Staring at God

by Simon Heffer

  Inevitably, the privations were harshest for the working class, and particularly for those whose lives had been uprooted by the need to move to another part of the country to work in the war effort. For example, the Ministry of Munitions’ determination to improve iron ore production to help speed up the replacement of shipping required thousands of workers to be moved to iron-producing areas. However, there were huge shortages of housing in such places in which to billet the immigrant workers. Since August 1914 civilians had been used to having soldiers and workers billeted on them, but it had been done on a voluntary basis and among people glad to earn extra money for letting a spare room. Now the problem seemed insoluble without a massive construction programme of temporary hostels: Barrow-in-Furness had had its population trebled, and the influx of women workers was causing special problems. Those with spare rooms, alert to the laws of supply and demand, were putting up rents above what workers – especially the more lowly paid women – could afford. The population of Carlisle had increased by 20,000 and there were no more lodgings.

  In an attempt to grapple with the problem, local welfare committees had been set up to ensure workers could be absorbed successfully into their new locations; and a Central Billeting Board had local representatives organise accommodation, settle complaints and allocate rooms. However, matters had reached the point that when all those willing to take lodgers had been exhausted, so those with spare rooms who had not offered them would now be compelled to do so under yet more new provisions of DORA. All occupiers would be forced to disclose what accommodation they had. Addison, as minister of munitions, aware of this infringement of individual rights, promised that ‘I myself believe, however, that in very few instances will it be necessary to exercise any compulsory powers or extreme measures.’114

  Nonetheless, there were widespread objections, with MPs accusing the government of lacking foresight in setting up factories without planning to house those who would work in them. Addison protested that a programme of hostel building was unfeasible; there were not men to build them nor the materials. James Hogge – an Edinburgh MP who would become government chief whip after the 1918 election – protested about the sort of people who might be about to be imposed upon his and other MPs’ constituents: ‘I have heard that on certain days in the week you cannot get along certain roads … on account of the drunken people in the way. That may or may not be true, but if it is true, they are the people who are to be compulsorily billeted on ladies who knit socks and mufflers.’115 Realising it had to act, the Ministry of Munitions announced an initiative to build 500 permanent and 500 semi-permanent houses at Barrow-in-Furness for workers, many of whom had been living in glorified barracks.

  A regime of compliance and inspection was proposed to ensure the billets were up to standard, which incensed Hogge. He feared an ‘inquisition into the home life of respectable women whose sons and husbands, many of them, are serving across the water at the front.’116 He asked Addison to envisage the consequences of introducing compulsion. ‘Surely he must see that the woman who has to provide that accommodation must have more protection. Take some of the Scottish villages. Those women have given up their men for the Army, and frequently there is nobody left at home but the woman and her girls. Can my right hon Friend contemplate with equanimity a defenceless woman and her daughter in a Scottish village in which munition workers have settled being saddled with the rough type of men engaged in munition works?’117 Another criticism was that it was not compulsory billeting, but better wages, that were required: young women were paid on average 23s a week, and with the rise in the cost of living since 1914 that severely limited the range of accommodation they could afford.

  Snowden, who had just been elected chairman of the Independent Labour Party at a conference that (to the government’s alarm) had cheered the overthrow of the Tsar and celebrated pacifism, pointed out the main danger of young women being moved into such overcrowded conditions: ‘Immorality.’118 He was ‘appalled’ when he considered the consequences of the government’s policy. More to the point, ‘no interference with individual liberty … has been more outrageous than this which is proposed.’ John Henderson, Liberal MP for West Aberdeenshire, said that ‘no Bill has been introduced into this House which has had such an evil aspect as this one.’119 He added: ‘I also dread this eternal appointment of salaried officials and local committees’, and feared the numbers working for the state were ‘getting enormous and beyond all control and knowledge’: the old Britain in which the state barely touched, let alone interfered in, individual lives was being buried.120 The billeting of soldiers had been helped by their being subject to military discipline; munitions workers were not. The Bill had its second reading, thanks to the large government majority, but there was no concealing the unease among backbenchers.

  VI

  To add to the public’s woes the threat to life and property from air raids grew throughout the year, despite an important advance in 1916 from a dramatic improvement to London’s anti-aircraft defences. Zeppelin raids on the city had stopped in September that year, and the RFC became highly effective at shooting down enemy planes. As a result, defences had been reduced in early 1917, when it seemed the Germans would not return. Yet on 25 April 1917 a daylight bombing raid on Folkestone killed ninety-five people. In the following days German destroyers sporadically shelled the Kent coast, notably Ramsgate, inflicting few casualties but destroying various properties. Soon, demands were made in and out of Parliament for the entire civilian population of towns on the east and south-east coasts to be evacuated, which would have made the already dire accommodation problem effectively unmanageable. The government quite sensibly refused to consider any such thing, claiming it was improving both the nation’s air defences and the air-raid warning system. To boost morale the government had also ordered the bombing of occupied towns on the European coast, such as Zeebrugge.

