Gimme Shelter

The image of Londoners sleeping in the subways is one of the emblematic images of the Blitz. That, and the ruins of London (although all of England was hit and the city of Coventry wracked worse), and a picture of firemen struggling against a blazing building that is as likely as not from a film made in the 50's and not a "real" footage.

When you dig deeper --as it were -- you run into references of the Deep Underground Shelters, which are largely still there. More footage has been shot in those shelters for a number of movies than was ever taken in period. Because here is where it starts getting interesting.

The possibility of needing shelters had been discussed between the wars. The government expressed doubts, though. More publicly stated was that they didn't want the people to develop a shelter mentality, to hide instead of doing the necessary work to support their society. Less publicly said but very much there was the fear that people left to congregate underground might start to talk to each other. Might get certain ideas. Might organize.

It is hard to understand at this time that the great fear was not Germany, but Communism. And even the Aux Units were less concerned with Paratroopers than they were with Fifth Columnists.

And they were right to fear this.

This is why Anderson shelters, and public shelters such as the one at Kennington Park. Shallow, poorly protected, and little protection for the poor for that matter; corrugated iron was hard to come by and many of the poor lacked gardens to dig into. When the bombs began dropping, the doors were locked at the tube stations. There was barbed wire around Oval (in the Kennington area). The public shelter was flooded and stinky and too small and the last was perhaps to the good because it collapsed when a fifty-pound bomb hit it, killing almost everyone inside.

This started a growing movement -- and, yes, local Communists take credit for some of it -- to squat in protected basements of the big store. To charge into the really, really nice shelter under the Savoy. And to force their way into the tubes.

And the government may have expressed their desire not to see a troglodyte life (their words) spring up, but they hadn't counted on just how widespread the destruction was of homes. And how little the poor, already stressed enough, could afford to rebuild. Of course the poor had taken the brunt already. The rich were often in the country. The poor were right where there was industry. So they went to the tube and they camped there not just for shelter from the bombs but because they had nowhere else to go.

It wasn't until almost a year after the Blitz that any of the deep shelters were completed. Some, like Kennington, never were. Basically, they never got used.