in Germany.
11:41And we were brought on that boat.
11:44And several of them wanted to jump into the water, you know, because they didn't know what is in front of them.
11:52And we arrived on the Isle of Man.
11:54We had a picture statement first, of course, with our number on.
11:58So we had already the feeling, well, we are criminals.
12:02But from that moment on, it was much, much better.
12:07We had quite nice people to look after us.
12:11And we had more security.
12:14We had so much security that we were fenced in, even.
12:19Aliens had the right of appeal to tribunals, and by 1941, many were free.
12:25But a new threat to civil liberty had loomed.
12:28Regulation 2D.
12:33Because Stalin was still in alliance with Hitler, the British Communist Party opposed the war effort.
12:39Under 2D, its paper, The Daily Worker, had been banned.
12:43But five months later, when Hitler struck at Russia, Churchill himself seized the chance to be Stalin's ally.
12:50Germany's new thrust east took the pressure off Churchill's battered island.
12:54There was time now to perfect the new and truly total war economy.
13:01But at its head in the coalition government were two jealous rivals.
13:05Big men brought in from outside Parliament.
13:08Max Beeverbrook, the newspaper baron, now Minister of Supply,
13:12and Ernest Bevin, the strongman of the TUC.
13:17For Bevin, the industrial workers were his people.
13:21Well, mates, ever since we took office, we have been exhorting you to work harder.
13:29I've never done so much exhortation to work hard in my life.
13:34But we've got to do it to win this victory.
13:38We'll all go along together with a mighty effort and show to the Hitlers and Mussolinis
13:46that we can not only work and fight, but we can be cheerful in doing it as well.
13:54APPLAUSE
13:59Ernie Bevin, you see, is an Englishman to the fingertips
14:03and with a great hold over the trade unions and the labour movement as a whole.
14:09I think he's the most conceited man that I've ever known.
14:13It happens to self-made men very often.
14:16But the great thing about Ernie is that he never went back on what he said.
14:21And he said to me, I said it, didn't I?
14:25And that is a tremendous thing. He was very loyal in those ways.
14:29Very likeable man.
14:31And one day, we were fighting for a rather technical point,
14:34the extraction of wheat in the loaf.
14:37And they were trying to get it up to 88% extraction.
14:41And Ernie suddenly said in the committee, he said,
14:45I say that the middle of this loaf is indigestible.
14:48Yeah, can't eat it, it's a waste.
14:50There you are, what did I tell you?
14:52Churchill grew in admiration of the great fundamental qualities of Bevin,
14:58his single-purposedness and the obvious desire, determination,
15:04on the part of Bevin to suppress all party political considerations.
15:10Imagine the power he had.
15:13He was in charge of the possibilities of service
15:18for everybody in the civilian life of this country.
15:23He had total powers over every man working and over every woman.
15:28From March 1941, Bevin began to direct women into vital work.
15:33And into vital work, the pretty girls went.
15:36But not enough of them.
15:38So in December, Britain went further than any fighting land had ever done
15:42and further than the Germans could ever go,
15:44conscription of women was announced.
15:47Girls called up could choose between the women's services
15:51or war work in the fields or factories.
15:57You'll be highly welcomed with ladies this morning on Rhythmic Records.
16:13I suppose you'll be leaving us shortly.
16:15Yes, I think I will.
16:17Think I'll give the land down here a try?
16:19Do you think you'll like that?
16:21Yes, the land rather appeals to me.
16:23Don't think any of us want to sell that.
16:25Whatever happens to you?
16:26Well, I guess it's about my hair.
16:28I can't possibly come down to the country.
16:31Well, I suppose you'll be leaving us shortly.
16:33Yes, I think I will.
16:35Think I'll give the land down here a try?
16:37Do you think you'll like that?
16:39Yes, the land rather appeals to me.
16:42Well then, I suggest you wear it straight.
16:45That's hipless.
16:46I'd like to help to build Spitfires.
16:48My boy's in the RAS.
16:50Well, and I feel I'm helping him.
16:53The sooner we all pull together in this thing,
16:55the sooner it will be over.
16:56I myself would like to go in the services
16:58because it's the uniform that appeals.
