Birmingham at War, 1939–45

Introduction

Barely seventeen years after the long and treacherous Great War of 1914–1918, Birmingham was once more being forced to take part in yet another world war. The Great War had been labelled the war to end all wars, with significant efforts upon the part of the League of Nations to prevent such a world crisis from ever happening again falling apart with the invasion of Poland by Germany in 1935.

It must have been a scene of déjà vu, with many in the city having not yet forgotten the horror and hardship that the First World War had cruelly bestowed upon them. Despite the recession and continuing hardship felt by Birmingham and many other towns and cities across the country, once more the people of Birmingham, from the ordinary working class to those in power and more affluent, were prepared to do what they could to help Britain triumph over Hitler. They were not going to merely stand by and let Germany trample over their freedom and way of life.

The contribution of Birmingham to the Second World War was vast, as was the damage it sustained through the battering of the Blitz. It is far beyond the scope of this book to highlight every single event, heroics and contribution that its citizens and community had to undertake to make the war a little easier for all concerned. This book, therefore, gives a snapshot of the period, examining the contribution of its workforce, its community and the powers that be.

CHAPTER ONE

A Brief History of Birmingham

Birmingham has always been a strategic and important place in the British Isles. It was first referred to in the Domesday Book, 1086, as a farming community, a poor relation to the more affluent areas of nearby King’s Norton and Aston. The area started off relatively small with around 100 inhabitants. The origins of how the name Birmingham came to be is subject to some disagreement but Bermingeham, as it was spelled in the Domesday Book, is a combination of words from the Anglo-Saxon: Brem/Beorma (a person’s name), ingas (meaning descendants) and ham (meaning home).

There is evidence of a settlement from around 3,000 years ago by way of burnt mounds that are believed to be where cooking took place, or possibly the sites of saunas. It wasn’t until the Romans came in 43AD that the first main roads were built, along with a major fort near Edgbaston. Then came the German settlers.

The settlements remained small and it wasn’t until 1166 when the king granted Peter de Birmingham, the lord of the manor, permission to hold a market that we see the tremendous growth of the city begin. What made it an excellent site for trade was the position of the River Rea and a suitable crossing. Traders first came from across the borders in Wales to sell their sheep and cattle.

It wasn’t long before several local industries and trades developed. With the coming of the cattle a whole industry based on leather evolved. As transport and trade links were strengthened, Birmingham saw raw materials, such as iron and coal, brought in alongside clay for the potteries. The river was also invaluable in that it provided the resources for washing and dyeing cloth.

Birmingham was becoming a boomtown and by the 1300s it was the third largest town in the county of Warwickshire behind only Warwick and Coventry. From its lowly beginnings, its trade and industry had seen its inhabitants swell to around 1,000. Birmingham also had its own particular dialect, resulting in its people being affectionately known as Brummies – but woe betide the well-meaning tourist who mistakes other dialects from the Black Country or West Midlands as Brummie.

Unfortunately, this rapid period of growth and expansion was to come to a halt in the fourteenth century with the arrival of the plague – the Black Death. This devastating disease arrived aboard sailing ships from Genoa that docked in Sicily. Many of the ships’ passengers and crew had mysteriously died, the only clues to their demise being the horrendous black boils that covered their bodies. The plague had come to Europe and it wasn’t long until it invaded Britain. Over five years the Black Death killed an estimated one-third of Europe’s population – that’s a staggering 20 million people. Birmingham was not immune to the devastating effects of the plague and its population declined.

By the 1500s, Birmingham had managed to rally and saw a decent population increase to around 1,500. This rose again in the 1700s to around 8,000 inhabitants. The main industry of the period, metal work, including gun production, saw around 200 forges in the area in 1683, with everything from nails, brass candlesticks, ironwork and swords produced. It wouldn’t be the last time that the city would see the manufacturing of guns and ammunition.

