by Sue Black
We were shown around the CHM by the museum director John Hollar. We got to see a working model of Babbage’s Difference Engine, which was just stunning. I wish the Science Museum in London would demonstrate theirs running from time to time, it’s breathtakingly wonderful. So wonderful that I actually cried (very inconspicuously of course).
There was also an exhibit about Colossus which featured a video including Bletchley Park and The National Museum of Computing hero Tony Sale. It was great to see him represented there, thousands of miles from Bletchley Park, in another geek mecca.
After our tour, a few of us sat down together to have a chat about Bletchley Park and the CHM and whether there was any scope for working together. Megan was keen to start up a mutually beneficial relationship and this was the first step towards making that happen.
After a while, we all said our goodbyes and I went back to Google MTV with Simon Meacham. Simon asked if I wanted to have a go on one of the Google bikes that were sitting around the site. I said, “Yes please!”
Me on a Google bike at Google MTV Riding around Google MTV campus on a bike in the sun, representing Bletchley Park’s interests in Silicon Valley, I thought to myself, it doesn’t get much better than this. I was supremely happy. When I had been in Denver in 2010 presenting our paper “Can Twitter save Bletchley Park?,” I really had the sense that people in the US understood and appreciated how important Bletchley Park is. I had written a proposal to the BPT board when I got back from Denver, asking them to let me go to the US to spread the word and fundraise for the Trust. At the time they had not thought it was a good idea, so I was glad that, two years later, I was able to help take the idea forward.
Before long it was time for the event at the CHM. As I got out of the car, I spotted DJ Patil and Julie Hanna, who I had spent the day with as part of the #SVC2UK trip to Bletchley some months previously. I chatted to Julie and DJ for a while. They introduced me to some other really cool tech entrepreneurs and told them about their trip to Bletchley Park and how much they had enjoyed it. More and more people arrived and then after a while Megan introduced herself and gave a talk about Bletchley Park, about how she had met me at NESTA and how I’d asked for help to secure the Turing papers for Bletchley Park.
At dinner, Megan introduced Sir John Scarlett. John gave a great talk about the history of espionage and the contribution made by Bletchley Park during WWII. We hung on his every word – he is a great speaker. He mentioned me near the end of his talk, saying that Bletchley Park would not be doing as well as it was now if it weren’t for people like me, which was very kind. It was a great evening and a great first step in building a relationship and understanding between Bletchley Park and the Bay Area tech community.
I gave my talk “Did Twitter save Bletchley Park?” at the Google MTV campus a couple of days later. One of the members of the audience turned out to be Nigel Sale, Tony and Margaret Sale’s son, who (amazingly) worked for Google MTV. It’s such a small world!
Sir John Scarlett at the CHM
Nominet internet awards
One of the fabulous people that I’ve met through Twitter is Maggie Philbin, who is now a friend. You may know Maggie from her appearances in the UK on shows like Swap Shop and Tomorrow’s World. She is an institution. I first met Maggie at the Tuttle club in London; we had been chatting via Twitter for some time as Maggie was interested in Bletchley Park and had asked what she could do to help the campaign. We got to know each other over the next couple of years, and in 2012 she very kindly nominated my blog “Saving Bletchley Park” for the Nominet Internet Awards in the charity/non-profit category.
I invited several people who had been instrumental in making the blog successful to join me at the awards dinner. My partner Paul has supported me all the way through the Save Bletchley Park campaign, and he is also a computer scientist himself so completely gets why I think it is so important. I also invited Chris Maigler from Brave Media, a friend who encouraged me to set up the blog and kindly hosted it for free, and Iain Standen, the current CEO of Bletchley Park. I also invited Christian Payne and Mike Sizemore, who couldn’t make it, and Jamillah Knowles, who did come but was unfortunately called away early on an emergency.
The awards dinner was held at the Saatchi Gallery on the King’s Road. I got there early and stood outside in the sunshine for a while, enjoying watching all the people walking around.
The atmosphere inside was electric. Our table got very excited when Bletchley Park was mentioned in the opening speech by Baroness Rennie Fritchie. By the time it got to our category I was so nervous. I was absolutely delighted when I was awarded the runner-up prize in the best charitable or not-for-profit work online category. It was a lovely evening and great to have friends who had helped me to make my blog successful there with me to celebrate my award.
In October 2012 I sent 2578 tweets
As seen on TV
When I first started campaigning to save Bletchley Park I dreamt of the day when I would be able to see programmes on television and go and see plays about Bletchley Park and the people who worked there. That dream has now come true several times over. It’s been so wonderful to see The Bletchley Circle, Universal Machine, Codebreaker and other productions on television and in theatres in London’s West End. As I write this I’m also looking forward to seeing The Imitation Game, a film about Alan Turing starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
One of the things I had tried to do during my time campaigning for Bletchley Park was to find and talk to people about creating a TV programme or film about the women who worked there. It is such an interesting story: all of those young women, working somewhere that probably seemed very alien. It was particularly wonderful to hear in 2012, therefore, that a programme called The Bletchley Circle was being made about the women that worked at Bletchley and would be aired later in the year.
