Episode 3 Blitz: The Bombs That Changed Britain


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In September 1940,

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death and destruction came to the streets of Britain

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on a scale never seen before or since.

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The noise was deafening - bang, bang, tremendous explosions,

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one after another.

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They called it the Blitz.

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The whole city was aglow.

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In the space of little over eight months,

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more than 450,000 bombs rained down on British soil.

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But in the midst of the chaos and confusion,

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meticulous records were kept.

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This is a bomb map. Every single dot is where a bomb landed.

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Using this untapped archive, we'll identify individual bombs.

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That's the bomb that you're looking for.

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Oh, it is, yes.

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With consequences which rippled out from the point of impact,

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through the lives of people and beyond,

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to help shape modern Britain.

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Of all the houses that plane was flying over

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and one bomb, why did it hit us?

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In this episode, in one of the most brutal raids of the Blitz,

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a bomb falls on Jellicoe Street,

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in the Scottish town of Clydebank.

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I thought war was always fought away in far, far places

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and nobody got killed.

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Until March the 13th, 1941.

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Then I knew what war was all about.

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This bomb, and others like it, shattered lives

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and threatened total defeat...

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..in a city already riven by class warfare.

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Political activist, communist, commie,

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oh, I think the Government thought my father was a troublemaker,

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there's no doubt about it.

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They were fighting for better pay and conditions.

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They were fighting for security for their families.

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It was just basic survival.

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The people of Clydebank had to choose whether to stand together...

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..or fall divided.

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And it began with one bomb.

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March 1941.

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The aerial assault known as the Blitz

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had been ravaging Britain for more than six months.

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Across the country, dozens of cities,

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ports and industrial centres

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had been battered and burned by Luftwaffe bombs.

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But north of the border, it was a different story.

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Up to this point, Scotland had come through the Blitz

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relatively unscathed.

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But its luck was about to run out.

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Eight miles west of Glasgow lies the industrial town of Clydebank,

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Some Bankies, as the locals are known,

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dared to believe their town was

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beyond the range of the Luftwaffe bombers.

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But Clydebank's strategically vital industrial output

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hadn't gone unnoticed by the Germans.

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In the second week of March, 1941,

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German reconnaissance planes had been spotted above the town.

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Days later, on Thursday the 13th of March,

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all was still quiet in Clydebank,

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as people went about their normal business.

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But life in this working-class town was about to change forever.

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Little did the Bankies know that at that very moment

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a fleet of more than 200 bombers was heading straight towards them.

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In the tenement-lined streets, children were playing.

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In Jellicoe Street, Brendan Kelly

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was with his best friend, Tommy Rocks.

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Tommy sat right there.

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I was just this side of him.

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And suddenly, Tommy looked up,

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"Look at that moon," he says.

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"If the Jerries come over tonight," he says, "they cannae miss."

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So far, the war had brought jobs, not bombs, to Clydebank.

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The town's skilled workforce had been kept out of the armed forces,

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thanks to reserved occupation status.

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Their contribution was measured by industrial output

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for the British war machine...

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..everything from battleships to submachine guns.

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In the dockyards and factories,

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fathers and sons worked side by side.

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Shifts ran night and day seven days a week.

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A trip down the Clyde affords the truest evidence -

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at every yard are ships being built to the cheerful sound of riveting.

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Heavy industry was in Clydebank's very foundations.

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Established in the 1880s,

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the industrial cornerstones of the town were the enormous Singer sewing

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machine factory and the maritime giant of the John Brown shipyard.

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Nothing but work, work, work.

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We had the best shipyards probably in Europe,

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and wherever else. We had it all here.

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One ship after another was going out.

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John Brown's 5,000 employees, Singer at its peak 40,000 employees.

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That's a lot of people and a lot of social interaction.

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Clydebank's industrial machine was served

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by the densely populated

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tenement-lined streets surrounding it, like Jellicoe Street.

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Largely rebuilt after the war,

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its original tenement blocks, like many others in Clydebank,

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were constructed by employers to provide cheap,

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convenient housing for their workforce.

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Each block was four storeys high with two flats to a floor...

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..built around an open stairwell

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that ran the height of the building and was capped by a skylight.

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Patrick Docherty was seven in 1941.

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He lived a couple of miles from Jellicoe Street,

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on Southbank Street,

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in the shadow of John Brown's shipyard.

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There was no doors closed in the tenements at that time,

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and as children, when I'm going to meet you,

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I just walk into your house,

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and I could go into any house in the street and walk into it,

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and we'd all know each other.

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Cramped and communal,

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tenement life could be rough and ready,

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but for a child growing up here in the 1930s,

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it was like being part of one big family.

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That's what brought us all through that time, because there was no,

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"You are this," or, "You are that," we are all together.

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Just around the corner from Jellicoe Street was Scott Street,

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where seven-year-old Jack Tasker lived.

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Life was happy.

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We lived two up the middle, which was a room and kitchen,

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with an outside toilet, but it was fine.

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It's not as if you knew anything else.

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Two streets away, at six Kitchener Street lived the McDowell sisters,

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Lilian, Kathleen and Janette,

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with their parents Stuart and Edith,

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and their brothers John and Stuart.

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-We were born in Clydebank.

-Aye, we were born in Dalmuir West.

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And my father was from Clydebank.

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On the 13th of March,

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a day that was soon to become infamous in Clydebank's history,

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Lilian was seven, Kathleen six and Janette just a day old.

