PhD Thesis: Chapter 4: Representations of ‘Your Britain’, Urban and Rural

Macmillan summarised the aims of the Ministry of Information (MOI) to the Cabinet as demonstrating ‘what Britain was fighting for; how Britain was fighting; and the need for sacrifice if the war was to be won’.[1] National identification is always central in wartime, and ‘the land’ (and what is built on it) is always central to such discourse. Initially triggered by the two very different sets of images produced within the ‘Your Britain’ campaign by Games and Newbould in 1942 (figures 14 to 20), this chapter will consider the posters produced by government that were believed to reflect the ‘Britain’ that people were being asked to fight for. The differences in appeal within one campaign are very startling, as both are presented as ‘Your Britain’, as something to be fought for. One appears to appeal to a modernistic, urban vision of the future, whilst the other appeals to a rural, pastoral past. In war, however, ‘or other periods of acute national danger, propaganda machinery is likely to simplify, to make black and white, issues which in fact may have been more complex’.[2] Such symbols of ‘Britishness’ can be addressed for their greater significance, the modernistic vision tying in with the Beveridge Report which was being produced around the same time, the rural vision addressing the significance of the landscape as a part of English heritage.[3] These seven posters, produced at the same time, within the same campaign, by the same organisation,[4] will be examined alongside other posters depicting rural or urban landscapes, and within the context of longer term debates defining British national identities and landscapes. The chapter will discuss a range of discourses which underlay the posters, including: national identity, citizenship, the rural, agriculture, land, heritage, tradition, home, suburbs, reconstruction, the urban, future, science, technology, medicine, health, education, and modernity. How differing poster styles were deployed to represent these discourses will also be considered.

The Context and Planning of ‘British’ Posters

National ‘[i]dentities are composed of a variety of ingredients, including a sense of community or place, loyalty to particular institutions or ideologies, shared aspects of common experience and culture.’[5] They are generally regarded as relative concepts ‘always constituted through definitions of Self and Other and always subject to internal differentiation’.[6] Samuel defines the English nation as having self-consciously emerged in the nineteenth century, which ‘on the one hand summoned up the ghosts of the past to shore up threatened values, and on the other prepared a master race for its imperial vocation’.[7] With wider enfranchisement introduced since the First World War, the Second World War was ‘The People’s War’, with a wider number and range of people included in formal citizenship. These citizens were being asked to be model citizens, and some in government thought people needed to know what they were fighting for. As in commercial advertising, people were incentivised to give in return for gains.

This chapter will use Benedict Anderson’s idea of an ‘imagined community’. The British people were fighting together for the imagined community of their nation:

It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, of even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.[8]

Anderson questions what ‘makes people love and die for nations, as well as hate and kill in their name’.[9] He examines how tradition is constructed, invented and appropriated, often through symbolism based on false tradition. Anderson’s frame will be used in this chapter to discuss both the ways in which utopian visions of the future were popular in wartime, and how tradition was also appropriated. For example, as the war removed accessibility to large swathes of the countryside, it was mythologised and became an emphasised part of ‘Your Britain’.[10] Both utopian and traditional visions drew on longer term discourses. Often the rural is associated with conservative pastoral idyll images, and the urban with socialistic futures.[11] This chapter will consider whether there was a consistent contrast between the use of such images in posters, whether images of modernity appeared in rural images, and whether there was any harking back to the past in ‘modern’ images.

The rural images tend to include aspects that are unchanging, quiet, idyllic, steadfast, tranquil, and spacious. Images of rural areas are generally of balmy spring or summer days, particularly landscapes, few of which, following art movements such as Romanticism, have human beings in them. As a more recent photographer explains, ‘[people’s] presence in a landscape seems to trivialise and distort it’, when looking for ‘a timelessness and a permanence which the human and the urban cannot convey’.[12] The MOI had no need to invent the theme of ‘Deep England’, as it was ‘rooted in the national consciousness’.[13] Many in wartime would have been familiar with the work of John Constable, whose famous landscape paintings of the nineteenth century have come to define quintessential Englishness,[14] with human figures deliberately kept distant or indistinct.[15] Through his images, often recruited on the side of tradition, Constable was seeking to portray a solution to the struggle between progress and preservation.[16]

From the twelfth century when 97% of the United Kingdom population lived in rural areas,[17] there had been many changes in population movements, with about 80% in urban areas by the 1880s.[18] In the nineteenth century, many still felt that their roots were rural, and the countryside still remained physically close. Country Life noted that ours was ‘an island race whereof even the town dweller is a country man at heart.’[19] Town dwellers viewed urban living as a ‘temporary necessity’ and dreamt of the day that he would find a cottage on the green, and ‘real’ values.[20] The dominant image of late nineteenth century England was of an idealised and sentimentalised Arcadia,[21] a term which referred to the unspoilt parts of England where there was a perceived unique, international beauty.[22] The number visiting the countryside during the interwar years demonstrates that the ‘centrality of the countryside to national identity’ was still key.[23] Originally the countryside was seen as a place of function, synonymous with agriculture.[24] With the growth of outdoor pursuits such as hiking and camping in the early years of the twentieth century,[25] particularly the 1930s, it became a place of consumption and (aesthetic) pleasure rather than production.[26] Many would have seen H.V.Morton’s In Search of England, first published in 1927, still being republished in 1944, full of photographs that highlighted the old and quiet, lanes and cathedrals.[27] The aspirant suburban middle classes in particular, would also have been brought up on images in magazines such as Country Life, which provided ‘assured and immutable’ establishment values,[28] focusing on a celebration of nature through landscape, country houses and sporting pursuits.[29]

With this growth of aesthetic appreciation of the countryside arose a number of preservationist groups, looking for a planned countryside. For example, the CPRE (Council for the Preservation of Rural England), founded in 1926,[30] was looking ‘for a tidy, ordered countryside, rather than preserving an unchanging, traditional countryside’.[31] Commonly preservation is identified with ‘nostalgia and anti-modernity’,[32] but many preservationist movements were radical, and against the private ownership of significant areas that could be of good to the community. Few leaders of preservationist movements would have regarded their work as a retreat to the past: rather, they were concerned with improving the future.[33] They constructed ‘specific narratives of history’, which posited ‘a particular relationship between past, present and future’,[34] using the past to criticise the present in the hope that the future would be better.[35] Such rural planners wanted a countryside ‘fit for purpose’, not littered with billboards or mock-Tudor houses. Expressing ‘a particular modernism, committed to order and design’, they were not simply protecting the way things were for the sake of tradition,[36] but was any of this reflected in the wartime posters?

A variety of Acts were passed to protect the countryside, including the first Green Belt formed outside London in 1938,[37] providing a physical barrier, preserving the distinction between urban and rural areas. There were increased restrictions on advertising and housing developments, and local authorities bought several areas of natural beauty. With the growth of hiking and other countryside pursuits the question of access to private areas of beauty was brought up, bringing town dwellers into conflict with those resident in the country, particularly farmers.[38] During the interwar years there arose the idea of landscaped citizenship, those visiting needed to be aesthetically educated. The countryside was to be open to all, but those visiting needed to be educated in the body to the ‘correct’ conduct, such as picking up litter.[39]

In the Second World War, a machine war, ‘rural England became the touchstone of stability and tranquillity’.[40] Country Life noted that Churchill recognised the value of presenting the war as a struggle between Britain, a humane, old-fashioned rural culture, against Germany, a heartless industrial society run amok.[41] The myth of ‘Deep England’ was very important during the war, a ‘green and pleasant land with rolling hills, village greens and parish churches’, with an idyllic landscape symbolising ‘order, stability, and tradition, linking the past with the present’, which ‘no amount of German bombs could destroy’.[42] The land did not simply have an aesthetic purpose during the war, regaining its functional element, with farmers ‘the fourth line of defence’.[43] Unsurprisingly, it is quite difficult to track down posters addressed to the rural community, as the poster is really a tool of urban areas. One questionnaire respondent makes clear the dependence that farmers had on trade magazines: ‘“Make two blades of grass grow where one grew before”’. This slogan has been identified as a theme that appeared widely in farming circles and in the farming press, Farmers Weekly, Farmer and Stockbreeder.[44] Such magazines could bring important issues to the attention of rurally-bound farmers faster than any poster, being brought to the farmer, rather than requiring the farmer to be where the message was.[45]

Most posters were aimed at the urban population, with rural images used to get them to defend England’s mythical ‘green and pleasant land’, or attract them to work in rural areas. With the nation having to be less reliant on food imports, and with men called up into the armed forces, agriculture needed more workers.[46] The Woman’s Land Army (WLA), formed in June 1939, looked to attract women to work on farms,[47] for seasonal as well as permanent work, rather than other options such as factories.[48] Within the WLA campaign, the MOI, working on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture, was keen to focus on the effort that the women were making, and rejected a design from Laura Knight. The design was rejected on the basis that: ‘the emphasis in your design is so very strongly on the horses and so little on the girl that the message which we wish to convey would not really get to the public’.[49] The new design was altered from an illustration of three girls working a plough, to one depicting just one, entirely replacing the man’s role.[50] In March 1940, a new WLA recruitment campaign was planned, solely for seasonal work. The national campaign was to include posters, handbills, articles in the local press, cinema publicity, and local recruiting meetings and demonstrations, including the use of Employment Exchanges.[51] In 1942 a new campaign was planned, to be organised on the same lines as the 1941 campaign. General recruiting appeals were to be avoided, but efforts were to be made to record spontaneous offers of help.[52]

