Did anyone else watch the real Blitz Spirit with Lucy Worsley last night?

[Biscoffaddict]

Over the last year we’ve been told more than ever that we need to find our Blitz Spirit and Keep Calm and Carry On etc, only for this programme to blow the whole thing apart and reveal it was actually one great big myth put out by the government to try and boost morale. Propaganda basically. There was no ‘Blitz Spirit’ and its just a made up narrative that’s pushed on us by the media and the establishment for the last 80 years.

If you didn’t watch it I’d highly recommend it. One of the best things I’ve watched in ages.

No! Never!

I started watching, then my friend called me. It looked brilliant, so I'll catch up later. Thanks for reminding me OP.

As in I agree with you Boiledpotatowitch.

[quote TeaSoakedDisasterMagnet]@ssd that’s interesting. Can I ask what made you feel like that?[/quote]
It was the way the stories were told, I thought it was a dramatisation of what it was like, rather than a factual program that LW usually does. Didn't realise it was true stories. Will watch later.

The wartime mass observation diaries / reports are (at least partly?) online. Fascinating reading.

@Tehmina23

My Nan went through the Salford & Manchester Blitz aged 15 - 16. She was evacuated to Accrington but hated it so returned to Salford just as the Blitz started. So school was finished for her at 15 & she found an office job plus helped in her parents' grocery shop. She remembered walking to work across miles of broken glass crunching under her feet. Firstly ALL the slightly older boys in her group of friends ' (I have a group photo of them) were killed in the Battle of Britain. Then her dad died of a brain abcess caused by an ear infection- no antibiotics were available for civilians then. She was devastated. The Hope Hospital where he died was bombed & a whole wing of operating theatres taken out killing doctors, nurses & patients. Her 6 year old neighbour burned to death in her under stair cupboard while sheltering with her parents.

My Nan joined the ARP underage & delivered messages by bicycle during raids while bombs were dropping - one of her 14 year old colleagues was blown to bits.
During other raids she would sit in her damp partly flooded cellar with her mum all night, which gave her bad chest infections all her life.

Then she met my grandad twice & fell in love, but he got sent to Burma for 2 years & she spent all that time worrying if he would die.
They married on his return after just 2 dates! She was 20 & he was 31.

Nan talked a lot about the Ww2 because some big events happened during the war in her life, & she was a bit of a drama queen too, but she said really the Blitz was awful.

My parents were younger than your Nan, but were from the same area.

As they were children during the war they could tell me of their experiences of rationing, air raids and evacuation but I suppose there must have been a lot they were sheltered from. I got the impression though that people were on the whole supportive. They never mentioned the black market.

However one thing they did tell us was how they were homed when evacuated. They were put in a hall with a gas mask and a small food parcel each and people came and chose them. At the end there was only my Dad (who had sticking plaster over one eye) and another boy (who had callipers on) left in the hall, so the woman in charge took them round the town and knocked on doors until someone agreed to take them - talk about safeguarding .

My uncle was told that he had to stay with his younger sister and not be separated - she looked naughty (she did - I've seen the photos) so a lot of people who wouldn't have minded a ten-year-old boy, who looked very well behaved, didn't want his six-year-old sister, who was a bit of a madam. They did get taken in eventually though.

Some of their teachers went with them and they had to share the school premises with the children from the area - I think they did half days - and probably spent the rest of the time causing trouble.

They only died last year in the first wave of the pandemic, how I wish I had asked them more now.

I worked with a woman who told me her evacuation story and had me weeping into my packed lunch. The rejection on top of being dragged from home. God love those kids.

My own family told me less. I think quite a bit nowadays on how some people disclosed their stories and who to. There was a lot of trauma under the surface for sure.

I can’t think who on earth would suggest that the Blitz wasn’t awful! Certainly not my DM, who so often had to spend the night on tube station platforms with a baby (my elder sister). It was bloody scary - especially when you were also in daily dread of getting a telegram to say your husband had been killed.

But that’s not the same as saying that everyone was purely out for themselves and fuck everybody else.

