Why do sources A to E differ in their attitudes to the evacuation of children? Explain your answer using the sources and knowledge from your studies.

Richard Tandy December 2003

Coursework 2 / Question 2.

In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland in what would be the final step in the build up to war. As the last days of peace lasted away in 1939, evacuation was introduced and more than 3.5 million children were taken from their homes as part of a Government plan to evacuate what would be the largest mass movement of people ever seen in Britain. Outline plans had been drawn up as early as 1935 after the Munich conference however they became much more detailed. The British Government had decided to organize an evacuation scheme in which Sir John Anderson was put in charge. Britain feared that during the war major towns and cities such as London would be in danger of heavy bombings from the Germans. As a consequence of this, many children, who were made the priority, and some women and teachers, were evacuated from the cities and moved into more rural areas with foster families to look after them. The idea was that they would be safe there, and in the first three days of September 1,250,000 children were said to have been evacuated. The evacuees would take the train to their destination, with no idea where they were going or who was going to look after them. There are many sources of evidence about evacuation and naturally they differ in their attitudes towards the evacuation of children. I have been supplied with five sources about evacuation, sources A to E and in this essay I will be looking at why these sources differ in their attitudes to the evacuation of children. I will group the sources together to enable me to compare and contrast the differences and similarities between them. For example, I will group sources B and E together because they are both interviews.