The ‘Lend a Hand on the Land’ campaign looked to attract urbanites to use their holidays to work in rural areas. It first went national in 1945,[53] and ran into the post-war years, even running in conjunction with the ‘Holidays at Home’ campaign.[54]. People ‘discovered that farm work was a dignified, and notably cheap, way of taking a holiday in wartime’,[55] continuing a long-term trend, where the industrial workforce would help with the annual harvest. Hop picking in Kent was still an annual event for many East End Londoners until well after the Second World War.[56] Within urban areas the ‘Dig For Victory’ campaign began in the early months of the war, initially as a ‘Grow More Food’ campaign. Extensive publicity, including ten million instructional leaflets in 1942 alone,[57] was used by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in a campaign to provide an additional 500,000 allotments in and around urban areas in England and Wales.[58] With an emphasis on idealised rural self-sufficiency, and an increased knowledge of nutrition, the benefits of growing one’s own food were stressed, with fruit and vegetables, important for the health of the nation, only ‘absolutely fresh when grown in a man’s own garden’.[59]

The recurrent binary opposition in interwar British culture had been the belief that rural indicated life, and urban indicated death.[60] Initially the Industrial Revolution appeared to reinvigorate towns and cities, offering ‘handsome public buildings and parks, gracious suburbs and vibrant shopping streets’.[61] However, by the twentieth century the terms more associated with urban areas were crowded, cramped, polluted, poverty, dirty and disease-ridden. Houses had been squeezed into the courtyards and gardens of existing houses, and dark and airless alleyways developed. Diseases, particularly waterborne, became a problem, and in the second half of the nineteenth century action was taken to improve matters, particularly as it started to impact on the rich.[62] During the interwar years travel became cheaper and easier, aiding the growth of suburbia, where new, clean housing, and life outside the city were sold to the ‘respectable’ working classes (see figure 63).[63] The government concentrated on slum clearance programmes,[64] and vast amounts of housing were built on cheap land, developed into suburbs. Such housing was seen as the key to averting working class discontent,[65] although many did not want to move as they feared the loss of warmth and friendliness of their current surroundings. There was also the problem of relatively high rents, as houses were built an average of twelve to an acre as opposed to forty plus per acre prior to the First World War, and the expense of commuting.[66] For those who did move to suburbia, however, this idea of ‘the Englishman’s home is his castle’ was evident, with neo-Georgian and mock-Tudor ‘self-contained, owner-occupied, semi-detached’ houses ‘signifying both the desire for privacy and the desire for status’.[67] The suburbs, with their mock-style housing, attracted derogatory comment. Those moving to the suburbs were seen as attempting to get back to the country, to enjoy ‘rus in urbe’, the benefits of the country in the town. There was an element of fantasy, the suburban man ‘being neither urbane nor exhibiting the qualities of the true-born English countryman’.[68] The pastoral tradition was clear, but vulgarised, in suburbia, judging by the number of streets named, for example, Laburnum Avenue. Garden Cities, designed by Ebenezer Howard, also grew in this period.[69] The countryside came to be regarded with nostalgia and had the allure of ‘paradise lost’.[70] More urban solutions were also presented. The influence of Le Corbusier, for instance, although not fully implemented, could be seen in the concrete blocks of flats built, intended to provide communities surrounded by green space.[71]

Miles and Smith note that many historical texts have concentrated on the perceived divide between the depressed industrial areas of the North, and the new consumer economy in the South.[72] Donald Horne sees the South standing for ‘order and tradition’, defined as ‘romantic, illogical, muddled, divinely lucky, Anglican, aristocratic, traditional, frivolous’; while the North was projected as ‘pragmatic, empirical, calculating, Puritan, bourgeois, enterprising, adventurous, scientific, serious’, believing in ‘struggle’,[73] with similar descriptions from Orwell and Priestley.[74] The landscape, however, needs to be seen as a whole, rather than in binary terms, for example, as highland and lowland, radical and conservative,[75] and ‘to concentrate entirely on these disunities and paradoxes is to miss the significance of the unities’. During the interwar years, as the reality of pastoral England, particularly the South,[76] was being swallowed by suburbia, the associated myth of pastoral England, articulated historically to the myth of the pre-industrial Golden Age, a time of supposed harmony and progress, became stronger.[77] Powell writes that the war prompted the halt in the divergence between north and south, as it was necessary for them to fight together,[78] but in the media Coventry complained that London received more attention about the bombing. All industrial areas were under threat from bombs, but Southern factories, where consumer factories moved to production of wartime goods, were more within the range.

After the Spanish Civil War bombing was expected to be catastrophic.[79] In the summer of 1939 over 80% of Londoners wanted to evacuate their children in the event of war, and evacuation was meticulously planned to meet these kind of numbers. In the event less than 50% sent their children to safe rural areas, and the plans were thrown into chaos, resulting in a well-publicised disaster. Those in the reception areas were shocked by the state of poor urban children,[80] and although there was increased social mixing, it merely confirmed the prejudices that the middle-classes had ‘about the dirty fecklessness of the working class’.[81] The initial stages of evacuation caused many problems, and the evacuees started to drift back to town. By January 1940, over half of those evacuated had returned home, despite efforts by the government to persuade parents to leave the children in the country.[82] People were getting ‘impatient and irritated at being told to be patient’, at being told ‘that the difficulties are unavoidable, or that they will straighten themselves out in time’, and were looking for more concrete measures from government.[83] There were doubts within Government as to the value of an extra evacuation campaign as it was unclear whether the Government had a settled policy on evacuation, and was sending mixed messages by re-opening schools in dangerous areas.[84] On November 20 1939, a small photographic poster, described as ‘effective, attractive and simple’: ‘Children are Safer in the Country, Leave them There’, was published. It was hoped that it ‘would serve a dual purpose of restraining parents from bringing their children back at Christmas and of serving a long term policy’.[85] When the Blitz began in September 1940 a second wave of evacuation did occur.[86]

Intellectuals such as Orwell viewed the ‘real’ England as ‘the willow tree by the stream’, but in the meantime campaigned for an ‘English’ revolution, espousing socialist principles but with English decency rather than in a Soviet style.[87] As with most periods of English history, ‘the inter-war years revealed a series of tensions, paradoxes and echoes between utopian and arcadian fantasies’.[88] The Second World War probably accelerated, rather than was the catalyst for, socialist change, as intervention, rather than laissez-faire had begun in earnest in the 1930s. Rising social and economic standards were accepted as necessary, and such rising demands were strongly influenced by the work of social reformers.[89] This was the result of two nineteenth century trends, one a concern with the employment conditions of the working classes, and the other with health, housing and hygiene.[90]

From about 1940 onwards there were many calls for a publication of peace aims, including large measures of social reconstruction after the war. Themes of ‘never before’ and ‘never again’ emerged well before 1945: ‘never again a return to the poverty and perceived chaos of the 1930s, never again such an opportunity to make a new country’.[91] For example, Basil Wright wrote in the Documentary News Letter in June 1940, that ‘a nation fighting desperately to defend the present lacks the inspiration which springs from a vision of the future’. It was ‘necessary to repair past errors and fortify national morale with an articulation of democratic citizenship’, a ‘conservative force’ which could ‘mould the future’.[92] This was necessarily a radicalisation of opinion, but the growth of information services in wartime brought many of the intelligentsia concerned with the issues into a position of power.[93] The MOI, responding the Home Intelligence (HI) findings, argued for the government to publish peace aims,[94] in order to strengthen public morale, and ‘heal the rifts left by the interwar experience’.[95] Churchill, however, wanted to postpone discussing future changes until the war was won, not wanting to ‘raise false hopes’.[96] Churchill was too concerned with fighting the war abroad and, after 1942, in co-ordinating with American and Soviet efforts. The Second World War did put the regenerative ideas of ‘real’ British futuristic values in a powerful position. Churchill left the Home Front to Labour or Tory Reform ministers, many of whom believed that war was also being fought against the conditions of the 1930s, allowing ideas of the ‘New Jerusalem’ unaccustomed power and influence.[97]

In December 1942, the Beveridge Report was published.[98] The central recommendations ‘comprised the creation of a unified and universal system of social insurance’, which would protect citizens ‘from the cradle to the grave’.[99] It was perceived as a struggle against ‘five giants on the road of reconstruction’, defined as Want, Ignorance, Squalor, Idleness and Disease.[100] Reactions to it varied from enthusiastic acceptance,[101] disbelief that it would ever be implemented,[102] as ‘Homes Fit for Heroes’ had never been after the First World War,[103] and a disgust that such an expensive idea should have been mooted.[104] Many believed that it epitomised the more ‘classless’ society that people were fighting for, an idea that gained more prevalence with a large mass electorate.[105] Implementation of the scheme met resistance with the Churchill Cabinet, largely as it would involve a threefold increase in costs over 1941 compared to relative schemes. Churchill wanted to delay questions of social reform until the end of the war, partly to avoid distractions, and partly to avoid expensive post-war commitments. Bracken, as Minister of Information, was particularly keen to prevent Beveridge from making public statements on the subject, expecting that it would attract ‘an immense amount of ballyhoo about the importance of implementing the recommendations without delay’.[106] Public opinion was keenly interested in the proposals, and appeared to look for commitment from the government. Churchill was not keen to devote time to a matter of such importance when the war was still far from won, but in 1943 Lord Woolton was appointed as Minister for Reconstruction, and a year later a white paper was accepted which included many of Beveridge’s ideas.[107]

Wars are expensive, particularly the Second World War, which spanned nearly six years and was highly mechanised. This needed to be paid for, and discourses of the ‘people’s war’ suggested that it was the people who should therefore be asked to pay for this. Although income tax rose and reached a wider net of people, further measures were also needed.[108] As people were earning more, and had fewer consumer goods to spend their money on, saving became a ‘national obsession’. The National Savings campaign spent more on advertising than even the Ministry of Food, and many campaigns were targeted at the small saver. The main benefit for the government was to combat inflation.[109]

The following section will focus on the ‘Your Britain’ poster series, which contained very different urban and rural representations in the same series. All posters were ultimately depicting either the world that was being fought for, against, or something that could be done to achieve it, some of which were clearly looking forward, others backwards. The section also considers other posters that represent or appeal to the British landscape.