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Running parallel to Kitchener Street,

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facing the canal, was Jellicoe Street,

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where the McDowells' grandparents and uncles lived at number 78.

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And three blocks down, at number 60, was Brendan Kelly.

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Good old Jellicoe Street.

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Brendan was eight years old in 1941.

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He was living in the ground floor flat at number 60,

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with his mum and dad, and seven brothers and sisters.

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It's been 75 years since Brendan lived in this street,

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but his memories are still vivid.

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Women used to come out and sit there

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in their chairs in the summertime.

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Come along here and they were chatter, chatter, chatter,

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kids fleeing up and down the place.

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I see Mrs Scanlan up there,

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shouting down, "Jackie, come up, your tea's ready."

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See the white building?

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That's where the Rockses were.

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Like the Kellys, the Rocks at number 78

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were a big Irish Catholic family

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occupying two flats in the tenement building.

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Patrick Rocks senior lived in one with his mother-in-law,

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his wife Annie and six of their children.

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In the other flat was his son Patrick Rocks junior,

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his wife and their five children -

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16 family members in all.

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Marion McDermid is a descendent of the Rocks family.

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Her loft is filled with family history.

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The Rockses were my great-grandparents.

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I have a picture in here somewhere, which I'll try and find.

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I don't actually know who's who in it,

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all I know is that it's the Rockses, and this is Jellicoe Street.

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The back of Jellicoe Street.

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Francis Rocks, he was an iron driller.

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Elizabeth Rocks, she was a mother.

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That means she done everything.

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There were 16 members of the one family lived in that close.

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Thomas Rocks, he was at school.

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13-year-old Tommy Rocks

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was eight-year-old Brendan's best friend.

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Tommy and I was great pals.

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He was a wee bit older than me, and he looked after me.

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He was my guardian.

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Every Saturday morning, Tommy was in our close,

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and he always sang,

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"When Irish eyes are smiling and the ham is on the pan,"

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and he would rap the door, "Mr Kelly."

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"Yeah, what is it, Tommy?"

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"Can Brendan come out?" That was us.

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You had your breakfast, now away you go out and play.

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The children of Clydebank's tenement homes lived right next door

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to prime strategic targets.

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But after more than 18 months of war,

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the wails of the air raid sirens had mostly been false alarms.

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I thought war was always fought away in far, far places,

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and nobody got killed.

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That was only in films people got killed.

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Until March the 13th, 1941.

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Then I knew what war was all about.

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As I say, I went to bed at night a boy and wakened up a man.

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At around 7:30pm on that Thursday night,

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British monitoring stations detected powerful radio beams

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emanating from Nazi-occupied Europe...

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..directed toward Scotland.

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Luftwaffe pilots used these beams to guide them to their targets.

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War was coming to Clydebank.

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Approximately 9:00pm.

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As Bankie families were getting ready for bed...

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..the air raid sirens started up.

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This time, it was no false alarm.

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My mother came flying in the door and she says,

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"I don't like the sound of this tonight,

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"never heard the siren so loud."

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The invisible radio beams were directed at Clydebank.

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And the menacing drone of more than 200 bombers

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loaded with high explosives and incendiaries could now be heard.

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She says, "Go upstairs," she says, "and get all the neighbours,

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"bring them down here."

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Looked at my sister and I says to her,

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"If my mammy is going to die here,"

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I says, "I'm going to die with her."

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All over Clydebank, families rushed to take cover.

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In Jellicoe Street and the surrounding area,

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some headed to air raid shelters, but many stayed inside.

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Sheltering in ground floor flats,

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or at the bottom of stairwells,

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believing the tenement's thick, reinforced walls would protect them.

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When the siren come on, we started to go into the hole...

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-You close the curtains.

-The folk up the stairs,

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went for the two bottom houses and we all lay in behind.

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-Under the table, you know.

-Aye.

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We went down the stairs to the bottom flat into Mrs Walker's lobby,

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they got a wee stool for me and I sat on this wee stool.

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As the bombs rained down,

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Brendan's family decided to make a dash for the air raid shelter in the

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backyard of 60 Jellicoe St.

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Come right along this wall like that.

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Down the two wee steps.

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We just ran straight across to the shelter.

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There must've been flames all around.

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I didn't see flames.

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All I saw was a shelter and I was heading straight for it.

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Just down the road,

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the Rocks huddled together in the ground floor flat of number 78.

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Directly behind them, in Kitchener Street,

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another branch of the Rocks family

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sheltered in their ground floor flat.

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Among them, was Marion McDermid's mother, Ann,

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just four years old at the time.

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She later wrote an account of that terrifying night.

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People were hiding under the kitchen table,

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children crying and wetting the floor in fright,

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other people being sick.

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During all the commotion, my mother's brother John

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came into the house.

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He called to make sure we were all right.

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I was very frightened and asked my uncle

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why the sky was red, as it was night-time.

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He told me God was polishing up the sun to make it a nice day tomorrow.

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By now the bombs had been falling for nearly three hours.

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At some point a high explosive bomb was released.

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It made its screaming descent through the night,

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heading towards Jellicoe Street.

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Some of the men stood out in the close and shouted,

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"Here's one coming."

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It struck the skylight on the roof of number 78,

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continuing its calamitous fall into the stairwell directly below.

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All of a sudden the ground moved.

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It was like being on an escalator,

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and you could hear a kind of...