Record book book
Many people that I have spoken to over the years have said that I should write a book about the Save Bletchley Park campaign and my experiences. I spoke to several friends about this, some of whom had written books themselves, asking for advice on publishers and on writing. I wondered whether I was actually capable of writing a book. I chatted to a couple of people who worked for publishing houses and, although they were interested in talking to me about it, I was disheartened because it seemed as though it would be a very restrictive process. I wanted to write a book that brought the story alive, through photos, tweets, little digital snippets of the campaign’s history – a book that looked more like a blog, maybe, and one that really captured the excitement of social media, particularly Twitter.
At some point I came across the Unbound website. Unbound described themselves as a new kind of publisher, who funded their books through crowdfunding. I found that very exciting, and very much in line with the way Bletchley Park had been saved: through the efforts of a community of like-minded people, many of whom used social media to spread the message.
I got in contact with Unbound, and they were interested in taking the project on. I was thrilled. We assembled all the materials we’d need to put together for the pitch page on the Unbound website, including a short video which was shot at Bletchley Park.
When everything was ready on 25th October 2012 the page went LIVE. I tweeted, emailed, Facebooked and everything else that I could think of, asking people to buy my book.
So many wonderful people not only signed up for my book but also encouraged their networks to buy it too. It was an absolutely remarkable experience. I was completely overwhelmed by the support and excitement that people so obviously felt about me writing the book. To be honest it gave me a lot of much-needed confidence that I actually could write a book and that it was a story worth telling. Thank you so much to everyone who encouraged me and pledged. At the time of writing, we went into the Unbound record books, with Saving Bletchley Park becoming the fastest crowdfunded book in history. It took less than five days to rais
e the money needed to make this book, and all because of a strong and committed community of supporters.
Sue Black
@Dr_Black
Thanks to all these lovely people my book is now at 124% funded :))) Thank you *so* much everyone :)) unbound.co.uk/books/saving-bletchley-park
8:42 AM – 31 Oct 2012
One thing I’ve learned from this whole experience: it’s true that you “get out what you put in” in life. I put so much of my time and energy over the several years I spent campaigning for Bletchley Park into a cause that I completely believed in, and I got back just as much if not more. The campaign and the people involved, especially those I met through Twitter, have been truly wonderful. I’ve made so many friends, built up my confidence in myself, grown as a person, and I guess, in a way, found myself. Social media has allowed me to be myself, the me that was always there inside but a bit scared to come out. I grew up a shy person, scared to voice my opinions in case I offended someone. Over the years, I’ve forced myself to speak out when something needs changing.
Social media has shown me that there are many people out there that feel the same way that I do and that it’s fine to say what I think in public. It’s a simple lesson, but having grown up a girl in the 1960s and ‘70s, it’s diametrically opposed to what I grew up being told. “Don’t speak until you are spoken to” was a frequently used phrase in my upbringing, something I have in common with a whole generation of girls. I’m so glad that women are finally finding their voice. It may cause some change that will be difficult for society as a whole to deal with, but in the long run it will benefit us all.
The Duchess of Cornwall visits
The 20th February 2013 was a red letter day for me and for Bletchley Park which, in a way, brought everything full circle.
In my capacity as trustee at Bletchley Park I had been invited to host a table of female veterans at afternoon tea. There was to be a special guest on the day, the Duchess of Cornwall. The Duchess had specifically requested that she meet female veterans at Bletchley and about 60 Bletchley Park veterans from the local area had been invited to talk to her. My role as trustee was to host a table of six ladies, and we would have six minutes in the Duchess’ company. I was sent the names of the veterans on my table and some details of their time at Bletchley and their experience. They were an interesting bunch, one of whom I already knew: Jean Valentine, well-known Bletchley Park guide and all round amazing woman. Jean has such energy and enthusiasm, she’s an absolute force to be reckoned with.
BritishMonarchy
@BritishMonarchy
On 20 Feb: The Duchess of Cornwall – will visit Bletchley Park, the home of the Second World War code breakers . . .
12:15 PM – 19 Feb 2013
I had an opportunity to have a quick chat with all the ladies at our table before the Duchess arrived. I always feel humbled meeting Bletchley Park veterans.
When the Duchess arrived at our table, I introduced each lady in turn by name. The Duchess was very obviously interested in what the women had to say about their experience during the war and in particular at Bletchley or one of the outstations. She told one lady that she had visited a few years ago, but couldn’t remember the date. I said that I knew the date of the visit: it had been on 23rd July 2008. I knew this because I had been on the BBC News and the Today programme that same day, talking about the letter that I had written to The Times along with 97 UK computer scientists, asking the government to save Bletchley Park.
