HistoryThe myth of the "Battle of Britain" spirit, of doughty Londoners cheering an even doughtier Churchill, has endured unquestioned for far too long; though it is easy to see why it endures. For simply, the world needed Britain to hold out in 1940.
People like to think that the tenacity and stubbornness through the darkest hours the human race has known must have been born of a higher sense of purpose than is available to us today. We need the myths.
There was of course truth in the myth; the man on the gasometer stoically repairing a flaming leak with millions of square feet of explosive vapour just inches away: or the shelter marshals taking the weight of a collapsing shelter on their shoulders while the occupants scrambled out. As one Glasgwegian declared: "One thing about the blitz. It's certainly taken our minds off the war". As it would do. Shelters for 2,500 regularly held 10,000 people, their latrines unspeakable horrors, and these shelters - as we learn from this book - soon became a captive market for organised thieves to move through.
For crime did not stop simply because there was a war on; many people brought their life's savings into the shelters, and some were there relieved of them as they slept.
On the surface, looting during and after air-raids was commonplace, and the response of the authorities seems to have been stupid and indiscriminatingly heavy-handed. Indeed, it might have been the public disgust at these "little Hitlers" (as the saying went) that caused the British people to turn so vehemently against the Tories in 1945.
For example, Leonard Watson of the heroic Heavy Rescue Squad found a three-quarters-empty bottle of gin in the bombed-out ruins of the pub. He picked it up to give to his men, was found with it, was charged with looting and was imprisoned and disgraced. So too were four Royal Engineers who had just saved St Paul's Cathedral by carrying fire-bombs from it, and who found some shaving brushes in a broken shop window and kept them.
Not that the authorities confined their punishments to the working classes.
Lt Col Lawrence was dismissed the service for using army petrol to go fishing, shooting and beagling, and Sir Peter Laurie, Provost Marshall of the Military Police, was convicted of rationing offences. Others prosecuted for violating war-time regulations included bandleader Victor Silvester, Noël Coward, Lord Alfred Douglas (yes, he of Oscar Wilde fame) and Ivor Novello, who was jailed for misusing petrol.
War meant more regulations; and more regulations meant the emergence of the jobsworths, like the two policemen who invited two women club- owners out for dinner. The ladies asked the police officers back to the club for a night-cap. The moment it was served, the women were arrested, and charged with serving drinks after hours. They were heavily fined and the club closed.
George Hall (67) overslept on the train and awoke in a military region for which he had no pass; one month's imprisonment. Another man was snoring in the shelter, where it was an offence to keep others awake: a fortnight in jail.
It seems hard to believe now, but those curious British 1940s and 1950s films that today look so improbable and clunky were probably reflecting life. For there really were "smash and grab" raids on jewellery shops by thieves with handkerchiefs over their mouths: and if they saw the culprit, crowds would then give chase, shouting, "There he is!" They gave such a chase to Billy Hill, whose gang members included Franny the Spaniel, Horrible Harry, Bear's Breath and Tony the Wop. Hill once blocked a police pursuit with a stolen car with false number plates, marked MUG 999. The blackout was causing 600 fatalities a month, and a new night-time speed-limit was enforced by an unmarked police car travelling at 20 mph. If it were overtaken, the police would wave the offending car down with paper-covered torches. The very first vehicle they caught was a hearse, doing 37 mph. Those Ealing Comedies had their roots in life.
Hearses had many uses, not least the illegal transport of sugar, four hundredweight of which could fit snugly alongside the body, for delivery on the way back from the cemetery. But cigarettes were far more valuable, and after 1944 they became the unofficial currency of Europe. Little wonder that thieves stole 2 million cigarettes from an army warehouse. For in France in June 1944, one cigarette could buy you four eggs; and in Denmark, a yacht was actually sold for 25,000 cigarettes.
Crime was by no means confined to the lower social scale: a Liverpool ship repairs yard cheated the government of the equivalent of £20 million, and in Trieste alone the equivalent of £80 million in relief supplies was stolen every month.
It came as something of a surprise to learn that the RAF used to drop little wooden toys onto the Afrika Korps, which, when activated by a string, caused the tiny figure of Hailie Selassie to bugger a round little Mussolini. It proved very popular with the Germans. Just how saucy this was by the standards of the time is indicated by the Met's campaign in London to close down cafes where for the price of a very expensive cup of tea - 2/6 then: €8 today - you could kiss and perhaps even cuddle the waitress.
Donald Thomas has written a quite enchanting book, magnificently researched, and cleverly and wittily presented.
Moreover, it is an important work, because one can see in the middle of this vital war for freedom the kind of witless establishment-authoritarianism which I believe was an extraordinarily powerful factor in the eclipse of the Churchill government in 1945. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Quite outstanding.
Kevin Myers is an Irish Times columnist and the author of a novel, Banks of Green Willow
An Underworld at War: Spivs, Deserters, Racketeers and Civilians in the Second World War By Donald Thomas John Murray, 384pp, £20