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HE SLURPS

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Obviously it was the earth moving under us.

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My father, he looked out, he could see the big gap here, he says,

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"It's a building that's down," he says.

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He turned around and he says to my mother,

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"Rockses' corner is down to the ground."

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"Oh," she says, "I hope," she says, "they got out."

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My mum as a child can still remember

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seeing her mother screaming, running

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across the back court pulling with her hands,

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clawing at the dirt and the rubble to get to her family.

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And it must have been terrible.

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I happened to look up and I seen all these sacks,

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and I says to my brother, I says, "What's that?"

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He says, "It's dead bodies," he says.

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As they pulled the bodies out of the debris,

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and put them into these sacks.

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The bomb that destroyed 78 Jellicoe Street

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is designated as Bomb 187 on the official bomb map.

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It killed everyone inside the tenement block...

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..31 people in all.

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Men, women, children.

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Among the victims were

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the McDowells' grandparents and two uncles.

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The sisters still vividly recall the scenes of chaos and confusion when

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they emerged from their own tenement block in Kitchener street,

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directly behind Jellicoe Street.

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My father was shouting all the time,

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and it was to keep us from looking about,

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and he was shout, shout, shouting because...

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There must've been bodies.

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Bodies and everything as we were walking.

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The building was blasted forward,

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and blasted back and it was a grievous site.

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You know, when the rescuers arrived on the scene,

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to see so many dead people who were blasted out in to the canal

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and all across the road here.

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Tom McKendrick's mother Rachel was a nurse,

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and that night she was helping in an improvised casualty centre.

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And she said, "It was horror beyond your wildest dreams,

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"people burned and people had lost legs and arms."

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Numbered among the dead that Friday morning

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were 15 members of the Rocks family from 78 Jellicoe Street.

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This was one of the greatest losses of life from a single-family

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during the entire Blitz.

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I think to think that my granny lost all her family in the one day,

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it must've been horrific.

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To lose one person is bad enough,

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but to lose 15 all in the one go.

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Brendan's best pal, Tommy Rocks, died alongside his family.

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Tommy Rocks, my great friend.

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Maybe Tommy would have got married,

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and maybe some of his family would have married into my family.

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So their life was taken, my future was taken, their future was taken.

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But one of the Rocks family living at number 78 did survive.

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Patrick Rocks senior.

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He agreed to work his son's night shift at the factory

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so Patrick Junior could stay and help with his young children.

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A last-minute decision,

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it saved Patrick Rocks' life but at an unimaginable cost,

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as his granddaughter Ann later recalled.

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When he returned from work, his mother-in-law,

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his wife, his six sons,

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his daughter, his daughter-in-law,

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and five of his grandchildren were all dead.

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His home was totally destroyed,

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and all he had were the working clothes he was wearing.

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The shock waves of that night didn't just tear apart families,

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they also threatened the very existence

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of an industrial town already riven by conflict of another kind.

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The job that saved the life of Patrick Rocks senior

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had been at the Royal Ordnance Factory,

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across the canal from Jellicoe Street.

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In the weeks leading up to the Clydebank Blitz,

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Government investigators had reported on the mood

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in this vital strategic cog.

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They described a town at war with itself.

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Quite a lot of men are hating their bosses,

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just as much as they hate the fascists.

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Quite a lot of bosses are hating their men,

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nearly as much as they are hating Hitler.

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Brendan Kelly's dad, Thomas,

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worked at John Brown's as a general labourer,

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and knew all about working conditions in the shipyards.

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The shipbuilders, to be honest,

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way back in days gone by they were treated like muck.

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The working conditions were terrible.

0:21:540:21:56

You were swallowing all kinds of fumes, breathing all kinds of fumes.

0:21:560:22:00

Poor working conditions and a lack of job security

0:22:050:22:08

were facts of life in Clydebank,

0:22:080:22:11

which had a long and bitter history of industrial conflict.

0:22:110:22:15

This was a working-class community.

0:22:150:22:17

-Totally.

-It identifies with working-class tradition.

0:22:170:22:22

So there was a very strong, both communist and socialist,

0:22:220:22:26

political scene here in Clydebank.

0:22:260:22:29

You had, for instance, the 1919 riots in George Square,

0:22:290:22:32

which some equated

0:22:320:22:34

to a semi-communist revolt,

0:22:340:22:36

and what was called the Red Clydeside.

0:22:360:22:38

For thousands of workers along the Clyde,

0:22:420:22:45

the communist system seemed a desirable alternative

0:22:450:22:48

to the hard-nosed capitalism they experienced every working day.

0:22:480:22:52

But with the Soviet Union having signed a pact with Nazi Germany,

0:22:540:22:58

Communist sympathies were a cause of concern to the Government,

0:22:580:23:02

as intelligence received by the Ministry of Information reveals.

0:23:020:23:05

A serious situation seems to be developing in the Clyde.

0:23:080:23:11

It would seem that the troublemakers are a large band of communists,

0:23:110:23:15

probably numbering about 6,000.

0:23:150:23:18

So when the bombs began falling on Jellicoe Street

0:23:190:23:22

and the rest of Clydebank,

0:23:220:23:24

the war effort wasn't the only thing on Bankies' minds.

0:23:240:23:27

Like Patrick Rocks, the McDowell's father, Stuart,

0:23:280:23:32

worked in the Royal Ordnance Factory making gun sights.

