Austerity Britain, 1945–51 (15 page)

The impact, nevertheless, was immediate. ‘My husband looked at me across the lounge of the London flat, and I looked at him,’ the writer Ursula Bloom remembered. ‘Horror filled us both, and to such a degree that for a moment neither of us could speak.’ Elizabeth Long-ford was sitting alone in her Oxford home when she turned on the wireless. ‘For the first time in my life I had a strong presentiment about the future: that a brilliant scientific discovery would bring a balance of evil to the human race.’ Later that evening, Joan Wyndham, standing around with WAAF colleagues at their Nottinghamshire air base waiting for transport to take them to the late watch, noticed Flight Sergeant Kelly hurrying towards them:

First she walked a bit, then she broke into a run and walked again. It seemed odd because she wasn’t late for the transport.

When she came up to us she said, ‘There’s a terrible bomb been dropped on Japan – the worst ever! It’s to do with re-directing the energy from the sun, or something. Everybody thinks the Japs will surrender any minute!’

She probably expected a barrage of questions – or even cries of ‘Good show!’ – but there was nothing, only a shocked silence . . .

I think I was stunned, not so much because of the bomb as at the thought of the war ending. Later, when the meaning finally sank in, I felt the strangest mixture of elation and terror.

For the Rev. John Collins, Dean of Oriel College, Oxford, the news marked the moment when ‘I finally decided against the whole concept of the Just War.’ Within minutes of the bulletin ending, he was rung by the left-wing publisher Victor Gollancz, who persuaded Collins to call at once his friend Sir Stafford Cripps, the ascetic, high-minded Christian who had just become President of the Board of Trade. Collins, as he later recalled, got through without difficulty, to be told by Cripps that ‘the Cabinet had not been informed about what was to happen’, though he ‘went on to assure me that no more atomic bombs would be used against the Japanese’. Still that same evening, Collins rang Lambeth Palace in the hope of speaking to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher. However, he got only a chaplain, who told him ‘that His Grace had “gone into hiding” – a favourite posture of the Church in moments of moral crisis’.
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Over the next week or so – which included, notwithstanding Cripps’s assurance, an atom bomb being dropped on Nagasaki – most people reacted in characteristic ways. Randolph Churchill, son of Winston, was reported by Evelyn Waugh as ‘greatly over-excited’; Joyce Grenfell declared herself ‘all for the Atomic Bomb, but not to drop it much’; Noël Coward reckoned that a bomb that was going to ‘blow us all to buggery’ was ‘not a bad idea’; and Vanessa Bell, writing to her daughter, spoke for the Bloomsbury Group: ‘What a to-do about the atomic bomb . . . I wish they’d get to the stage of labour-saving devices instead of destroying whole cities.’ J.R.R. Tolkien was even prompted to make a rare pronouncement, albeit private, on a public matter. ‘The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world,’ he wrote to his son. ‘Such explosives in man’s hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope “this will ensure peace”.’ He concluded, ‘Well we’re in God’s hands. But He does not look kindly on Babel-builders.’ The pattern-maker Colin Ferguson, writing his diary in Glasgow on the 8th, concurred: ‘The papers are still full of the Atomic bomb and what it may mean for the future. They hope it will have beneficial effects & not a diabolic outcome. I say, before they place any “hopes” on the future they’ll have to get
men
changed – not “political systems” . . . And in that they’re hoping against hope: there is
no hope
in
man
, and he is credulous who believes there is. The end is near – maybe some years only.’ As the news of the appalling human and material destruction filtered through, perhaps most people felt like that at some level, even if less starkly. Yet the observation of Gladys Langford was telling. ‘Everybody very proud of the Atomic bomb
we’ve
dropped on Japan,’ she noted on the 7th, ‘and yet those same people cursed the Germans for
their
cruelty when
they
bombed
us
.’
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The day after Hiroshima found Henry St John, briefly on secondment in the north-east, working in Spennymoor: ‘I tried in vain to buy cigarettes. The public lavatory had some fixtures missing, and an unusual wealth of scribblings on the door of the water closet. “I know a little girl of 11 who can take a man’s prick. I broke her down in the woods, and did she enjoy it. I fuck my sister – she’s 14,” were specimens. A drawing showed a nude woman beside a bed, with a caption, “I’m ready, dean”.’ Two days later, the urban anthropologist returned to the scene ‘to see if I could masturbate over the mural inscriptions’, but vexingly, ‘there was no lock on the door’. There was no such anticlimax for Nella Last and her husband on Saturday the 11th, when, having got ‘the extra petrol’, they set out from Barrow for the day, taking with them their next-door neighbours the Atkinsons:

