LISTENING TO BRITAIN IN HISTORY

THE MINISTRY OF INFORMATION 1940

January 2026

Front Cover

Home Intelligence Reports on Public
Morale 1940

Introduction

by
Kenneth Webb

History has a way of sanitising events. The greater the time distance between the event and the person reading about the event, the more likely is the reader to obtain a perspective of a particular timeline that conceals the reality of the situation as it unfolded in that event.

This time distance becomes more important to investigate as it grows in length. For example, the perspective of the people who lived through the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) will be different to the people who came in the century following. As the years increase from 1815, so the History thereof will be sanitised. This is not a deliberate act. Rather, that attitudes and perspectives change.

A case in point might be that of the cataclysmic effect upon the entire Twentieth Century of Adolf Hitler. In this 21st Century an increasing number of books and documentaries treat Hitler as just another historical political figure. Moreover, markedly in students of history born in this century. In this century, Winston Churchill is seen by many university students as a warmonger and a man who committed war crimes and thus no different to those indicted in the Nuremburg Trials 1946.

The events of the Second World War have now passed into distant history, reinforced by the division of century.

People born in the 21st century cannot grasp the cataclysmic events of the Second World War and this is demonstrated none more than by directors and producers of television dramas, drama documentary and factual documentaries, let alone the prop actors who don uniforms etc., where all are so divorced from the period of history upon which they are reporting and illustrating, that anyone living during the Second World War or in the long shadow cast by the Second World War after its end, will show impatience; and members of the UK Armed Forces, serving and veteran, will cringe and often simply reach for the control even though in other respects the production is worth watching.

This, of course, is dismissed by the 21st century generation simply on the grounds of old age and a hint of senility. Great grandchildren cannot grasp that the world of the 20th Century is so far removed from the 21st Century that they might as well be two different worlds.

Called to task upon the horrors of the Israel-Gaza War 2023-2025 (still open-ended), undergraduates of whom I expect better cannot fathom the Holocaust, nor the mass atrocity committed by Hamas on Israel on Sunday 7 October 2023, and here is the indictment, do not wish to fathom reality. I grow weary with listening to teeny bops attempting to convince me that the Pathe News Reels of the Holocaust, the concentration camps, the Final Solution, are all, in the Trumpian language of today, all fake news.

This happens in every generation without exception. Trauma today will play out a half-century from now. Human Nature is much weaker than one supposes. This is the ultimate tragedy of the Human Species; it is unique to us. For we have the capacity to deliberately inflict the cruellest acts upon each other that no other species even imitates. Parental violence, school and institutionalised bullying, cruelty for the sake of cruelty, slave trafficking, sexual slavery, wife-beating, husband-beating, misogyny - this particular crime is so repugnant and rife throughout society, and yet for me the greatest criminal within that crime alone, is the politician who replies, well, it’s their way of life. That’s how they see women. They have a different culture, and we must respect that difference.

The career politician has no backbone. Their motivation is self-serving, self-aggrandisement. It is for the voting public to quickly detect this, and then remove such malign influence by means of the ballot box. That is how we do things in the British Isles, though God knows, there have been terrible times even here. I have only to refer to The Troubles. Neither side has my respect.

So Why the Need for This Platform ~ Listening to Britain?

I grew up in that long shadow of the Second World War. My friend Rita did so, too, in Germany. So, I approach the subject with an eye that ranges throughout the earth, as one popular saying goes.

My father was a policeman, and my parents taught me much about the war years, and when I had questions ~ I question everything, encouraged from earliest memory ~ my four grandparents would tactfully explain. I look back now and see a united family post war, the loss of two brothers in the Royal Air Force that gave my parents the kick-start to talk and which of course eventually led to my sisters and me. Every cloud has a silver lining. It was not all plain sailing. Family life never is, as the popular Granada Television 1960s Drama A Family at War [i] set in Liverpool aptly demonstrates. It is the same in every generation.

Growing up, I presumed that everyone was fighting the worst war in history and that people were, therefore, generally law-abiding. Naively, this has remained with me. Then I came across LISTENING TO BRITAIN edited by Paul Addison and Jeremy A. Crang.[ii]

Similarly, are the diaries of Vera Brittain which are often quoted at length in documentaries about the Second World War, made as the century handed the baton to this century.