0:23:320:23:35

He wasn't a Communist Party member, but he shared their grievances.

0:23:360:23:40

You knew your parents were talking about those things,

0:23:410:23:44

but it didn't mean anything to us,

0:23:440:23:46

but there definitely was that feeling of animosity right

0:23:460:23:49

enough, you know what I mean? With the workers and the people.

0:23:490:23:52

John Moore, a 21-year-old apprentice,

0:23:530:23:56

who worked alongside many of the residents of Jellicoe Street and the

0:23:560:24:00

surrounding area, was passionate about workers' rights.

0:24:000:24:03

Moore was a communist,

0:24:040:24:06

and was dedicated to recruiting his fellow workers

0:24:060:24:09

to the communist cause.

0:24:090:24:10

Linden Moore is his daughter.

0:24:100:24:13

So this is my father's

0:24:140:24:16

Communist Party of Great Britain membership card,

0:24:160:24:21

and inside you could see his paid-up stamps.

0:24:210:24:25

He's fully paid up for that year.

0:24:250:24:27

Though young, John Moore was a rising star in the party.

0:24:300:24:34

My father knew Willie Gallacher.

0:24:340:24:37

And Willie Gallacher was one of the original Red Clydeside leaders,

0:24:370:24:41

but Willie Gallacher had met Stalin.

0:24:410:24:43

So my father was only one place removed from Stalin.

0:24:440:24:48

I mean, now we think of all that as quite shocking,

0:24:480:24:50

but at that time, even Stalin was romantic.

0:24:500:24:54

Some people might not think so.

0:24:550:24:56

The struggle for the hearts and minds

0:24:590:25:01

of the workers of Clydebank created

0:25:010:25:03

deep divisions in this close-knit community.

0:25:030:25:05

Brendan Kelly's father worked at John Brown's shipyard,

0:25:070:25:10

where Moore was busy spreading the Communist word.

0:25:100:25:13

The Daily Worker? No.

0:25:150:25:17

No way. Communists, it was a Communist newspaper.

0:25:190:25:23

My father stopped a guy at the bottom of Kilbowie Road

0:25:240:25:26

selling the Daily Worker.

0:25:260:25:28

He walked across to him, he says,

0:25:280:25:29

"Your father would be turning in his grave."

0:25:290:25:32

For Party members like Moore,

0:25:330:25:35

loyalty to class trumped loyalty to country,

0:25:350:25:39

even in times of war.

0:25:390:25:41

The First World War, in particular, had been an imperialist war.

0:25:410:25:45

He felt that the working classes were cannon fodder, really.

0:25:450:25:51

And that the masters of war didn't really care about them.

0:25:510:25:56

That was also shown in the way that the working classes were treated

0:25:560:26:01

in Britain at the time.

0:26:010:26:02

Just one week before the Clydebank Blitz,

0:26:070:26:10

John Moore and his comrades decided it was time for action.

0:26:100:26:13

He put himself at the head of a strike

0:26:150:26:18

of Clydebank shipyard apprentices,

0:26:180:26:20

a direct threat to the smooth running

0:26:200:26:22

of the industrial war machine.

0:26:220:26:25

Oh, I think the Government thought my father was a troublemaker.

0:26:250:26:29

There's no doubt about it.

0:26:290:26:30

Young Turk. Political activist, Communist, commie.

0:26:300:26:34

The strike call fell on fertile ground.

0:26:360:26:39

Apprentices were considered to be learning their trade,

0:26:390:26:43

so they didn't really have to be paid properly.

0:26:430:26:47

But some of them could be married men.

0:26:470:26:49

Some of them could have families.

0:26:490:26:51

It just was not regulated.

0:26:510:26:55

There were fighting for better pay and conditions.

0:26:550:26:58

They were fighting for security for their families.

0:26:580:27:00

The loss of a week's wages

0:27:000:27:02

was a catastrophe that could probably

0:27:020:27:05

take you a year to recover from.

0:27:050:27:07

So when people went striking,

0:27:070:27:09

they knew they were threatening their own existence,

0:27:090:27:12

so it had to be quite extreme.

0:27:120:27:14

As the sun rose on March 13th, 1941,

0:27:200:27:24

it must have seemed like just another day.

0:27:240:27:26

The apprentice strike, led by John Moore,

0:27:270:27:30

had been going for several days and was now beginning to bite,

0:27:300:27:34

with 6,000 apprentices downing tools along the Clyde.

0:27:340:27:37

The Government decided enough was enough.

0:27:410:27:43

Bosses and workers were summoned to an emergency enquiry,

0:27:450:27:49

under pressure to thrash out an agreement,

0:27:490:27:51

and get the Bankies back to work.

0:27:510:27:55

For John Moore, this was a chance to make his case.

0:27:550:27:59

Clyde Boy Striker In Debate With Sheriff.

0:28:000:28:03

Clyde apprentice strike leader, John Moore,

0:28:030:28:06

made his way along deep-piled carpets,

0:28:060:28:09

to the Arran room of the Central Hotel, Glasgow yesterday.

0:28:090:28:13

Deep-piled carpets, indeed.

0:28:150:28:16

Striking for better pay while the country was at war was contentious.

0:28:200:28:24

But Moore was in no mood for patriotic lectures,

0:28:270:28:30

as the press statement issued the day before reveals.

0:28:300:28:33

We've been accused in not so many words of helping Hitler,

0:28:350:28:40

for demanding a living wage.

