On 4 December 1943
Bert Waddams (Jan’s grandfather) wrote to his son Ron (Jan’s father), who had
been sent to India as “a litho draughtsman and photo-writer” in a map-making
unit of the Royal Engineers. Bert noted that the Vicar at his church, St Mary’s
in West Twyford (West London), and a neighbour, Mr Johnson, were sick with flu.
In the same letter Annie, Ron’s mother noted that her sister Lily was also in bed
with the virus. Bert wrote: “All I hope is that this
epidemic is a good omen of the end of the War as it happened so in the last.”
Bert had good reason to draw this parallel. He had been shot in France in 1916,
and later had not been far from death with the Spanish Flu. The 1943 flu
affected Bert’s employer, the printing company founded in Hammersmith by the
late Emery Walker, an eminent figure in the Arts & Crafts movement. Bert
had had to turn away jobs from a new customer because the firm that supplied
Walker’s colour work had been stricken with the flu. “There is not a firm in
London”, Bert noted, “unaffected by this scourge.”
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The staff of Emery Walker in 1910. Bert may be the man third from right
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In 1943 war and flu
threatened the lives of Londoners like Annie and Bert. But since 1940 it was
not a virus that kept Londoners awake at night, but bombing raids, flying bombs
or rockets, and the death, destruction and fires that they caused. Bert had
written to Ron on 24 October 1943: “You can rest
assured that Ruislip is a comparatively safe area, although we can hear the barrage
over distant districts. One night last week I had a wonderful view of a
“firework” display in the direction of Slough. They came over on my night of
firewatching. I turned out in my steel helmet and armlet in company with Mrs
Read next door & another lady neighbour, so what have I got to worry over!”
Bert had good reason to fear that his son would be concerned, for the family
home, 45 Huxley Gardens in West Twyford, had been bombed on 18 September 1940 mere
days after the beginning of the Blitz.
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Ron Waddams, Portrait of Bert Waddams, oil on canvas
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Ron had received a report
of the destruction of his home from his vicar, Mr Manning:
“The burden of this letter I am afraid is
one of sadness. You will have heard by now of the calamity which took place on
Wednesday night last. The German bombers in the course of their indiscriminate
attacks on the civilian population of London hit your house in Huxley Gardens
was hit [sic] & destroyed, but God in His infinite mercy spread His
shadowing wings over your family & also over the Pilchers & they have
escaped without any serious hurt. It has all come as a tremendous shock to
everybody but friends have rallied round & given an amazing amount of help to
your Dad who has stood up to this grievous trial in a way which has been
admired by all. For the time being he is staying with me here & your mother
is at Ruislip with your aunt [Lily, her sister]. Evelyn [Ron’s sister] is
staying with Nan [a friend]. Some of the home has been saved including the
dining room & drawing room furniture. All the books in the bookcase in the
hall were unhurt & practically all of your pictures & painting things
are safe, also your Dad’s drawing materials. They have given your Dad a house
in Twyford Abbey Rd (corner of Rossall Crescent) which is empty & all the
stuff worth keeping is being placed there.
We
went to see your mother yesterday (Friday) afternoon & it was good to see
how well she was standing up to all this & it eased both your Dad’s &
Evelyn’s mind to find her so calm & contented.”
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Ron Waddams, Portrait of Annie Waddams (née Elkins), oil on canvas
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I have been reading
the letters exchanged between Bert, Annie and their son during his service in
the army from 1941 to 1946, first in the UK, then in South Africa, India and
Burma. Bert and Annie’s letters paint a vivid picture of life in London during
World War II. Bert’s references to the flu epidemic and the hardship his family
endured set me thinking about parallels (or lack of parallels) with our current
plight.
Politicians (to be
more precise generally Conservative politicians and the majority of our national newspapers) in the UK are fond of
calling for a Blitz spirit. A headline in the Daily Express of 27 December 2020
read: “Who says blitz spirit is gone? Be PROUD of our defiance in 2020.” The writer
urged his readers to face down defiantly the second wave of Covid, the EU,
unemployment, a forthcoming third lockdown, and a record national debt.
