by Sue Black
There would be no more public mention of Bletchley Park.
03
The women of Station X
7th March 2008: the day of the Women of Station X launch had finally arrived. It was held at the British Computer Society’s London offices on Southampton Street. There were about 20 veterans in attendance, along with many BCSWomen members including Jill Dann and Jo Komisarczuk, who had done a great job of listening to and transcribing the veterans’ interviews. Jill had the good idea of bringing along Colossus by Professor Jack Copeland, about Bletchley’s code breaking computers, and asking all the veterans present to sign it.
BCS President Rachel Burnett, Jan Peters, female veterans and me at BCS HQ for the Women of Station X project launch Jan Peters, the project manager, welcomed everyone and introduced the day. I gave a short talk about my first trip to Bletchley Park five yearspreviously, when I had found out to my amazement that more than 5,000 women had worked there during WWII. I’d had no idea that any women had been involved in the code breaking effort and it left me wanting to document and showcase the contribution of the women who had worked there. I was so happy to have finally found some funding and for some veterans to have been interviewed.
Recognising Bletchley Park’s unsung heroines
12 March 2008
Richard Thurston
ZDNet
Codebreakers like Alan Turing have been rightly celebrated for their wartime work but, until now, the women of Station X have been largely overlooked.
The project, launched on Friday, called the “Women of Station X” or the “Women of Bletchley Park”, is the brainchild of Sue Black, chair of BCSWomen – a networking group within BCS that strives to support female IT professionals in the workplace – and the head of the department of information and software systems at the University of Westminster.
Next to speak was Simon Greenish, the Director of Bletchley Park at the time. Simon spoke about what had happened at Bletchley Park and its fundamental importance. He then made an impassioned plea, one that had a profound effect on me and would, in a sense, shape my life for the next few years.
Bletchley Park, he said, was “teetering on a financial knife edge”.
They had no financial support from government or industry, Simon told us. Their main source of income was from gate receipts – the money paid by visitors for admission to the site. Simon was worried that if the visitor numbers dropped, the amount of money taken on the gate would fall and Bletchley Park would have to close. If Bletchley Park closed, he continued, they probably would not reopen, as once operations shut down there it would be too hard to start back up again.
Me handing over the Women of Station X oral history project to Simon Greenish at the project launch at BCS HQ I was shocked. I knew that Bletchley Park had made a substantial contribution towards the war effort. It was also considered by many to be the birthplace of computing, since the world’s first programmable, digital, electronic computer, Colossus, was invented and built at Bletchley Park and Dollis Hill during the war. It seemed so wrong that such a site might have to close down.
The Mansion House at Bletchley Park Bletchley Park faces bleak future
13 May 2008
Richard Thurston
ZDNet
The secret home to Britain’s World War II codebreaking efforts could face closure in two to three years unless it receives more funding.
Historians have postulated that, without Bletchley Park, the Allies may never have won the war.
But, despite an impressive contribution to the war effort, the Bletchley Park site, now a museum, faces a bleak future unless it can secure funding to keep its doors open and its numerous exhibits from rotting away.
Spending time in the company of the veterans that day was wonderful. I felt so in awe of them and the work that they had done all those years ago when they were in their teens and 20s and the world was teetering on the edge of disaster. I enjoyed the event immensely, but I was also disturbed by the news that Bletchley Park was struggling financially, and I left feeling worried about the situation and wondering what I could do to help.
My first email to CPHC
A few weeks later, in June 2008, Simon Greenish called my attention to a petition on the 10 Downing Street website which asked the Prime Minister and the UK government to save Bletchley Park. I signed the petition and then sent an email to all members of the Council for Professors and Heads of Computing (CPHC) asking them to sign the petition too. An email to CPHC goes to all heads of computer science departments and all professors of computer science in all universities in the UK. As a reasonably new member of CPHC I felt a bit shy about emailing all of the heads and profs in the country, but I was really keen to get support for the petition. I remember sitting there thinking that I didn’t know most of the people that would receive my email and hoping that they wouldn’t be annoyed by my blanket message to them all.
Subject: Saving Bletchley Park
From: Dr Sue Black
To: CPHC, Simon Greenish
Sent: 25 June 2008
Dear all,
There is a petition asking for action to secure the future of Bletchley Park. As many of you will know this historic site is run on a charitable basis and holds the national museum of computing along with many other amazing exhibits. I strongly urge you to sign the petition and to support the campaign to save Bletchley Park.
I first visited Bletchley several years ago for a BCS SG meeting and was amazed by the place, so much so that I went away determined to find some funding to record for posterity the efforts of the women who worked there. [ . . . ]
The text of the petition is:
As has been reported elsewhere, Bletchley Park “have two to three more years of survival.”