The Design of ‘British’ Posters

Starting in November 1942, the Army Bureau of Current Affairs (ABCA) produced a series of seven pictorial posters on the theme of ‘Your Britain’.[110] This showed the men of the British Army some of the things they were fighting for.[111] This was ABCA’s first enterprise of this type, as previous efforts had been confined to map reviews in poster form.[112] Abram Games, a modernist artist, was the official War Office poster artist and Newbould, well known for his pre-war railway posters, his assistant.[113] Commissioned to do these designs by the War Office, the posters were distributed by ABCA, three by Abram Games,[114] four by Frank Newbould. Newbould chose ‘views of English country scenes and buildings’ as his subjects, in a style that closely followed ‘his pre-war technique’.[115] Presenting a Southern England, Newbould’s designs focused on a typical English village (figure 14), Alfriston Fair (figure 15), Salisbury Catherdral (figure 16), and the South Downs (figure 16). The largely rural Southern counties, particularly Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire, were in the ‘front line’ in the ‘Battle of Britain’, so the ‘image of the English village could be related more directly, by juxtaposition and contrast, to German barbarism than could Yorkshire moors or Scottish coalfields’.[116]

Villages were places with communal functions, small areas with ‘an ancient church with lofty tower’ at the centre,[117] often mythically constructed tranquil ‘villages in the mind’.[118] This is the image Newbould presents in figure 14, even without the text, instantly recognisable as an ‘English’ image, in the style of Constable’s ‘quintessential Englishness’, described on page 112. Although most of the UK’s inhabitants had long lived in towns, ‘the idealised rustic village was a potent symbol of national identity, of “England’s Green and Pleasant Land”.’[119] Miles and Smith explain how ‘[t]ime and again, the village community is represented as a microcosm of the national community.’[120] Several discourses are evident within the image: discourses of tradition, where something that appears to have existed in a stable and unchanging manner for a long time is to be defended. The viewer is told that this will not last unless ‘you’ fight for it. The discourses of religion and community are presented in the Saxon church (topped with St George’s flag) and the pub (probably traditionally named), central to the image, and thus to village life. Discourses of aesthetic beauty are also clear: a quiet, traditional village, beautiful buildings, well planted, noticeably with an established English Oak. Bathed in sunlight, the image appears almost timeless, with indistinct signs of human activity.

Figure 15 depicts Alfriston Fair, in Sussex, where there was a long tradition of village fairs. The image, with traditional pink-striped awnings, baloon-sellers, and swing-boats is the type of image that evokes nostalgia now. Discourses of family life are evident in this poster, as children enjoy a simple carefree time on the swings and roundabouts. The flag on top of the roundabout appears to be another St George’s Cross. Once again, the old English Oak and church appear at the centre of the image. The image appeals to what people ‘know’, and follows on from previous traditions, particularly well-known railway posters, where depictions of the English countryside were already popular before the war.[121]

Religious discourse and the established church is evident in figure 16 which depicts the spired gothic Salisbury Cathedral, bathed in sunlight. This traditional image would have been familiar to many from guidebooks, particularly after the 1937 centenary of Constable, and his significant painting of Salisbury Cathedral.[122] Once again, an established old English Oak is a key part of the image. The only person in the image is an indistinct figure with a horse and cart under the tree.

In August 1943 figure 17 of the South Downs was the latest in the series prepared for ABCA,[123] described by Darracott and Loftus as a ‘traditional vision of an idyllic, pastoral, almost historical Britain’.[124] In 1938 it was believed that ‘[m]ore than any other race in the world are we influenced by the smooth gentle contours of the south-country wolds and downs.’[125] Roads, and possibly electricity pylons, existed on the downs, but none of this is evident in this picture. Instead there is a timeless sweep of almost hedgeless landscape, and more established English oaks. An old manor or farmhouse nestles among the hills, but there is very little evidence of mechanisation. Tractors ‘were still far from universal, and [were] outnumbered by farm horses through the interwar years’.[126] An old shepherd in traditional garb is walks across the lush green land with an old English sheepdog, bathed in sunlight. This is reminiscent of a typical image, particularly from nineteenth century photographs, where ‘[s]hepherds and sheepdogs were often almost inseparable’.[127] All four images follow the long tradition of typical horizontally painted ‘landscapes’.[128] Newbould’s posters are typical examples of how pre-war travel poster style was used almost unchanged during the war to arouse patriotic feelings for an idealised pastoral Britain.[129] Such peaceful visions were a relief from the grim realities of war. Despite largely industrialised populations, rural images avoided confrontations with the ‘awkward realities’ of urban living.[130] As Advertiser’s Weekly described it, ‘Newbould… looks back on the peaceful side of British life and presents those landmarks which are inseparably bound up with the spirit of England’.

The same Advertiser’s Weekly article noted that Games had pushed ahead to the future. He produced three surrealist-inspired images for the ‘Your Britain’ campaign, covering three of the subjects dear to socialist hearts: modern variants of health, education and housing. Art and Industry noted that these posters would have been very different without the clear influence of Chirico and Dali, with the images dependent ‘on the extreme of photographic realism that results from the skilful use of perspective and shadows’.[131] Although photographic techniques were available, and Games had been brought up in a photographic studio, Games ‘disliked photography’, finding ‘it too mechanical and neither creative nor personal enough’, finding the airbrush more flexible.[132] All three images depict pioneering, futuristic buildings that already existed: Finsbury Health Centre (figure 18), school in Cambridgeshire (figure 19), and a block of workers’ flats in London (figure 20). These new, clean-lined and geometric, images are superimposed on the unromantic old, presenting ‘the bad old ways of poor living conditions’. They demonstrated ‘how slums can give way to bright, clean houses and how dark, stuffy schoolrooms can be redesigned to admit light and air’.[133] These images demonstrate a belief that the future was to be planned, that collective suffering and heroism deserved a collective and planned future, and a sense that if a country was worth dying for, it had to be worth living for. A planned society ‘was upheld as offering a new basis for social and political organisation at a time when laissez-faire capitalism was in crisis’.[134] However, not all were in favour of reconstruction, as some saw planning as ‘non-English’, even Nazi.[135]

Discourses of a healthy future are evident in figure 18, depicting Finsbury Health Centre. Possibly a community health centre, Finsbury, like Peckham, promoted health for families, and looked to re-enable the ‘village gaze’ within an urban setting.[136] Death, disease and rickets are evident in the background – also the past, to be solved by modern healthcare regimes. Discourses of a modern urban future mask the dreary past, and discourses of cleanliness are evident, meshing with discourses of science and modernity. The large concrete structures depicted in the images were believed to offer cleanliness, lightness and freshness. The architecture appears to show the influence of modern architects such as Le Corbusier, with the health centre in an Art Deco style and the buildings alongside in a Bauhaus style. Figure 19 depicts a school in Cambridgeshire ‘where village children are learning to grow up in healthful surroundings’.[137] In the past there is old style furniture, a lack of equipment, and what there is is tired and broken. Old styles of education with easels, chalk dusk, in small dilapidated village schools are to be replaced by bright, modern large schools. It is not clear what age or gender the schoolchildren are, but light, fresh, airy and modern facilities are to be provided. The ideal of universal education, with children ‘our future’, was growing in the interwar years, culminating in the Education Act of 1944.

Figure 20 depicts a block of workers’ flats built in London in 1936, probably a result of various interwar social housing experiments. Although the suburbs were the main areas of interwar development, these are not presented as the future. As with the other images, Games’ future is very much an urban, concrete one. The flats were to be part of the new, planned housing, carefully planned to use less ground space, and built of clean, hygienic fabrics, with balconies to access fresh air.[138] Unlike the established Oak trees evident in all of Newbould’s posters, this poster has the sole tree in Games’ designs, and this tree is still new, not yet established. The old tenement buildings in the background, part of the nineteenth century housing movements, had become overcrowded, uninhabitable and discredited. Such houses were dark and dingy, and generally housed one family per room, the water pump is evident outside. The scruffy poster on the wall claims ‘Carbol Disinfectant kills fleas, bugs, mice, rats’, real problems for urban areas.

McLaine believes that Games was putting forward messages the Government was reluctant to make on its own behalf,[139] but the War Office was behind the posters. The assumptions evident in these posters structured the thinking that made Beveridge acceptable. Although the less obviously ‘English’ view, Games’ was the style taken forward to the 1951 Festival of Britain. Games’ aim was ‘essentially about paring down the message to its simplest and most powerful form’,[140] and every element of his design was a working part.[141] The posters use ‘strongly symbolical colour’, with the past in dark and muted colours, but the future bright and sunny. Games’ designs show a familiarity with surrealism, which allowed poster designers to go beyond the physical, realistic depictions of a subject. Art and Industry noted in 1943 that Games’ posters ‘are interesting as an example of modern design harnessed to an educative and constructive theme.’[142] Although the two sets of images by Newbould and Games are very different, there are similarities in discourse. For example, discourses of citizenship are evident within the poster series, as the slogan ‘Your Britain’ implies a sense of ownership, something to be defended and fought for, but presented in very different ways, reflecting very different contradictory but, nonetheless, meshing discourses. All posters ask the viewer to ‘Fight for it NOW’, aimed at (citizen) soldiers already fighting, this made the killing appear justified. The rural images suggest that they do their job as soldiers and they will maintain the rural idyll. The urban images provide both a fear, that unless you maintain your role we will be going back to cramped conditions, and they point to a hope that the future will be better.