The first sources I will look at are sources A and D, which are both visual sources. Source A is a photograph of evacuees walking to the station in London, in September 1939 going to be evacuated. This photograph illustrates most of the children looking excited and happy as they are waving to the camera and smiling. Like in many cases, the children in the photograph probably didn’t know exactly why they are being evacuated, and that is why they don't look too upset. The children are not walking with their parents, but some of the children are on their own, probably because they have already been split up from their parents. Some children in the picture are accompanied by an adult who could be a parent or a minder. The picture displays that they are accompanied by what could be a teacher as she is leading them on and may be keeping them on the pavement; teachers were seen as a valuable acquisition and so were also evacuated to the countryside and accompanied the children. In the photograph the children are wearing tags and are carrying gas masks and some personal belongings in bags, all of which are necessities in which they would require when being evacuated. There is also a man in the foreground of the photograph who is wearing a suit and tie and a hat. He may be an official from the government overseeing the evacuation process or he could be the headteacher of the school in which the children are from. This source is useful because it is a primary source from the time and was taken as the children were leaving and so it shows us almost exactly what was happening at the time. The source is further useful because it gives a brief view on what it may have been like for the children and what their attitudes towards evacuation were such as what their feelings and emotions may have been. For example, the photograph illustrates that most of the children were not accompanied by adults and so they may have felt lonely, also the photograph illustrates the children on their way to the station and many of the children had never been that far from home. Therefore, they may have felt excited and this may be why from what we can see of the children in the foreground they are waving and smiling at the cambers. The source is furthermore useful because it supplies us with a view of what evacuation may have been like and how the evacuation process was conducted and it shows us the sort of scene there may have been when children were being evacuated. The source is also useful because it shows us that the children had to walk with other children from their school in groups to the train station and were accompanied by a teacher. This source is reliable because being a photograph it is not as easy to misinterpret what is being illustrated. For example, stories can be misinterpreted because we have to imagine what is being said. However, being a photograph we can se exactly what is happening and so we know what is happening. However, this source is not useful because it only gives us a limited snapshot of what was happening, we cannot see the whole picture. For example, we cannot see if or who the man in suit in the foreground is standing with or talking to. Also, because we cannot see out of the camera angle, we cannot see what the scene is like anywhere else, whether there are also large amounts of children being evacuated nearby and if the street is crowded with people watching the evacuation, or whether the area is quiet and these are the only children being evacuated at that time. This source may furthermore not be reliable because the photograph could have been staged, for instance it does not say who took the photograph. For example, it would probably have been the first time that the children, who are from the city and attend a local school, would have been away from their parents and so they would have been quite anxious or nervous, however, these feelings are not shown in the photograph and they are instead from what we can see waving and smiling and so this is questionable. The photographer may be bias because he may have been working for the Government and may have therefore set up a photograph such as this for the Government so that they can use it as propaganda purposes in order to make evacuation look good to in turn make the government look like they are doing a good job and to persuade parents to evacuate their children as the photograph shows an organized scene with happy and smiling children and this may put guilt into the minds of parents and influence them to evacuate their children. The purpose of this photograph is to show people the process of evacuation and how it was undertaken. However, we have to take into hand with this that it could initially have been used for propaganda purposes. The photograph displays a well conducted and organized affair with from what we can see happy, smiling and excited children. Therefore, this image could be used by the Government to give people the idea that evacuation was a good thing and to especially persuade the remaining parents to believe this and evacuate their children too. The photograph could also have been used for propaganda purposes by the government and also possibly by the media in which to put people as a whole under the impression that evacuation was a positive step in the right direction and to sustain collective morale in the nation as a whole. Not surprisingly it is most likely to be the parents who are the intended audience for this photograph. The photograph displays a well organized and conducted procedure with happy, smiling children and this image would be used to encourage parents to evacuate their children as it would probably sway their perception of evacuation by viewing the positive scenes displayed by this photograph. This photograph gives a positive attitude towards evacuation in the sense that it shows a well organized and from what we can see, successful process with happy and smiling children, lead by a smiling teacher leading them on. The photograph gives this positive attitude towards evacuation because it is a probably a propaganda piece issued by the government or the media and its purpose is initially to illustrate the evacuation process and it therefore gives this view in order to give people the impression that evacuation was positive thing and it is likely to be intended to encourage the remaining parents to evacuate their children by giving this positive view of evacuation. With showing all these smiling, happy children, the photograph may also make parents feel guilty about not evacuating their own and so is intended to encourage them to change their minds. Source D is an advertisement issued by the Government in 1939 and is an appeal for more people in Scotland to provide homes for evacuee children. The advertisement has a picture at the top of two smiling children in front of a contrasting background comparing the danger of the dark cities with German planes flying over, to the safety of the bright countryside. Below the picture is a section of text, which basically outlines how the foster parents in Scotland have done a great job, but more volunteers are needed. The advertisement is a piece of propaganda and the main message it conveys is that people would be helping if they put their names forward to become foster parents. This source is useful because it tells us that 20,000 people in Scotland have been looking after evacuated children. It is also useful because it tells us how there were not enough homes for children to go into as it says, “many new volunteers are needed”. The advertisement is further useful because it tells us how long the children have been in the evacuation areas. The text in the advertisement says that people in Scotland “have been looking after children from the cities for over six months”. The advertisement is also useful because it gives us a brief view of what it was like to be fostering the children as it tells us that the evacuees have “been a handful” and it also briefly tells us the attitudes of the foster parents themselves as it says that they “know they have done the right thing”. The advertisement is furthermore useful because it is a primary source, as it was made just after the major evacuation of industrial areas and so it is from the time and is the actual advertisement in which the Government issued. The advertisement is reliable because it had been issued by the Government and they should therefore have know the situation well enough to create an accurate interpretation of the circumstances and so all the information in the text should be correct and true. However, this source is not useful or reliable because it is a propaganda piece. Its purpose is to get older people in Scotland to enroll and it uses much emotive, and over emphasized language and details in which to do this. For example, the last line of the advertisement, in which is the last line that would stick in the readers mind says: “You may be saving a child’s life” – this is true however, just like the rest of the advertisement it has been over exaggerated in order to capture the emotions of the reader and so the information may not be totally correct and also this advertisement is probably looking on the sunny side of things as not all children were fortunate enough to get homes. Also, the advertisement is not useful because it tells us that many new volunteers are needed but it does not tell us how many more homes were needed to supply the demand of children – the figure may have been quite big and so the government would not want to include it, this also makes the Advertisement unreliable. The purpose of this advertisement is to get older people in Scotland to provide homes for evacuees; younger people in Scotland would not be targeted, as they would be involved in the war effort. The Government issued this advertisement, as they need more children to be evacuated, which would also take some of the pressure off the Government and if children were dieing in the City then it would lower morale. Moreover, this advertisement could be used to make people feel more anti-German or anti-Nazi through making it seem that the Germans are going to be killing a lot of our children by bombing cities. Also, by issuing this appeal for people in Scotland to provide homes for evacuee children so that children can be evacuated out of the city it would make the Government look caring. The intended audience for this advertisement is older people in Scotland who would have free time; younger people would be involved in the war effort. It would make older people feel that they are doing something to help the war effort, and so everyone in the country would be all doing something and this would in turn help to unite the country against the common enemy. This advertisement gives the attitude that evacuation is a positive experience for the evacuee children and the people doing it. It is seen as a positive experience for the children as they are healthier in the country, in the fresh air and away from built up areas and are safer in the country “out of a danger-zone – where desperate peril may come at any minute”. It is also seen as a positive experience for the older people doing it who would become foster parents because they would be doing a worthwhile job and making something of their time. The advertisement gives these attitudes because it is trying to persuade older people in Scotland to become foster parents. Older people would free time on their hands as they were not involved in the war effort in terms of fighting or working in the factories, therefore, becoming foster parents would make older people feel like they were doing something to help the war effort. These two sources are similar in the sense that from what I can see in the photograph of source A, everyone looks happy and are smiling, and in the picture of the advertisement in source D, the two children are also smiling and look happy. Therefore, both of these sources are similar in this sense that they convey happiness. However, the sources are different in that the photograph of source A is an actual photograph of children being evacuated, whilst source D is an advertising campaign, which is not actual reality. The sources are also different in the sense that the purpose of the photograph of source A is to encourage the parents to evacuate their children, whilst the advertisement of source D is appealing for older people to take the evacuated children.