The appeal of the
Blitz spirit rhetoric rests on the enduring national myth that “we” stood alone
from 1939-1945 and rescued the wretched, capitulationist Europeans (still
heartily despised by Brexiters) from the German threat (still heartily loathed
by Brexiters). The slight problem is that “we” only fits the facts if we
conveniently forget the troops of countries in the British Empire, the
Americans, the Russians, and assorted others such as the airmen from Poland
(now an EU member) to whom a monument stands by the A40 as you leave London to
the West. But, my word, the voters love the Blitz myth so facts rarely stand in
the way of a bit of jingoism.
As I have been reading
Bert, Annie and Ron’s letters I have been reflecting on the similarities and
contrasts between the 2020/2021 pandemic and the hardships at home of 1940-1945.
Annie’s letter of 10 December 1943 carries intimations of our own locked-down
lives: “We shall not be going to the cinema this side
of Xmas as there is such a lot of flu about you are advised to keep out of
crowded places.” Bert added that: “The epidemic is pretty serious; we hope
fervently that we shall escape infection.” But I have been struck by the
differences between 1941-1945 rather than the parallels.
The Blitz, and the
later threats posed by flying bombs and rockets, certainly did not keep Annie
and Bert away from the cinema. On 24 August 1940, Annie wrote: “I see Evelyn has told you about the air raid warnings we had after
breakfast, and the kiddies had theirs in the shelter, and the second one we
were in the pictures. We took Mrs Johnson with us and the manager came on the
stage and asked us if we would like to take shelter or carry on, so we carried
on. Only very few went out. It [the warning] lasted about an hour. I could not
enjoy the performance as I was worried over Evelyn as she was by herself. Daisy
& the kiddies went to Ealing and took shelter in the little park where you
play golf, and there was no one to be with in her shelter, but as it happened
she was allright.” References to the cinema are frequent in the letters: one or
other member of the household seems to have seen a film at least once a week,
often twice, although after 1943 when money was tight Bert & Annie cut
their cinema-going back to once a week.
On 24 November 1944 Annie wrote to her son
about the rocket attacks: “They make a terrible noise but the damage from blast
is not so great as the flying bomb. Of course there is no warning. The nearest
we have had was at Kingsbury, Hendon, Pinner & Uxbridge. We have not heard
any this week but Uncle Ted came over last Wednesday and he said one dropped in
Battersea that morning.” The rockets did not close down the cinemas and
theatres any more than the Luftwaffe’s bombs had. On 30 December Bert, Annie, her
sister Lily with her husband John and daughter Anne, had tickets for Happy and
Glorious at the London Palladium. The star of the show was the comedian Tommy
Trinder, famous for his catch phrase “You lucky people!”: “By all accounts”,
Bert commented, “there is at the present time an unprecedented boom in the
theatre world.” Thus, while a lunchtime concert at the Wigmore Hall or an
evening at the English National Opera seem to us distant memories, cinema and
theatre were parts of daily life throughout London’s war.
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Tommy Trinder
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Nevertheless, the threat of death was
present for much of the war. Two weeks before he was bombed out of his home,
Bert wrote to Ron that the parents of his friend Harold had been killed, their
daughter Doreen injured, but Harold hurt only slightly. In February 1944 the
caretaker of the school near the family home was killed, his wife with him. However,
reports of damage to property are much more numerous than deaths, even during
the worst of the 1940 Blitz. The vicar wrote to Ron in October: “a bomb had
fallen in the garden of Robbins house in Huxley Gardens & I am sorry to say
that it did a great deal of damage. It must have been a heavy bomb which came
down – they reckon it was a 500 pounder. About ten houses in Huxley suffered
& several in Brentmead Gardens & one or two in Spencer Close. Thank God
there was no loss of life & superficial cuts were the only injuries received.