Re evacuees, an older friend of ours had nothing but very fond memories. As a 5 year old he was evacuated from a flat in a poor area of London to a Devon farmhouse, where there were five daughters who spoilt him rotten, and he used to fall asleep by the fire, curled up with the sheepdogs.

He ended up retiring to Devon, used to give talks about it to local schoolchildren, and loved dogs to his dying day.
I know he was exceptionally lucky, though.

My dad survived the blitz in Coventry. He was a young teenager when war broke out and was evacuated to the country but he ran away and returned home where he stayed throughout the war.

He never talked much about life back then and now he’s gone I can’t ask him which is a regret.

I don’t think the blitz spirit is a myth though, as people had to be stoic and just get on with things. People did help each other too if they could so I would argue that this was the blitz spirit. Of course there were the “spivs” selling on the black market and gangsters as well and people who didn’t cope but that is just human behaviour, surely?

I loved the programme last night and actually think I will watch it again. LW is such a clear and concise presenter - I could listen to her all day.

So easily influenced by one TV programme... who is to say this is not propaganda to suit their narrative

What narrative? Whose narrative?

My nan lived in Surrey Docks (one of the places spoken about in the programme for being heavily hit) my great grandad worked in the docks & was a reserve fireman - he was seriously injured at the fire featured.
I grew up knowing the myth of the Blitz spirit was just that - a myth.
My nan would hardly ever speak about it but when she did it wasn’t memories of sing songs in the tube, all she remembered was terror & sadness.
When I was little (70’s) the last scars of the bombings were still there - prefab houses in Deptford, rows of terraces with gaps & few gardens with bomb shelters.
I thought the programme was excellent & cried through most of it thinking of my nan going through that

Just downloaded this off the back of this thread.

I'd not hear of it but i will watch it. I love Lucy Worsely.

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER

Personally I find LW very irritating. I’m not at all surprised that she made this programme though, since it’s very on-trend to debunk anything that could be seen as remotely positive about the U.K.

My DPs lived as adults during WW2 - one in the RN and one on her own during the London Blitz, and while my DM was well aware - as I’m sure we all are now - of the black market and other nefarious goings-on, she always said that most ordinary people bore up well and did their best to help each other.

I dare say that LW, born so long afterwards, and presumably with no direct reminiscences from parents who lived through it as adults, would say that my DM was deluded.

She’s a historian and was using actual classified government documents as her sources. Nothing anti British about that.

This country isn’t perfect, but there seems a resistance from a lot of people to accept the mistakes we’ve made in the past.

@Boiledpotatowitch

So easily influenced by one TV programme... who is to say this is not propaganda to suit their narrative

You think people really were signing and laughing and doing the Lambeth Walk amongst the rubble and around the air raid shelters?

OK then...

Like just about everything else people had different experiences. My mother had a great war, went from domestic service on a pittance to a well paid job in an aircraft factory. GI boyfriend. No responsibilities. Yes she had sad memories of dead bodies but generally enjoyed herself. Would laughingly tell the story of my Great Grandmother being disgusted with people going into shelters in the bombing. Apparently her usual comment was "Why can't people just die in their own beds."

My dad was in the navy, on north atlantic convoys. Drank himself to death when I was a child drowning out the memories.

It wasn't one true version.

My dad was in the navy on convoys too. He has PTSD and heart problems all his life afterwards.

I saw an interview with LW who said that she went in with a very cynical eye. But she said that she was very affected by some of the stories which led her to believe there was indeed a 'Blitz spirit'. None of you were there. I don't know why some of you want to depict the British people as having no community spirit. It is one of the fundamental ways in which humans survive a crisis. As with everything, some people behaved better than others.

Like just about everything else people had different experiences. My mother had a great war, went from domestic service on a pittance to a well paid job in an aircraft factory.

So true. My Mum left domestic service to join the Land Army at 18. She always spoke of it as a kind of liberation.
She also remembered sheltering under the stairs at her lodgings and hearing the bombers go over on the night of the biggest air raid on Coventry, and how horrified she was at the sheer number of aircraft.

