Within days, Morrison was allocating new funds for shelters. ‘What does money matter?’ he asked. ‘There are thousands of lives at stake!’ In Britain, during the Blitz, a lot of relationships started changing. The loveless marriage between government and people was only one of them. [loc. 918]
The 'secret' is that there was no consensus, no 'Blitz spirit': not all Londoners bonded in shared peril (singalongs in air raid shelters), or indulged their baser fantasies (looting bombed houses, illicit relationships), or approved of the government's policies, or put on a brave face as the bombs fell. Some Londoners were proud of having been bombed, others utterly terrified. Daily privations didn't prevent people from, well, acting like people.
Some really fascinating history here, told in a mixture of personal accounts -- letters, Mass Observation diaries, interviews et cetera -- and lightly-editorialised reportage. I had not previously heard of the Sherwood Forest oil drilling, run by Americans, which extracted nearly a million barrels of crude oil in a single year. I also wasn't aware that peregrine falcons were culled because they might have preyed on carrier pigeons ... And I did not know that there was a popular magazine, London Life, which featured articles on fetishism: apparently the people in one shelter were so engrossed in discussion that they 'failed to respond to a bomb exploding nearby' [loc. 1171] and later agreed 'to host a special evening in the shelter where everyone would dress according to their own particular pleasure'.
Levine argues that the Blitz was a period of misrule, of disruption to peacetime moralities and hierarchies: that it led to the creation of the National Health Service, free education for all, and the institution of the welfare state. (The Citizens Advice Bureau was originally formed to provide assistance to those left homeless by the bombs.)
It's hard to read this and not draw parallels with the ongoing pandemic, and the frequent calls on 'Blitz spirit'. If the Blitz was the dawn of the welfare state, is the pandemic its dusk?
The Blitz was the dark crucible of the National Health Service, of free education for all, of the collective spirit that guided much of the last century. Today’s politicians and policy makers were born long after these benefits evolved, and this, perhaps, is why they are now being allowed to erode. [loc. 4630]
Purchased 2018, read as part of my non-fiction 'reading diet'.
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