The phoney war severely knocked evacuations reputation. It made people think that the government were exaggerating and the war wasn’t going to be as bad as people made out. They began to think that evacuation was a farce, that evacuation was just the government’s way of showing the people that they were at war and that it was serious.
Soon after the phoney war the blitz occurred so children were evacuated again. Some parents chose not to evacuate their children. They were thinking along the lines of the quote Stanley Baldwin made.
Stanley Baldwin had quoted before the war that
‘The bomber will always get through’
Now if Stanley Baldwin was right when he made this quote, then it was pointless evacuating children because the bomber will always get through so why bother evacuating children? The German bomber could drop his bombs anywhere so children might as well just stay at home. Unfortunately this attitude cost many people their lives, especially when the Blitz was happening. The blitz was a major cause of deaths in the second world war, at least 400,000 people alone were killed when the German bombers came over and dropped their bombs on England.
Many people thought of evacuation as cruel and inhumane. They thought that it was unfair that children had to be put through the stress of being moved from place to place just to avoid the Luftwaffer. Evacuation was thought of as cruel because children were being uplifted from their families to go and lie with perfect strangers. Evacuation not only cause stress on children but on the parents of the children as well. The parents didn’t know if their children were being treated well or not. In some cases children were not treated very well by their evacuees. Some people did not just take evacuees in out of the goodness of their heart. They took them in only because people who took in evacuees were paid.
Some children were treated very badly at the hands of their evacuation parents. The famous actor Michael Cain was only 6 at the time of his evacuation recalls how him and his brother were mistreated. He quotes in a interview that his evacuation parents ‘’ were only looking after him for the money’’ Sadly, many evacuation treated children like that. But not all.
Not all children were treated badly at the hands of their evacuation parents. Miss stayed at a farm in Witherslak just near Kendal. She recalls her evacuation days as being the ‘’ Best days of her life’’. She comments that her evacuation parents treated her like she was one of the family and made her feel at home. She also comments on how her evacuation parents helped her to settle into her surroundings. On the whole, she had a very pleasant stay at her place of evacuation.
On the whole, there was a wide range of reactions and opinion on the policy of evacuation. Many people believed that it was a good idea if it was going to children’s lives and prevent death from the German airforce. Other people though, seen evacuation as pointless and a waste of people time.