These shelters were possessed by some workers (given “free”) or purchased by the middle-class from the UK government. Even well-off workers could purchase this (and other types) of family bomb-shelters designed to be partly dug-in to the back garden. The fact that thousands of working-class people in London took to the Tube tunnels for safety demonstrates just how few people possessed these shelters. My mother’s family – which lived in Lewisham – did possess one of these “Anderson Shelters” – and it saved their lives when Hitler’s bombers finally came! During September, 1941, Hitler targetted the working-class areas of London with the intention of either wiping-out the working-class (and preventing them joining the British Armed Forces) or scaring them so much that they would not volunteer to fight Hitler. Hitler destroyed large parts of Lewisham – which included my mother’s family home. They had took cover in the shelter and as my grandfather was piling-up the sand-bags around the door – when the bombs fell that destotyed their house and street!
Many thousands of Londoners had nowhere to go and were sent to the nearby Chislehurst Caves in Kent – where they built an underground town. My grandparents were sent to Oxford – as they possessed single relative living there. This is how my mother was eventually born in Oxford in 1948 – and I was born there in 1967! In a sense, Hitler enabled us to move from a working-class slum in London – to a genteel place known as Oxford! This is why I was not born in a London working-class slum – where I really belong speaking Cockney! As matters transpired, my maternal grandfather – Arthur Gibson – joined the Royal Navy Patrol Service and serbed aboard the HMS Beaumaris Castle in the North Atlantic.
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 