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The next sources I will look at are sources B and E, which are both interviews. Source B is an extract from an interview with a teacher in 1988 in which a teacher remembers being evacuated with children from her school. The extract explains how the children were very scared to leave, and there was hardly any talking, only a murmur because of how afraid they were. It also explains how the parents and children were split up from very early on and the mothers of the children were not allowed to go with the evacuees, so some younger children would have been very upset; however mothers followed the groups to the stations. The extract also explains that teachers were evacuated with children and that the children and teachers did not know where they were going. This source is useful because it is a first hand account and so the teacher was evacuated and so she knows what happened. This source is also useful because it gives us a better idea of what the atmosphere would have been like when the children had to leave their parents. This source is furthermore useful because it gives us a different aspect of evacuation in the sense that she was actually there being evacuated with the children and so this gives us I brief insight to what her ideas were at the time and what the atmosphere was like. This source is reliable because it is a first hand account from someone who was actually there and therefore she would know what happened. This source is also reliable because it is not propaganda, for example the government would not want to use this source for propaganda purposes because at the time it would have given the wrong impression, and it tells it as it really was in that it was very stressful and they didn’t know where they were going. However, this source may not be useful because it is a secondary source and the interview took place a long time after the actual events happened. It is an interview, which took place 49 years after the evacuation, so it is not as reliable, because the teacher may have forgotten certain details and because she would have been an old lady she may have also exaggerated certain points. Furthermore, this account may be how it happened, however, this may be her interpretation of the events and so this account may not be very reliable. It could well be very reliable but we would need to look at similar sources and compare her account with other people who were teachers being evacuated at the time. The purpose of this interview was to gain a first hand account through what is called living history, before this generation of people die out. The teacher was interviewed to find out about evacuation, possibly for an article in a woman’s magazine in what would be called a human-interest story in which people recall real life situations. There could be numerous intended audiences for this extract from an interview. For example, this extract could be part of a newspaper article so that ordinary people can find out about evacuation. It could also be for historians doing research who wanted accounts from people who actually experienced the evacuation to tell them their story. From the extract it appears that the author feels that peoples feelings were not taken into account during evacuation. Mothers weren’t aloud to walk with their children, they didn’t know where the children were going to and they had to say goodbye by leaning against and shouting through the railings and couldn’t kiss or hug their children goodbye and the parents, living in the cities could have got killed by bomb the next day and would never see their children again. Source E is an extract from a Mass Observation Survey of people’s attitudes to the evacuation of children and it is of person whose child is a possible evacuee. This source is useful because it gives us an idea to people’s attitudes about evacuating their children as it tells us that people had reservations about sending their children away. It shows us the real feelings of the parents during the War crisis. This extract is also useful because it tells us how people could be worried how their children would be cared for. It is also useful because it tells us how people saw other parts of the country in the war period, in this interview it tells us that the people in London believed that in the shires (Whales and the West) there wasn’t enough food for everybody, even before the war. This source is reliable because it is a primary source from 1940, obtained from a first hand account as it is an interview with a parent, which took place at the time, and so he was there at the time. It is also reliable because it is from an official survey and so the information that had been collected would not have been altered and would be the actual views in which were exchanged at the time. Furthermore, the person being interviewed is a father of a possible evacuee and this would make the extract reliable because he would have expressed his true feelings. However, this source is not useful because it is just one person’s point of view. To be more useful you would have to compare a number of these interviews as people may have felt differently. Leading on from this, this extract is further not useful because it doesn’t give the view of people who wanted to send their children. This extract may also not be reliable because the parent may be emotionally involved and may so be defiant about sending his child to be evacuated. The main purpose of this interview is to survey and find out about peoples attitudes towards evacuation. However, the government may have furthermore conducted this survey in order to find out why not everybody is sending their children out to be evacuated. Therefore, if the Government found out the reason to why people were not sending their children then they may have been able to correct this. The intended audience for this interview is the government so that they can find out peoples attitudes towards evacuation. It was not for open publication but historians have manages to dig it out. This extract shows that people were against evacuation and preferred their children to stay with them despite of the dangers. According to this extract, they felt that there was plenty of people around them, family and friends who would look after their children if they themselves were to get killed. The two sources are similar in the sense that they are actual real people conveying people’s attitudes towards evacuation. These two sources are similar in the respect that they both give a very different viewpoint or picture of evacuation. For example, source B explains how people’s feelings were not taken into account during evacuation and source E in a way supplements this with an extract from an interview in which a man is defiant about sending his child off to be evacuated.