In addition to this damage we have also lost two houses in Cleveley Crescent. The
same plane must have dropped oil bombs & one of these lit two houses
opposite Lytham Grove & burnt them to nothing.”
And, of course, friends and colleagues died
in battle. In March 1945 Douglas Harvey, “one of my chaps” at Bert’s workplace,
visited him while on home leave. Douglas informed Bert of the deat of a young
apprentice, Dennis Hadley, killed in 1944 at the battle of Anzio. “I am
terribly grieved”, Bert wrote, “He was the finest boy we ever had. His death
has caused a complete breakup of his family”. In March 1944 Bert inscribed in
his elegant lettring a verse for a mother who had lost her son at sea. The same
letter recorded that “Mary Rider is getting married to a Dutchman. Her first
fiancé was killed last year.”
The emotions expressed in the letters are
not the heroic solidarity of our contemporary myth makers. Much of the response
is simply practical: finding another place to live; rescuing furniture and
other belongings, packing them up and storing them; finding alternative work;
queueing resignedly for scarce food stuffs. There is a notable lack of
expressions of hostility or hatred of the enemy. In fact, the terms German or
Nazi are hardly used at all in the hundreds of letters, although Jerry occurs
occasionally. Contrast this with the jingoism and scorn directed at the EU and
European nations in the UK nowadays.
Of course, running a business was
difficult. The building in which Bert worked in Hammersmith was damaged by bomb
blast for the third time in 1943. In February 1944 it was blasted again: “It is
terrible the devastation around. With two of our chaps I have been all day
clearing up the mess at the works & also helping Charlie carry some of the
things over to our machine room where he is storing them. It made me very sad.”
It happened again in July: We at work have had another one close by blasting
our work worse than ever. Just when we had finished repairing after the last
one. To-day I have been up on the roof helping to repair the roof which was in
a shocking mess.” The firm had to suspend printing operations during the war.
It was not until February 1946 that engineers were able to clean and reinstall
the collotype and letterpress machines. Even then photographic supplies were
scarce and “Paper is a very difficult problem.” The firm kept going with other
work. In April 1944 the British Museum bought all the remaining impressions of
Saxton’s maps of the counties of England for £180. “What a windfall!”.
Labour was a problem. Many young men were
absent on military service, so the firm struggled on with older staff who, Bert
complained, were resisting the modern working methods he wanted to introduce. It
was not until 1946, as young men returned from the forces, that Bert was able
to welcome back the likes of Bert Huggins, Charlie Kent and Douglas Harvey. Labour
was, in fact, managed by the government, rather as the state now manages the
vaccination programme in the UK. In August 1943 Annie wrote: “What do you think
Ron. I shall have to register for war work in the factory in September. They
are going to call up women between forty five and fifty and I am fifty today,
don’t you think this is the limit, they will be having Gran soon.” Evelyn fell
foul of the Labour Exchange by taking a job at the Hoover company, which was
engaged in war work. The officials complained that the proper procedures had
not been followed and threatened to assign her to work at a factory called the
Sheds. The point here is that, while the 2020-2021 pandemic has shut down much
of the economy, the economic damage done by the war was different in nature and
scale. Production was not shut down, but rather switched from civilian to war
mode.
Social gatherings continued much as normal,
with the exception of the absence of many young men unless they were home on
leave. Visits from friends and family were frequent. When visitors arrived, the
men would often repair to The Orchard pub for a few ales. Every opportunity for
a party was gleefully seized. Parties featured the best food that could be
managed under rationing, dancing to music on the wireless, and hilarious
games. Twelve sat down for Christmas
dinner in 1944. A young nephew, Brian Elkins, would also have been there but a
Christmas Day tube strike (not much Blitz spirit there) delayed his arrival
until Boxing Day. Annie described Christmas Day. Evelyn had made a five-pound
cake, iced by Bert (whose professional speciality was high quality lettering) with
the words “Happy Christmas and a Victorious New Year. There were chocolate
biscuits, a chocolate layer cake, mince pies, nutty cluster sweets, fruit and
nut fudge and cheese straws. “We had nuts, dates, oranges, apples and lemons,
but John was not able to get any whisky. I peeled forty eight potatoes and did
all the sprouts and jellies & blanc-manges (the ones you [Ron] sent [from
India]). Christmas we had only the turkey to stuff the next morning. Dad told
you what the tree looked like but he did not tell you that the fairy doll’s
hand that held the wand was made to move. Dad had made some gadget so that when
the music was on it beat time. It looked very effective with the light shining
on it, the kiddies thought it was wonderful.”
