Source B is an interview from 1988 with a teacher so it’s a primary source and unlike in source A the teacher mention that the children were “too afraid to talk” so it shows a different perspective although it might not be as accurate with it being so long after the actual event.
Source C is an extract from a novel about evacuees which is telling a story about how a lady thought the two children were too poor to have slippers so this source is quite reliable in that quite a few hosts did actually think that with the children coming from the city they were poor although this source is from a novel that was published quite some time after the event happened so it might not be very accurate or could have been exaggerated on so that it sounded better.
Source D is an advertisement asking for foster parents in Scotland, published by the government so it is telling you that they were always needing foster parents because they didn’t have enough to take in all the children although it could have just been published as a source of propaganda like in ww1 they used propaganda to make people join the army they are using propaganda here to appeal to peoples emotions to get “involved” and foster the children.
Source E is an extract from a mass observation survey done by the observer in 1940 where they are interviewing a parent and it is basically telling us that not all parents wanted their children to go and the ones that did let them go were very reluctant to do so. It is not propaganda and is reliable in that it was an interview of that time and actually gets the true feelings of the parent. It is well suited to source B as both express in their own way some sort of reluctance shown by parents to let their children go.
Source F was the ‘evacuees’ video and was quite useful in that it told us quite a lot of information from people who were actually there and had “hands on” experience of what actually happened although it cant be considered as very reliable in that the programme was done quite a long time after the event so it wont be very accurate what the people are actually saying. It was useful in that most people actually agreed on that you were “just chosen” and it was like going on a “bit of an adventure” and most people agreed, “there was excitement” and “it was exciting”.
The government thought evacuation was necessary because they “feared” German bombers would bomb cities so if they got children out of the cities they would save a lot of lives and the parents wouldn’t be having to care for their kids they could just get on with helping fight the war whatever contribution they were making. The government were right to have evacuation because has I stated before it did save lives so in that way evacuation was a success.
It was carried out successfully although not all parents wanted their kids to go with complete strangers so it was quite hard to convince the parents to let their children go. The hosts of the evacuees also had a bad time in that they didn’t know who they were going to end up with and it was hard for everyone when who the evacuees were put with had a different religion or were of a different social class so the evacuees and hosts had to just try and work round each other. The children were the people most affected by evacuation in that the hosts they ended up with could have been anyone and it was a truly “terrifying” experience for the children in that quite a few were used as “slaves” or if they were working class and the hosts were of a higher class they might have been treat cruelly or could have been “left out” if the hosts had other children.
Evacuation was both good and bad so in some way it was a success and others it wasn’t although it did save lives so it can be considered a success in that way.