I told the Duchess that if it hadn’t been for her and Prince Charles, the whole campaign to save Bletchley Park might never have happened. If the royal couple had not been going to visit the Park on that day, would Rory Cellan-Jones have phoned the editor of The Times asking him to print our letter in his newspaper? Possibly not. The Duchess remembered their visit, and she also remembered hearing something on the radio that morning about Bletchley Park. I chuckled at the thought that she and Prince Charles might have heard me speaking on the radio rather than the more likely scenario of me hearing one of them speaking!
The Duchess spoke very kindly to the ladies, taking each one in turn and asking about their experience. My mind drifted back ten years to 2003, when I had first visited Bletchley to attend the BCS Specialist Groups Assembly . . . I had walked around the site afterwards, bumped into John Harper and his team rebuilding the Bombe machine and had been intrigued by what they were doing. After I had asked all about the Bombe, John had asked me why I was there. When I told him that I was there representing BCSWomen, he asked if I knew that more than half of the people that had worked at Bletchley Park had been women.
The Duchess of Cornwall talks to Bletchley Park veteran Jean Valentine “No, I had no idea. How many people worked here during the war?”
“About ten thousand.”
“Ten thousand! That’s incredible, how come I don’t know about that?”
It had been the beginning of a ten-year journey for me. Ten years of trying to fulfill a passionate desire to make sure that not only were the women of Bletchley Park known, but that Bletchley Park itself was recognised as the national treasure that it is. I can’t put into words, although I have tried very hard in this book, how important Bletchley Park is to me. I have visited many, many times now, and every time I walk up the road towards the Mansion House, with the lake on my left and the code breaking blocks on my right, I get a tear in my eye. I take a deep breath and think:
“This place and the people stationed here helped to shorten the war by two years, potentially saving 22 million lives. It was also the birthplace of the computer. What other place in the world could be more important?”
In February 2013 I sent 749 tweets
24
The end of an era
“It looks as if Bletchley Park is the single greatest achievement of Britain during 1939-45, perhaps during the [20th] century as a whole.”
—George Steiner
“Without Bletchley Park, we would have lost World War II.”
—Lord Charles Brocket
In the autumn and winter of 1945, Station X was slowly and carefully dismantled. “It was so strange,” says one veteran. “It was already nearly empty – a ghost town with just a few removal men shifting furniture. Thousands of people just walked out of the gate never to return.” Another veteran recalls the moment when the point of no return was reached: “I remember having to dismantle the Bombes, bit by bit, wire by wire, screw by screw. We sat at tables with screwdrivers taking out all the wire contact brushes. It had been a sin to drop a drum but now we were allowed to roll one down the floor of the hut.”[56] All of the other machines were similarly dismantled; the Heath Robinson and Colossus machines were broken up and reduced to boxes of parts.
Winding Station X down wasn’t simply a matter of shifting some furniture about and dismantling equipment; due to the ultra top secret nature of the work conducted there, every last scrap of evidence had to be located and destroyed. Absolutely nothing could be left behind. This meant fingertip searches of every hut and building; a surprising number of messages were found that had been crumpled up and stuffed into wall cracks and draughty window frames during the bitter cold of winter. All were removed and, along with every other piece of paperwork, burned in large bonfires. No evidence that Bletchley Park had ever existed would be left behind except for the huts which could possibly be repurposed. What few remaining Bombes and Colossi remained were kept at Stanmore and Eastcote before moving to permanent homes at GCHQ in Cheltenham.
Many of the codebreakers resumed their previous occupations as university dons and engineers. Things were different for the military personnel, especially the thousands of Wrens and WAAFs who had been the backbone of BP. They found themselves posted to new jobs that were often more menial than the work they had been doing. And, frustratingly, due to the intense secrecy, they couldn’t produce any evidence of what they had proved themselves capable of. For the women returnin
g to “Civvy Street” things weren’t much better. The best that most of them got was a letter of reference that said:
“Miss XXX performed her duties in a very satisfactory manner. She was employed on important and highly specialised work of a secret nature. The Official Secrets Acts preclude giving any information in connection with those duties.”
The secrecy surrounding Bletchley Park also meant that they would receive no official recognition for their work; there would be no campaign medals, no reunions, no war memoirs. For some staff, this did lead to resentment and a feeling that they had been forgotten and their efforts unrecognised. For others, the opportunities for women that BP had provided were an inspiration. “You suddenly realised that life was full of possibilities, that a new world was opening for us all,” says telegraphist Barbara Mulligan. “Instead of being at home and helping look after the babies and put the flowers in the vases, I could do something else, so I did . . . never regretted it.” She went on to become a police inspector at a time when very few women reached officer rank. Other BP veterans who went on to have notable careers include Sally Norton, a Naval Section operative who became Lady Astor; Alvar Lidell, the famous BBC newsreader; writer and former Wren Rosamunde Pilcher; Jeanie Campbell-Harris, who became Baroness Trumpington; and future MP Roy Jenkins, who worked in the Testery and Newmanry. One veteran also mentions “Audrey Element – the first Western woman ever to enter Tibet on a yak.”