The thought that peace would soon be here, that mothers and wives could cease their constant worry, and anxiety, that people could begin to live their own lives again, seemed all mixed up with the warm sunshine and the fields of cut golden corn and the sea sparkling over the golden sands – a feeling of ‘rightness’. We walked round Morecambe,
marvelling
at the tons of good food – things in Marks & Spencer’s like brawn and sausage, thousands of sausage-rolls and pies, including big raised pork-pies.

We went on to Heysham Head – surely the best shilling’s worth in the whole world! Lovely surroundings, a show in the Rose Gardens, a circus, concert party, marionette show, little menagerie, dance board with relayed music, seats for everyone, either in the sun or the shade – all included! . . . We sat on the slope of the Head to watch the circus, and I saw a group sitting near in very earnest conversation, with their heads together. I’d have loved to go and butt in. I love being in an argument, and thought, ‘Perhaps they are talking about the atomic bomb – or the result of the Election.’ I’ve very good hearing, and when I’d got used to the different sounds around, I could hear what they
were
discussing – the new ‘cold perm’! Every woman I know is interested in it – another revolution, when curly hair can be assured by a method so simple that it can be done at home.

‘We felt in a real holiday mood’ as, coatless, they drove home. And Last thought: ‘It will be a good month for getting in the crops, for the moon rose fair when it came in.’
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Negotiations had dragged on for several days after the Japanese surrender on the 10th, but by Tuesday the 14th there was a general expectation that the end of the war could be only hours away. ‘Crowds of small boys keep going by with packing cases for burning,’ Gladys Langford tut-tutted that day. ‘I think it is a great pity in view of necessary economy in fuel this coming winter.’ The suspense mounted. ‘We listened eagerly to the six o’clock news – still nothing tangible,’ noted Last. ‘I thought of a remark I’d heard: “Perhaps Japan, too, has a mystery bomb and is playing for time.”’ Later, ‘when there was nothing on the nine o’clock news, I said that I was going to bed, as my back ached badly.’ But finally, as Ernest Loftus near Tilbury succinctly recorded, it came:

At 11 p.m. – summary of news – we were told to stand by at 12 for an important announcement.

At midnight, therefore, I switched on and Attlee the new Prime Minister announced PEACE. The Japs had accepted our terms. Even while Attlee was speaking the sirens began to sound on the ships in the river & some of them are still at it at 12.55 as I write this.

The
Merthyr Express
described the memorable scenes and noises that ensued in South Wales – as in many parts of Britain – almost straight after the typically clipped announcement:

The streets in all the towns and villages in the Merthyr Valley, the Rhymney Valley and the West Monmouthshire area were thronged with singing and cheering people. Dancing and singing took place from soon after midnight until the small hours.

Those who did not hear the Premier’s broadcast were awakened by their neighbours, and many left their beds, donned dressing gowns or overcoats and joined the ever-increasing crowds.

‘The war is over’ was a cry frequently heard, and for many the news was almost unbelievable at first. Many women were in tears at the thought of again seeing a husband or son soon to be released from prisoner-of-war camps.

Large buildings in many districts were floodlit – red, white and blue ‘V’ signs being very prominent. All our South Wales colliery hooters, train whistles, detonators, fireworks and rattles were used to swell the great chorus of celebration. Many bonfires were lit in the streets and on the mountain-sides, and shone out as symbols of Peace and Freedom.

