The government’s evacuation campaign was not greatly successful. In the 1st wave of evacuation, 1.8 million people should have been evacuated from London, but actually only 36% of this number did. 3.6 million people should have been evacuated from provinces, but only 33% were evacuated. Also, by Christmas 1939, 90% of evacuated mothers and children had returned home and overall 60% of all evacuees had returned home. The 2nd and 3rd waves of evacuation were also not a success. In the 2nd wave only a small amount of children were evacuated from danger zones, about 200,000 in all. The 3rd wave was a complete failure, more bombs were dropped in 3 months than in the whole of 1943, yet there was no demand for evacuation, and people had a ‘stay put’ attitude. So evacuation was not a great success for the government.
Success in evacuation was limited because many mothers had a ‘better we all die together’ attitude and some people hated the countryside so they had no wish to be evacuated to the country.
Source A tells us that arrangement did not go smoothly and evacuation was unorganised. This source has been written for a British school textbook and was written in i988, so the source is reliable and can be trusted because the author will have gotten lots of evidence from lots of other sources, he has lots of facts and has no need to exaggerate. Source I is from an interview with a father from South end with a 7 year old boy. It has been written in May 1940, but before the heavy bombing started. It cannot be trusted because it took place before the bombing started so his opinion could have changed.
Sources 7 and 8 suggest that the evacuation process was well organised and a success. The children on the trains are all smiling and are happy, and the children walking to the station also look happy. The government leaflet on evacuation: why and how, suggests that evacuation was well organised, it says that all children were evacuated to safer places called reception areas. Whereas source C suggest that it wasn’t, it says people had no idea where they were going. The source comes from an interview with a teacher in 1988. This source cannot be fully trusted because it is only her memories and is only one viewpoint
Some sources suggest that evacuation was well organised when evacuee’s got there. For example, in the Internet sheet, a 5-year-old evacuee described his experience; he says that he enjoyed himself, and enjoyed his 2 – 3 years in Wales, and that the host wanted to adopt him. Another example of where evaluation was a success was from a rich host who says that her 6 male evacuees’s made the war bearable and enjoyable.
There is a lot of information about why the evacuation process was unorganised. Source 11 in the blue pamphlet tells us about the terrible and traumatising was in which evacuee’s were picked to go with people. There were also a lot of problems with manners, habits and social mismatches. Source E is from an interview from the mother of a host family, she says that the children and mother evacuees urinated on the floor and when told not to, they ignored them. It was written in 1988, and cannot be fully trusted because the woman may have forgot some key points and these are only her memories so are only one viewpoint. Source F is from an interview with an evacuee. It tells us that it was quite upsetting for wealthy evacuees to end up in semi slums and visa versa; this was caused by the rudimentary selection of evacuees by hosts. The source is from 1988 and again cannot be fully trusted because the evacuee may have forgotten something and it is only his or her memory, and is only one viewpoint. Source G shows a misconception between hosts and evacuee’s. The host assumes that they are poor children, because they have no slippers with them, it was written in 1973 for a children’s novel, so we have to be careful because it is a storybook. There are some facts but as it is a story perhaps the author exaggerates and dramatises some of the feelings.
Another fact that that evacuation wasn’t organised properly for when evacuee’s got to where they were going is that they were used for cheap labour and some were beaten, and many got very homesick. Cynthia Gillet described her experience of evacuation as terrible, she was evacuated twice and was beaten and worked. Another girl described her experience with a rich family as unhappy, she got very homesick and returned home a few months later. Source L also tells us of brutality towards evacuee’s, other children would gang up on them in the playground.
The successes were that evacuation saved thousands of lives and up to the end of 1942, only 27 children evacuated from London were injured, which was a tiny amount compared to the casualties of the people who stayed. Many evacuees saw world outside of the cities and many loved the countryside. It also highlighted poverty and the slum conditions people were living in. The failures though were that only 36% of people who should have been evacuated from London were evacuated and only 33% of people from provinces were evacuated; a lot of people weren’t evacuated. Other failures were when the government tried to introduce a second wave of evacuation, response was very limited. In conclusion, evacuation was partly a success because of the lives it saved, but it partly failed because only a small majority of people who should have been evacuated were, and because of the haphazard placement of evacuees with hosts, most evacuees hated the countryside and returned home.