Christmas 1941 had been a larger gathering:
“We have got the turkey and it looks a very good one. Uncle has managed to get
some whiskey and gin but had to pay a good price for it. We shall have fifteen
to dinner and eighteen to tea.” However, 1940 was a much more constrained
Christmas season. Annie, Bert and Evelyn had moved from London to Taunton. Bert
had found employment at the Admiralty Hydrographic Department, at a lower rate
of pay than he had earned in London so money was short. The family was lodging
with a Mr & Mrs Gibbs. Evelyn wrote to Ron that “Mrs Gibbs is properly
getting excited as they don’t usually have a crowd, so we will have to show
them what a real London Xmas is”. Evelyn
was a party girl. However, Annie explained that presents were out of the
question. Mrs Gibbs could get a chicken from her mother’s farm, it might be
possible to find some sausage meat, and Mrs Gibbs was making brawn. They had a
pudding and a cake. But a ham was out of the question.
Of course, life was not all parties, cinema
and Tommy Trinder. The family home would not be rebuilt until after 1946. After
about a year in Taunton Bert and Annie returned to London and moved in with
Annie’s sister Lily. Lily, John and young Anne lived downstairs, while Annie,
Bert, Evelyn and Annie’s elderly mother occupied rooms upstairs, converting one
bedroom into a sitting room with furniture rescued from their bombed home. They
shared the kitchen and bathroom. Annie’s store cupboard was in the bathroom.
Those of us who have lived through the UK’s
lockdown would be made positively envious to read of the social life of wartime
London. Social distancing existed only for the “boys” sent overseas. Ron left
on a convoy to South Africa in February 1943 and did not return until June
1946. In lockdown WhatsApp and Zoom have kept us in touch with our friends and
family. For Ron and his parents, the equivalent was the weekly letter (numbered
so that the recipient could monitor whether any had been delayed or lost).
While Ron was overseas they wrote some 400 letters and sent parcels from the UK
to India and Burma, and from South Africa, India and Burma to home. Ron also
wrote letters to, and received letters from, aunts and uncles, his vicar,
friends, including his future wife Betty Charrosin. A week without letters was
the cause of much discontent among the troops. In London, letters were avidly read,
re-read and commented upon, but delayed letters caused disappointment and
anxiety. If Ron’s colleagues maintained a similar volume of correspondence in
their three-year service overseas, his unit alone could well have accounted for
18,000 or 20,000 letters. The logistics
of delivering a huge volume of correspondence to mobile troops, who might have
moved to a new location while the letter was en route, must have been a considerable
challenge.
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Ron Waddams, pencil sketch of a bathroom design for the rebuilt family home at 45 Huxley Gardens, Dehra Dun, India, enclosed with a letter dated 5 July 1943
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For time sensitive communication there was
the cable (to reassure parents of a safe arrival, or for best wishes on
birthdays, anniversaries and so on). The new technology of choice for communication
that required more words than the cable, but would arrive faster than a letter,
was the Airgraph, invented by Kodak. An Airgraph was written on one side of a
paper form, which was then photographed, sent by air to Cairo where it was
printed in a reduced format (13.1cm x 10.7cm) and then forwarded to the UK.
Airgraphs could also be sent from the UK to the soldier overseas. As well as
being speedier, the great advantage of the Airgraph was that it greatly reduced
the weight of paper that had to be transported in scarce planes.
