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Thursday, 2nd May, 1946

This is an entry in a year-long project to post-blog the demobilisation experience for British servicemen at the end of the Second World War. See here for an introduction to the project and here for a brief overview of the demobilisation process.

One in five Britons - representing four million families - is actively looking for a new home, according to a recent Gallup poll, reports the News Chronicle. A further ten per cent of those polled would like to move, but have given up hope for the time being. Working class families are most desperate for new accommodation, with one in three of them on a local authority list for a new flat or house. Scotland is the worst affected region of all; only 60 per cent of Scots are satisfied with their current housing, eight per cent lower than the next worst area.

During the war, four in ten of the population told pollsters that they would seek new accommodation in peacetime. The new figures would suggest that only twenty five per cent of those persons have been able to secure satisfactory new housing in the twelve months since the conflict in Europe ended.

Wednesday, 17th April, 1946

This is an entry in a year-long project to post-blog the demobilisation experience for British servicemen at the end of the Second World War. See here for an introduction to the project and here for a brief overview of the demobilisation process.

J.J. Astor, chairman of the Times, writes to the paper in his capacity as President of the National Association for the Employment of Sailors, Soldiers, and Airmen:

Though in theory more jobs are [currently] available than men, in practice so far as the individual is concerned this statement needs qualification ... many men have acquired qualities of leadership and administrative ability. Having been engaged in mechanized warfare, most have proved capable of mastering and maintaining some machine, whether weapon or instrument. All are embued with the spirit of service. These qualities, though of great potential value, may not immediately fit them for positions which with training they would be exceptionally well qualified to fill ...

The men themselves are not fully aware of the effect which the shortage of houses has upon employment. A man is limited in his choice of work to the vacancies which occur within reach of the lodging he is able to secure. These vacancies may not be to his liking nor within his capacity ... this handicap bears most hardly on the married man with children. Unfortunately it is not removed by offers of well-paid domestic service, as this type of work rarely attracts the ex-servicemen and his wife ...

Friday, 12th April, 1946

This is an entry in a year-long project to post-blog the demobilisation experience for British servicemen at the end of the Second World War. See here for an introduction to the project and here for a brief overview of the demobilisation process.

Lieutenant Commander Rupert Lonsdale, ex-POW and former commander of the submarine HMS Seal, was honorably acquitted by a naval court-martial yesterday after an inquiry into the capture of his vessel by the Germans in May 1940, writes the Times. Lonsdale had been accused of failing to engage enemy aircraft which had attached Seal, and of failing to take steps to ensure the sinking of his submarine when it appeared likely that the Germans would seize her. But Lonsdale's defending officer satisfied the court that under the circumstances - Seal had sunk after hitting a mine in the Kattegat bay and had only been returned to the surface with great difficulty, after which she immediately found herself surrounded by enemy forces - Lonsdale had no choice but to capitulate. "A naval captain was [not] expected to indulge in mock heroics with absolute disregard for the safety of his men," he insisted: "[Lonsdale] had got the idea in his mind that he was going to save the crew, and everything he did revolved around that."

“Wanted! A Home of Our Own”, writes Jean Bird in this week's Modern Woman. “Every woman knows by instinct that a happy family life is impossible without a home of one’s own ...

The experiences of the past few years have made this painfully – and in many cases tragically – clear to the young mothers who as evacuees tried to share kitchens with their hostesses, for the war brides who went to live with their mothers-in-law, for the grandmothers who had to squeeze into a bedroom with their children’s children.

Friday, 5th April, 1946

This is an entry in a year-long project to post-blog the demobilisation experience for British servicemen at the end of the Second World War. See here for an introduction to the project and here for a brief overview of the demobilisation process.

Hundreds of ex-servicewomen flocking to London every week to take advantage of the good conditions and wages offered to typists, secretaries and receptionists are struggling to find places to live, reports the News Chronicle. "Many return to their homes in the provinces unhappy and disillusioned because they can find nowhere to live," complains Margaret Brooke of the Central Council for the Social Welfare of Girls and Women in London. A great number are forced to take furnished rooms with rents that their salaries of £4-6 a week are quite inadequate to pay for. "there are undoubtedly cases of young girls and women reduced to tramping the streets," says Brooke. "Eventually they may be taken by policewomen to homes and institutions, but that is no solution. The weary business of hunting must begin again the next day." Some solutions are opening up: London County Council has just opened a hostel in Buckinghamshire to accommodate between 80-100 commuting female workers at a cost of 2s. a night. A hostel is being established at Paddington Station also.

Thursday, 14th March, 1946

This is an entry in a year-long project to post-blog the demobilisation experience for British servicemen at the end of the Second World War. See here for an introduction to the project and here for a brief overview of the demobilisation process.

Chief Controller Dame Leslie Whateley, Director of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, is being voluntarily demobbed, reports the Times. She will be succeeded early in April by her current deputy, Controller M.J.C. Tyrwhitt, though given the diminished size of the service since demobilisation began the rank of 'Chief Controller' will be suspended. Whateley volunteered for the service in November 1938 and steered it through six years of rapid wartime expansion in which it reached a size of over 200,000 personnel.

The paper also notes a turbulent meeting last night at the Albert Hall of the Vigilantes Action League, the organisation which provoked much commentary (and not a little sympathy) in the summer of 1945 when it began its program of illegally requisitioning vacant houses on behalf of service and ex-service families. Fringe politics has come to overshadow the work of the League since then, however, and the meeting broke up after fifteen minutes when a crowd of Communist Party members stormed the platform, accusing the League of being a pro-fascist organisaion. Shouts of "down with fascism" drowned out speaker after speaker until the police suspended the meeting.

Saturday, 23rd February, 1946

This is an entry in a year-long project to post-blog the demobilisation experience for British servicemen at the end of the Second World War. See here for an introduction to the project and here for a brief overview of the demobilisation process.