17:00♪
17:06Change step on the march in quick time.
17:09Change step.
17:11Change step.
17:14Move the right hand please.
17:16About turn.
17:21Pose.
17:23March.
17:25About turn.
17:31While Bevin's concern was long-term efficiency,
17:34Beaverbrook reveled in short-term frenzies.
17:37Now he was calling for tanks.
17:40We want tanks.
17:42We want very many tanks.
17:45We want them for the defence of our island
17:49and also for offensive operations.
17:54Beaverbrook's flamboyant methods outraged his colleagues
17:57and even his loyal friend Churchill was troubled
17:59by Beaverbrook's moods, by his resignations,
18:02and by his quarrels with Bevin.
18:05Well, Max Beaverbrook did a very good crash job.
18:10But in my opinion, and I am biased,
18:13he left behind an enormous quantity of wreckage,
18:18of administrative wreckage.
18:20As he said, war is a matter of improvisation.
18:26Organisation is the enemy of improvisation.
18:30Ernie Bevin, domineering, dogmatic,
18:34even tyrannical, could be ruthless.
18:37Don't stand in my way. Don't criticise me.
18:40I will tolerate no interrogation from any source.
18:45Beaverbrook, the same. Same.
18:48Two strong personalities, domineering and ruthless.
18:54Early in 1942, Beaverbrook flounced out
18:57after only two weeks in a new job,
18:59boss of war industry, minister of production.
19:03For convincing reasons, Bevin had finally won.
19:07Well, I think he won because
19:10Churchill had the sense, the common sense to realise
19:14it was good to have the trade union movement on his side.
19:18He didn't throw Beaverbrook overboard.
19:21Don't forget, Beaverbrook was out and in and out and in.
19:25And finally out.
19:27This time he stayed out.
19:29A visit to Russia, where he had been welcomed
19:32by Britain's ambassador, Sir Stafford Cripps,
19:34had convinced him that the delightful Stalin was a great man.
19:39The Russians had been pressing a reluctant British government
19:42to start a second front in Europe.
19:44Out of office, Beaverbrook flung himself into a campaign
19:47for the second front, building on Britain's
19:49almost mystical admiration for the Red Army.
19:53We believe in the skill of the Russian generals.
19:57We believe in the equipment of the Russian divisions.
20:01And we believe in the fighting power
20:04and the courage of the Russian soldiers.
20:10And this is the day to proclaim our faith.
20:15Weapons we must give, and raw materials.
20:20Bread we must give, and sugar too.
20:25Men we must give.
20:28Equipped with tanks and with airplanes.
20:33That is a pledge of the second front.
20:38Also, cheering Beaverbrook on,
20:40Britain's Communist Party now backed the war.
20:43Their leaders were calling on the workers
20:45to make their war production mightier yet.
20:48No one calls for the second front
20:51without being personally prepared
20:54to place their being, their energy,
20:57and every ounce of fight they possess
21:00at the disposal of the government,
21:04there is a full understanding of what is meant,
21:08and the people of this country are quite rightly
21:11beginning to resent this war on the cheap,
21:15this one-way war that's going on,
21:18where it's the Russians that do the dying
21:21and the fighting and the sacrifice,
21:23while we pay tributes to them
21:25from the benches of the House of Commons.
21:29But one left-winger on those benches, Krips,
21:32had just returned from his stint in Moscow.
21:35Many people saw him as a possible rival for Churchill.
21:39His views on Russia had vast appeal.
21:43We've got to try and help the Russians
21:46in every way that we can to make ready
21:49to meet the spring offensive of Hitler.
21:52I appreciate there are some people in this country
21:55who are still afraid of the spread
21:58of the Russian ideology,
22:01but what they've got to recollect is
22:04that if we are friendly with Russia
22:07and have an arrangement of cooperation with them,
22:10any dangers which they fear will be very much less.
22:13As a matter of fact, the Soviet Union
22:16have no idea and no wish to interfere
22:19with the internal affairs of any other country.
22:23I know that from the lips of Stalin himself.
22:36Again in the headlines,
22:38disaster was stacked on defeat.
22:40The press was worried and critical,
22:42especially the Daily Mirror,
22:44which ran a scalding campaign against profiteers.