Rural images are often idealised, unrealistic, but in a style of heightened realism, as with the Women’s Land Army (WLA) posters. Smiling English roses are presented within the sunny rural pastoral idyll, in landscapes (figure 64), near picturesque old farmhouses (figure 65), and amongst ‘cute’ animals (figure 66). The women are rarely shown doing the physical work that would have been necessary, and always remain recognisably feminine.[143] More of a rarity appears to be ‘That Men May Fight’ (figure 67), which shows more of the real hard physical work the WLA did, with extra realism provided by using photographs and testimonials from actual farmers. The posters by Fougasse (figures 68 and 69), although cartoons, present more realism, with the women doing backbreaking work in the rain. Utilising blank space, the image focuses the eye upon the simplified main character at the centre. These posters, however, were trying to produce sympathy and money for those who had done the work, rather than gain new recruits. Throughout all of these posters there is little sign of mechanisation, most are holding pitchforks or buckets, although Matless believed that machinery feminised farm work as it made labour easier.[144] Many of the images from the ‘Lend a Hand on the Land’ type campaigns were more of the same, for example figures 70 and 71, although now with a mixed gender audience. Again, the images were over-idealised, depicting smiling men or women, looking distinctly unflustered, set within a ‘traditional’ landscape, as in figure 72. Significantly, unlike in traditional landscapes, the figures of the people are central to the image, not indistinct. The message is that anyone can do this. There is little evidence of modernisation or mechanisation in agriculture, although the straight lines in figure 73 could indicate mechanised ploughing. The focus is on manual work, companionship, and holidays (figure 74), when there would have been few other options for holidays. Those depicted within the posters are happy and healthy specimens, including those in the services (figures 75 and 76), obviously keen for a change, although the clothing is not always the most practical. Particularly symbolic is the rolled up muscled arm (figures 77 and 78), ready for hard physical labour, first launched in July 1943 and expected to become a big feature. These ‘holidays’ were presented as something even the children could manage (figure 79). We can see in this image a distinct contrast between the grey urban and colourful and sunny rural, lifestyles.

The ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign was effectively a rural campaign played out in suburban or urban areas, as allotments were encouraged and schools turned their fields over to growing food. Dig for Victory was a huge campaign, running for much of the war, and thus presents a real choice of images. The phrase is first obvious in figure 80, an obviously local, text-only poster from November 1939. The poster is quite solemn, promoting something that will help the national effort, but not selling the benefits to the viewer. Also at the same time, figure 81 was produced, with more emphasis on ‘Grow More Food’, before the phrase ‘Dig for Victory’ took on a life of its own. Using natural green colours, the older man is dealing with hard physical labour: ‘the imagery of male and female domestic digging called up an amateur spirit of improvisation’, with ‘muddling agrarianism’ moving ‘from the farm to the urban allotment’.[145] Science if applied to this ‘muddling agrarianism’, with careful planning could get the best from the ground, all year round (figure 82). Such detailed text would probably have been more appropriate in a leaflet, but was possibly provided for reference on allotment sheds. The image uses the logo of the foot on the spade, which first appeared early in the war (figure 83), where the ‘Minister of Agriculture exhorted not only the big man with the plough, but the little man with the spade’.[146] The spade is the tool of the individual, and within this image we have a manly work boot digging with a functional spade into soil that is to be tamed to become fertile in the war effort. The image was ‘cleverly used in all forms of the campaign’, which gave strength to the appeal.[147] Using photography, this image purported to reproduce reality, although only the left leg is visible, the right leg must have been airbrushed from the image – why is unclear.

The benefits of fresh food are sold in a new campaign in September 1941 when the ‘familiar foot-on-spade illustration’ gave way to a traditional still-life full-colour design of a basket of vegetables, (figure 84), directed more noticeably at women (with most men in uniform). The appeal for allotment cultivation was to continue, but home gardens would ‘receive new emphasis’.[148] Such over-heightened colour visions of abundant vegetables, (rarely fruit or salad), good, nutritious food in a time of shortages, would have appealed (figures 85 to 87). There would be no need for coupons, although this is not sold as part of the campaign. Stapledon commented in 1942 that:

The inter-dependability of food and ships can never be sufficiently stressed, and it is a fact that should always be held prominently before the peoples of our small and densely populated island, alike in times of peace and war.[149]

Games’ certainly demonstrated this within figure 88. Most of the previous images have been very naturalistic, but the benefits of growing ones own food to yourself (figure 89) and your nation (figure 88) were made clear through Games’ modern montaged images, the spade and the ship together presenting a new message, and Schleger’s clever use of vegetables as text (figure 90), natural forms represented in an unnatural manner. The slogan appears in various guises, which indicates the longevity and adaptable nature of the slogan, including ‘Dig on for Victory’ (figure 91), set within a traditional landscape, and ‘Dig for Plenty’ (figure 92), which again emphasises the benefits. The campaign even gained commercial support, for example from Guinness (figure 93), which was believed to have iron-qualities, which gave the strength to ‘Dig for Victory’.[150] Although people are rarely seen in the images, innocent, Aryan, beautiful children, in a style associated with children’s story books, do appear in figure 94, needing fresh food to keep them healthy. The guilt feeling is even stronger in figure 95 where (in the style of Hassall’s seaside posters) the child is trying to do their bit, when it should be the adults doing this particular job, although children were expected to do their bit elsewhere.

With two different audiences for the evacuation campaign, the children remain the centre of attention. The mothers (the fathers are expected to be away at war) are to be persuaded to send the children away to safe areas; the reception areas are to be persuaded to accept the urban children. Urban areas are shown with all the trappings of war. A child is shown bravely trying to do a man’s work within blitzed areas (figure 96), whilst other clean, cherubic children cower in fear in urban shelters (figure 97). The reception areas are depicted in a similar style to Newbould’s ‘Your Britain’ images, traditional, but with and economy of line and detail, villages with a church at the centre (figure 98), populated by friendly, motherly women. Although the urban areas are shown as dangerous, with barrage balloons indicating the danger of further air raids (figure 99), icons such as the Union Jack (figure 96) and St Paul’s (figure 99) are evident as the nation is not to be cowed.

London Transport noticeably supported wartime campaigns, and their campaigns, directed at urban commuters, depicted London standing up under the Blitz. ‘The Proud City’ was a series of six in traditional painted style, with the image surrounded by a frame. The series focused on historic or significant buildings in the capital, surrounded by, or the victim of, bombing campaigns, but demonstrating resilience or new life coming through (figures 100 to 102). The series was to emphasise that in spite of Hitler such ‘monuments of antiquity’ still stood, and the posters exemplified ‘in material form the proud spirit of the people of London – a spirit that remains as a symbol of Right over Might’.[151] Walter Spradbery, a Royal Academy artist, was looking to ‘convey something intangible, something far beyond an actual pictorial record of the damaged historical buildings of London’. The muted colourings were chosen to demonstrate the ‘indestructible’ nature of light and beauty in the face of the Blitz.[152] Interestingly, the series was also produced in Arabic (figure 103), although it is not clear where these were placed.

The London Transport campaign demonstrated a hope in the future, and the savings campaigns largely push hope for the future as a message too. Essentially savings posters were persuading people to fund the war, but no posters were identified that depict what would actually have been bought with these funds. The emphasis with the slogans is on saving and lending, not on giving. Figure 104 demonstrates, through statistics, the return that will be achieved from investing. Much of the rest of the campaign focuses on what will be gained or protected with the money, particularly improvements to be made in the future. As the likelihood of winning the war increased, the emphasis on the future could become stronger. Eric Fraser’s modern image (figure 105), demonstrating cubist influences, emphasised the modern materials that would be used to construct the future, concrete and steel, with education at the centre of how this will be achieved. Education is also seen as an investment in the future in (figure 106), although in a style with more realism. This realism is also evident in figure 107, where a middle-class woman and child look to the horizon for a brighter future, presumably aimed at the men who had left them behind. In wartime, other than concentrating on the present, people could do little but dream of the future. This is evident in posters, where a glamorous woman dreams of holidays and fashion she can return to in the future (figure 108), and in figure 109 a worker dreams of a good family lifestyle in the suburbs. Despite the important growth of the suburbs in the interwar years, there is largely a silence surrounding them in posters, and this is one of the few images that depicts a suburb. The silence of the suburbs was possibly because propaganda deals with othering, more difficult to depict in the case of the in-between suburb. Figure 110 was part of a stop-gap campaign to keep people saving after the end of the European war,[153] but was hurriedly withdrawn after the Japanese surrender.[154] Reconstruction in a modern, planned world is evident in the blueprint, where central issues include housing, leisure, health, education, agriculture, roads and buildings.

