Eastside Community Heritage on the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II

A black and white picture of a four-person wedding party — Newham residents Joan and Phil, September 1945

It is now 80 years ago, but the memories of the war still linger even with those who weren’t born when, on 8 May 1945, the people of Newham joined the rest of the nation in celebrating VE Day, marking the end of the Second World War.

VE Day was a moment of joyous relief and also a symbol of resilience for residents who had endured some of the most devastating bombings of the Blitz.

Newham resident Patricia Jolly recalls: “Being born in 1946 and then being a toddler in the 50s, I realised that a war had been on… I noticed that all of our surroundings were mostly flat, which was due to the bombing that Canning Town and Silvertown took because of the dock area. The Royal Victoria Docks, King George, Royal Albert, and Queen Victoria Dock.

“The playgrounds of me and my friends were the debris and areas of destruction. We just used to use our own imaginations to play on the waste ground.”

During the war, the docks at Silvertown were badly hit and were targeted because of their importance in producing arms and munitions. German tactics were to disrupt British manufacturing and trade and to break Britain’s spirit through continuous and effective bombing.

The Blitz began in September 1940, and the Luftwaffe bombed London for 57 consecutive days, causing an estimated £13.5 million worth of damage to the Docklands and the Surrey Docks near Rotherhithe.

Public air raid shelters and homemade family Anderson shelters provided some relief from the bombing, but many of those who grew up in the Docklands still remember the sounds of the air raid sirens, the shelters, and the bomb damage, as shown in this quote from Newham resident and civil campaigner Connie Hunt.

“We were ATS girls,.. I used to come back to London. I mean, it was terrible, here it really was. I can hear a soldier saying now, he lived in our turning and we’d had a terrible bombing that night, and he said the next day, ‘Do you know, I’ll be glad to get back to the trenches.’ I said, ‘Why?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s more peaceful than it is here.’ Yet we survived.

“ Another night, in the general uproar, a baby was born in the Anderson shelter next door with the bombing and all that. How people came through it and didn’t break down completely, I’ll never know.”

Despite the hardship, in 1945, streets that had once echoed with the sounds of air raid sirens and war now buzzed with the energy of celebrations, as communities came together to honour the end of years of hardship and loss.

The spirit of VE Day in Newham was one of unity, pride, and the shared triumph of a community that had weathered the storm together as we can see from this quote from Alan Mead, who worked at Tate and Lyle in Newham for 60 years: “My parents were married in ’39, he was drafted abroad and didn’t come back until February ’45. I was born December ’45. Ah ha, right? Okay, that says it all, doesn’t it?”

Photos of Joan Francis and her husband Phil, taken upon his return from the war, illustrate how some Newham residents began to rebuild their lives—reuniting with friends in June 1945 and getting married that September.

https://www.hidden-histories.org

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