Nella Last in Barrow was woken from her half-sleep by shouting and the noise of ships’ sirens and church bells. For the next hour, as she looked through her bedroom window but could not quite bring herself to get dressed and go out, there were ‘cars rushing down Abbey Road into the town’, an excitable neighbour ‘half-screaming “God Save the King”’, from all directions ‘the sound of opening doors and people telling each other they had been in bed and asleep’, dogs ‘barking crazily’, ships’ hooters ‘turned on and forgotten’, and ‘the sound of fireworks coming out of little back gardens’. By 1.00 she had had enough. ‘I feel no wild whoopee, just a quiet thankfulness and a feeling of “flatness”,’ she scribbled before returning to bed. ‘I think I’ll take two aspirins and try and read myself to sleep.’
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Attlee had announced in his broadcast that the next two days were to be public holidays, and as it happened Wednesday the 15th – VJ Day – had long been booked for the state opening of Parliament and the King’s Speech. ‘It was like old times even though there was no gold coach,’ reflected one of the Tory survivors, Sir Cuthbert Headlam. ‘The new Labour M.P.s are a strange looking lot – one regrets the departure of the sound old Trade Unionists and the advent of this rabble of youthful, ignorant young men.’ Not everyone, to judge by Judy Haines’s report, had been aware of the midnight revels:

We got up as usual and were breakfasting and listening to the 7 o’clock news, when we realised a V.J. day was on. People had started out for work and hardly knew which way to turn when it was conveyed to them today and tomorrow are holidays. Some had evidently been given instructions to join the bread queue in the event of VJ, for that is what they did. I have never seen so many people in Chingford. The queues were more like those of a football match. The queue for bread from List’s stretched round to the Prince Albert. I was very glad Dyson’s opened as it is my shopping morning and I needed my rations.

It was no better in Wembley. ‘Women grumbling & arguing in the queues,’ noted Rose Uttin, ‘& then it started to rain – everybody with heavy bags of shopping got soaked.’ Elsewhere, once the shopping was in and with the weather brightening up, there were the familiar street tea parties for children, followed by victory dances and bonfires in the evening. ‘All day long,’ observed Langford in less disapproving mode, ‘children have been passing with doors, window frames and other woodwork torn from buildings.’ Anthony Heap and his wife, on holiday in Somerset when they heard the news, decided to ‘dash up to London for the celebrations’, catching the 10.35 from Frome. For a time, as they made ‘a preliminary tour of the West End’, he half-regretted their decision: ‘Not quite so thrilling as we expected. The inevitable crowds gathered en masse in Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus & Buckingham Palace listening to tinned music emanating from loud speakers. But otherwise the rejoicing seemed to be rather subdued. Just thousands of weary-looking people wandering round the streets or sprawling on the grass in the parks.’ Sticking to their VE ritual, they went home for some tea before ‘embarking on the evening excursion’:

Had to walk there and back this time, but as it turned out to be so much more lively and jubilant a jaunt than the afternoon one, we didn’t mind that so much. We waited among the multitude outside Buckingham Palace to hear the King’s Broadcast speech at 9.0 and see the Royal Family appear on the balcony afterwards. We stood among the crowds in Whitehall and saw Attlee, Morrison and Bevin on the balcony of the Ministry of Health building, though we couldn’t hear what the former was saying for his speech was continually drowned by shouts of ‘We want Churchill’ . . . We saw the floodlighting, we saw the fireworks, we saw the town literally and figuratively lit up – despite the deplorable dearth of drink – as it’s rarely been lit up before . . . So far as revelry by night was concerned, VE Day had nothing on VJ Day. It was London with the lid off!

So no doubt it was, but for many people one day of celebrations was quite enough, even more than enough. ‘Another V.J. day spent quietly at home,’ wrote Haines on the 16th. ‘So glad of the rest.’
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