0:28:400:28:42

Yet the employers who are making hundreds of thousands of pounds

0:28:420:28:46

refuse to concede to the demands of the boys,

0:28:460:28:49

while claiming themselves to be patriots.

0:28:490:28:52

Moore demanded extra time to prepare his argument.

0:28:530:28:57

The enquiry was adjourned.

0:28:570:28:59

On Thursday 13th March,

0:29:000:29:03

the chairman scheduled a resumption of talks for Saturday morning,

0:29:030:29:06

little knowing what the coming two days would bring.

0:29:060:29:09

That night, the drone of bombers was heard over Clydebank

0:29:200:29:24

for the first time.

0:29:240:29:26

This was the night bomb 187

0:29:300:29:33

crashed through the skylight of 78 Jellicoe Street.

0:29:330:29:39

As word spread about the devastation wreaked in the tight-knit community,

0:29:510:29:56

John Moore responded by immediately calling on the striking apprentices

0:29:560:30:01

to offer whatever assistance they could to the authorities.

0:30:010:30:04

I think that he felt it was the right thing to do.

0:30:060:30:08

It had to be all hands on deck, basically.

0:30:080:30:12

Everybody had to help each other to clear up the city.

0:30:120:30:16

That was the priority.

0:30:160:30:17

Back in Clydebank,

0:30:250:30:26

another Bankie was busy dealing the aftermath of the Blitz.

0:30:260:30:30

Air raid warden William Roberts.

0:30:300:30:32

Rosabel Richards is his daughter.

0:30:340:30:37

It does say ARP,

0:30:370:30:38

but obviously it's an air raid precautions box,

0:30:380:30:42

and I do know that they were

0:30:420:30:43

issued to air raid wardens,

0:30:430:30:46

and my father was an air raid warden.

0:30:460:30:49

But apart from his ARP work,

0:30:510:30:53

Rosabel has very few clues about what her father did during the war.

0:30:530:30:57

He was born in 1905,

0:30:580:31:00

I think in Clydebank,

0:31:000:31:02

and he was brought up in a working-class area

0:31:020:31:06

and I think went to work in Singers.

0:31:060:31:09

And somehow or other, after the war,

0:31:090:31:12

he ended up going to Balliol to study modern greats.

0:31:120:31:17

What I wrestle with is, how did this man from

0:31:190:31:23

a working-class background in Clydebank

0:31:230:31:26

end up, after the war, studying at Oxford University?

0:31:260:31:30

In order to piece together the puzzle,

0:31:340:31:38

Rosabel is travelling up to Clydebank from London

0:31:380:31:42

to try and find some answers.

0:31:420:31:43

She's arranged to meet her cousin John,

0:31:460:31:48

who she hasn't seen since the 1950s,

0:31:480:31:51

in the pub where her father used to drink.

0:31:510:31:53

Where is he?

0:31:560:31:58

-Rosabel.

-Are you John?

-Aye.

0:31:590:32:02

Hello, it's really nice to meet you.

0:32:020:32:04

John remembers Rosabel's father as Uncle Willie.

0:32:060:32:11

Have you got any photographs?

0:32:110:32:12

I've got loads.

0:32:120:32:13

-There's Uncle Willie and my dad.

-Oh, yes.

0:32:150:32:19

That, I think, must be his wedding day because,

0:32:190:32:22

look, they're wearing carnations,

0:32:220:32:23

and they're looking incredibly smart.

0:32:230:32:25

-Yes.

-Which I don't think they normally did.

0:32:250:32:27

-No.

-Did they?

-No, they weren't, no.

0:32:270:32:30

He always came across to me as a very educated man.

0:32:300:32:35

Very quiet.

0:32:350:32:36

You could talk to him about anything.

0:32:360:32:38

You know what I mean? He was, how can I put it?

0:32:380:32:41

Cool, calm and collected.

0:32:410:32:43

I know he was involved in politics,

0:32:430:32:45

because my dad told me that.

0:32:450:32:47

You see, I don't know anything about that.

0:32:470:32:49

So what do you know about that?

0:32:490:32:51

I don't know if I should say this on camera,

0:32:510:32:54

but he used to bring a load of stuff up from the House of Commons -

0:32:540:32:58

-whisky.

-Oh, well he liked whisky.

0:32:580:33:01

He did, he did. So did my dad.

0:33:010:33:04

But what was he doing in the House of Commons?

0:33:040:33:05

-I don't know.

-Are you sure?

-Yes.

0:33:050:33:07

He'd come up and the bottles were embossed,

0:33:070:33:10

property of Her Majesty's Government.

0:33:100:33:14

And I remember him sitting there and my dad saying, "Oh, Willie,

0:33:140:33:17

"that's a lovely drop of whisky you've got."

0:33:170:33:19

Rosabel knows little beyond the fact that her dad was an ARP warden

0:33:220:33:27

during the war. So she's surprised

0:33:270:33:28

that he seemed to have connections to Westminster.

0:33:280:33:32

She's hoping she can find out more from official records.

0:33:320:33:35

I thought my father hadn't made a great fist of his life,

0:33:360:33:41

and he didn't seem to have much of a career.

0:33:410:33:44

My mother was the breadwinner,

0:33:440:33:46

so he tended to follow where she went,

0:33:460:33:48

and find work locally wherever we happened to be living in Scotland.