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Ron Waddams, Airgraph, Dehra Dun, India, 14 August 1943, noting that he has been taught to tango by a fellow soldier
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While in some years, the family could pool
its coupons to produce a Christmas feast of almost pre-war proportions,
rationing and shortages were irritating facts of life. In March 1944 Annie
wrote to her son: “What do you think? We have had pancakes today with real
lemons. You have to wait in queues for oranges and lemons. The worst of it is
they are never sold together, you have to go at a different time, and in this
cold weather it is not too good standing about, so we have not had any oranges
yet. Evelyn has had some. She has been making lemon curd with dried eggs, a war
time recipe. It was very good too.” In the context of shortages, gardens provided
what money and coupons could not buy. In June 1943 Bert picked 7 pounds of
raspberries and loganberries from the garden of his bombed home. Some had to be
bottled because they did not have enough sugar to make jam.
Ron’s letters from South Africa and India
are full of references to salads, fruits and abundant food, frequently
enviously commented on by his parents and his sister. In Durban in 1943 Ron and
a pal were invited home by a local family. “For the lunch, there were some perfect Cornish pasties, with salad. The
salad was made up of: potato, tomato, cucumber, onion, and avocado pear. The
last named is a fruit we never see at home. It grows rather like a pear in
shape, though larger, and its likeness to a pear ends at that. The green skin
is peeled off for eating, and the fruit cut so that the large stone from its
centre may be removed. I do not find this fruit appetising to look at; its
colour is a dirty yellow, and its substance is soft like butter. The taste is
quite a new one to me, and impossible to describe accurately. The nearest
likeness I can give is a mixture of tomato and potato, with just that something
else that makes the difference. It is a tasty asset to a salad, though I do not
like them alone. Following this course came ‘Angel’s Fruit’. This is what they
call a fruit salad, made from fresh bananas, pineapple, oranges, melon, and
passion fruit, all covered over with cream. The meal was concluded with cakes
and two cups of tea.”
From Dehra Dun, in the Himalayas of India, Ron
described the food available in his canteen: “My favourite meal will seem a luxury to you in present times. It is two
eggs, chips, tomatoes and bacon, with bread and butter. What follows depends on
my whim, might be toast and marmalade, cakes or fruit and custard. Another
favourite of mine is ‘strawberry fool’, which is strawberry jam whipped up in a
glass with milk and custard, and served ice cold, it’s like a rich milk shake.
They also make them with Guava jam, and with raw Mango. The guava is a
plum-like fruit, we had some in Africa. While the mango is of the orange
family.” The following year, at Thondebavi, near Bangalore, the mangos were
abundant: “On the mango trees here, the mangoes are not yet ripe, but we have
ripe ones in our rations and they are particularly delicious. To look at they
are oval and the size of an orange. The skin is thin and mottled green and
yellow. Inside the fruit is like a peach in substance and colour. To taste, it
has the sharp tang of the orange and raw pineapple together with the somewhat
sickly taste of the melon. It is a rich and luscious fruit to be taken
in small quantities.”
One of the ironies apparent from the
family’s letters, is that while in the Empire foodstuffs were varied and
abundant, and textiles readily available, in the capital of Imperial Britain
they were rationed and expensive. Ron frequently sent home parcels of food and
textiles (tea towels, sheets, pillow slips, socks, dress material), which were
enormously appreciated by his parents and his sister. In September 1944 Women’s Voluntary Service of South Africa sent
food parcels to the homes of soldiers serving overseas. In 1945 a welfare parcel
arrived in Ruislip from Australia: a pound of sugar, a pound of sultanas, a
half-pound tin of orange jam and a tin of a mysterious delicacy called Camp
Pie, tinned meat, usually either beef or mutton.