Its association with arms became more pronounced during the Civil War of 1642–1651. Due to tensions between Charles I and his allegiance to the church and the puritan-associated parliament, Birmingham saw attention drawn to their sword- and gun-making prowess with their supply to the parliamentary forces. If the people of Birmingham thought they would get away with such heresy, they were about to receive a rude awakening. The morning of Easter Monday 1643 dawned as usual until the unsuspecting inhabitants were confronted by a 2,000-strong army led by Prince Rupert, marching to teach them a lesson. Because Birmingham was not a fortified town, they met with little resistance and had free reign to attack the people and ransack their homes. There is still damage caused by this battle to be seen on the staircase of Aston Hall today.

Despite these troubles the population had grown again by the eighteenth century, up to 15,000, rendering it the fastest-developing town. By the nineteenth century, it had expanded again to almost 74,000, as people swept in to the area from across the country. It was fast becoming a metropolitan town with immigrants from Africa and the West Indies alongside European Jewish refugees, a tradition that continues today.

Council House, Birmingham. Author’s own.

There was no stopping the town, which saw its industrial heart grow and grow. One of its industries was brass and in the eighteenth century fittings were made for horses and carriages, buttons and buckles. With the price of metal rising and to lessen their reliance on exports those brass manufacturers were forced to rethink their strategies. This came via the formation of the Birmingham Metal Company, which was situated at the Brass House on Broad Street. Birmingham was put on the map as the centre for brass-making. To reduce costs in transport as the town’s narrow and ineffective roads were damaged by the heavily laden carts, canals were constructed by engineer James Brindley, who built the canal from Birmingham to Wednesbury. Eventually this canal system would be expanded, joining the town to the Severn, Mersey, Trent and Thames, and to important ports such as Liverpool and Hull.

It wasn’t just industry that was booming in the town. Education and free thinking was also blossoming with the grammar school and a group known as the Lunar Society. This was formed by men of the scientific, literary and business persuasion with inventors. They met in the town at Boulton House, Handsworth, whenever the moon was full, with the remit to make new discoveries and understanding of the natural world and medicine, build factories and make new machines, such as the steam engine, and make waves against slavery, amongst other things. Prominent members of the group included: Erasmus Darwin – doctor and writer; Josiah Wedgewood – industrialist; James Watt – inventor; and William Witherington – the doctor who was to discover the drug digitalis (digoxin) from the foxglove plant, used to treat heart problems. The society petered out in the 1800s, but they left a legacy for the modern world.

A chapter on the history of Birmingham would not be complete without mentioning its part in anti-slavery. As has been mentioned before, the town had a great gun-making industry, the products of which were sold in Africa to buy slaves on the sugar plantations. They also made slave chains. There were some in the local community who opposed this and they set up a campaign to abolish slavery. They had special badges made by Josiah Wedgewood with the slogan ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’ written on them. In 1806, the slave trade was abolished.

There were many trades in Birmingham, including leather-work, guns and pottery. This paved the way for many different areas of the town to be associated with certain trades. One of these was the Jewellery Quarter, a collection of small businesses. One young jeweller’s family, Jacob Jacobs from Sheffield, moved to Birmingham in 1852 and set up premises in Vittoria Street. Because of the lack of trade in the industry, as a ploy to garner more trade, much in the way that celebrities are used to endorse products today by advertisers, HRH Alexandra, the Princess of Wales, wore Birmingham jewellery.

The Art Gallery, Birmingham. Author’s own.

In 1887, trade had picked up sufficiently for the introduction of the Birmingham Jewellers’ and Silversmiths’ Association, which founded a school for workers. There were once over 30,000 people working there and part of that era still stands today with museums and workshops.

Birmingham had and still has many trades including glass (the windows in Crystal Palace originated from Birmingham), screws manufactured in Smethwick, Ansells Brewery and the Midland Vinegar factories, along with powdered custard and HP Sauce. One of the other big industries was pen-making, when Joseph Gillott came to Birmingham from Sheffield in 1822, where he had previously made knives and other small metal items. His endeavour was so successful that he expanded the business in 1839.

The Town Hall, Birmingham. Author’s Own.

With the growth in industry there had to be somewhere to house all the workers. An unfortunate by-product of the success in industry was that this led to more pollution and overcrowding. Something had to be done and fast. A special board (the Birmingham Street Commissioners) was set up in 1769 that would help to clean up the streets and bring some order.

