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