22:47One cartoon was too much for Churchill.
22:50The price of petrol has been increased
22:53by one penny, official.
22:58Churchill told Morrison to stop the paper,
23:01but the rest of the press rallied to the Mirror's support,
23:04led by the young editor of Beaverbrook's Evening Standard,
23:07Michael Foot.
23:09The liberty of the press in this country
23:12can only be maintained by the vigilance of the people
23:15and the vigilance of Parliament
23:17and the courage of the newspapers themselves.
23:20That's the only way.
23:22Therefore we must fight, fight, fight
23:25to retain those liberties.
23:27The ministers come along and tell us,
23:29have told us in the last two or three weeks,
23:31of course it's only the Daily Mirror
23:33they were trying to get at.
23:35The attack is over, they say.
23:37No more demands on any other newspapers.
23:40All other newspapers may continue to live
23:43in tranquility and in freedom and in peace.
23:47There's something rather familiar about those words.
23:51I have no more territorial demands.
23:56I can picture in my mind's eye now
23:59Mr. Morrison himself
24:02muttering those words,
24:04I have no more territorial demands.
24:08Coming down Shoe Lane
24:10with a firm look on his jaw
24:12and a hot gun in his pocket
24:14with the evening standard safely suppressed under 2D
24:17and its proprietor safely looked after under 18B.
24:22The only man who thought it was going to be shut down was Churchill.
24:25And when it was brought up in the House of Commons,
24:28on the whole the House of Commons
24:30came out on the side of the Mirror, more or less.
24:33They didn't like the Mirror, but they weren't going to have it suppressed.
24:37And after that, well, we trimmed ourselves a bit
24:41and the government forgot their foolishness.
24:45Since democratic life did go on,
24:47there were still by-elections.
24:49The coalition government lost a string of them to independence.
24:53Tom Dryberg stood at Malden as an independent socialist.
24:57Malden was a very safe Tory seat.
25:00I hadn't the faintest idea of how to be a candidate.
25:03I didn't belong to any party,
25:05didn't know the electoral law or anything.
25:08First I went to see my employer, Lord Beaverbrook,
25:12whom I was working for at the time on the Daily Express.
25:16And he was a bit sceptical.
25:19He said the only advice he would give me was that I must wear a hat.
25:24He said the British people will never vote for a man who doesn't wear a hat.
25:28Then in June came a fresh shock from Africa.
25:32Toobrook fell about three or four days
25:35before polling day in the election.
25:38We rushed out a leaflet headed Tragedy at Toobrook,
25:42and it was a tragedy, and we felt it as such.
25:45But nonetheless, I'm bound to admit
25:47that that did probably greatly add to the number of votes which we got.
25:53Dryberg won by a huge majority.
25:56Meanwhile, the rebel MPs of all parties wanted a showdown with Churchill.
26:01I went to Brookville in 1942.
26:05Churchill was in Washington,
26:08and the American press carried alarmist reports
26:13of the state of the government at home
26:16and the possible votes of Censhaw and so on.
26:19So much so that Winston rang me up.
26:22It was about 5 a.m. our time, I suppose about midnight his time,
26:27to ask what was happening.
26:30Was the government still in office and what was going on and so forth?
26:34And I was able to tell him so far as I knew nothing had happened
26:38except that this motion had been tabled which we'd have to take.
26:42Churchill came back to confront a House of Commons motion
26:45expressing no confidence in his leadership.
26:48It even seemed to the rebels that they might win.
26:51They muffed it.
26:54As so often with these great parliamentary debates,
26:58there's a bit of an anticlimax when you get there.
27:02And in this case, the anticlimax came instantly
27:06in the opening speech by this ineffable old Tory, Sir John Wardlaw Milne,
27:12because he made this fantastic suggestion
27:15that there should be a supreme commander of all the armed forces
27:20and he named him none other than the Duke of Gloucester,
27:24whom God preserve.
27:26But there was a roar of laughter and a howl of disappointment.
27:32And in gales of derision, the motion was swept away.
27:36There were only 25 votes against Churchill.
27:40And now the war news began to grow brighter.
27:44The Germans were held up at Stalingrad.