The Bletchley Park Trust receives no external funding. It has been deemed ineligible for funding by the National Lottery, and turned down by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Please do not allow this crucial piece of both British and World culture to disappear. If ever an example were needed of Britain leading the world, this surely would be it. To allow it to fall into the hands of developers would be simply unconscionable.
Please sign up here: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/BletchleyPark/
Many thanks
Sue
After I sent the email, I read it again and thought about the more than 10,000 people who had worked at Bletchley Park during the war, many of them young women who had left school or university to help with the war effort. I now knew more about the conditions that these women had worked under – eight hour shifts, six or seven days per week, working in temporary huts that were hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. Most of them were doing quite boring, repetitive work, looking after the Bombe machines that were cranking through the various possible settings to decode messages sent by the German High Command to each other through Enigma machines, but it was absolutely crucial.
The petition stated that the Bletchley Park Trust received no external funding and had been deemed ineligible for funding by the National Lottery and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I really couldn’t understand why funding was not being put forward by these organisations or any others. Why was no one taking any notice of Bletchley Park and its plight?
The petition mentioned the possibility of Bletchley Park disappearing, perhaps falling into the hands of developers. I was horrified by this thought. There was no way that would happen if I could possibly do anything to help stop it.
I checked my email a bit later and found to my delight that several recipients of my email had replied to me saying that they agreed and had signed the petition. I was relieved; although I was very passionate about saving Bletchley Park, I didn’t know if my peers would share my enthusiasm. Imagine my astonishment, then, when I checked the Save Bletchley Park petition a few hours later and
saw that many heads and professors of computing had signed the petition, including from Oxford and Cambridge and other major universities, the kind of people that made me feel a little awed. I was, to put it mildly, over the moon. Even though I was desperate to get the word out that Bletchley Park needed help, I was very conscious that I was, in my mind at least, at the bottom of the pecking order: I was a new head of department at a “new” university. I’d felt that there was a serious chance that I would get either no response at all to my email or that someone would kindly take me to one side and admonish me. I was therefore both very excited that so many heads and profs had signed the petition and also relieved that no one had asked me who I thought I was addressing all of these great (mainly) men as equals.
I needn’t have worried. As well as seeing all the influential signatures on the petition, I also had many lovely and supportive emails from colleagues across the country, both well-known and new like me, male and female, young and old. My CPHC peer group agreed with me: we must help save Bletchley Park. I buzzed with new-found confidence. I was not alone in the opinion that Bletchley Park was an important place; others shared my desire to make sure its importance was recognised and that the site was saved for the country.
Jägerbombe
I carried on as usual for a few days, teaching my students and doing research. But I was keeping an eye on the petition as the number of signatories increased; all the time a thought was whirring in my head: what else could I do to help Bletchley Park?
After the Women of Station X launch I had received an invitation to a champagne reception at Bletchley Park in July. Not one to ever turn down champagne, and really keen to visit Bletchley Park again, I gladly accepted the invitation. I was allowed to take a guest along with me to the reception, and my thoughts immediately turned to John Turner, a colleague at the University of Westminster. John and I had had several chats about Bletchley Park at work, and he shared my interest in the place.
On the day of the reception, we travelled up to Bletchley together on the train from London. I was very excited, not least because for the first time I was to get a tour of Bletchley Park led by one of the veterans. We arrived at Bletchley station and walked the short distance to the entrance to Bletchley Park. It was a really nice summer’s day, and as we walked past the gatehouse into the park, the fountain in the middle of the lake was sparkling in the sunshine. There was a large marquee on the lawn beside it, open along one side. The scene was idyllic.
John and I were greeted by Bletchley Park Director Simon Greenish, and after a quick chat we were put into a group and taken on a tour of the site. As I had not been on a proper tour of Bletchley Park before, I was very keen to see what else the site held.
First we went to The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC), which is based at Bletchley Park, and saw many old computers in various states of repair. As computer scientists, it was fabulous for John and me to see so many machines. They spanned the whole era of computing in the UK, from the 1943 Colossus rebuild through to Elliot Brothers machines, PDP11s, BBC Micros, and more. I challenge anyone interested in computing to go to TNMOC to see Colossus running and not get a tear in their eye. It is simply beautiful to look at, and hearing its sound when running is poetry in motion, very relaxing and hypnotic. At the same time, it is a reminder of the invention, ingenuity and innovation that occurred during WWII, at the dawn of the computing age.
After leaving TNMOC, our tour leader walked us over to Hut 6 and stopped us right in front of it, with our backs to the car park (which were tennis courts during WWII and are still referred to as “the tennis courts” by some!). We stood in the sunshine looking at the hut as our guide proceeded to tell us all about the amazing code breaking achievements that had happened just in that one hut.