We then began to see real change in the streets and structure of Birmingham. People were concerned about crime and the fact there was very little by way of order and governance. One prominent man involved in this was Joseph Chamberlain, who was Mayor of Birmingham from 1873–1876. His vision was revolutionary and his changes paved the way for Birmingham to become the great city it is today. He was dismayed by the lack of education for workers’ children and was also keen to modernise the voting system. He became MP for Birmingham under the Liberal party and was involved in founding the University of Birmingham.

In 1838, the first council was formed and in 1851 took responsibility of the work started by the Street Commissioners. This involved the sanitation of the water supply and setting the rails for the trams. By 1901, Birmingham’s population had risen to over 522,200 and the town was given city status by Queen Victoria in 1889. It’s true that people in Birmingham can drink water from Wales due to the determination of Chamberlain to improve Birmingham’s lot. They started to build a reservoir in 1894 in the Elan valley to the tune of £6.6 million (£778,800,000 at today’s values). It was opened in 1904 by King Edward VII.

During the First World War, many of the local trades and industries turned their attention to war-work, including women working in munitions factories. Austin Motors in the city at Longbridge manufactured motor cars, producing 1,500 vehicles a year and employing 2,000 workers by the start of the Second World War. When the Second World War began, they diversified to help the war effort by producing aircraft, guns and trucks.

Another prominent concern in Birmingham was that of the Quaker Cadbury family. They built a factory in Bournville in 1878, manufacturing chocolate and cocoa. Just as Chamberlain had, George Cadbury was interested in the health of the population, particularly those who worked for the family, so he decided to build decent homes to get them out of their squalid, back-to-back houses.

Corporation Street, Birmingham. Author’s Own.

The Bournville Village Trust was founded in 1900 and was granted permission to have more land for houses. The village included sports facilities, parks, a local school and shops. The village was heralded as gold standard and people visited from across the globe.

New developments, Birmingham, 2016. Author’s Own.

At the end of the First World War the world suffered a financial slump. The war had affected everyone deeply, no less the appalling loss of life – Birmingham itself had seen 148,000 of its men enlist, 11,000 of whom were never to return. Unemployment was rife and Britain was on her knees. Things for Birmingham, however, were perhaps more favourable than elsewhere. It would be less than twenty years later that the call of war would sound again and Birmingham was to have one of its worst periods in history.

Today, Birmingham is a vibrant, multicultural, modern city with around 1.1 million people living and working there. The city goes against the trend where in the rest of the UK there is an older population – most in the city are young, aged 20–24, probably due to the popularity of the university. Despite the battering it took in the Second World War and the closure of many factories between the 1970s–1990s, it has expanded again and regeneration is taking place all the time. So, what did happen to Birmingham in the Second World War? How did they cope and what was their contribution to the war effort?

Library and Baskerville House in Centenary Square, Birmingham, 2016. Author’s Own.

CHAPTER TWO

War Breaks Out

Birmingham did its utmost to support the war effort in the Great War and the people of Birmingham were quite rightly relieved when it was all over. The Great War had been titled the war to end all wars but, despite the formation of the League of Nations and negotiations to prevent such a bloody and costly war from happening again, tensions prevailed and less than twenty years after the end of the First World War, it looked as though the world was about to find itself embroiled in yet another conflict.

It took a long time for Britain to recover from the Great War. In the immediate aftermath came a recession. Not only had people suffered great losses of their menfolk on the battlefields and seas of the conflict, supplies were still scarce and the make-do-and-mend mentality had to continue for years after the war ended. Jobs were scarce and many women who had found themselves employed at the plough and in the factories suddenly had to return to the home as the men that survived and returned took back what jobs there were. The last thing they needed was another long, drawn-out conflict.

But why did the Second World War start and why was Britain compelled, as it had been in the Great War, to intervene? Germany was financially ruined because of the First World War. There was high unemployment with the then government coming under fire. This gave the National Socialist Party (Nazis), headed by Adolf Hitler, the right environment to launch their campaign. Hitler had fought in the Great War and took the defeat badly,