The Reception of ‘British’ Posters

The popularity of posters depicting the English countryside had been demonstrated before the war by well-known railway posters displayed within homes and schoolrooms. During the war the War Office’s series of ‘Your Britain’ posters by Newbould and Games, ‘impressed upon a vital section of the people what Britain is – the heritage of landscape and what men have built upon it’.[155] Games’ posters intentionally had a ‘strong educative component’, and he deliberately did not design to the level of least intelligence. He relied on the more-informed soldiers to help the ‘more humble’ understand his messages. Games believed that the Army did not really understand the quality of the work that it was getting, otherwise they may have stopped his work, believing it to be too advanced for common soldiery.[156] The images shown in Games’ posters were largely in line with the ideas of the Beveridge Report, with emphases on health, housing, education. As Bracken had feared, there was an enthusiastic reaction to the Beveridge report.[157] Advertiser’s Weekly wrote that the all of the ‘Your Britain’ series had ‘proved popular; demand far outstrips supply’.[158]

Although the posters may have been popular with the public, Churchill complained that if those fighting the war did not focus on winning the war, there would be no future to fight for as the country would be under the power of the Nazis. Churchill had a particular objection to figure 18, depicting Finsbury Health Centre, believing that it was an attack on pre-war conservative policies.[159] Bevin had drawn his attention to the poster, upon which Churchill had become ‘very angry’,[160] claiming that: ‘The poster is a disgraceful libel on the conditions prevailing in Great Britain before the war.’ On the April 21 1943 Grigg agreed to stop the general issue of poster, which had only been seen by senior education officers so far, although he argued that ‘not intended to represent any of our soldiers’ homes’.[161] Most copies of the poster were pulped, although a few copies survived, including one in the IWM.[162] Although Newbould’s images may be seen as more ‘English’, it was Games’ modern style that was used at the Festival of Britain in 1951.[163]

It is less easy to find direct responses to WLA and ‘Lend A Hand’ poster campaigns, but the results of printing posters that were far more idealistic, glamorous and clean than the reality were clear. Problems were caused for some farmers when the images did not match the realities and, as a consequence, the ‘wrong’ type of person was recruited: ‘Girls turned up dressed as for a picnic and were incapacitated in a matter of hours.’[164] As the ‘Lend a Hand’ national campaign was launched when the end of the European war was in sight, the public wished to ‘relax and take a normal holiday and the cessation of hostilities made it more difficult to attract volunteers’. In such circumstances, the publicity was believed to play a key role in helping the number of volunteers to reach 107,000, nearly the same as the previous year.[165] The posters worked in conjunction with national press advertisements, the first batch of which produced ‘thousands of offers’. Holidaymakers ‘experiencing the difficulties of travel and seaside accommodation must have found the suggestion of an agricultural camp a promising prospect for the summer’.[166] Stapledon noted that there was a ‘large reservoir of intelligent, willing and physically robust “casual” labour of both sexes that can be brought out on to the farms’. Farmers were willing to ‘exercise greater patience with “casual” help, and to take more trouble in training both part-time and whole-time recruits to the land’. He felt that the organisation needed to be strengthened, and the introduction of staggered holidays could help.[167]

In 1944, the Ministry of Agriculture considered all their long-running campaigns, ‘Lend a Hand on the Land’, ‘Grow More Food’ and ‘Dig for Victory’ as successful enough to continue throughout 1945.[168] In 1941, when debating a new angle on the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign (figure 84), an extra half-a-million allotments were credited to the ‘very successful 1940-1 publicity effort’.[169] The 1942 campaign was specifically targeted at women, but women gardeners gained most of their information from friends. The conclusion was that the publicity aimed at them was not nearly as effective as it might have been.[170] In 1943 ‘[p]ress and poster campaigns adjuring the people to “Dig for Victory” have played a vital part … in easing the shipping situation’. The urban dweller was believed to be ‘particularly impressed’ by the posters, with the ‘admirable selection of sites’ a key secret of the campaigns success.’[171] However, in a letter to Advertiser’s Weekly in September 1941, Norman Taylor noted an ‘unfortunate association of ideas’ when a small poster bearing the slogan ‘Dig For Victory’ was exhibited next to an undertakers.[172]

‘Digging for Victory’ was a voluntary campaign, and in January 1940 a psychology student wrote to Advertiser’s Weekly, contending that the slogan ‘Dig For Victory’ conveyed ‘the thought of hard work, sweating and thirst’. He suggested a slogan such as ‘Plant for Victory’ would mean the same but remove the ‘psychological impression of hard work’, to a public who ‘will not go to any effort when they really do not have to’.[173] This is borne out by a comment in 1943 to HI, from the Midland Region: ‘It’s all very fine for the Government to tell us to grow out own vegetables – we haven’t time to do more’.[174] Mass-Observation (M-O) investigated the 1943 ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign where many claimed that they would willingly dig, but were unable to access any land to dig on, and called for areas such as Hyde Park to be used. Those who had dug up half their lawn for vegetables, had done it partly in response to the government campaign, but also due to fears of price rises in food and as a leisure interest.[175] Despite these complaints, in 1943, allotment ‘numbers had almost doubled to 1,400,000’.[176] The general background and sheer scale of the campaign was more significant than any one part of the campaign. Statistics provided by the Wartime Social Survey in 1942 demonstrate the largest percentages had taken wartime allotments because of ‘Dig for Victory’ publicity (14.9%), the desire for fresh vegetables (14.1%), and as a hobby (23.9%). The Survey claimed ‘that the desire for fresh vegetables and the wish to help in the national food situation – “are in themselves a reflection of the message conveyed in the ‘Dig for Victory’ publicity and should, therefore be attributed directly to the campaign”.[177] The campaign continued into 1944, and although the peak year for allotments was 1942, ‘interest in the campaign generally appeared to be undiminished’. The campaign no longer called for extra allotments, and was ‘directed almost entirely to greater efficiency in vegetable production’.[178] The slogan had caught on, and aside from the ‘immediate purpose of helping out the supplies of green vegetables’ it gave ‘many a new feeling (or revived an old one) about the soil and working outdoors’. Both the Dig for Victory and evacuation campaigns effected a mixing of town and country.[179]

Despite widespread evacuation campaigns in many different media, by June 1940 ‘only about a quarter of mothers in danger areas have registered their children for evacuation’.[180] In 1944 the evacuation campaign still continued, although such publicity was not expected to ‘have any substantial effect on registrations under present conditions’, as not only were people unlikely to go, they started to drift back as they become more optimistic about the progress of the war. People would not evacuate without good reason, and posters and press campaigns were not getting the support of ‘authoritative statement from the Government’.[181] In a democratic society, if the leaders had decided that it was in the best interest of the state, and the people, that children should be evacuated, a failure to persuade them to do was, was ‘a definite failure on the part of leadership’. It meant that ‘either the people do not believe in their leaders, or … the leaders have not spoken in a language which the people can understand and respond to’.[182] London Transport had a lot of experience in publicity, and certainly spoke in a language people could understand and respond to. Posters they produce are often popular for reproduction, and despite Spradbery’s fears that ‘The Proud City’ series would be one of the grimmest ever produced, his posters attracted considerable attention and thousands of copies were distributed throughout the world, including in Arabic.[183]

In October 1939, the National Savings Committee (NSC) proposed to put St George and the Dragon on their forthcoming posters. M-O were asked to do an advance test on this and found that many ‘condemned this symbol as too old-fashioned or remote’, as were the ‘whole tone of the red Government posters’.[184] ‘Candidus’ of the Daily Sketch enquired in March 1942 as to why one of the slogans used as ‘lend to defend’, reminiscent of the ‘Maginot mentality’ and suggested that ‘give to attack’ would be a more appropriate message. A series under the slogan ‘hit the enemy with your savings’ had disappeared, and Candidus was glad to see the back of it as

‘[h]e felt that forgoing the use of one’s money could not be compared with the fighting man’s sacrifices, and that the stress on the merits of war savings as an investment contrasted badly with self-denial in other countries.[185]

Throughout December 1942, praise for advertising was reported, though the ‘ghastly picture of the Savings family’ was criticised: ‘The posters are regarded, on the whole, as “the best advertisements issued by any Government Department.”’[186] At the same time, the editor of War Savings, the NSC journal, discovered that there was a clear desire for horrific, meaning realistic, posters.[187]

Whatever image or slogan was used on the posters, if the government was not producing a consistent message, it was not going to be a success, as with one hand it promoted a NSC campaign, and with the other made ‘arrangements for the resumption of football pools. On Monday we are urged to keep trade alive. On Tuesday we are told to reduce expenditure even upon necessities’.[188] Savings increased following good war news but there was a reluctance, particularly in rural areas, as people did not believe that government would be able to meet its debts after the war. Workers also disliked tying up their money, believing that if a slump set in after war they would be required to use their savings. They particularly disliked paying up at work, as employers would say that there was no need for pay rises if they could afford certificates.[189] During February 1943 people were holding back from buying Savings Certificates because of ‘lack of faith in the Government’s post-war standing’. Builders were not joining saving groups as they were observing a ‘wastage of material’ on aerodrome sites.’[190] In August 1943, savings campaigns were still attracting a great deal of response, much of it negative, including the belief that the more they paid into savings the longer the war would last.[191] In November, there was still a lot of comment and opinion was ‘divided as to their effectiveness. Some appreciate the publicity; others “deplore its fatuous tone”.’ Some felt that campaigns increased interest in savings; others that ‘the expense is not justified because much of the money “saved”’ was really only transferred, and therefore did not represent an extra saving.[192]

