To get the public ready and to rally morale, the publicity division of the Ministry of Information devised a propaganda campaign. These posters were signed off by the Home Secretary in August 1939. These two were issued immediately, but they kept this one back; they were going to issue it later on when morale needed a boost after the destruction had actually started. It's so familiar, isn't it? It's the best-known wartime slogan, and I think it's right at the heart of what we understand about this chapter in our history. Keeping calm and carrying on seems like the essence of Blitz spirit. It must have captured the public mood, mustn't it? The government certainly hoped so.
Now war had been declared, the whole nation braced itself for the bombing to begin. The warning may be short: prepare now. Official information and instruction will be given over the wireless and in the newspapers. In a matter of days, a million children were evacuated, 400 million sandbags were piled up, 86,000 hand-held fire extinguishers called Stewart pumps were distributed, patients were discharged from hospitals to make way for casualties, and the millions of predicted cases of hysteria. Paper mache coffins were mass-produced for the huge number of expected dead. "If you are provided with a steel shelter and have not erected it, do so at once."
The most important preparation of all was to provide people with shelter from the bombs. Tin self-assembly Anderson shelters were given out, basements of existing buildings converted, and brick surface shelters built on streets. But to keep transport running smoothly, the government rejected the idea of allowing people to shelter in underground stations. "When you hear these warning sirens, take cover at once. Put on your gas mask."
In the first terrifying weeks after war was declared, there were frequent false alarms. People expected bombs at any moment. Would they keep calm and carry on? As Nina recorded in her diary, there were signs they might not. She was working in her parents' shop, where she observed what sounds like an awful lot of panic buying. "I served in my father's shop all day. Every third person asks for candles or nightlights, every fourth for sugar, every sixth for black paper. We soon sold out of all these things, as did every other shop in Romford. And it became clear that people were wandering from shop to shop, getting a pound of sugar here, a pound there, a candle here, a nightlight there, and as cheaply as they could."