Until after 1945 coupons, rationing and
shortage were significant factors of everyday life. Contrast 2020-2021. After a
brief period of scarcity of items such as toilet paper and hand sanitizer,
shortages of the basics of life do not affect the entire population, only those
poor enough not to be able to afford them. In the UK this phenomenon did not
begin with the pandemic, for the use of food banks had already been increasing
year-on-year, driven by a deliberately inadequate welfare system. The pandemic
has made matters worse because it plunged many more people into the
parsimonious hands of Universal Credit.
The Blitz mythology suggests that a heroic
solidarity was the norm in wartime Britain. Certainly, when Bert and Annie’s
home was bombed friends and neighbours gathered round to offer them shelter. Bert
wrote a month after the bombing of his house that: “The air raids are still a
bit troublesome and I shall be very glad to be out of London. The Vicar, Mr
Gleeson & Mrs Eames have been wonderful to me … Mrs Eames even did my
washing this week.” But mostly Annie and Bert simply coped with wartime living:
air raid warnings, an uncertain housing situation, cramped accommodation,
rationing and queueing, the general threat of disruption at home and at work. For
a year, 1940-1941, Bert worked for the Admiralty in Taunton at much reduced
pay. Back at Emery Walker, in April 1943 he had to ask his boss for a pay rise,
otherwise he could not meet his commitments. By 1944 Bert reported that the
price of clothes had doubled. By 1946 the couple had already spent half of
their £150 war damage claim and work had not yet begun on rebuilding their
home.
Then there were the dealings with
officialdom. To be rehoused you applied to the billeting people at the Town
Hall, who might offer accommodation that was too large and that you could not
afford to heat. To rebuild his house Bert needed approval from the local Town
Hall, which in turn required plans drawn by an architect, a profession in very
short supply. Almost six years after the destruction of his home, there had
been little progress towards rebuilding.
Bert described his negotiations with the
Assistance Board in January 1942: “I am afraid the more I know of officialdom
the less I like it. I am referring to the Assistance Board. I went there this
morning and was calmly told that as I was in furnished rooms they could not
give me any grant. If I was rehoused I would probably get a grant of only £30,
which I explained was inadequate considering the expense which would be
incurred. They evidently had a report from some official who had examined my
furniture which is in store. The officer-in-charge told me that as my furniture
had not sustained much damage I could not expect any help. He realised after I
told him, that the majority of the damaged stuff had been too bad to salvage! I
also explained to him that if my bedding was not reconditioned till after the
war it would deteriorate so much that it may be a total loss. But it seems he
is so tied up with red-tape that if he does not make it a special case I have
very little hope of assistance.”
In November 1945 Bert summed up the post-
war mood: “I shall be glad to improve the state of things at Sussex House as
soon as it is possible. On Friday next I have arranged a meeting at my office,
of the District Surveyor, the War Damage Commission’s Surveyor & also the
builder. So I am hoping that something decisive will be done. It is very
difficult to keep cheerful these days somehow. More so than I have experienced
throughout the war. Everybody seems the same. The trouble I think is that we
all expected too much after the cessation of hostilities to be frightfully
disappointed. … Priestley spoke last Sunday on the radio about how the people
have forgotten the friendliness they showed during the blitz. Piers England in
an article in the ‘People’ writes of his experience during a walk in London.
Universal shop assistants, & bragging know alls who can always get anything
in short supply (at a price). … I only think it is a phase – a post war
feeling. And when we get improved rations & obvious signs of better times,
people will be more cheerful & friendlier.”
Solidarity seems not to have prevented
crime. In June 1943 Annie took one of Bert’s suits to the cleaners. It was stolen
during a robbery. In November 1944, there were a series or burglaries at the
church. On one occasion, money intended for “Comforts for The Troops” was
stolen. In February 1946 there was a second break-in at Emery Walker in
Hammersmith. Thieves stole two clocks and some instruments. That same month
burglars stole £2,000 of clothing from the best ladies’ outfitters in Ruislip.
Bert and Ron’s letters also tell something
of the political change that was stirring as the war ground to its end. In
February 1944, Bert wrote, the Master Printers Association arranged a lecture
“on “The Value of Full Co-operation with your Employees and how to obtain it”.