The final source I will examine is source C, which is a novel extract. This extract is from Carrie’s War, a novel for children written by Nina Bowden in 1973. This extract briefly goes into the different social classes of evacuees as it compares the poor and wealthy.

This source is useful because it briefly goes into the expectations of host families that all children would be poor. For example the foster parents are not entirely sure of the evacuee's situation and she makes an assumption that they are too poor to afford a pair of slippers although the real reason she doesn't have slippers, is because the amount of items they were allowed to take with them, and the children who are actually from a wealthy background, start to giggle. The extract is also useful because shows that the children in the novel were understanding of their foster parents, as they didn't answer back about the slippers, but just giggle about it, this may have been the case with most of the children or it may have just been the case with the more well off children as they may have had better manners. The source may be reliable because the author, Nina Bowden, may have researched the attitudes and expectations of the host families and the evacuee children before writing her novel. However, the extract is not useful because it is from a book, which was written after the War, in 1973, after the time and so she wasn’t there and this makes the extract not useful as she may not have known much about evacuation, she may have just made it up for her story. Also, it is a novel – a story, not a biography and it is not really even a secondary source and so the information in the extract may not be true at all as such it might not be that reliable. Also, the person who wrote this extract is a novelist and so she would change the storyline to suit her book and this would not only make the extract unreliable. This is also quite an unreliable source, because we are not sure when the author was born, or if she had any part in evacuation. The purpose of the story in which this extract is from is to entertain children as it is from a children’s book. It gives a child’s eye view of evacuation and so the information is going to be twisted in order to suit the story. The intended audience for the story in which this extract is from is children and so the author of the story is not going to dwell on horrible things and will keep the content light. There is not really sufficient information in this extract in which to pick out an attitude. However, this extract is giving the attitude that the evacuation was like an adventure for some children. The story would give this attitude, as it would make the story more interesting for the younger readers for whom it is intended.

In conclusion, there are differing attitudes towards evacuation depending on who is doing the writing and what audience it is aimed at. From the Governments viewpoint when trying to produce propaganda to encourage people to evacuate children, the evacuation is seen as a great adventure and everybody is happy to go. Whereas when people who are actually involved in the evacuation process talk about evacuation, you get a very different viewpoint, in this case people didn’t know where they were being evacuated to, children were afraid, mothers were unable to walk with them and some parents preferred their children to stay with them throughout the war.

Why do sources A to E differ in their attitudes to the evacuation of children? Explain your answer using the sources and knowledge from your studies.

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