0:33:480:33:52

Rosabel has a declassified Government intelligence document,

0:33:530:33:58

from December 1940, three months before the Clydebank Blitz.

0:33:580:34:02

It's a minute sheet, industrial campaign, and it's from, oh,

0:34:020:34:07

it's from the regional intelligence officer in Scotland.

0:34:070:34:10

Oh, hang on, I've just spotted something.

0:34:120:34:14

The very last sentence says, the man's name is William Roberts.

0:34:140:34:19

His address is 14...

0:34:190:34:21

Right, I'd better read the rest of it.

0:34:230:34:26

Mr William Roberts is a Clydebank man who

0:34:260:34:30

has eschewed the prospects of large wartime wages,

0:34:300:34:33

and is working whole time on ARP.

0:34:330:34:36

He has had two years at Newbattle Abbey College...

0:34:370:34:40

Oh, that's where my mother taught.

0:34:400:34:43

..the adult education college in Scotland, and is at present,

0:34:430:34:46

in his spare time,

0:34:460:34:47

taking a diploma in social studies at Glasgow University.

0:34:470:34:51

He has special experience and training

0:34:530:34:56

in conducting small meetings.

0:34:560:34:58

He has also been invaluable as an advanced outpost

0:34:580:35:01

against Communist infiltration through shadow organisations.

0:35:010:35:05

Rosabel has discovered that her father worked for the Government's

0:35:070:35:11

industrial areas campaign,

0:35:110:35:13

which had been set up to counter the message

0:35:130:35:16

of Communists like John Moore.

0:35:160:35:18

His job was to try and get people to understand that the way forward

0:35:200:35:25

wasn't the Communist way.

0:35:250:35:27

Well, I never.

0:35:280:35:30

Well, well, well.

0:35:300:35:32

Daddy. You kept that very quiet.

0:35:320:35:35

William Roberts was fiercely anti-Communist.

0:35:390:35:42

He believed that party members were undermining the war effort to pave

0:35:420:35:46

the way for a Communist takeover.

0:35:460:35:48

In the weeks immediately before the bombing of Clydebank,

0:35:520:35:56

Roberts was working to counteract the influence of

0:35:560:35:58

John Moore and his comrades,

0:35:580:36:01

one tenement at time.

0:36:010:36:03

"One woman of my..."

0:36:040:36:06

This is my father writing now.

0:36:060:36:09

"One woman of my acquaintance came to me one day and asked me to come

0:36:090:36:13

"up to her house on the Wednesday of that week and attempt to

0:36:130:36:16

"discredit the Communist family who lived next door to her."

0:36:160:36:20

"The first time I called,

0:36:210:36:23

"I just listened to the woman Communist Party member.

0:36:230:36:27

"She really had no more consciousness of what she was saying

0:36:270:36:31

"than a gramophone record.

0:36:310:36:33

"After criticising her,

0:36:340:36:36

"she told me that her husband would be a match for me.

0:36:360:36:40

"The husband was as hopeless as his wife, in fact.

0:36:410:36:44

"He used such terms as 'dialectics'

0:36:440:36:47

"and 'materialist conception of history,' et cetera,

0:36:470:36:51

"which I asked him to define, but he couldn't."

0:36:510:36:54

I feel very, I don't know, I'm really very surprised.

0:36:560:37:02

It's like...

0:37:040:37:06

..a totally different person.

0:37:060:37:08

This is not the man I knew as my father.

0:37:080:37:11

I mean, I find this whole thing quite astonishing and I'm very proud

0:37:140:37:18

of him.

0:37:180:37:19

Less than 24 hours after Jellicoe Street had been hit,

0:37:350:37:38

the sirens sounded over Clydebank again.

0:37:380:37:42

The Luftwaffe had returned.

0:37:430:37:45

The second attack was different from the first.

0:37:460:37:49

The first night, the target had been the dockyards and the factories of

0:37:510:37:54

Clydebank, but the second night...

0:37:540:37:58

..it felt as if it was the morale of the Bankies themselves

0:38:000:38:03

that was being targeted.

0:38:030:38:05

This is a bomb map I made up.

0:38:070:38:09

Every single dot is where a bomb landed.

0:38:090:38:12

Every bomb has got a blast ring diameter.

0:38:120:38:16

There's a 1,000kg line.

0:38:160:38:18

There's another one in there.

0:38:180:38:19

You're talking about a bomb that has got half-a-mile blast damage radius.

0:38:200:38:26

So this is the intensity.

0:38:260:38:28

This is the bombing of Clydebank.

0:38:280:38:30

It's just a saturation.

0:38:300:38:31

An absolute saturation.

0:38:310:38:33

The consequences for this small town were cataclysmic.

0:38:350:38:39

Out of 12,000 houses, only eight were left undamaged.

0:38:400:38:45

In just two nights, the town had been virtually wiped out.

0:38:470:38:51

Tom McKendrick has pieced together a devastating picture of the impact

0:39:000:39:04

on Clydebank...

0:39:040:39:05

..after more than 400 high-explosive bombs and thousands

0:39:070:39:11

of incendiary bombs

0:39:110:39:13

had fallen on this densely populated area of just two square miles.

0:39:130:39:17

Just right here there was a massive crater on the road there.

0:39:190:39:23

The windows and the roofs were all lifted off of these.

0:39:230:39:26

This road here, there's a photograph of that house smashed to pieces.

0:39:260:39:30

This side here, there was garages,

0:39:330:39:35

there's a photograph of burnt-out cars and stuff like that.

