| |
About a mile long: BT is looking for a buyer for Kingsway Tunnels |
Sacrifices made by Londoners driven to shelter underground
Author Peter Richards examines the history of wartime shelters as BT announces its intention to sell Kingsway Tunnels
BRITISH Telecom says it wants to sell its little-known Kingsway Tunnel, a structure about a mile long, the length of 14 football pitches…
This offer raises a number of questions concerning the origin of the tunnel, pre-war policies regarding civil defence, the huge wartime costs involved, and the issue of whether the result of public sacrifice should be sold off with no recompense to the community.
As war loomed in the late 1930s fears grew about the devastation that enemy aircraft could inflict.
ARP – Air Raid Precautions – was written into daily life, and a host of measures such as garden shelters, stirrup pumps and gas masks became widely available. But many of these precautions were abandoned when the Blitz started in September 1940 and thousands of Londoners illegally took to the deep shelter of Tube stations.
And where was the Kingsway Tunnel? The simple answer is that it did not exist, or was only at an early stage of construction; it certainly was not open to the public. Instead of a mile-long shelter in which people could bed down, they were forced to occupy every nook and cranny in Tube stations, the safety of which was found wanting on several major occasions.
The story of the occupation of the Tube stations by Londoners has been written large into the history of the war. The unnecessary sufferings caused by a lack of planning were enormous.
The Blitz continued, the City was set ablaze at the end of 1940, and Bank Tube station received a direct hit in January 1941, which claimed 56 lives.
Periodic concentrated raids took place in the spring culminating on May 10 when all hell was unleashed on the capital. Then, just as many Londoners felt they could take no more, the raids stopped as Hitler’s eyes turned on Russia.
If the raids had stopped, the building of deep shelters was about to start. In October 1940 a decision was made to build eight deep shelters adjacent to Tube stations, and work on these projects began early in the new year. The Kingsway Tunnel was used as an air raid shelter in 1942, and in other parts of London similar work was under way. Camden enjoyed its share of this programme when construction began on a shelter close to Belsize Park station.
In April 1941 I began work as a motorcycle messenger at the Post Office next to Belsize Park Tube station.
The alleyway that led to the garage that housed the motorbikes was also used by the vast fleet of contractors’ lorries as they carried tons of soil out, and brought in an array of equipment. I got to know the contractors’ men, and the wages they were earning tempted me to change jobs.
In other areas the Paddock bunker at Dollis Hill was built as standby accommodation for the wartime cabinet.
It can be argued the government’s approach to deep shelters proved woefully inept. When the shelters were needed they were not there, and when they were, the changed character of aerial warfare rendered them unsuitable to the needs.
After May 1941 the capital was generally calm until 1944 when in March there was a mini-Blitz with night raids. During that month I was at home in Kentish Town on leave from the army and I cannot remember any attacks. But the situation changed drastically in June when the Flying Bombs, the V1s, began their deadly assault.
These arrived at any time during the day. Unless one was to live underground there was little answer to this menace except to dive for cover when one heard its distinctive engine cut out and experience gut-wrenching fear during its dive to earth.
By the late summer of 1944 the V1 had largely been conquered, but any respite was short-lived, for in September the more deadly V2s began to devastate the capital and continued to wreak havoc until the end of March 1945.
There is evidence that more people began to shelter in the Tube at this time.
Yet it is clear that the new deep shelters played little or no part in these developments. Indeed a report shows that Belsize Park was used as a shelter from July 23 until October 21 1944, “…when this function ceased to low usage”.
This at a time when V2s were dropping with a vengeance.
It would be interesting to see similar figures for the Kingsway Tunnel.
Although I know plenty of people who sheltered in the Tube stations, I do not know anybody who took refuge in the deep shelters. Nor can I recall any publicity concerning these shelters – how one could gain admission, and what rules were in force. Why was the subject kept under wraps? Indeed, the story of Kingsway and other deep air raid shelters has been clouded in secrecy.
Of course BT bought all former rights from the government when it was privatised in the 1980s so why should it not be free to sell an asset for which it has no further use? But the inclusion of the tunnel was not appreciated by the public at large when the shares were floated.
In view of the sacrifices involved, would it not be equitable if the proceeds from the sale of Kingsway were donated to alleviating the sufferings of wartime victims or some other worthy cause?
|
 |
|
| |
