neilaholmesuk
A "Coastal Town"
One interesting aspect of the raids on Merseyside during the war was the initial reluctance of even the local press to report what was happening to the city in detail. This example of a newspaper cutting comes from the Liverpool Daily Post of the 18th September 1940.
It talks about a recent raid on a "North Western coastal town" but provides very few clues as to where this might be, or full extent of the horror visited on the town that night. Some clues can be gained from reading the article however, we know that the raid took place on the 17th, on a day when three seperate raids took place, one of which must have occurred in the evening but whilst it was still light, which broadly speaking matches what we know about the raids on Liverpool for that date.
Further confirmation comes from the research of John Hughes in his excellent book "Port in a Storm" which deals with Liverpool during the May Blitz in great detail. He states that the city was often referred to by that vague title.
As John points out, this was partly because the press had been issued a Whitehall communique instructing them to not provide specific details that could be helpful to the enemy in assessing the impact of their raids. Part of this was an instruction to supress the names of towns that were attacked, but specifically stated that larger cities such as London and Liverpool were to be excluded from this rule.
By late September this problem had been corrected and Liverpool began to be mentioned regularly by name in both the national and local press, but for some the damage had already been done. Other less prominent targets such as Birkenhead, Wallasey and Crosby were not mentioned by name however.
This blackout of names, whether it be temporary in the case of Liverpool, or permanent in the case of the surrounding towns caused some resentment in the area. People were frustrated that their resilience was not being recognised. The press seemed full of articles about how Londoners could "take it" and their bravery, but sadly lacking in similar stories about places and people they knew.
It did not help either that press censorship and innacurate casualty estimates meant that some raids were reported with terms such as "but casualties were reported as remarkably light" when locals knew full well that they were not. That particular quote for example followed the raid of the 28th/29th November 1940, which witnessed what Churchill described as "the worst single incident of the entire war".
Coupled with the fact that the raids on Merseyside did not feature in any of the cinema newsreels of the time (unlike Manchester or Coventry) it left many locals feeling frustrated and ignored, a feeling that persisted after the war. It eventually transofrmed itself into a myth that the city was never mentioned by name in the press at the time. As we have seen this is untrue, but for the people of the towns I covered in my second book - Birkenhead, Wallasey, Bootle and Crosby it was all to painfully correct.
A "Coastal Town"
One interesting aspect of the raids on Merseyside during the war was the initial reluctance of even the local press to report what was happening to the city in detail. This example of a newspaper cutting comes from the Liverpool Daily Post of the 18th September 1940.
It talks about a recent raid on a "North Western coastal town" but provides very few clues as to where this might be, or full extent of the horror visited on the town that night. Some clues can be gained from reading the article however, we know that the raid took place on the 17th, on a day when three seperate raids took place, one of which must have occurred in the evening but whilst it was still light, which broadly speaking matches what we know about the raids on Liverpool for that date.
Further confirmation comes from the research of John Hughes in his excellent book "Port in a Storm" which deals with Liverpool during the May Blitz in great detail. He states that the city was often referred to by that vague title.
As John points out, this was partly because the press had been issued a Whitehall communique instructing them to not provide specific details that could be helpful to the enemy in assessing the impact of their raids. Part of this was an instruction to supress the names of towns that were attacked, but specifically stated that larger cities such as London and Liverpool were to be excluded from this rule.
By late September this problem had been corrected and Liverpool began to be mentioned regularly by name in both the national and local press, but for some the damage had already been done. Other less prominent targets such as Birkenhead, Wallasey and Crosby were not mentioned by name however.
This blackout of names, whether it be temporary in the case of Liverpool, or permanent in the case of the surrounding towns caused some resentment in the area. People were frustrated that their resilience was not being recognised. The press seemed full of articles about how Londoners could "take it" and their bravery, but sadly lacking in similar stories about places and people they knew.
It did not help either that press censorship and innacurate casualty estimates meant that some raids were reported with terms such as "but casualties were reported as remarkably light" when locals knew full well that they were not. That particular quote for example followed the raid of the 28th/29th November 1940, which witnessed what Churchill described as "the worst single incident of the entire war".
Coupled with the fact that the raids on Merseyside did not feature in any of the cinema newsreels of the time (unlike Manchester or Coventry) it left many locals feeling frustrated and ignored, a feeling that persisted after the war. It eventually transofrmed itself into a myth that the city was never mentioned by name in the press at the time. As we have seen this is untrue, but for the people of the towns I covered in my second book - Birkenhead, Wallasey, Bootle and Crosby it was all to painfully correct.