Angus Calder - The Peoples War

Contents

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A.R.P.; the road to war; the Munich crisis; the three Britains; rearmament; war is declaredThe exodus; the official scheme; billeting; outrage in the countryside, squalor in the towns; evacuation fails; education in chaosThe call-up; A.R.P.; opposition to the war; inaction and confusion; blackout and Civil Defence; the war economy; rationing; Finland and NorwayChurchills 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, EdenThe 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 WarEarly 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 thwartedThe 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 incidentCoventry 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 blitzTerror 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 HarbourA 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 beginningThe 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 downStalingrad 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 BevinismTrade 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 disparitiesThe 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 victoryMining before the war; an inevitable crisis; dual control; causes and effects; the Bevin Boys; wage claims and strikes; Trotsky strikes again; the moralA ramshackle industry; Cripps at M.A.P.; workers control; the planesRadar, 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 educationThe 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 JewsPropaganda 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 DouglasVictory 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-electionThe Little Blitz; D Day; the doodlebugs; the V 2; Greece and the Bulge; the defeat of Germany; VE DayDemob; 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?

About the Author

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.

TO MY PARENTS

Angus Calder

THE PEOPLES

WAR

Britain 1939-1945

Select List of Abbreviations

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AA	Anti-Aircraft (also abbreviated to Ack Ack)
ABCA	Army Bureau of Current Affairs
AEU	Amalgamated Engineering Union
AFS	Auxiliary Fire Service
ARP	Air Raid Precautions
BEF	British Expeditionary Force
CD	Civil Defence
CO	Conscientious Objector
CP	Communist Party
CPGB	Communist Party of Great Britain
CW	Common Wealth Party
CWAEC	County War Agricultural Executive Committee
DA	Delayed Action (bomb)
DC	District (War Agricultural) Committee
DSIR	Department of Scientific and Industrial Research
EEF	Engineering Employers Federation
ENSA	Entertainments National Service Association
EWO	Essential Work Order
GP	General Practitioner
GTC	Government Training Centre
HE	High Explosive
HG	Home Guard
IB	Incendiary Bomb
ICI	Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd
ILP	Independent Labour Party
JPC	Joint Production Committee
LCC	London County Council
LDV	Local Defence Volunteer(s)
LEA	Local Education Authority
MAP	Ministry of Aircraft Production

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