Foyle's War [i]The Drama depicts life in the strategically placed coastal town of Hastings on the English Channel and from where, (like Folkestone just along the coastline where I practised law in 2001), give us a splendid view of the French Coast. How different during those war years. France and the English Channel Islands were occupied. As the machinery of war gathered pace and the boot-stomping victor of 1939-1940 discovered with great shock exactly what the warning ~ you have sown the wind, now you will reap the whirlwind, meant![ii]

The Main Image to this Introduction shows Castle Street leading into Lord Street Liverpool 1940-1941. Liverpool and Bootle were bombed persistently in 1940 and early 1941, culminating in an eight night continuous Blitz between 1-8 May 1941, the intent being to destroy the City, the dockyards, and infrastructure. Housing districts, as in every other city and town in Britain and Ireland were regarded by the Luftwaffe high command as legitimate targets. As Listening to Britain 1940 all too clearly shows, central government did not permit the general public to learn about the Liverpool Blitz for fear that it would undermine morale. This angered the People of Liverpool and Bootle and Merseyside, and Lord Derby published a booklet in 1941 to counter this denial.

News travels fast in any event. Liverpool was Britain’s principal maritime port throughout the Second World War, and people talk. When I took up work in Liverpool in 2003, I mentioned this when I came across a facsimile of the booklet, and I remember my mother’s comment. Ah, yes. Liverpool. They got hit bad, really bad.[iii]

The May 1941 Blitz was the most concentrated series of air attacks on any British city area outside London during the Second World War, removing the entire Liverpool city centre as well as large swathes of Bootle, and also Birkenhead Docks, Wallasey and New Brighton on the south bank of the Mersey on the Wirral Peninsula. These attacks resulted in 1,453 deaths and thousands more injured and homeless during those eight days alone. The original booklet served to document the devastation and the resilience of the local population and to counteract the Ministry of Information policy of not keeping the national public updated.

This booklet is now available through the National Museums Liverpool shop and other historical book retailers.

Some might wonder why I say Britain and Ireland rather than Britain and Northern Ireland, because Ireland was neutral. Dublin, the Capital of Ireland (Eire as it was then known) was bombed three times in January and May 1941, as well as Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland. Apologists today, write that the Luftwaffe accidentally bombed Dublin.

In every war in history, the aggressor has little or no time for most neutral countries. And if the reader is having a problem with that, I simply point the reader to Gaza. No, that does not mean that I am against Israel or that I am anti-semitic. I have spent much time in Israel. I have stood on the West Bank. I have seen the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and I have listened to the arguments of all. I do question a leader of the free world who has clearly gone rogue. And that means that I question the American People. I will be clear. I have always respected that nation, but I have also always been highly suspicious of their motives. How can you say that? My reply this morning, 23 December 2025 is simple… Greenland, Venezuela, Syria, Canada, Europe.

Footnotes

[i] Granada Television A Family at War first aired on 14 April 1970 until February 1972

[ii] LISTENING TO BRITAIN edited by Paul Addison and Jeremy A. Crang published by THE BODLEY HEAD LONDON in 2010 and reprints by VINTAGE 2011 onwards

[iii] FOYLE’S WAR, a critically acclaimed detective drama set during and after the Second World War, aired for eight (seasons) on the United Kingdom’s ITV Network. Although ITV initially cancelled the show in 2007, strong public demand and high ratings led to its revival, continuing production until its final episode in 2015. Rights have now been bought to show Foyle’s War as nine Series on Netflix (UK).

[iv] Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris Air Officer Commanding Bomber Command Royal Air Force in a radio address on 28 July 1942

[v]A booklet about the Liverpool Blitz during May 1st-8th, 1941, was published by the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo Ltd, featuring a foreword by the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Derby (Lord Derby). The original publication from 1941 was an "authoritative record" of how the Blitz affected Merseyside and its people, containing five essays and many black and white photographs. This historical document has been reprinted in modern times under the title Bombers Over Merseyside: The Authoritative Record of The Blitz 1940-41.

The next article in this series Listening to Britain in History is scheduled for January 2026.