Calder - The Peoples War

Angus Calder

THE PEOPLES

WAR

Britain 1939-1945

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First published by Jonathan Cape Ltd 1969
Pimlico edition 1992
Reprinted 1993, 1994, 1996 (twice), 1997, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2008 (twice)

Angus Calder 1969

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 9780712652841

A.R.P.; the road to war; the Munich crisis; the three Britains; rearmament; war is declared

The exodus; the official scheme; billeting; outrage in the countryside, squalor in the towns; evacuation fails; education in chaos

The call-up; A.R.P.; opposition to the war; inaction and confusion; blackout and Civil Defence; the war economy; rationing; Finland and Norway

Churchills record; the Norway debate and the fall of Chamberlain; the coalition; the Prime Minister, history and the people; the War Cabinet Beaverbrook, Bevin, Anderson, Attlee, Eden

The fall of France; sang froid and sang chaud; the new economic outlook and the Dunkirk spirit; preparations for invasion; the Home Guard; the internment of aliens; Regulation 18B and the Fifth Column hysteria; Haw Haw and the Silent Column fiasco; Guilty Men, Priestleys broadcasts and the Peoples War

Early stages; the men and the planes; Eagle Day; Beaverbrook, M.A.P. and the Spitfire Fund; the view from the ground; crisis fortnight; reprisals; the blitz on London begins; the invasion thwarted

The East End takes it; sights, sounds, smells of blitz; the spirit of middle-class London; life in working-class shelters; the post-raid services and the crisis of local government; the Civil Defenders; the Civil Defence machine; an incident

Coventry blitzed a new phase; the attack on the provinces and the second Fire of London; the menace of incendiaries and the Fire Service; the raids of 1941 Clydebank, Plymouth, Merseyside; the last blow; Hess flies in; the question mark over morale; Southampton and Portsmouth examined; the effects of the blitz

Terror bombing of Germany begins; victory in Libya; Lease-lend; the Battle of the Atlantic; problems of the war economy; the manpower shortage; the Essential Work Order; the 1941 budget; rationing spreads; Government propaganda; Rommel arrives; disaster in the Mediterranean; the Peoples Convention; bullshit and ABCA; the Governments critics; inefficiency, cost plus and Excess Profits Tax; Lord Beaverbrooks carrot; the tank crisis; Russia invaded; the Atlantic Charter; Pearl Harbour

A new cycle of disasters; National Service extended the conscription of women; Cripps and the political crisis; the fall of Singapore; Austerity, the national loaf, and Utility; the fuel crisis; the Baedeker raids; the Daily Mirror is warned; independents win three by-elections; the movement away from party; monopolists and individualists; the movement back to party; Second Front Now; the fall of Tobruk; Churchill wins a vote of censure; a new threat from Cripps; El Alamein, the end of the beginning

The American occupation; the birth rate and the boom in sin; the billeting problem; the transport problem; the shopkeepers; full employment; war industry, the R.O.F.s and concentration; the G.T.C.s and dilution; jobs for the girls; skyvers and criminals; the lull in the raids; the Home Guard carry on; boys and girls mobilized; salvage; the railings come down

Stalingrad and the Russian glory; levelling down and levelling up of incomes; the Catering Wages Act and P.A.Y.E.; National Savings; the B.B.C., ITMA and the Brains Trust; watering the workers beer; the cinema does its bit; ENSA and all that; music booms; sport declines; fashion founders utterly; Lord Woolton, the Radio Doctor, carrot stickjaw, nutritional policy, and communal feeding; absenteeism and industrial welfare; the triumph of Bevinism

Trade unionism, shop stewards and strikes; Joint Production Committees; women workers and their pay; the unfairness of rationing; grey and black markets; no room at the inn; regional disparities

The Channel Islands; Ulster; fishermen at war; Croesus the Lydian, Murdo McGregor, and the war in Ross and Cromarty; farming between the wars; the plough-up; land reclamation; mechanization; feather-bedded farmers?; the War Ags; farm labour and the land girl; digging for victory

Mining before the war; an inevitable crisis; dual control; causes and effects; the Bevin Boys; wage claims and strikes; Trotsky strikes again; the moral

A ramshackle industry; Cripps at M.A.P.; workers control; the planes

Radar, the atom bomb, penicillin; the rise of the boffins; Lindemann v. Tizard; operational research; Sunday Soviets; the scientists conscience; social science surveys, propaganda, psychiatry, scientific management; technical advance in industry; higher education

The decline of the Churches; wartime cross-currents; the Churches and society; the Malvern conference; from Lang to Temple; loving our enemies; Vansittartism; Bishop Bell, area bombing and Catch-22; pacifism and conscientious objection; Britain and the Jews

Propaganda and censorship; the press at war; the mobilization of the arts; music and painting; book reading; the position of the writer; Horizon and Penguin New Writing; the war poets; Keith Douglas

Victory in North Africa; the mood of Britain; the Beveridge report; the Tory Reformers and the growth of consensus; Churchills Four Year Plan; Scott, Uthwatt and the Ministry of Cloud Cuckoo Land; a National Health Service; the Education Act of 1944; Beveridgism and the Common Wealth Party; the release of Mosley; the West Derbyshire by-election

The Little Blitz; D Day; the doodlebugs; the V 2; Greece and the Bulge; the defeat of Germany; VE Day

Demob; the coalition breaks up; the Caretaker Government; party policies; the Gestapo scare; the Laski scare; electioneering; the forces vote; the Labour landslide; a prospect of the future; Churchill takes it; the atom bomb what price victory?

TO MY PARENTS

Angus Calder is Reader in Cultural Studies and Staff Tutor in Arts with the Open University in Scotland. He read English at Cambridge and received his D. Phil. from the School of Social Studies at the University of Sussex. He was Convener of the Scottish Poetry Library when it was founded in 1984. His other books include Revolutionary Empire and The Myth of the Blitz (available from Pimlico). He has contributed to many Open University courses, notably on The Enlightenment, Popular Culture and Literature and the Modern World.

General, that tank of yours is some car.

It can wreck a forest, crush a hundred men.

But it has one failing: