Saving Bletchley Park

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Saving Bletchley Park Page 7

by Sue Black


  Dr Black said she had been “overwhelmed” by the response which showed the depth of feeling about Bletchley and the position it occupies in the history of the computer age.

  It must have gone up online at around midnight as I already had lots of emails from people around the world who had read it and wanted to show their support – including a lovely message from Professor Wendy Hall at the University of Southampton (sent at 2.08am!).

  From: Prof Wendy Hall

  Sent: 24 July 2008 02:08

  To: Dr Sue Black

  Subject: RE: Bletchley Park update

  Best of luck tomorrow – I hope it’s a slow news day and you get all the slots.

  Wendy

  That morning, I had several phone calls from BBC Radio Five Live, who kept changing the time that I was going to be interviewed. Now that I’m a bit more used to dealing with the media, I know that this is reasonably common for a live news show as so much can change within the space of a few hours. I finally did my live interview sometime before 9 am; it finished just in time for me to listen to Rory’s piece on the Today programme.

  The announcer introduced the piece and then Rory’s voice came on the radio. Rory described Bletchley Park, where it is, what happened there and its historic importance. He went on, saying that it is in a poor state of repair, and then he introduced me. It was very odd to hear myself on the radio! Then Simon Greenish was saying that it was a struggle keeping the site open and that they needed £200,000-£300,000 per year just to stay open. Rory then spoke to some of the visitors to the Park who said that it was a shame it was underfunded and that it looked shabby. The report then cut back to me saying, “Everybody in computing that knows about Bletchley Park wants it to be looked after properly . . . for us to understand what went on here and for our children . . . the state it is in now it’s not going to be here when I retire.”

  Rory summed up:

  “So secret was the work done at Bletchley Park that it was only decades later that its story began to be told. Now its supporters believe that it may not be here for future generations, many may not get the chance to hear about the place that helped shape their country’s future.”

  It was a great report, and I was delighted. In just a few short days I had gone from gingerly sending an email to my peers asking for support, to being on the BBC Today programme. Rob Watson from the press office at work had told me that Today was the top media spot in terms of having influence in the UK with the people that mattered, so this was a very big deal.

  I checked my email quickly. I had lots of messages from CPHC members congratulating me on raising awareness, messages from friends and family saying that they had heard me on the radio and Rob from Westminster saying that I was now a media star having also got onto page 9 of The Times. I checked the petition quickly and saw that there had been quite a few more signatures there too. Excellent.

  Now that the Five Live and Today interviews were over, I started to worry about the BBC News 24 live interview I was going to be doing at around 11.30 am. Actually, to say that I was nervous was a complete understatement. I was beside myself with nerves.

  Nevertheless, I got myself ready, put my best suit and make-up on and started my journey uptown to Millbank and the BBC studios. My phone had been buzzing all morning with calls from friends and radio stations. I agreed to do another interview for the BBC World Service in a radio studio at Millbank before the BBC TV News interview. Andy Clark from TNMOC had also been in touch, inviting me to meet him for lunch in the restaurant at Millbank after my news interview. I was looking forward to that, but not to the interview itself.

  When I got up to Millbank I found the BBC studios and the contact that I had there. After waiting a few minutes, I was ushered into a small studio and told what to expect for the World Service radio interview. I was asked to sit down and put on headphones and told that someone would talk to me soon through them. I didn’t have to wait long before a BBC interviewer spoke to me through the headphones, and we had a nice chat about Bletchley Park and the letter to The Times. I wasn’t too stressed during the interview, thankfully. It helped that it was being recorded for future broadcast and could therefore be edited if I said something incorrect or ended up at a loss for words, something which does frighten me.

  After the interview I was taken into the TV studios. I sat in a chair with a couple of other people who were due to be interviewed on the same show. When I looked at the person sitting opposite me, I realised that he was Feargal Sharkey, lead singer of the Undertones. How cool: the Undertones song “Teenage Kicks” is one of my favourite songs. It comforted me a bit to note that even Feargal Sharkey looked just as scared as I felt about going on live TV. It wasn’t just me, then. Phew!

  Feargal was called in first, and I was told that I was straight after him, so I would be called in in about five minutes. My heart started pounding loudly in my ears and my palms got very sweaty. I actually started hoping that my body would give in and that I would have a heart attack and die. At that moment, the fear of being in a live TV interview was worse than my fear of death.

  It was now my turn. I followed the BBC person over to a small booth which contained a camera, a chair and a TV monitor in it. I sat in the chair and thought, O.K., what was the advice that Rob and my media training had given me for live TV? All I could remember was that live TV was good because you could say what you wanted despite the questions you were being asked. So I didn’t need to worry too much about answering the interviewers’ questions per se, I just needed to say stuff that made some sort of sense and was vaguely on topic. I tried to calm myself down by doing some deep breathing as I thought about the main points that I wanted to get across.

  It was still clear in my mind that one thing I really wanted to happen was an oral history project which collected interviews from all of the Bletchley Park veterans still alive. I wanted to capture as much information about what happened there as possible. As practically everything at Bletchley apart from the buildings was destroyed after the war, most of the knowledge about what went on there was in veterans’ heads.

  The BBC person appeared and said we were about to go live. The TV screen showed what was currently happening on the news programme and then they started talking about Bletchley Park and the letter that had appeared in The Times.

  My pulse rocketed up to about two hundred beats per minute, but I also suddenly felt quite calm. Then I heard my name and a question addressed to me, and I started talking. The interview lasted about three minutes; I mentioned the veterans and oral history and talked about the letter and the overall importance of Bletchley Park. And then, as quickly as it had started, the interview finished. I hoped I had said the right things.

  Still buzzing with adrenaline, I went to meet Andy Clark for lunch. Andy told me all about The National Museum Of Computing at Bletchley Park. He said they had a rebuild of Colossus, the world’s first programmable digital computer, that had been built by a team of dedicated enthusiasts over many years. They also had several galleries full of computers of varying ages and were looking to build TNMOC into a world-class museum. In turn, I told him how I had got involved with Bletchley and how excited I was about all the media attention we had got from the letter in The Times. It was obvious that we both loved computing and Bletchley and wanted to raise awareness of Bletchley Park in the hope that it would increase in importance in the public psyche and hopefully bring in some funding.

  After lunch, I had another interview with BBC Radio Wales. This time I was told that there would also be a Bletchley Park veteran in the interview. After the recording began, the interviewer introduced us, talked about Bletchley Park and the letter in The Times and spoke to the veteran, who was in Wales, about what she did at Bletchley Park. Again, I was totally in awe. The veterans are such remarkable people and every single one I’ve met has been very modest about his or her contribution. When it was my turn, I talked about the fundament
al importance of Bletchley Park from both a wartime and a computer science perspective.

  After the interview finished, I walked out of Millbank into the sunshine. I had been indoors all day and, despite feeling elated at the amount of coverage we had had with the story, I was feeling pretty knackered. I walked to Waterloo over Westminster Bridge, then got the train home. I was so looking forward to laying down on the sofa with my feet up and a nice cup of tea!

  Prince Charles backs “crumbling” Bletchley Park

  24 July 2008

  MKweb

  The fight to save Bletchley Park received a huge boost today when Prince Charles declared his support. [ . . . ]

  Addressing Trust members, local dignitaries and park volunteers, Prince Charles said: “I woke up this morning, turned the wireless on and heard something about Bletchley Park.

  I was so pleased to hear that attention is being paid to this amazing place.

  You are the keepers of one of the greatest British success stories.”

  When I got home I made myself a cup of tea, sat on the sofa and attempted to catch up with everything that had been happening. I had loads of emails and texts from friends, family and others saying they had heard me on the radio or seen me on TV. I switched on the TV and put on BBC News 24. After a few minutes, they started talking about Bletchley Park and the letter in The Times. The narrator was Jon Brain; he started the piece:

  “It survived German bombers, it’s struggling to survive the ravages of time. It was here that the Nazis’ Enigma code, once considered unbreakable, was cracked. The only cracks now are in the buildings themselves.”

  And then I saw and heard myself standing in front of Hut 6 speaking about the state that Bletchley Park was in: “I feel embarrassed that it is in this state. I feel ashamed to be British in a way, because, why have we not looked after our heritage? This site here was fundamental in our winning of the war, and look at it now.”

  Ok, maybe not the most eloquent speech, but at least it was reasonably clear and to the point!

  Jon Brain went on to describe the park, saying, “Bletchley Park’s very existence was kept hidden for years. Although it’s now open to the public, it depends on charitable donations to keep it going, and it shows.”

  Some visitors then described what they saw – “bit dilapidated, buildings falling down”; “some of the huts in particular are dilapidated to the point of collapse almost, there’s obviously a great deal of work that could be done, were they to have the resources” – before Jon continued his narration: “In addition to its wartime role the Park was also where Colossus, the world’s first programmable computer was developed. Campaigners claim that it needs funding like any other major museum.”

  Simon Greenish, the Director of Bletchley Park, then came on, saying:

  “We believe that £5 million is needed to put the infrastructure back into good order, and then we want to develop the museum as well, which could be anything from £5 million upwards. We’ve done the plans and we have got some fabulous ideas; I think this site could be a very important museum in the future.”

  Jon finished the piece: “The fear is that without an injection of cash, the site where they helped win the war will be lost.”

  I was so delighted that we had got Bletchley Park on the news. Hopefully offers of support would now come rolling in. I felt sure that once people saw the state it was in and found out that they needed funding, help would materialise.

  People certainly seemed affected by what they were hearing, and we had got a lot of coverage. I had so many emails from people who had seen me on TV or heard me on the radio, saying that they supported what I was doing; one of them was from Mark Ward at the BBC saying that the piece had been running all day on BBC News 24 and was on the front page of the BBC website. Mark said that he thought the story had done really well and that he was going to follow it up with a call to the Heritage Lottery Fund people. He wanted to see if they would have anything substantive to say. I replied asking him to let me know what they said; I still thought that they were one of our biggest opportunities for funding.

  Reading through my emails, I noticed one from a CPHC Professor who told me that she had recommended to one of the Bletchley Park Trust board members that they invite me to join the board. She also mentioned that she had heard that the Heritage Lottery Fund were “taking an interest at last”, so hopefully the interest from the petition, The Times and BBC News would help to move things along. Christine Burns, a BCSWomen member, had kindly sent the links for the BBC coverage of the day around the BCSWomen online network, and great feedback was coming in about what members had seen in the media. Ann Appleton sent a link to a piece in The Register, “Scientists decry Bletchley Park’s decline. Demand government action to save Station X.”

  Scientists decry Bletchley Park’s decline, demand government

  action to save Station X

  Lester Haines

  The Register

  24 July 2008

  A group of the UK’s leading computer scientists have demanded government action to save Bletchley Park from further decay, saying that ‘the ravages of age and a lack of investment’ threaten the future of Station X.

  Some of the wooden codebreaking huts are in “a desperate state of decay” and, as we recently reported, the Bletchley Park Trust needs a cool £1m just to fix the central Victorian mansion’s roof.

  I also had emails from several people connecting me to others who they thought might be able to help with the campaign. One of these was Professor Derek Sleeman from the University of Aberdeen. He introduced me by email to Susan and Jonathan Michie whose father Donald Michie had actually been a codebreaker at Bletchley Park during the war. I got in touch with them and arranged to meet up with Jonathan later that week for a chat.

  I read Donald Michie’s obituary in The Telegraph. He had been a friend of Alan Turing during the war and had worked out the solution to Tunny, the German Lorenz cipher machine, before going on to a distinguished academic computer science career.

  Professor Donald Michie

  The Telegraph

  9 July 2007

  Professor Donald Michie, who died in a motor accident on Saturday aged 83, was a pioneer in the creation of artificial intelligence; during the war he worked on breaking German codes at Bletchley Park and later, as Professor of Machine Intelligence at Edinburgh University, helped to bring about the world of robots, computer games and search engines.

  Known to his colleagues as ‘Duckmouse’, Donald Michie was one of the great multi-disciplinarians of his generation. A classical scholar at the start, he worked with mathematicians – and especially Alan Turing – at Bletchley, then went into genetics until computers caught up with his ambitions to ‘build a brain’ before putting together his team at Edinburgh.

  The story had also reached the international press and media. Vladimiro Sassone from the University of Southampton sent me a link to an article in Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, which had covered the story; I even heard from friends in the US and Canada who had been surprised to see me pop up on their TVs on BBC America. Incredible; so wonderful that the story had reached so far. I’d had no idea what would happen when I’d had that first chat with Rory; this was way beyond what I had hoped for.

  A pezzi l’edificio dove gliinglesi decifrarono il Codice Enigma”

  La Repubblica

  24 luglio 2008

  LONDRA – La chiamavano la ‘Stazione X’, perché fu il decimo centro segreto di questo tipo ad essere costruito in Gran Bretagna. Tra la mura di Bletchley Park gli inglesi decifrarono il Codice Enigma, creato dai tedeschi per comunicare tra loro.

  Bletchley Park in the news

  Several journalists contacted me over the next few days to talk about the petition, the letter to The Times, the state of Bletchley Park and to ask what was needed to save it. I was starting to get to know mor
e about Bletchley Park, its history and its current position. There were many questions that I couldn’t answer, but thankfully Simon Greenish was happy to help. I also had Andy Clark and Stephen Fleming from TNMOC to talk to; they had been really helpful in sending me information about Colossus, TNMOC and its many delights.

  I received many emails and phone calls around this time from various people who wanted to help or who wanted to put me in touch with people who they thought might be able to help, particularly with funding. I remember one particular conversation with a key figure – I’ll call him Sir X. I had been told that Sir X cared about Bletchley Park, was influential in government, and would be able to advise me “off the record” about possibilities for serious funding. We had a really good chat about potential scenarios and what might and might not be possible.

  As I got to know more and more about Bletchley Park and its financial situation, I started thinking that surely the best idea for its future would be for it to somehow become a joint venture, with shared ownership between the Imperial War Museum and the Science Museum. In my mind Bletchley Park was unique; it was the only place that I knew that was so fundamentally important in both a historical and scientific way. Its contribution towards the shortening and the winning of World War II made it a site of great historical significance, while the industrial code breaking effort that led to the world’s first programmable digital computer, Colossus, had solidified its scientific significance. Surely, I thought, these remarkable achievements and the site and artefacts at Bletchley would be valuable assets to the Science and Imperial War museums.

  I put forward this case to Sir X and he agreed that, in principle, it sounded like a reasonable idea. He then went on to explain why it would not happen: partly because of institutional and governmental politics and partly because the financial instability of the Park meant that neither museum would consider it worth investing in. Still, we had a really interesting discussion. I greatly valued his interest and his candour in speaking to me, as I was an unknown quantity to him.

 

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