27:47Britain won in November at El Alamein.
27:50Churchill went north to Bradford in sprightly spirit.
27:56Now, we have just passed through the month of November,
28:02usually a month of fog and gloom.
28:05But on the whole, a month I've liked a good deal better
28:08than some other months we've seen
28:10during the course of this present unpleasantness.
28:15And so I say to you, let us go forward together
28:20and put these grave matters to the proof.
28:26Churchill was safe in power while the war lasted.
28:29But the hopes of the British people were swinging away from him.
28:33Beyond victory, what could Churchill offer them?
28:45But by the middle of the war, there weren't so many barrels.
28:49If you wanted beer, you might have to bring your own bottle.
28:53And many other things, which people had relied on,
28:56were now in short supply.
28:58Apples and raisins, prams and potatoes, bread and offal
29:02were all unrationed.
29:04And so Churchill was left to his own devices.
29:09Apples and raisins, prams and potatoes, bread and offal
29:13were all unrationed.
29:15But you had to queue.
29:22And because they hated queuing, people welcomed rationing.
29:26Soap and clothes were rationed, as well as most essential foodstuffs.
29:31You knew you could get the ration without fail,
29:34and the British system seemed fair enough,
29:36same for everyone, rich or poor.
29:38Each person got up to eight ounces of sugar a week,
29:41every two months, a packet of dried eggs,
29:44eight ounces of cheese a week,
29:46eight ounces of fats, four ounces of bacon,
29:49and about a pound of meat.
30:00Are you helping to win the war on the kitchen front?
30:06If you are saving our shipping
30:09by making the most of what we grow at home,
30:13if you are growing vegetables
30:15on every bit of ground that you can get hold of,
30:19if you are only eating what you need
30:23and not what you'd like,
30:25and as much as you'd like,
30:27then you are helping to win the war.
30:30And my advice to you
30:32is cook potatoes in their jackets
30:35and grow your own onions.
30:37And they did,
30:39assailed by a barrage of films and posters.
30:42After war work, before fire-watching,
30:44in between spells of Home Guard training,
30:46townsmen toiled on their allotments.
30:49Britain was under blockade.
30:52By 1943, farmers had brought
30:54nearly four and a half million extra acres of grassland under the plough,
30:58and allotments were chewing up scraps of good land left over.
31:02Vegetables flourished round the Albert Memorial.
31:11Good, plain food was still cheap
31:13and unrationed in factory canteens
31:15and in the new, publicly-owned British restaurants,
31:18but many people complained
31:20that the rich could still find fancier tidbits.
31:24The black market snaked silently through Britain.
31:28Poor fellow. Now, what can I sell his mother?
31:36I want to talk to you about what is called racketeering,
31:41or the black market.
31:44It is being stopped.
31:47These food cheats are the enemies of the people.
31:50There must be no dirty fingers in the people's food.
31:57The ugly squanderbug, symbol of waste, was outlawed.
32:01Women were reminded not to waste old clothes
32:04and not to ask for glamorous new ones.
32:13Every scrap of manufactured matter counted.
32:16Fashion is rationed.
32:20Roughly speaking, the rot set in
32:22when silk stockings had to be sacrificed in the early stages of the war.
32:26That was pre-austerity.
32:28By the way, did you realise the difference between austerity and utility?
32:32Austerity on the left is the elder sister of utility,
32:35which you see in the checked suit,
32:37and austerity was allowed many fashionable privileges denied to utility.
32:41For instance, pleats.
32:43Utility, as you know, is confined to four,
32:46whereas austerity was lavish with pleats.
32:52Strict petrol allocation drove many cars off the road,
32:55though some drivers ran on coal gas.
33:01Trains and buses were scarce now too.
33:04You'll wonder why we make a fuss if George decides to take a bus.
33:08But look again and you will see
33:10that George ain't all that George should be.
33:13He's only got a step to go, a couple of hundred yards or so,
33:17whilst others further down the queue have far to go and lots to do.
33:24When George gets on, we often find that other folk get left behind.
33:29He pays his fare and rides a stage,
33:33and off he hops
33:36and see the rage
33:39and seeing this gives George a jog.
33:42Perhaps I'm just a transport hog.
