ABSTRACT
For the British people the Second World War was a total war. It demanded the mobilisation of every resource, every citizen, every ounce of energy and treasure. During the course of the war the British broke taboos, debated the future of their country with great vigour, accepted hardships and privations. Unsurprisingly, the effect of such intense effort has left an indelible mark on modern British culture and the pool of public knowledge of the home front is wide, even if it isn’t very deep. Most people know something about rationing, particularly the lack of nylon stockings, causing women to stain their legs. They will recognise the character of the spiv and the slogan ‘Dig for Victory’, that women found American servicemen wonderfully glamorous and many became GI brides. This chapter will therefore concentrate on those images that have a high profile in the popular memory of the home front: rationing, the role of the BBC, sex, and the position of women. Such images and concepts are given an academic slant by the increasing significance of the home front in National Curriculum History studies and university courses. Our knowledge is curiously balanced between two poles: the ‘sacred’ – the British people heroically playing their part in the titanic struggle for survival – and the ‘profane’ – the British people engaged in all sorts of behaviour, some of which was, perhaps, improper. So does this provide the chance to divide the real experience of war from that devised by government and mellowed by memory and nostalgia? The answer has to be not really, for, as noted so often, the division between the contemporary reality of war and the remembered version is not a particularly valid or valuable one because no such clear lines have ever existed. Instead, this chapter will be slightly different from the others. It will also examine those elements of the British war story that are long since forgotten but that were once considered to be of absolute and vital importance. There is now very little popular knowledge of Britain’s wartime affinity with the USSR or the political divisions that were so fiercely felt and expressed. This chapter will reveal that the memory of the home front is a complex one, shot through with areas of contrast, light and shade.
