LAURENCE REES: In your book you say that one person in six in London was without a home. That’s a huge social problem.

JULIET GARDINER: Absolutely.

LAURENCE REES: So how did that social issue manifest itself as a problem?

JULIET GARDINER: Well, again, it manifested itself as a huge problem. At the beginning of the Blitz there were many places like Stepney which coped very, very badly with the Blitz, things like rest centres, the policy wasn’t really in place. What had been expected in the war was that there would be a huge number of deaths and casualties and nobody had really anticipated the damage to property. Fortunately, though, it was the reverse. There were over 60,000 civilians killed during the Second World War, that’s no small number, but nobody foresaw the number of houses and shops and living accommodation. It made a tremendous difficulty and there was some requisitioning of houses, which again was an interesting policy.

You were requisitioning houses that were owned by people who had gone to the country, things like that, so that was a great sort of social mix if you like and people were having to double up, move in with their families, and this was also seen in the early days with rest centres which were supposed to be a cup of tea and  blanket and in and out within an hour. People were there for days because there was nowhere else to go. And then of course there was a tremendous amount of patching up; local authorities would do what they could to patch up houses so that people could move back if at all possible. That was pretty grim; that would often mean you had no glass in your window, you had tarpaulin instead of a roof and this sort of thing; they were living in very poor conditions.

LAURENCE REES: And of course there is this kind of mythic image we have of the Blitz as everybody pulling together cheerfully with a cup of tea. But there were a number of strikes during the war, and there was quite a degree of social unrest in certain places wasn’t there?

JULIET GARDINER: There certainly was. Many people thought that they weren’t being looked after, I mean, people thought that the provision had not been made for them. The bureaucracy was absolutely unbelievable, if you were bombed out it would take you a week to get all the right forms and go to the right offices just to get some milk and get clothes for your kids and this sort of thing. So I think there was certainly lot of muttering. And I think in many ways that was one of the long term consequences of the war; the feeling that authorities could not be trusted, that they might let you down. I mean, they weren’t necessarily duplicitous but they weren’t up to the job and they might let you down.

LAURENCE REES: And there were also industrial strikes during the war?

JULIET GARDINER: It was actually illegal to strike but it didn’t matter, people did strike, and again that was partly to do with the fact that industrial relations during the 30s had been absolutely appalling. I mean, you’ve had a general strike in 1926, and nothing had been solved, in many industries like shipbuilding and places like that, there were very bad industrial relations with people being asked to work exceptionally long hours. In munitions factories during the period of Dunkirk, where work was essential when most of the British equipment had been left on the beaches of France, and obviously the army had to be re-equipped very, very quickly and in aircraft component factories and this sort of thing, an enormous amount was being asked of people and the social welfare benefits weren’t necessarily in place. They didn’t have good canteens and good hot meals.

Things got better, they certainly got better, but in the early days of the war that was absolutely true. Occasionally there were incidents of panic, I mean, obviously there were incidents of panic but they were hushed up, nobody ever heard of them. There were rumours that local authorities would only excavate for 24 hours for bodies and [then] they’d just concrete over bomb sites, all this sort of thing, and there was looting. Everybody didn’t join hands and sing ‘There’ll Always Be An England.’ I remember talking to a vicar in Walworth and the minute there was a bomb in his parish they’d send a sort of squad of church wardens as it were to secure the house because they knew perfectly well it would be looted. Sometimes these lootings were done by actual gangs, you know, driving around waiting, as it were ambulance chasers, finding out where the bombs were falling. Sometimes it would just be opportunistic, you know, kids seeing a house gaping open or a shop gaping open and there was the black market of course; human nature didn’t change. There were raids on coupon and ration book manufacturers and things; human nature didn’t change overnight.

LAURENCE REES: Yet despite all of those incidents, the sense in which there was a 'Blitz spirit' was that Britain didn't crack under the pressure. For example, there was certainly no systematic movement - as a result of the bombing - to try and seek peace with the Germans.

JULIET GARDINER: No. Absolutely not. I mean, that’s in a sense a surprising thing. There was some continuation occasionally of pacifist activity, and of course there were conscientious objectors, but that’s a different matter. No, there wasn’t, and there was never anything on a large scale, never, as it were, a civilian mutiny, never any sort of sit down strike or anything like that. There were strikes, there were grumblings and there were complaints, all this sort of thing, but no. I think that’s one of the things that we have to be very careful not to tip too far the other way, we have to be careful not to say, you know, it was all dustmen linking arms with the debutantes and all this sort of stuff. On the other hand I think we mustn’t go too far the other way. I think we’ve got to recognise that actually there was an enormous amount of unity and acceptance and quite honestly a willingness to work very, very hard and during very difficult conditions in the war.

LAURENCE REES: So did the Blitz actually help to stiffen resolve?

JULIET GARDINER: I think you can argue it either way. It certainly stiffened resolve, though it’s a counter-factual of history, what would have happened if it had gone on for another two years? I mean, this is certainly the case in somewhere like Coventry. Coventry ‘only’ had two nights, everybody said had it had a third, God knows what would have happened to the morale in Coventry, and the same in Plymouth. London, of course, had it night after night. London had it far worse with one exception in November and it was really night after night right up until the end of the year. But on the other hand, of course, London’s a big place so you’d have some nights when you knew there was a raid on but you wouldn’t directly have it.

I think it’s a very hard one to know. I mean, I think it did bring a bit of unity to people, but on the other hand it was an enormous strain. I mean, it isn’t only the danger, it’s the fact that you’re not going to sleep and you’re having to go to work the next day, and you don’t just get on the tube and then you’re there, there’s been a bomb on the line, and then you’ve got to queue up to get some food and then actually they’d run out of everything or you’d get your rations but they’ve run out of everything else and then there’s a power cut, so it was just exhausting.

I think where this really kicks in actually is in 1944. I think it was just after D Day, and D Day of course was a great thing; at last people had begun to realise that the war would never be won just by bombing, it would have to be a victory on land. In other words, the troops, the forces, the allied forces would have to go back and would have to fight in Europe. And so after D Day which was the 6th of June 1944 everybody thought fantastic, war will soon be over. Well, as we know it was nearly another year, and within days of D Day the first of the V1s came. They were particularly frightening weapons anyway because they seemed inhuman as they were not piloted, and then there were the V2s. I think that was the real low point of the war, that they’d been through the Blitz, they’d come through that and at last the privations, the shabbiness and the shortages were really getting people down and then there was this terrible secret weapon and a promise that there was another secret weapon coming, and I think that was the real low point. And that was when you got another mass evacuation, and I think the authorities were very worried that morale would crack then. And, again, it didn’t, it did in small places, but it didn’t overall.