33:46Hello, forces.
33:48Once again, this is Joan Griffiths saying thank you for your...
33:51The BBC, official voice of Britain, was more high-minded than ever,
33:55but the public didn't mind.
33:57The Brains Trust, a weekly intellectual forum,
34:00was one of the radio's most popular programmes,
34:03and the voice of the novelist J.B. Priestley made him a major star.
34:07The British were absolutely at their best in the Second World War.
34:12They were never as good, certainly in my lifetime, before it.
34:18And I'm sorry to say that they've never been quite as good after it.
34:23Because a large number of people were living more intensely
34:28than they'd ever done before,
34:31a large number of people equally felt
34:35they needed some of the arts.
34:41Des Mareges, played in the National Gallery.
34:49There was a greater demand, I think, for good books,
34:53good plays, music, sight of some good pictures,
34:58than I'd ever known before in this country.
35:05But still, more people loved High Gang,
35:08and that man, Tommy Handley.
35:10Hitmard!
35:17Hit that man again, hit that man again...
35:21Can I do you now, sir?
35:23APPLAUSE
35:27Well, well!
35:29If it isn't Canteen Clara, the whistle-smacking bomber.
35:32I say, you look a bit tounzled. Have you flown off the handle?
35:36No, sir. I've been fire-watching for the first time.
35:42Do you have a chaperone?
35:44Oh, no, I don't.
35:46I don't have a chaperone.
35:48I don't have a chaperone.
35:50I don't have a chaperone.
35:52I don't have a chaperone.
35:54Do you have a chaperone?
35:56Oh, yes, sir.
35:58And a very nice, polite chap he was, too.
36:01Always said pardon before he took his boots off.
36:08I'd hate to hear what he said before he took his socks off.
36:12And Gracie Fields was back.
36:15I'm the girl that makes the thing that drills
36:18The hole that holds the spring that drives
36:20The rod that turns the knob
36:22That works the thing-a-me-bob
36:24I'm the girl that makes the thing that holds
36:27The oil that oils the ring that takes
36:29The shank that moves the crank
36:31That works the thing-a-me-bob
36:33It's a dickly-sorted job making a thing for a thing-a-me-bob
36:37Especially when you don't know what it's for
36:40And I don't know
36:42But I'm the girl that makes the thing that drills
36:45The hole that holds the spring that makes
36:47The thing-a-me-bob that makes the engines roar
36:50And I'm the girl that makes the thing that holds
36:53The oil that oils the ring that makes
36:55The thing-a-me-bob that's going to win the war, taste you!
37:04Aircraft production had trebled in two years,
37:07and the next two it doubled again.
37:09By now, Britain's war economy was much more widely based
37:12and thoroughly organised than Germany's.
37:15But the cost of such concentrated effort was high.
37:18Familiar customs in industry were swept aside.
37:21Workers put in massive overtime,
37:23which stretched mind and body to the limit.
37:26Then, sometimes, their patience snapped.
37:30This is Betzhanger, Kent,
37:32scene of a famous dispute in 1942.
37:35Industry cried out for coal,
37:37but output fell and went on falling.
37:40Many miners had joined up or had found better paid work.
37:44Older men worked longer hours
37:46and had to guard the mine as well.
37:48But when they could stand these conditions no more,
37:51they struck.
37:53We all marched down into Deal
37:56and then down to the Canterbury Road.
37:59Well, there were several of the local residents
38:02and particularly some of the troops,
38:04they were jeering and sneering at us.
38:07But little did they know that at the time
38:11we were manning this pit 24 hours a day
38:14with the Home Guard troops ourselves,
38:17and many of us worked and stopped at the pit here 24 hours a day.
38:22The miners knew strikes were forbidden by Bevin
38:25by a wartime regulation, Order 1305.
38:30But faced with a solid body of 1,000 men,
38:33you couldn't jail them all or even collect the fines,
38:36and Bevin and Churchill knew it.
38:41I don't think Churchill wanted us to go to prison.
38:44He wanted us to stay here and guard his property
38:47because it was his property after all.
38:49It wasn't ours.
38:52The government gave in.
38:54Desperate for labour, late in 1943,
38:57Bevin called up boys,
38:59not for the forces, for the mines.
39:02Now, you'll be here four weeks.
39:04Is there any particular district you'd like to go to
39:07at the end of your train?
39:09Right. Now, will you pass down that to the billeting section, please?
39:12Well, if you'll help...
39:17What size is your house?
39:18Seven and a quarter, please.
39:19Seven and a quarter.
39:20One new National Serviceman in ten became a Bevin boy.
39:23You couldn't escape whoever your dad was.
39:26They tell me you're a public school boy.
39:28It'll be a bit of a change for you going in the mine, won't it?
39:31Yes, it will, but I feel as though it's a necessity
39:33that someone's got to do the job,
39:35and I think I'm doing my part in helping.
39:41I was expecting to go into the army,
39:43and, of course, I was very shocked
39:45when I heard on the news on Christmas Day
39:47that I was to be directed into the mines.
39:50It was a ballot, actually,
39:51and they drew out numbers ending in 0 or 9.
39:54My registration number ended in 0,
39:57because there's no ducking away from that.
39:59Consequently, I had to go into the mines regardless of anything.
40:02His parents hoped he'd be an army officer.
40:05Oh, they were flabbergasted.
40:06If somebody had said to me six months sooner
40:08that you were going into the mines,
40:09I should have thought they were joking.
40:13But lads of 17, without a mining background,
40:15couldn't solve the problem.
40:17Output went on falling, falling.
40:20And in 1944, in Yorkshire and South Wales,
40:23over 200,000 miners came out on unofficial strike.
40:28The men have worked continuously
40:31for a period of nearly five years,
40:34under war conditions,
40:36suffering from a deep sense of grievance
40:39because they have not been rewarded by the state
40:42equally with ex-mine workers employed in government factories.
40:51In the bustling Tyneside shipyards, as in the mines,
40:54men who remembered mass unemployment feared the peace.
40:58Their doubts and wishes spoke out
41:00even in government-made documentary films.
41:04Tyneside's busy enough today.
41:07Oldens and youngens hard at work making good ships.
41:11But just remember what the yards looked like five years ago.
41:16Idle.
41:18Empty.
41:20Some of them derelict.
41:22And the skilled men that worked in them scattered and forgotten.
41:27Will it be the same again five years from now?
41:33Other films echoed the same question,
41:35like this early effort by the Bolting Brothers,
41:38starring Bernard Miles.
41:40I reckon Hitler's made a lot on us change our minds a bit lately.
41:44We made a fine big war effort.
41:46Well, when it's all over, we've got to see to it
41:48we make a fine big peace effort.
41:50There's no two ways about it.
41:52It won't go back now we made a start.
41:55Sure, look at that Dunkirk.
41:58Wasn't no unemployed there.
42:00Every man had a job to do and he'd done it.
42:03And that's what we've got to see they has in peacetime.
42:06A job.
42:08And there'll be work enough too when this lot's over.
42:11Building up something new and better than what's been destroyed.
42:16There mustn't be no more chaps hanging around for work who don't come.
42:21No more slums neither.
42:24No more dirty, filthy back streets.
42:27And no more half-starved kids with no room to play in.
42:32We can't go back to the old way of living.
42:35At least not all of it.
42:37That's gone forever.
42:40And the sooner we all make up our minds about that, the better.
42:45We've got to all pull together.
42:48There was a great community spirit during the war.
42:52It was the nearest thing that I've seen in my lifetime to the operation of a kind of socialist state.
42:58That is, of a democratic socialist state of citizens believing that they could have influenced by their actions speedily
43:06what was going to be done and that the whole world could be changed by the way they operated.
43:11They saw that the world was changed by their actions in the war
43:14and they thought that could be translated into political action as well.
43:18It was extremely exciting, but some of the political leaders,
43:22maybe because they were so deeply involved in their own pursuits,
43:26didn't appreciate what was happening.
43:28And so the people's hopes for a better peace fixed themselves on Sir William Beveridge,
43:34who had been commissioned by the government to draw up plans for a welfare state.
43:41When his report was published in 1942, it was a bestseller.