Anything that presents one opinion is not going to show the whole situation.

My grandparents talked about it. Some of their stories are shocking-my granny used to shelter in their basement. When they came out one time there seemed to be little damage except one house on the other side of the road. They then found that a watermain had been hit, which had flooded the basements on the other side of the road and family after family had drowned. Whole row of houses with families in.
But you did get the other side too. I remember her talking about where she worked (a bank) and doing a Christmas party for bombed out children, and she did WVS (now WRVS) work and people donating what they could hardly afford to give (and knowing the chances were they could not get replacements either) to people who needed it.
My Grandad was in the RAF and his squadron definitely retained a bond. They still looked after each other in their 80s. I remember them banding together to pay for one of the squadron's grandchildren to have an operation-and a holiday afterwards and that sort of thing.

One thing that I find very poignant, is my Gran on the other side. My Grandad (I never met him) was a desert rat. I think he'd hardly been home since he was called up at the start of war. She was not sentimental at all. After she died, we found the telegram he sent to tell her he was coming home at the end of war.

You do get both sides. No, there wasn't singing in the air raid shelters every night. But there will have been some times.

Just like I've sat through 2 wet days on the centre court of Wimbledon. One day everyone was singing (no, it wasn't Cliff) and getting up and dancing and telling jokes. The security guards were leading it, but people joined in happily. Other day everyone sat miserably in their seats and stared glumly at the rain. Saying one happened doesn't mean the other didn't.

Yes, if you wanted stuff on the blackmarket, you could get it. Yes, people profiteered from the shortages. Still true today isn't it?

For the majority of people, the majority of time it will have been a case of keeping going, feeling the drudgery of every day life. And just like today that will be interspersed with periods of terror/misery and periods of hope and fun.

It's easy to nowadays look at it as being a short period of only 6 years. They didn't know in 1939 how it would end. Mentally that's going to take its toll.

It also depends on how people tell it. Dh had a friend who used to have a room in hysterical laughter when he was telling how he was rushed to hospital with the doctors saying he wasn't going to make it (he had a life threatening condition). The reality was that he was probably terrified, in a lot of pain. But he had a real gift of being able to look for the positive side and tell it in a way that was what you saw. Never knew someone who smiled so much.

Otoh I have a relative that can make a tale of going to the shops sound like the whole world's against him.

Have some of you actually watched the programme? She certainly wasn't denigrating the British or the courage of ordinary people. But she did show how the government manufactured a United 'Blitz spirit' (maybe understandably) which denied the very different experiences and attitudes of real people.
I thought it was very balanced and informative. And I cried at the end too!

I thought it was an excellent program. And very balanced. She said the true heroes were the ordinary people who stepped up to make a difference - so in that sense there was a Blitz Spirit, it's the same in any time of need - some people will fill the gaps where there is need.
But the propaganda was just that. It probably boosted morale in other parts of the country which weren't so affected, but must have felt a terrible betrayal to those living through those horrific events.

FIL's family took in an evacuee girl - he was a teen by then and working, his teen sister got pregnant by a GI. The evacuee had a marvellous time though and they all stayed in contact until his death.

My grandma was evacuated to Cornwall with her sisters. She was away 11 months and stayed with nuns in a convent. It wasn't a happy place. She remembers a boy going into the beach - which was covered in landmines - and he got blown to bits.

I don’t suppose it’s too surprising that the govt. used propaganda to try to boost people’s spirits - at a time when things were so very difficult for so many, and there was a very real danger of defeat and invasion by the Nazis.

Should they have acquiesced in gloom and despondency instead?

IIRC the Laurence Olivier film of Henry V - with the famous speech - was made as a spirit-booster at the time.

@Cooroo

Have some of you actually watched the programme? She certainly wasn't denigrating the British or the courage of ordinary people. But she did show how the government manufactured a United 'Blitz spirit' (maybe understandably) which denied the very different experiences and attitudes of real people. I thought it was very balanced and informative. And I cried at the end too!

For some people the words 'Blitz Spirit' are like a red rag to a bull.