The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

These were hardly rational responses but it is unlikely that any general psychological account would explain them. Circumstance clearly played a part. One of Clara Milburn’s neighbours had no garden shelter and sat during raids in an opening under the stairs decorated with Union Jacks. Many civil defence workers were compelled to sit in their posts during raids with minimal protection. John Strachey at Post D complained to the local council, but it was months before the wardens’ room in which he served was given strengthened joists and pillars to protect it.⁸⁵ In many cases the refusal to shelter was deliberate if often temporary. The journalist Virginia Cowles found many examples in London of an active choice not to shelter: the caretaker and his wife in her block of flats eating supper with a raid overhead; a soldier and his wife arguing about whether to drive home during a raid; Cowles herself choosing to sleep in her bed because a shelter ‘was no safer against a direct hit than staying at home’.⁸⁶ There was an element of bravado as well. Vera Brittain reported the popular society game ‘Playing No Man’s Land’, which involved bright young things dodging bombs on their way from one party to the next. Even Brittain, sober by comparison, slept in her bed some nights from sheer exhaustion rather than go to the shelter. The attitude she found among Londoners of ‘grim, resigned patience’ could be mobilized for running risks. ‘It’s them that are careless what get it,’ she was told by an ARP worker.⁸⁷

The high level of casualties and poor level of shelter provision forced the population of London to take events into their own hands. People gravitated to structures they regarded as sufficiently sturdy, such as railway arches, where informal shelter communities were set up despite the evidence that they were as vulnerable to a direct hit as anything else. The Chislehurst Caves in Kent were occupied by migrants from London’s East End. In West Ham three large underground stores were forced open and occupied by local people, though one area had no ventilation, sanitation, or a floor fit to sleep on. On 14 September 1940 the Stepney communist, Phil Piratin, led a group of 70 protestors from the borough to occupy the plush basement shelter of the Savoy Hotel on the Strand in the heart of London’s prosperous West End. They found a shelter divided into sections painted pink, blue and green, with matching bedding and towels, and an array of armchairs and deckchairs assembled for the long wait underground. The group settled down in the chairs and refused to leave when police were called; sympathetic waiters served bread and butter and tea on silver trays. Piratin led them out again when the bombing that day was over.⁸⁸

This incident was part of an uncoordinated but widespread demand for deep shelters, which were not unreasonably regarded as the only real guarantee of safety. Roy Harrod, one of the economists brought into the government Statistical Branch, wrote to Churchill’s senior scientific adviser, Frederick Lindemann, that the time had come for a deep-shelter policy, despite the official hostility to them:

a very formidable discontent is now arising. On all sides one hears the same opinion. People do not mind risk by day but ask for a safe and quiet night. It is not only noise but also risk that keeps people awake and impairs their efficiency. It also impairs their morale and loyalty. It is generally thought that deep shelters were provided in Spain. It is thought that the Government is inert or pig-headed in not doing so here.⁸⁹

Churchill and his Cabinet colleagues were not persuaded and dispersal remained the priority. When local authorities applied for permission to build deep shelters, the Ministry of Home Security refused or made them a secondary priority. Newcastle’s ARP Controller wanted local tunnels to be converted for the poorer dockside population, who it was felt would be difficult to control if serious bombing began. The Ministry allowed surveying to continue but did not regard it as a priority. In the London borough of Islington demands were made for deep shelters at least 100 feet (30 metres) underground because of popular pressure to abandon the poorly constructed trench shelters, but the government refused; in West Ham local protesters constructed models of deep shelters to demonstrate their viability and relative value for money (less per head of population, it was claimed, than the cost of their funerals), but failed in their bid.⁹⁰