43:46The report proposes first an all-in scheme of social insurance,
43:53providing for all citizens and their families all the cash benefits needed for security,
44:02in return for a single weekly contribution by one insurance stamp.
44:10It preserves the maximum of individual freedom and responsibility
44:17that is consistent with the abolition of want.
44:21The government first blew hot, then cold, very cold.
44:26Churchill wouldn't act.
44:28Churchill got very worried and his two chancellors of the Exchequer, Sir Kingsley Wood and Anderson,
44:34were equally critical.
44:36And that's why the Beveridge plan was delayed after my bill.
44:39That's why education came first.
44:42A major reform of education would tread on fewer big toes.
44:45It had other uses too.
44:48It wasn't really very controversial.
44:50It was very long.
44:52And Churchill realised here was a wonderful way of exercising the troops, you see.
44:57Churchill was first and foremost a war leader.
45:01He kept the brakes on Reconstruction.
45:04Churchill didn't take much interest, frankly.
45:07He wanted to know whether we were going to go in for nationalisation.
45:11And we had a proposal by Herbert Morrison to nationalise the electricity industry.
45:16And that's where the coalition government stopped.
45:19We couldn't get agreement on that.
45:21A new party, Commonwealth, called for Beveridge now and won two by-elections.
45:26Other independents took up the cry.
45:30The Beveridge bandwagon rolled on.
45:32Early in 1944, West Derbyshire had its say.
45:35One candidate was wholly independent.
45:38Indeed, he had no programme at all.
45:41I have no animosity to the other two candidates.
45:47If I am not elected, I am the only one that has anything to lose.
45:55I am very proud that what I consider to be the foundation stone of true democracy
46:05has been well and truly laid in the village of Knyfton, Derbyshire, England.
46:17Goodall then fled back to his father's cottage.
46:20The real fight was between an independent socialist, Charlie White, who had Commonwealth support,
46:26and the youthful Conservative, Lord Hartington, who had official Labour backing.
46:33Hartington's family had always found a seat round here,
46:36and to reject him would be most untraditional.
46:45But White won by a landslide.
46:48The Conservatives were not pleased.
46:51Democracy, however, was safe enough for the fascist leader, Moseley, to be released.
46:56He had been interned since 1940.
47:00The government said that he was ill, but very few people believed it.
47:05This caused the greatest public uproar of the war years.
47:18Fear and hatred had changed their targets.
47:20Released aliens were serving in the Pioneer Corps.
47:23On the newsreels, they now appeared as lovable allies.
47:26This is Corporal Drucker.
47:28His scars and his glass eye are the legacy of being kicked by a horse
47:33when he was in a crack Austrian cavalry regiment.
47:36The Dugroons, wasn't it, Drucker?
47:38Yes, sir. I was kicked twice.
47:40Once by a horse and once by Shekeltober.
47:43I prefer the horse.
47:46Alien troops of myriad nations were welcomed now in Britain,
47:49where they gathered to prepare for the D-Day invasion.
47:53The Free Poles conquered many Scottish hearts.
47:56Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!
47:59And the G.I.s were everywhere.
48:03One! Two! Three! Four!
48:07They were well equipped, well paid,
48:10and they gave the girls fine new things like nylons and the jitterbug.
48:16The End
48:19Churchill could now inspect an army which knew that it would win.
48:25The hour of our greatest effort and action is approaching.
48:29We march with valiant allies who count on us as we count on them.
48:34The only homeward road for all of us lies through the arch of victory.
48:41At last the day came.
48:44And it was sweet.
48:49Wally Hammond's cover drive delighted crowds
48:52who basked serenely in the fine high summer weather.
49:10Britain seemed close to the winning post.
49:13Wasn't it all over, bar the killing?
49:16Thanks to the very fine weather in the Straits of Dover,
49:20all holiday crowds apparently had a good time
49:22except those rash enough to travel.
49:24Is the favourite winning? Ah, who cares anyway?
49:40The V-1
49:54The V-1
50:06The plane with no pilot.
50:10The V-1
50:25A new kind of weapon.
50:28The V-1
50:39A new kind of war.
50:57The V-1
51:04It was time to hide again.
51:27The V-1
51:41The V-1
51:57The V-1
52:27The V-1