Poster sites in London were carefully chosen so that the message could be absorbed easily, ‘without shocking the viewer’. In March 1944, however, there were calls for War Savings posters to be removed from Nelson’s Column as foreign visitors might ‘think it strange that a national monument be used in this way’.[193] The type of images presented in figures 108 and 109 caused ‘a strong divergence of opinion’ in Lambeth for several months. Mr T. Hobson, of the NSC headquarters, was worried that a poster with the slogan ‘Save for a Sunny Day’ was illustrated with ‘fur coats, silk stockings, boxes of chocolates and all the other things which are in short supply’. Hobson contended that the poster would ‘induce the public to rush out and buy these luxurious goods’. The posters were turned down by the NSC headquarters because ‘advertising experts said they would encourage the public to believe that luxuries would be available as soon as the war was over’.[194] In August 1945 a thanksgiving campaign was planned, to be the biggest ever campaign. In order to be topical, there had to be some hurried changes, figure 110, urging the public to ‘finish the Japs’ had to be hurriedly withdrawn. The theme for an incentive to save was now to ‘be focussed entirely upon reconstruction’. A lot of debate occurred over the slogan, with Advertiser’s Weekly’s prediction that it would be ‘Great Things To Do…’, a slogan formerly used, but adapted for the new campaign.[195] In September 1945 the NSC released figures which showed that for ‘every £1 spent on advertising, £10,000 came back from the British public’. Commercially speaking, this was ‘a microscopic cost’.[196]

Propaganda, making the issue more black and white, presented two Englands throughout the war, of which the rural, pastoral England[197] was ‘often deemed more English’ than the urban.[198] The divisions are often not clear cut:

Defining England, or at least isolating any single version of ‘Englishness’, remained problematic. This was partly because of the size and diversity of England itself, and the number of its internal regional and social divisions.[199]

In a democracy, propaganda could not ‘short-circuit reason, as the dictator propaganda does’. As an educative process, it ‘knows that the stability of a social order does not depend upon everybody’s saying the same things, holding the same opinions, feeling the same feelings, but upon a freely achieved unity’ which recognises and accepts differences.[200] Both traditional and utopian visions drew on longer term discourses, stylistically, as well as in subject matter, whilst also looking forward to a more promising future. The rural in particular drew on the landscape tradition, with realistic drawings which appear to have forgotten all the lessons of modern design, although the designs were focused upon the functional message, with highly readable typography. The modern socialistic message was more tied with the abstract, graphical messages. This was not cut and dried: the London Transport series, for example, depicted urban images in a very traditional style. Various IPA techniques were drawn on, the ‘glittering generalities’ of democracy, and the transfer of authority from both conservative and socialist movements ensured that the war was deemed a good fight. Card stacking was used, to ensure that only selected facts were presented, appropriate to the message, and the bandwagon effect, where everyone should contribute to the fight, as everybody else is. Having examined what people were fighting for, identifying their ‘imagined community’, we move onto the second case study which emphasises the idea of the island nation, and identifies those involved in the industrial effort.

[1] Donnelly, M., Britain in the Second World War, 1999, p.70. Picture Post echoed this sentiment, demonstrating with extensive pictorial coverage the populist view of what the British were fighting for, particularly peaceful towns, villages and pubs, and what they were fighting against from the German people, namely dictatorship. Lloyd, A.L., ‘What we are Fighting For’, Picture Post, July 13 1940, pp.9-21; 24-39.

[2] Miles, P., and Smith, M., Cinema, Literature & Society, 1987, p.233. Cull, N.J., Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign Against American ‘Neutrality’ in World War II, 1995, p.138, demonstrates how a similar message was presented through film. Britain at Bay, (known overseas as Britain on Guard), (1940), for example, ‘provided a powerful vision of a war fought both to preserve old values and to build a better world’.

[4] Darracott, J. and Loftus, B. Second World War Posters, 1972 (1981 edition), p.48, note that these posters were produced by the Army Bureau of Current Affairs (ABCA), ‘whose function was to interest servicemen in political and social questions’.

[5] Powell, D., Nationhood & Identity: The British State Since 1800, 2002, p.174.

[6] Matless, D., op.cit., 1998, p.17.

[7] Samuel, R., op.cit., 1998, p.4. Others may refer further back to the Act of Union, 1707. See extracts from the original on Anonymous, ‘The Treaty (or Act) of Union, 1707’, http://personal.pitnet.net/primarysources/act.html, accessed March 25 2004.

[8] Anderson, B., Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 1991, p.6, (emphasis in the original).

[9] Ibid., 1991, Back cover (This reference is used as it sums the ideas up most clearly, and there is no comparable reference within the text.).

[10] Smith, M., Britain and 1940: History, Myth and Popular Memory, 2000, p.61.

[11] Lloyd, D.W., The Making of English Towns: 2000 Years of Evolution, 1998, p.13 notes the intensification of academic studies over perceived rural and urban divides in the last thirty or so years, resulting in the Centre for Urban History and The Rural History Centre. See University of Leicester, ‘Centre for Urban History’,  http://www.le.ac.uk/urbanhist/, accessed May 3 2003 and University of Reading, ‘The Rural History Centre’, http://www.rdg.ac.uk/Instits/im/index.html, accessed May 3 2003.

[12] Waite, C., and Nicolson, A., op.cit., 1984, p.8.

[13] Hewison, R., Culture & Consensus: England, Art and Politics Since 1940, p.23.

[14] Bishop, P., An Archetypal Constable: National Identity and the Geography of Nostalgia, 1995, p.1.

[15] Ibid., p.60.

[16] Ibid., p.115.

[17] Waite, C., and Nicolson, A., op.cit., 1984, p.53.

[18] Strong, R., Country Life, 1897-1997: The English Arcadia, 1996, p.29.

[19] Ibid., p.30.

[20] Miles, P., and Smith, M., op.cit., 1987, p.42.

[21] Ibid., p.43.

[22] Matless, D., op.cit., 1998, p.42.

[23] Burchart, J., Paradise Lost: Rural Idyll and Social Change Since 1800, 2002, p.99.

[24] As noted by Ibid., p.1, and Stapledon, R.G., The Way of the Land, 1942, p.87.

[25] Black, J.A., A History of the British Isles, 1997, p.251. For more, see Jones, S.G., Workers at Play: A Social and Economic History of Leisure 1918-39, 1986.

[26] Burchart, J., op.cit., 2002, p.2.

[27] Matless, D., op.cit., 1998, p.65.

[28] Strong, R., op.cit., 1996, p.12.

[29] Ibid., p.20. Strong notes on p.36: The magazine provided many images which powerfully presented national identity: portraits of long-standing families, ‘ancient manor houses and gardens’, unspoiled landscapes throughout the seasons, ordinary countrymen ‘at their toil’, and ‘the gentry engaged in country pursuits’.

[30] CRPE, ‘CPRE- About Us’, http://www.cpre.org.uk/about-us/index.htm, accessed December 23 2003. See also The National Trust, ‘About Us’, http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/nationaltrust/, accessed December 23 2003. The National Trust was founded even earlier, in 1895, by three Victorian philanthropists concerned about the impact of uncontrolled development and industrialisation.

[31] Burchart, J., op.cit., 2002, p.102.

[32] Matless, D., op.cit., 1998, p.14.

[33] Burchart, J., op.cit., 2002, p.100.

[34] Matless, D., op.cit., 1998, p.20.

[35] Burchart, J., op.cit., 2002, p.100.

[36] Matless, D., op.cit., 1998, p.14; p.32. Burchart, J., op.cit., 2002, p.92, notes that particularly problematic for the preservationist were the weekend bungalows and unplanned estates, known as Plotlands, unsuitable for any purposes. These were areas where land was bought by those who could not yet afford to build the house to put on it. Shack housing was developed upon them in the meantime.

[37] Matless, D., op.cit., 1998, p.33.

[38] Miles, P., and Smith, M., op.cit., 1987, p.48.

[39] Matless, D., op.cit., 1998, p.62.

[40] Miles, P., and Smith, M., op.cit., 1987, p.43.

[41] Strong, R., op.cit., 1996, p.128.

[42] Donnelly, M., op.cit., 1999, p.84.

[43] Female, Sussex, conversation as a result of the questionnaire, April 1998.

[44] Female, West Sussex, reply to questionnaire, May 1998. Briggs, A., and Burke, P., A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet, 2002, p.213 notes that Farmers’ Weekly was formed in 1937 by Edward Hulton.

[45] PRO MAF 39/67, ‘Minute No. 862’, Mr Dennis Chapman of the Wartime Social Survey investigated farmers’ reactions to various forms of publicity, and noted approval for practical instructions via the farming papers, broadcasts, field demonstrations, films and leaflets. Unknown date, but probably towards the end of the war. PRO MAF 58/25, ‘Agricultural Machinery Development Board Education and Propaganda Committee Minutes’, September 5 1942, mentions the use of ‘Market Posters’, one place where farmers might be expected to congregate and where posters were of use.

[46] Howlett, P., Fighting With Figures: A Statistical Digest of the Second World War, 1995, p.46, Table 3.12.

[47] Matless, D., op.cit., 1998, p.176.

[48] PRO MAF 59/8, ‘Women’s Land Army: Recruitment of Auxiliary Force for Seasonal Work’, 1940 and 1942.

[49] PRO INF 1/637, ‘Letter from Bevan to Dame Laura Knight’, December 29 1939.

[50] Ibid., January 3 1940.

[51] PRO MAF 59/8, ‘Recruiting Programme’, [March 1940].

[52] Ibid., ‘Women’s Land Army Auxiliary Force, 1942’, April 28 1942.

[53] PRO MAF 102/67, ‘A Report on the Work of Intelligence Branch for the Calendar Year’, 1945.

[54] Anonymous, ‘Big Publicity Link in Appeal for Help on the Land’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 121, No. 1,575, July 29 1943, p.176

[55] Calder, A., The People’s War, 1969, p.430.

