Some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in our country were among those who put in the work and made up the songs that got those who survived it through the Blitz.
Most of them are gone now, so we can’t ask them if they actually enjoyed it. Mum used to talk about a guilty awareness that she did. Sister Daphne was driving a fire engine, her dad was up on the rooftops, fire-watching, and Mum remembers exciting moonlit dashes across bomb-sites, and the magical glitter of coloured glass flying when the front door blew in.
But did she actually enjoy it at the time? When she was writing pleas to her mum, to get her brought home because her evacuee-house father was an abuser? When there was no hospital place for an acutely sick friend? When she realised her boyfriend was not ever going to come back from the front?
As we all share articles and quotes from Yellowhammer (yes, I’m doing it) we should remember that most people in this country are already at war – at war with poverty, with social care and health issues, with appallingly bad jobs and housing. We need to bear in mind that what Mum’s generation remembered as really horrible was the ‘phoney war’ – the constant low-level stress of waiting for the hammer to fall.
I get that. I’ve been living and working with one eye on encroaching disaster for years, now, how about you?
“If you’re going to give me a hard time, just bloody get on with it.”
Sharing genuine worries isn’t scaremongering – but it may not be the clear-cut anti-Johnson strategy you think it is.
The really scary (exciting?) bit of yellowhammer:
And a thoughtful response –
Kay Green 