He said that the work carried out at Bletchley Park had shortened the war by two years, and that at that time 11 million people per year were dying due to the war.
Hut 6 at Bletchley Park 11 million people.
Those words rang loudly in my head. So, the work carried out at Bletchley Park had potentially saved the lives of 22 million people. Unbelievable . . . but true. I stood there, looking at the hut, one corner of which was covered by a blue tarpaulin.
My brain was whirring fast. I thought, This place saved 22 million lives and was the birthplace of the computer. What other place have I ever heard about in my whole lifetime that is as important as Bletchley Park?
I couldn’t think of a single one.
Professor Richard Holmes, a military historian, then gave a talk about Bletchley Park and its significance in World War II. I listened intently as he made a very compelling case for the survival of Bletchley Park. He mentioned that they needed funding and that he thought it was a place worth saving – “sacred ground” is how he described it. I found myself nodding in agreement.
“The work here at Bletchley Park . . . was utterly fundamental to the survival of Britain and to the triumph of the West. I’m not actually sure that I can think of very many other places where I could say something as unequivocal as that. This is sacred ground. If this isn’t worth preserving, what is?”
— the late professor richard holmes,
military historian
Professor Holmes told us what Sir Harry Hinsley, the official historian of British Intelligence in WWII, had said about what the effect of the code breaking work carried out at Bletchley Park, officially named “Ultra”, had been.
“Ultra shortened the war ‘by not less than two years and probably by four years’; moreover, in the absence of Ultra, it is uncertain how the war would have ended.”
— sir harry hinsley, official historian of
british intelligence in world war ii.
Professor Holmes also mentioned the words of US President Eisenhower, who had said that the intelligence received from Bletchley Park had been “priceless” and a “decisive contribution to the Allied war effort”.
“The intelligence... from you [Bletchley Park]... has been of priceless value. It has saved thousands of British and American lives and, in no small way, contributed to the speed with which the enemy was routed and eventually forced to surrender... [It was a] very decisive contribution to the Allied war effort.”
— general dwight d eisenhower
I stood there feeling more and more enthralled by the amazing contribution that the work carried out at Bletchley had made and the incredible achievements that had only happened because of those thousands of people working there. At the same time I found myself getting more and more upset that this fact was either unknown or unrecognised by so many, and that Bletchley Park was having such financial difficulties, and that it might have to close for good. It wasn’t right; it wasn’t right at all.
When Professor Holmes had finished speaking, John and I went over to see the rebuilt Bombe machine and the slate sculpture of Alan Turing by sculptor Stephen Kettle that was housed in B Block. Stephen gave a talk about how he had been inspired to create the one and a half ton, life-size sculpture of Turing from half a million small pieces of 500 million-year-old Welsh slate. He told us the statue had been commissioned by US billionaire Sidney E Frank, who made his money from Grey Goose vodka and Jägermeister – think about that next time you drink a Jägerbomb!
We stood looking at the life-size statue. It was incredible. We were all in awe at such a remarkable feat, half a million pieces of slate lovingly, painstakingly put together to create a fabulous sculpture of the great man. Stephen described how he had wanted to show Turing’s personality through his sculpture and that one way he had done this was by including a slate recreation of Turing’s tin tea mug, which he was said to have chained to a radiator in Hut 8 where he had been based.
I had noticed earlier that many of the people on the tour with John and me did not seem to be particularly interested in the computing aspect of the tour. They weren’t rude, but they were obviously not as engaged by it as Joh
n and I were. Now that we were all looking at a sculpture and speaking to the sculptor, however, they became much more animated and clearly felt much more at home. I thought about that and reasoned that they were probably more used to looking at and talking about art than old computers. Of course, as computer scientists, John and I were interested in everything there, and there was so much for us to look at. It felt like discovering an extraordinary Aladdin’s cave of wonderful artefacts. But to this day, I still love the fact that Bletchley Park brings together the humanities and the sciences. It is the home of great historical and great scientific achievement. Can you think of another place in the world that does that?
At the end of the tour, we met up with Simon Greenish again. I had really enjoyed the evening and felt very passionate about helping Bletchley Park. I asked Simon how much money was needed to save Bletchley Park. He told me that, as a ballpark figure, around £10,000,000 would be necessary to carry out the renovation work, bring the buildings up to a reasonable standard, and keep the site going for a couple of years.
£10,000,000. You don’t need me to tell you that that’s a lot of money.
John and I got the train back to London together. We’d had a wonderful evening and seen many interesting and exciting things, but I couldn’t help feeling restless and unhappy. Professor Richard Holmes’ words were ringing in my ears, and so too was what Simon Greenish had said at the Women of Station X launch:
“Bletchley Park is teetering on a financial knife-edge.”
“Ultra shortened the war ‘by not less than two years and probably by four years’.”