[56] Miles, P., and Smith, M., op.cit., 1987, p.42.

[57] Calder, A., op.cit., 1969, p.430.

[58] Anonymous, ‘Publicity Campaign for More Allotments ‘, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 105, No 1,382, November 16 1939, p.115.

[59] Stapledon, R.G., op.cit., 1942, p.78.

[60] Miles, P., and Smith, M., op.cit., 1987, p.52.

[61] Strong, R., op.cit., 1996, p.30.

[62] Healy, S., Town Life, 1968, p.46 and 51.

[63] Cunliffe, B., Bartless, R., Morril, J., Briggs, A., Bourke, J. (eds), The Penguin Atlas of British & Irish History, 2001, pp.240-1. See also The Tube, ‘London Underground: March of the space invaders’, http://tube.tfl.gov.uk/content/metro/01/0106/010627/metro.asp, accessed December 23 2003, for information on Metroland, consisting of Wembley Park and Pinner, built as a result of tube developments.

[64] May, T., An Economic and Social History of Britain 1760-1970, 1987, p.361, notes that this followed the Greenwood Act of 1930.

[65] Strong, R., op.cit., 1996, p.97. May, T., op.cit., 1987, p.296 noted that in 1944 the Ministry of Town and Country Planning classified ‘[a]reas with a population density of between 400 and 6,400 per square mile’ as ‘suburban and industrialised rural’.

[66] Healy, S., Town Life, 1968, pp.73-4.

[67] Miles, P., and Smith, M., op.cit., 1987, p.46.

[68] May, T., op.cit., 1987, p.297.

[69] Miles, P., and Smith, M., op.cit., 1987, p.47. McKay, D., and Cox, A.W., The Politics of Urban Change, 1979, p.28 note that the first Garden City was created at Letchworth in 1901, but that the ideal was not realised generally until post-1945.

[70] Waite, C., and Nicolson, A., op.cit., 1984, p.69

[71] Lloyd, D.W., op.cit., 1998, p.268

[72] Miles, P., and Smith, M., op.cit., 1987, p.40. For example, McKay, D., and Cox, A.W., op.cit., 1979, p.29 appears to promote this idea.

[73] Matless, D. op.cit., 1998, p.17, (paraphrased).

[74] Orwell, G., The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937 (1962 edition), p.98. The Northerner has ‘grit’, is grim, ‘dour’, plucky, warm-hearted and democratic, whilst the Southerner is snobbish, effeminate and lazy. Priestley, J.B., English Journey, 1934, p.10, describes the Winchester man as ‘keen, sensible and energetic, and steadily losing money’, dreaming of new openings to make money, and p.159, describes the Bradford man as sardonic, ‘provincial’, but also ‘fiercely democratic’. Briggs, A., A Social History of England, 1983, p.269 notes that Priestley’s Yorkshire voice almost as influential as that of Churchill’s in the Second World War. He also ‘sought consolation in English history and the countryside’, but ‘demanded with equal firmness equality of sacrifice and a new and more equal deal when the War was over:… “We’re not fighting to restore the past… We must plan and create a noble future.”’

[75] Waite, C., and Nicolson, A., op.cit., 1984, p.121.

[76] This was by no means only a Southern phenomenon. For instance, the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, ‘Planned Settlements’, http://www.apl.ncl.ac.uk/coursework/IThompson/planned_settlements.htm, accessed March 27 2004 notes that Wythenshawe outside Greater Manchester was begun in 1927. More information can be found on Papillon Graphics’ Virtual Encyclopaedia of Greater Manchester, ‘Wythenshawe: Districts & Suburbs of Manchester’, http://www.manchester2002-uk.com/districts/wythenshawe.html, accessed March 27 2004.

[77] Miles, P., and Smith, M., op.cit., 1987, p.40. Cull, N.J., op.cit., 1995, p.138, however, describes documentaries of Humphrey Jennings. The Heart of Britain (1941), for example, became This is England (1941) with a concentration on the industrial midlands and the north.

[78] Powell, D., op.cit., 2002, p.171.

[79] Buchanan, T., Britain and the Spanish Civil War, 1997, p.190, notes that with the arrival of the Second World War, the British were prepared to learn lessons from the Spanish Civil War.

[80] Calder, A., op.cit., 1969, pp.35-47.

[81] Marwick, A., Class: Image and Reality, 1980, p.218.

[82] May, T., op.cit., 1987, p.371.

[83] PRO MH 78/232, ‘Home Intelligence Summary’, September 16 1939.

[84] PRO MH 78/230, ‘Letter from John Hilton, MOI to The Secretary, MOH’, November 13 1939.

[85] PRO MH 78/232, ‘Ministry of Information Liaison Committee of Imperial Defence’, November 20 1939.

[86] May, T., op.cit., 1987, p.371.

[87] Miles, P., and Smith, M., op.cit., 1987, p.226-229. Miles and Smith have taken the notion of willow trees by the stream from the novel, Orwell, G., Nineteen-Eighty-Four, 1949 (Chapter 2).

[88] Bishop, P., op.cit., 1995, p.121.

[89] Thorns, D.C., The Quest for Community: Social Aspects of Residential Growth, 1976, p.27.

[90] Ibid., p.24.

[91] Matless, D., op.cit., 1998, p.189. See Cull, N.J., op.cit., 1995, p.138, describes the film Dawn Guard (1941) with two Home Guard soldiers describing thoughts for peace, produced before the Prime Minister had made a formal declaration of British war aims.

[92] Miles, P., and Smith, M., op.cit., 1987, p.238, quoting Basil Wright.

[93] Ibid.

[94] See PRO INF 292 for Home Intelligence Reports, for instance, No. 23, March 5-12 1941, p.141 and August 19 1943, monthly review, p.10.

[95] Miles, P., and Smith, M., op.cit., 1987, p.235.

[96] May, T., op.cit., 1987, p.373, quoting a note circulated by Churchill.

[97] Miles, P., and Smith, M., op.cit., 1987, p.235, and Pelling, H., Modern Britain 1885-1955, 1960, p.151.

[98] May, T., op.cit., 1987, p.301, notes that Beveridge had been influenced by the Toynbee Hall lectures in his younger life.

[99] Land, A., Lowe, R., and Whiteside, N., The Development of the Welfare State 1939-1951: A Guide to Documents in the Public Record Office, 1992, p.18.

[100] Timmins, N., The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State, 1995, p.24.

[101] PRO INF 1 292C, ‘Home Intelligence Weekly Reports’, June 1942 to August 1943 and PRO INF 1 292D, ‘Home Intelligence Weekly Reports’, August 1943 to December 1944, provide evidence that the Beveridge proposals were widely discussed. Enthusiasm, disbelief and disgust can be found, although not in equal measures, throughout the Home Intelligence reports. In PIN 8/162, ‘The Beveridge Report: Public Opinion’, December 1942 to February 1943, collected comments expressing (largely) enthusiasm are evident.

[102] PRO INF 1 292/C, ‘Home Intelligence Weekly Reports’, 20-27 April 1943, p.145.

[103] Healy, S., Town Life, 1968, p.70 noted that a survey in 1936 found that nearly 350,000 families in England and Wales were still living in overcrowded conditions.

[104] M-O, FR 1634: ‘Fortnightly bulletin (4): Gandhi, the Beveridge Debate, Russia and morale, rumours and grumbles’, March 1943, p.9. See British Institute for Public Opinion, The Beveridge Report and the Public, 1943.

[105] McLaine, I., Ministry of Morale: Home Front Morale and the Ministry of Information in World War Two, 1979, pp.179-181; Marwick, A., op.cit., 1980, p.220.

[106] Land, A., Lowe, R., and Whiteside, N., op.cit., 1992, p.19.

[107] Pelling, H., op.cit., 1960, p.153.

[108] May, T., op.cit., 1987, p.370.

[109] Calder, A., op.cit., 1969, pp.355-356. See more in Rickards, M., Design for Savings, 1986.

[110] Newton, E., ‘The Poster in Wartime Britain’, Art and Industry, Vol. 35, No.205, July 1943, p.9, notes that ABCA was founded in 1941 to promote the idea of the intelligent citizen soldier. See also Fielding, S., Thompson, P., and Tiratsoo, N. (eds), “England Arise!” The Labour Party and Popular Politics in 1940s Britain, 1995, pp.27-30, and ‘The Coming of ABCA, 1941-1942’, Mackenzie, S.P. Politics and Military Morale: Current-Affairs and Citizenship. Education in the British Army, 1914-1950, 1992, (Chapter 5) pp.85-117 for the development of ABCA. Previous chapters provide information on previous educational and morale boosting activities within the army.

[111] Anonymous ‘How Posters are Being Used in Armed Forces’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 120, No. 1,568, June 10 1943, p.316.

[112] Anonymous, Image Caption, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 119, No. 1,548, January 21 1943, p.56.

[113] ‘Newbould, Frank’, London Transport Museum Database, February 2000.

[114] Discussed on page 125.

[115] Anonymous ‘How Posters are Being Used in Armed Forces’, op.cit., June 10 1943, p.314.

[116] Campbell, J., Experience of World War II, 1989, p.200.

[117] Matless, D., op.cit., 1998, p.42.

[118] Burchart, J., op.cit., 2002, p.146.

[119] Campbell, J., op.cit., 1989, p.200.

[120] Miles, P., and Smith, M., op.cit., 1987, p.40.

[121] Anonymous, ‘How Posters will Build “Come to Britain” Drive’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 121, No. 1,581, September 9 1943, p.328.