  As the threat from the air increased, the government was urged to appoint a minister for the air defences, the War Office’s existing control of the RFC being deemed untenable because, although there was an Air Board, no minister was answerable to Parliament. The War Cabinet also considered ‘the possible spread of epidemics by dropping germs from the air’.121 It had long expected the Germans to try such a tactic on the British public as part of a ‘campaign of frightfulness’; experts thought germ warfare would be ineffective, unless the water supply were directly infected with typhoid or cholera. It was felt ‘improbable’ this could be done from the air, but the government asked its scientists to consider possible retaliation if it was.

  Churchill, showing welcome proactivity, realised how vulnerable his munitions factories were to air raids, and instigated a programme of building dugouts and shelters lined with sandbags to protect workers. This, as he admitted, was only copying practice in many privately owned factories. Although constructing the shelters would affect productivity – the workers themselves would dig them – he argued it would result in higher output as workers would not retreat home during a raid. Churchill wanted to take this principle further, and urged the War Cabinet to sanction a network of shelters in residential areas near such factories. The cheap housing in which working-class communities tended to live was deemed especially vulnerable to collapse if bombed; and the government accepted that, whether bombed or not, the national housing stock would require a huge public subsidy after the war to be raised to an acceptable standard, and local authorities had been invited to submit applications for help.122

  However, in believing they had tamed German air power, the British authorities had not reckoned on the Gotha fixed-wing bomber, which flew from bases in Belgium and, flying as it did largely over water, was until it reached its target largely free of molestation by British anti-aircraft guns. Flying at 10,500 feet and heavily armed with machine guns, the Gothas killed seventy-one and injured a hundred and ninety-two people in and around Folkestone on 25 May in a daylight raid, having aborted an attack on London because of thick clou
d. At the inquest the following week the jury condemned ‘in the strongest possible manner the negligence of the local and military authorities for not having made arrangements whereby the public could be warned.’123

  The first such raid on the capital, on the morning of 13 June, left a hundred and sixty-two dead and four hundred and thirty-two injured, mainly around Liverpool Street Station: eighteen children died at Upper North Street school in the East India Dock Road, with a little girl being dug from the rubble three days later, alive. A fifth of the casualties were children. The King went to the scene of the raid and drove slowly through the streets, being cheered by survivors; he then visited the injured in hospital. A Zeppelin was destroyed the next day (just as a privately owned TNT factory blew up at Ashton-under-Lyne, killing forty-three and injuring a hundred and twenty others. The government offered to pay for the funerals). There was inevitable criticism of the slow response of the air defences – there had, William Joynson-Hicks, the Tory MP, alleged in Parliament on 14 June, been forty-five minutes between the Gothas being spotted and bombs being dropped. When planes were spotted, warnings were telegraphed ahead and the police were sent out to order people under cover. There had been a failure to warn institutions, notably schools and hospitals. Joynson-Hicks also demanded retaliatory raids on German towns.

  That evening a meeting of London citizens convened and passed a resolution demanding reprisals, and their example was followed around the country. The public urged MPs to hold a debate in Parliament; the government refused, relying instead on raising morale by improving warnings and defences. Air resources were limited, and the War Cabinet decided they were better used defending rather than attacking. It also ruled that to bomb German towns within range of the RFC was a suggestion ‘in reality one of “frightfulness”.’124

  The Germans fed, however, on British inactivity in tackling the Gothas. On 7 July there were two hundred and fifty more casualties, including fifty-seven dead, in a daylight raid on London by twenty-two bombers. A clamour built about poor air-raid warnings, not least because the bombers had been spotted over the east coast. The government admitted a reluctance to issue warnings because the home defence had had three false alarms the previous week; had all been acted upon the loss of productivity would have been damaging. The Times detected ‘widespread indignation’, provoked by a sense that Britain was being humiliated, but also by a growing fear that air power might decide the war, and the country seemed unequal to the challenge.125 The War Cabinet authorised Cave to initiate a system of warnings ‘when the course followed by the raiders left practically no doubt as to their destination or objective.’126 The RFC attacked the Gothas over the Essex coast as they returned home, and one was reportedly shot down. A small riot broke out in London’s east end, wrecking property owned by, or thought to be owned by, Germans: twenty-four people were arrested.

  The War Cabinet was propelled into mild panic as the press expressed its outrage at such raids being allowed to happen, and the public demanded retaliation. The London Air Defence Area was created and, despite objections from Haig, the War Cabinet ordered back two RFC squadrons from the Western Front to protect London. Lloyd George blamed the shortage of planes on Asquith’s ‘vacillation’, a convenient excuse with some truth in it – Asquith had failed to take a grip on the Air Board – but not one the new prime minister could use for much longer.127 In the short term the new plan worked; in August three raids on London failed, and the Germans switched to trying to bomb by night. It had long been established that the anti-aircraft guns around London lacked the range to shoot anything down, so fighter planes were essential for the job.

