Hello Children Everywhere!

In the weeks leading up to Remembrance Sunday we offer There’ll Always Be An England – A Wartime Music Hall Show. Always a popular show, the songs of the era are particularly loved because they remind us of a time when people pulled together and got through. Nowhere more so than the East End of London during the Blitz when the East End and the Docks were known as “Target Area A” by German bomber pilots. On the first night of bombing alone, 430 civilians were killed and 1,600 seriously wounded, with Silvertown and Canning Town bearing the brunt of the attacks.

The children of those war years survive today to tell the tales of fathers and uncles in the services while mothers and grandparents banded together on the home front and did what they could to support the war effort. Many remember their experiences as evacuees, as it was decided to evacuate city children to the relative safety of the countryside. This year our wartime show particularly remembers those evacuees and the experiences of those on the homefront.

3 million people left the cities as evacuees, mostly children. They were told to bring food for a day, a change of clothes and wellingtons if they had them. Sent off by coach or train with a label tied on giving their destination, many city children had never seen the countryside before and were amazed by sights of grass and cows. Their hosts were equally amazed by the poverty of the city children. Many had never worn underclothes, eaten food from a table or slept in a bed. Very young children sometimes forgot their real parents. Although experiences varied, many were happier with their new families than they had been at home.

It was feared that the savage German bombing campaign would weaken morale, when in fact it only served to strengthen the spirit of defiance, the bulldog spirit embodied by Winston Churchill and supported by the government and the BBC in propaganda and the successful radio show Workers’ Playtime.

Variety artists gamely performed in munitions factories or travelled to the battlefield to support the troops in an era unparalleled in our history, an era that has left a moving legacy that still resonates today. Pictured above, Vincent Hayes and Paul James in a Workers’ Playtime sketch (There’ll Always Be An England – A Wartime Music Hall Show, 2013).