[122] Bishop, P., op.cit., 1995, pp.117-119. Priestley, J.B., op.cit., 1934, p.66, noted that even ‘if the Church ceased to exist tomorrow, we should not allow Salisbury Cathedral to be turned into a filling station’.

[123] Anonymous, Image Caption, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 121, No. 1,756, August 5 1943, p.206

[124] Darracott, J., and Loftus, B., Second World War Posters, 1972 (1981 edition), p.33.

[125] Bishop, P., op.cit., 1995, p.153, quoting Mais.

[126] Burchart, J., op.cit., 2002, p.151.

[127] Ibid., p.154.

[128] Bishop, P., op.cit., 1995, p.65.

[129] Darracott, J., and Loftus, B., op.cit., 1972 (1981 edition), p.46.

[130] Burchart, J., op.cit., 2002, p.159.

[131] Newton, E., ‘The Poster in War-Time Britain’, op.cit., July 1943, p.10.

[132] Moriarty, C., Rose, J., and Games, N., Abram Games: Graphic Designer – Maximum Meaning, Minimum Means, 2003, p.13

[133] Anonymous, ‘Posters in the Army’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 120, No. 1,568, June 10 1943, p.315

[134] Matless, D., op.cit., 1998, p.29.

[135] Ibid., p.195. On pp.54-61 Matless explains how inter-war planning influenced was by the Nazi development of autobahns.

[136] Price, M., ‘In Sickness or in Health: the Pioneer Health Centre and the creation of the NHS’, ‘Re-Making Londoners: Models of a Healthy Society in the Nation’s Capital 1918-1939’, CMH Workshop, November 13 2002.

[137] Text on poster, figure 19.

[138] Darling, E., ‘“The Peckhamites are going all Nazi”: a new landscape of health in a south London street’Re-Making Londoners’, op.cit., November 13 2002.

[139] McLaine, I., op.cit., 1979, between pp.214-215.

[140] Livingston, A., and Livingston, I., ‘Obituary: Abraham Games’, The Independent, August 29 1996.

[141] Darracott, J., and Loftus, B., op.cit., 1972 (1981 edition) p.33.

[142] Newton, E., ‘The Poster in War-Time Britain’, op.cit., July 1943, p.9

[143] Matless, D., op.cit., 1998, p.177.

[144] Ibid., p.176.

[145] Ibid., p.179.

[146] Briggs, S., Keep Smiling Through, 1975, p.177.

[147] Groves, F.R., ‘What Makes a Poster Live?’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 120, No. 1,559, April 8 1943, p.47

[148] Anonymous, ‘New “Dig for Victory” Drive will Appeal to Women’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 113, No. 1,479, September 25 1941, p.256

[149] Stapledon, R.G., op.cit., 1942, p.239.

[150] Bradshaw, P.V., ‘Years of Goodness in Guinness Advedrtising’, Art and Industry, Vol. 59, No. 350, July 1955, p.39 noted that Guinness first issued ‘Dig for Victory’ in June 1942. Davies, J., The Book of Guinness Advertising, 1998, p.67 notes that this was a re-interpretation of the MOI slogan, and was used again in 1945, as figure 93, with ‘Dig for Plenty’ now the message.

[151] Anonymous, ‘What Immunisation Publicity Has Achieved’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 126, No. 1,648, December 21 1944, p.461.

[152] Anon, ‘A New L.P.T.B. Posters Series: “The Proud City”’, Art and Industry, Vol. 38, No.224, February 1945, p.58.

[153] Anonymous, ‘Stop-Gap Campaign to Keep the Savings Habit’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 128, No. 1,672, June 7 1945, p.345.

[154] Anonymous, ‘Jap Surrender Will Not Change Savings Campaign: They’ve Been a Back Number as an Incentive for Sometime’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 129, No. 1,682, August 16 1945, p.317.

[155] Anonymous, ‘How Posters Will Build ‘Come to Britain’ Drive’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 121, No. 1,581, September 9 1943, p.328.

[156] Games, A., ‘Art for the Cause of Victory: My World War II Posters’, Quarterly Journal of the Poster Society, Summer 1986, pp.15-16 .

[157] May, T. op.cit., 1987, p.372 notes that the report sold over 100,000 copies within a month of publication, and a cheap edition circulated the forces. By 1943 sales were 256,000 for the whole report, and 369,000 for the abridged version.

[158] Anonymous, ‘How Posters are Being Used in Armed Forces’, op.cit., June 10 1943, p.314. Newton, E., ‘The Poster in War-Time Britain’, op.cit., July 1943, p.9. Newton noted that they also serve ‘a decorative purpose in contents and quiet rooms’, probably not quite the effect that Games was looking for!

[159] Osley, A., Persuading the People: Government Publicity in the Second World War, 1995, p.63.

[160] Mackenzie, S.P., op.cit., 1992, p.140.

[161] Ibid., p.141.

[162] Moody, M., ‘“War” Games – An Undisputed Genius’, IWM: Despatches, December 1996, p.26.

[163] Powell, D., op.cit., 2002, p.174. The Festival combined the futuristic and nostalgic. For instance, the main site was dominated by the ‘Skylon’, but at the opening ceremony ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ was played.

[164] Chamberlin, E.R., Life in Wartime Britain, 1972, p.129.

[165] PRO MAF 102/67, ‘A Report on the Work of Intelligence Branch for the Calendar Year’, 1945. The target was 200,000 volunteers.

[166] Anonymous, ‘“Lend a Hand on the Land” Campaign Opens’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 128, No. 1,663, April 5 1945, p.39

[167] Stapledon, R.G., op.cit., 1942, p.258.

[168] PRO INF 1/341, ‘Choice of Advertising Agents & Payment of Commission: Policy – General’, December 12 1944, p.121.

[169] Anonymous, ‘New “Dig for Victory” Drive Will Appeal to Women’, op.cit., September 25 1941, p.256.

[170] PRO RG 23/26, ‘Inquiry by Wartime Social Survey for Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, August & September 1942, into how far the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign had been successful’, 1942, p.51.

[171] Anonymous, ‘A Successful Campaign’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 120, No. 1,570, June 24 1943, p.346.

[172] Taylor, N., Letter, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 113, No. 1,476, September 4 1941, p.ii.

[173] Grenfell, F. H., ‘“Dig” or “Plant” for Victory?’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 107, No. 1,391, January 18 1940, p.50.

[174] PRO INF 1/292C, ‘Home Intelligence Weekly Reports’, No. 125, February 16-23 1943, p.210.

[175] M-O FR116, ‘US 16-17: Digging for Victory: War and the Churches; Health and War’, May 1940, pp.160-161.

[176] Matless, D., op.cit., 1998, p.179.

[177] PRO RG 23/26, ‘Inquiry by Wartime Social Survey for Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries’, op.cit., 1942, pp.15-16.

[178] PRO MAF 102/67, ‘A Report on the Work of Intelligence Branch for the Calendar Year’, 1945.

[179] M-O FR 116, ‘US 16-17: Digging for Victory: War and the Churches; Health and War’, May 1940, p.160.

[180] M-O FR 193, ‘A New Attitude to the Problems of Civilian Morale: The Home Front: Function of Propaganda Recommendations’, June 1940, p.7.

[181] PRO HLG 7/93, ‘Mr Barter, from TTC’, August 27 1944.

[182] Ibid., pp.8-9.

[183] Darracott, J., and Loftus, B., op.cit., 1972 (1981 edition), p.54.

[184] M-O FR 2, ‘Government Posters in Wartime: Effectiveness of Posters’, October 1939.

[185] Anonymous, ‘Wrong Angle is Used in Savings Publicity’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 115, No. 1,503, March 12 1942, p.193, quoting Candidus.

[186] PRO INF 1/292C, ‘Home Intelligence Weekly Reports No. 113’, November 24 – December 1 1942, p.296.

[187] Anonymous, ‘Clear Majority Preference for Horrific Posters’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 118, No. 1,532, October 1 1942, p.16.

[188] Anonymous, ‘Explanation Please!’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 105, No. 1,384, November 30 1939, p.152.

[189] PRO INF 1/292B, ‘Home Intelligence Weekly Reports’, No. 87, May 26 –June 2 1942, p.28; PRO INF 1/292C, ‘Home Intelligence Weekly Reports, No. 107’, October 13-20 1942, p.341; No. 113, November 24 – December 1 1942, p.296.

[190] PRO INF 1/292C, ‘Home Intelligence Weekly Reports, No 125’, February 16-23 1943, p.211.

[191] Ibid., August 19 1943, p.18.

[192] PRO INF 1/292D, ‘Home Intelligence Weekly Reports, No. 164’, November 16-23 1943, p.415.

[193] Anonymous, ‘Most Irregular’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 123, No. 1,607, March 9 1944, p.248.

[194] Anonymous, ‘Savings Poster Dispute’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 128, No. 1,666, April 26 1945, p.108.

[195] Anonymous, ‘Jap Surrender Will Not Change Savings Campaign’, op.cit., August 16 1945, p.317.

[196] Anonymous, ‘War Savings Advertising Costs Have Been Many Times Repaid’, Advertiser’s Weekly, Vol. 129, No. 1,687, September 20 1945, p.536.

[197] Priestley, J.B., op.cit., 1934, p.397; Weight, R. & Beach, A. The Right to Belong: Citizenship and National Identity in Britain, 1930-1960, 1998, p.3; Wiener, M.J. English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850-1980, 1981, p.74.

[198] Matless, D., op.cit., 1998, p.179.

[199] Powell, D., op.cit., 2002, p.183.

[200] Bartlett, F.C., Political Propaganda 1940, p.153.

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