  Robertson was summoned to a special War Cabinet meeting after the raid. He found ministers in a near-hysterical panic about the raids and, through the prism of what he knew of the infinitely greater carnage at the front, told Haig, ‘one would have thought that the world was coming to an end.’128 French, as home commander-in-chief, was present, and complained about the inadequacy of the forces at his disposal to defend England. Robertson privately agreed, saying the defenders of the country were mainly ‘oddments’ – men unfit for active service abroad, or too young by law to serve there. He added that ‘our anti-aircraft artillery was apparently of no use, and our airmen arrived in driblets and were powerless, but succeeded in getting one machine down. The fact is we have not enough machines to meet our requirements.’

  On 9 July the Commons held a secret session about air defences. According to the official report issued by the Speaker, Lloyd George said that ‘complete protection in the air could never be secured.’129 He felt one of the main reasons the Germans were bombing England was to force the withdrawal of aeroplanes from France to defend the homeland: a strategy the War Cabinet was determined to avoid. Instead, Lloyd George promised that aircraft production, which had increased in the preceding six months, would continue to do so: he was confident that French would soon have enough planes to defend London adequately. A week later a system of sirens was tested in the City of London, but most people indoors could not hear them: cannon fire, flares, police firing blanks from pistols in the streets and boats on the river sounding their whistles were also tried. The search for the perfect system culminated with what the government called ‘sound bombs’, three maroons fired at fifteen-second intervals, while police put up notices in the street ordering people to ‘take cover’.130 Lloyd George assured the Commons that Royal Navy bombers were regularly attacking German aerodromes in Belgium, and dropping a heavier tonnage of bombs on them than the Gothas were on London.

  A series of six raids on London occurred between 24 September and 1 October, which included new aeroplanes known as ‘Giants’ that could fly at 19,000 feet and drop 1,000-kilogram bombs: these were beyond the range of not just guns but searchlights and, more to the point, fighter aircraft.131 There was a debate about sounding warnings for night-time raids in case half-asleep civilians rushed into the streets and became even more vulnerable to the bombs. A tactic that would be familiar in Hitler’s war was introduced, with tens of thousands of Londoners spontaneously taking refuge in the Underground. Maroons were fired to signal an imminent raid; unfortunately, some mistook these for anti-aircraft guns and panicked, thinking the raid had started; the government was asked to use sirens as a warning instead, but said these were harder than maroons to hear above the traffic.

  The prime minister’s own reaction to the raids was less than stalwart. He was about to pursue successful libel actions against several news organisations that had accused him of retreating to his house at Walton Heath during raids: which he had, because of his fear of explosions. He claimed he was suing not because of the personal attack on him, but because of the fear it might sow among the public, prompting them to think raids were more dangerous than they actually were. The raids were also continuing to fuel demands for retaliation. On 2 October Lloyd George toured bombed areas, and met protestors calling for reprisals. He was heard to say to some of them: ‘we shall do that.’132

  Later that month the King and Queen toured the east end, inspecting air-raid shelters. Some east enders sent a telegram to the King asking that he command the War Office to receive a deputation to deliver their demand for reprisals: he passed the telegram to the prime minister, and Stamfordham took the precaution of telling the press he had done so. Mayors of several London boroughs added to the clamour, as did the mayor of Ramsgate, whose town was used for target practice by bombers coming down the Thames estuary. The government briefed that the delay in reprisals was not because of an unwillingness to share in German ‘beastliness’, but because there was not the air power to do it without exposing the Western Front: but such power was being increased. It was also reported that although German civilians were not being attacked, the aerodromes of the planes bombing London were. Within a fortnight RFC planes were bombing factories in Saarbrücken. In early November Ben Tillett, the veteran dockers’ leader, easily beat a government candidate in a by-election at Salford, on a manifesto
including a demand for ‘air raid reprisals on a large scale’, as well as for better pay for servicemen and their dependents. It was a fair reflection of public disillusion with the government. The War Cabinet implored Lord Montagu of Beaulieu to withdraw a question to Curzon on air-raid precautions, as ‘he would be unable to answer it without revealing valuable information to the enemy’, but in fact so that ‘deficiencies’ should not be publicly exposed.133

  Air raids continued on the capital, Kent and the eastern counties throughout the winter of 1917–18. Gwynne, reflecting the general feeling that too little was being done to protect the British people against murderous attack, told Lady Bathurst on 15 January 1918: ‘Believe me England is not rotten. It is a nation of lions led by asses and knaves. England is all right at heart. I have never lost faith in the people. But I have lost faith in all our leaders.’134 Some leaders, political and military, would not have disagreed. On the night of 28 January the Germans bombed Ramsgate; a hundred and sixteen houses sustained damage, but there were no casualties. A shelter in a basement in Odham’s printing works in Covent Garden took a direct hit, killing thirty-eight people and wounding sixty-five; the raid killed sixty-seven and injured another hundred and sixty-six, including women and children trampled to death in a stampede at Bishopsgate station. The War Cabinet decided to release the figures, as failure to do so might, in the climate then existing, lead to wild and demoralising rumours.135 General Hugh Trenchard, managing the creation of the RAF, was promised planes to bomb Germany into submission; he never got them.