This was not only interesting but shows one the present day trend. The day of
slave labour is considered gone, and it is urged that every firm should have
its works committee who should be taken into the confidence of the management. Sounds
like an echo of Russia doesn’t it? One question – How should you deal with an
extreme Red? – once you take him in your confidence you will find him the most
co-operative man.”
Ron and Bert became interested in the
Common Wealth Party, founded in 1942 by Sir Richard Acland (who had been a
Liberal MP), the writer J B Priestley, and a veteran of the Spanish Civil War
Tom Wintringham. Bert sent pamphlets and a magazine issued by the party, which
Ron shared with some of his colleagues. The party’s core principles were common
ownership, morality in politics and “Vital Democracy”. In 1944 and 1945 they celebrated the party’s
victories in bye-elections in Skipton and Chelmsford, but lamented its loss in
Camberwell.
As the July 1945 General Election
approached Ron wrote to his father: “I
rather think Labour will get in on an easy majority. Churchill is not so
popular as you think at least not in the forces. It is realized that he was the
only strong man who could have led the government in these war years and that
he fulfilled his task excellently, but he is still not a man of the people, and
with peace approaching it is a people’s government that is wanted.” He
predicted that Labour would win 359 seats (they won 393) and the Conservatives
184 (in fact, 197), but did not foresee the Liberal collapse from 47 to 112 and
Common Wealth from 7 to 1. Nevertheless, he was “jubilant over Labour’s
victory. When Bert arrived at his office on 27 July his boss “Mr Merton greeted
me with “Good morning Comrade Waddams!”” Since those who appeal to the Blitz
spirit do so almost without exception from a Conservative Party point of view,
they must conveniently forget the left-wing sentiments that flourished as the
war came to its end. No doubt there was hunger during the war years, but it
would not have been casually accepted as we now accept food banks.
Bert died before I married Jan, and Annie
within a year of our wedding, so I have been getting to know them through their
letters. Annie was very much the motherly home-maker. She was concerned for her
son’s safety from shipwreck, enemy action, and his first flight in an aeroplane
from Rangoon to Calcutta in an American Dakota in December 1945. She
disapproved of his plans to buy a car (unsafe) when he returned and urged him
to shave off his new moustache (he did not). She managed household affairs and
coped (grumblingly) with rationing and coupons. Bert clearly relied on her
domestic support. Bert was an accomplished artisan, specializing in lettering
and diagrams. His employers and clients valued his skills. Church and pride in
his work were clearly enormously important to him. He saw the need to modernize
the firm for which he worked, and diplomatically set about persuading his
conservative superiors to agree to his plans. He had a playful, gentle sense of
humour. He was a lover of classical music and, with Annie a keen cinema and theatre-goer.
He played chess ad delighted in teaching others the game. He loved a party,
complete with humorous games, and a good dance. He and Ron regularly corresponded
about weighty matters: the causes of the war, politics, the fate of the world
once the Peace had come. They wrote about the books they had read, the music
they had listened to, the films they had seen. If he disagreed with his son, he
did so gently but firmly, never seeking confrontation.
I do not detect in Annie and Bert the Blitz
spirit so beloved of 2021 propagandists. Rather, I see fortitude, an
unbreakable togetherness, the devastating blow of a family home destroyed, and
a dogged determination to rebuild it. Their daughter Evelyn married in 1942,
and a granddaughter Julie was born in 1944. They worried for the safety of
their son, since censorship meant that they often did not know where he was.
They studied the photos he sent home with a magnifying glass. Was he eating
well since, he seemed thinner? His mother disapproved when a moustache
appeared. But above all they longed for his return. They expressed weary relief
as the military situation turned first against the Germans and then against the
Japanese. They occasionally wished for victory, but above all for “the Peace”.
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Ron Waddams, Portrait of Evelyn Waddams in Her Wedding Veil, oil on canvas, 1942
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