0:39:350:39:38

Another bomb blast there and the these tenements

0:39:410:39:44

bomb blasted back to there.

0:39:440:39:46

You can see now the fireplaces that still remain after that bombing.

0:39:490:39:52

Interesting to think that was somebody's living room at one time.

0:39:530:39:56

And as you go along the tenement, here you have it, there's a gap.

0:40:000:40:04

Every single one of these gaps tells a story - a bomb.

0:40:040:40:07

After the second night's bombing, Brendan Kelly's tenement, number 60,

0:40:100:40:15

was the only residence left standing in Jellicoe Street.

0:40:150:40:18

But by then, the Kellys had gone,

0:40:220:40:25

joining the mass exodus of bombed-out refugees

0:40:250:40:28

who were fleeing the town on foot.

0:40:280:40:30

Everybody was calm and orderly.

0:40:390:40:41

But nobody had a clue where they were going,

0:40:410:40:44

just anywhere out of the road they were bombing.

0:40:440:40:46

Some of the soldiers, were saying to my mother

0:40:470:40:49

"just take your families, because Hitler's not going to stop until he

0:40:490:40:52

"flattens this place."

0:40:520:40:54

Later in the day, a passing lorry picked the Kellys up.

0:40:540:40:57

This is where the truck driver brought us.

0:40:590:41:01

It was like a big furniture van.

0:41:010:41:03

Right down this road.

0:41:050:41:06

Brendan's family were just a small part of the stream of humanity

0:41:080:41:13

leaving the town.

0:41:130:41:14

By Saturday morning, a fleet of 200 buses was working nonstop,

0:41:150:41:20

ferrying Bankies out of the danger zone.

0:41:200:41:22

Many would never return to Clydebank,

0:41:240:41:26

the future of their lives determined by the lottery of the bus

0:41:260:41:30

they boarded.

0:41:300:41:31

By the evening, two-thirds of the town's population of nearly 60,000

0:41:340:41:39

had left.

0:41:390:41:41

It was the largest evacuation in the history of these islands.

0:41:430:41:48

40,000, between 40,000-45,000 people leaving over two nights.

0:41:480:41:54

These islands have never seen anything like it since.

0:41:540:41:56

For the Kellys, journey's end was the outskirts of a village called

0:41:590:42:03

Furnace on the banks of Loch Fyne,

0:42:030:42:06

60 miles and a world away from the terrors of Clydebank.

0:42:070:42:11

In the ghost town of Clydebank,

0:42:190:42:21

damage to the town's productivity was being urgently assessed.

0:42:210:42:25

In spite of the intensive bombing, the shipyards and factories,

0:42:270:42:31

though battered and open to the skies, were judged to be close to

0:42:310:42:35

operational, if only the workers could be found to man them.

0:42:350:42:40

The first obstacle in the way was the apprentices' strike,

0:42:400:42:44

led by John Moore.

0:42:440:42:45

That Saturday, at the Central Hotel, Glasgow,

0:42:460:42:50

the industrial enquiry reconvened.

0:42:500:42:52

In the 48 hours since the two sides had last met,

0:42:540:42:57

life around them had changed forever.

0:42:570:42:59

Many, including John Moore himself, had lost their homes.

0:42:590:43:04

Some had lost friends and family.

0:43:040:43:07

But the apprentices did not back down,

0:43:080:43:12

as a statement from Moore and his comrades made clear.

0:43:120:43:15

"There are apprentices in Clydebank who have been bombed.

0:43:160:43:20

"And they go into a factory next week and earn 13 shillings

0:43:200:43:25

"and fourpence, and their families, who've been bombed,

0:43:250:43:28

"expected to keep them

0:43:280:43:29

"on 13 shillings and fourpence."

0:43:290:43:32

Nevertheless, a return to full production was a priority.

0:43:350:43:39

The apprentices went back to work on condition that their terms of

0:43:390:43:43

employment were reviewed.

0:43:430:43:45

A week later, shipyard bosses agreed to John Moore's wage demands.

0:43:450:43:49

The enquiry's chairman acknowledged the extraordinary backdrop to this

0:43:510:43:55

bitter industrial dispute.

0:43:550:43:57

"I would like to say to both the boys and those who this afternoon

0:43:580:44:02

"have thrashed out this agreement

0:44:020:44:04

"how deeply we appreciate the sense of public duty

0:44:040:44:06

"and the responsibility that has actuated this situation

0:44:060:44:11

"we are all in,

0:44:110:44:12

"and with the desire which I am sure actuated us all to do justly by each

0:44:120:44:17

"other in this issue."

0:44:170:44:19

But despite the conciliatory words,

0:44:210:44:24

the fact remained John Moore had won.

0:44:240:44:26

I would say it was my father's finest hour.

0:44:280:44:30

He was very pleased with his success.

0:44:310:44:33

I'm proud of him. I'm proud of that young man who stood up and took on

0:44:340:44:39

a case that other people probably wouldn't have taken on

0:44:390:44:42

at a young age. So I'm proud of him.

0:44:420:44:45

I'm sure at the time my father was viewed as a working-class hero in

0:44:470:44:51

Clydebank and that to some extent

0:44:510:44:54

he's still thought of a working-class hero.

0:44:540:44:57

But William Roberts was not going to let John Moore claim a victory

0:45:030:45:07

unopposed. Hanging up his ARP helmet,

0:45:070:45:10

he continued with his mission

0:45:100:45:12

on behalf of the Government, against the Communists.