John Bull reports on the temporary 'pre-fab' housing offered in lieu of a permanent home for reunited couples:

Mrs. Mark has had a fearful time. A flying bomb destroyed her home in June 1944. Her husband was in the Navy then. She had a twelve-year-old daughter, Jean. With a badly cut hand a shattered nerves she and the girl found themselves rushed into a hostile Somerset cottage. Constantly the hostess reminded them that 'if my husband were alive he would never have allowed you in.'

Mr. Mark was discharged from the Navy on medical grounds resulting from arthritis in the feet, the result of being torpedoed while on convoy duty to Russia. He also had high blood pressure, and is a pretty sick man.

Back in London after VE-Day, Mrs. Mark and Jean were living in a school rest centre. Mr. Mark has to have a place without stairs as he cannot walk easily. After innumerable calls on the local housing authorities, they finally moved into a three-bedroom Nissen hut and have made it into a cosy little home for themselves.

Mr. Mark is apprehensive about the future. The prefabs and the Nissens are, after all, only a temporary expedient. Ten years for the prefabs. Two years for the Nissens. They like their present home. Jean, now fourteen years old, burst into tears when her father told her that the Nissens would eventually have to be torn down to make way for proper houses. "I don't want to live in a proper house," she wept. "I like living here ..."

 

Wednesday, 13th February, 1946

This is an entry in a year-long project to post-blog the demobilisation experience for British servicemen at the end of the Second World War. See here for an introduction to the project and here for a brief overview of the demobilisation process.

Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Sholto Douglas has been appointed commander-in-chief of British forces in Germany and military governor of the British Occupation Zone (BOZ), reports the Times. He replaces Field Marshal Montgomery, who will become Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

An ex-serviceman writes to the Times concerning housing for the demobbed:

After years of service in the Army abroad, separated from my wife, and most of the time thinking and longing for home, I have recently been demobilised, and have got a job in London. Can I find anywhere to live? No, it is absolutely hopeless. I have tried everything. My name has been placed at the bottom of the list kept by the local borough council. The list contains over 4,000 names already. At the present rate of progress, my name might be reached in about ten years' time with luck.

Can you be surprised, sir, if we are getting just a little impatient and angry about it all?

 

Friday, 11th January, 1946

This is an entry in a year-long project to post-blog the demobilisation experience for British servicemen at the end of the Second World War. See here for an introduction to the project and here for a brief overview of the demobilisation process.

Ex-soldier William Donovan pleaded unsuccessfully at an inquiry in Leyton, Essex yesterday to be allowed to rebuild his bomb-destroyed home on a site which the borough council wishes to develop as a community and shopping centre, reports the Times. The town clerk "expressed the council's sympathy with Mr. Donovan, but said they must refuse him ... they were determined that Leyton should be properly replanned."

The Times also reports on further protests by American servicemen overseas about their slow repatriation and demobilisation. About 5,000 GIs assembled in a public park in Calcutta on Thursday to express dissatisfaction with the pace of events. In Frankfurt, meanwhile, scene of protests earlier this week, a delegation of fifty representatives of occupation troops had a three-hour conference with senior staff officers to air their grievances. "we wish you would tell the War Department about some of our ideas on how to get us home," said one.

Thursday, 3rd January, 1946

This is an entry in a year-long project to post-blog the demobilisation experience for British servicemen at the end of the Second World War. See here for an introduction to the project and here for a brief overview of the demobilisation process.

The British Legion Journal reports on a decision by the district council housing committee in Walsingham, Norfolk that illustrates the moral complexity of rationing at a time of acute shortages. The committee had before them two families, one headed by a farmworker, the other by an ex-serviceman - but only one residence. The farmworker was serving in a key agricultural job and has a wife and five children, all of whom have been living in two upstairs rooms in another overcrowded house. The ex-serviceman, who was discharged from the Forces in September 1944, has a wife and two children, all of whom were bombed out of their Norwich home during the war and who have been living with his parents. According to the committee's points system the farmworker's family (with thirteen-and-and-half points) had priority over the ex-serviceman's (with eight points). The Journal is clearly unhappy with the decision, but if anything the case suggests how hard it is to prioritize the needs of ex-Forces personnel, however genuine their claims, when so many other worthy applicants are on the waiting lists: as a spokesman for the farmworker points out, he has been in a state-directed line of work every bit of vital to the nation as the ex-serviceman during the recent conflict.

Friday, 14th December, 1945

This is an entry in a year-long project to post-blog the demobilisation experience for British servicemen at the end of the Second World War. See here for an introduction to the project and here for a brief overview of the demobilisation process.

For the last 196 days men of the Royal Engineers have been labouring unsuccessfully to defuse a 4,000-lb 'Hermann' bomb which lies in a clay bed forty feet underground in a neighbourhood of South Croydon. Now, reports the Times, the frustrated sappers have had to abandon their painstaking work because the bomb's fuse has broken. Traffic was suspended on nine local bus routes yesterday and local residents evacuated as UXB experts worked for hours to remove the fuse, but eventually had to admit defeat with two-thirds of the fuse still embedded in the bomb. The plan now is to 'sterilize' the bomb instead by removing its 3,000 lbs of TNT; this will take at least twelve hours and is expected to be finished on Sunday. Until then, warned Royal Engineers, the bomb remains "as dangerous as ever."

In other news: George Clark, of Sutton, Surrey, was fined £5 yesterday for demanding a £140 premium for a three-year lease on a house. The illegal practice of requiring so-called 'key money' from new tenants, often ex-servicemen with gratuity payments in hand, has become particularly common in this period of acute housing shortage. A former RAF airman was amongst those who lodged the complaint about Clark's behaviour.