0:45:120:45:15

My father did do some work after the Blitz

0:45:160:45:19

visiting people in rest centres

0:45:190:45:21

and so on and tried to continue his work

0:45:210:45:25

dissuading people from Communist sympathies.

0:45:250:45:30

Even with the strike being resolved,

0:45:350:45:39

there could be no certainty that the rest of the Bankies would return

0:45:390:45:42

for their shifts on Monday morning.

0:45:420:45:44

The town's once-cohesive workforce,

0:45:460:45:48

used to having factories and dockyards

0:45:480:45:50

on their very doorstep, were now bombed-out, shell-shocked refugees,

0:45:500:45:55

scattered far and wide over the Clyde valley, Ayrshire, Argyll,

0:45:550:46:00

Lanarkshire and Stirling.

0:46:000:46:02

But old Bankie habits die hard.

0:46:030:46:07

That Sunday night in the village of Furnace,

0:46:070:46:09

where Brendan Kelly's family had found a refuge,

0:46:090:46:13

Brendan's father, Thomas,

0:46:130:46:15

prepared to negotiate the 60-mile journey back to Clydebank,

0:46:150:46:19

anxious not to miss the start of his shift at John Brown's.

0:46:190:46:24

My father took me up the road on Sunday night.

0:46:240:46:27

He needed to go on the 6 o'clock bus out of the village.

0:46:270:46:30

John Brown's shipyard started at half past seven.

0:46:300:46:33

Thomas Kelly was not alone.

0:46:410:46:44

All over the west of Scotland,

0:46:440:46:46

Bankies were on the move, by bus, by car,

0:46:460:46:50

hitching, on foot,

0:46:500:46:51

flooding back to their battered home town to serve the war effort.

0:46:530:46:56

The McDowells' father was one of the few who travelled in style.

0:46:580:47:03

The story is he had the car and in those days

0:47:030:47:06

you didn't need a licence.

0:47:060:47:08

-For driving.

-So the chauffeurs showed him the gear work,

0:47:080:47:12

you know, the car, how to work the car, and he had followed...

0:47:120:47:16

He went up to the main road and the bus came.

0:47:160:47:18

So he wasn't quite sure, feeling confident to drive,

0:47:180:47:23

so every time the bus stopped, he stopped.

0:47:230:47:25

People did turn up for their work the next day

0:47:270:47:30

and the day after and they returned and they walked great distances.

0:47:300:47:34

They travelled great distances to actually come back here

0:47:340:47:38

to their work because they needed to.

0:47:380:47:41

And if your town is destroyed, if your home is destroyed,

0:47:410:47:44

perhaps the only thing you've got left is your work because that is

0:47:440:47:49

continuity, that is security, that is something you can hang on to.

0:47:490:47:53

But that security came at a price.

0:47:550:47:58

For Bankies who'd fled a long way from Clydebank,

0:47:580:48:01

returning after their shift each night was simply not practical.

0:48:010:48:04

So many, like Brendan's father, Thomas, slept in shelters,

0:48:050:48:10

churches and in school halls,

0:48:100:48:13

only seeing their families at weekends.

0:48:130:48:15

Still traumatised by the Blitz,

0:48:160:48:19

the strain on these families was enormous.

0:48:190:48:22

I used to walk down and leave him.

0:48:220:48:24

I used to cry, when I seen him going away on the bus,

0:48:250:48:27

because I was frightened in case he'd get killed.

0:48:270:48:30

I remember my mother crying with loneliness

0:48:310:48:34

and she kind of broke down

0:48:340:48:37

because my dad had been back up to work.

0:48:370:48:40

And I always remember her crying that night and I said to her,

0:48:400:48:43

"You'll be all right, you'll be all right."

0:48:430:48:45

The family was scattered and it was breaking my mother's heart.

0:48:480:48:52

But for some, the aftermath was even more challenging.

0:48:550:48:59

For the surviving members of the Rocks family,

0:49:000:49:03

the struggle to return to work was made worse by the grim necessities

0:49:030:49:07

arising from the tragedy at 78 Jellicoe Street...

0:49:070:49:11

..as Marion McDermid's mother, Ann, recalled.

0:49:120:49:15

"During the day, my mother would have heard

0:49:180:49:20

"that they had found some bodies

0:49:200:49:22

"and she would plead with my father to go and see if it was her family,

0:49:220:49:27

"as they had not been found yet.

0:49:270:49:29

"So my father would walk back to Clydebank to make enquiries."

0:49:290:49:33

When the bodies of the Rocks were finally recovered,

0:49:350:49:38

Ann's father accompanied Patrick Rock Senior

0:49:380:49:41

when he went to identify the family members

0:49:410:49:45

he had so nearly died alongside.

0:49:450:49:47

"My grandfather managed to keep his composure until he came to

0:49:470:49:51

"his daughter, Teresa, whose face had been blown apart.

0:49:510:49:54

"At that point, Grandfather fainted."

0:49:540:49:57

Then Patrick Rock Senior came to the bodies of his wife

0:49:570:50:01

and one-year-old niece.

0:50:010:50:03

"She looked as though she was sleeping.

0:50:040:50:06

"She had my cousin, Ann,

0:50:060:50:08

"clasped in her arms and Ann was buried with her still clasped

0:50:080:50:12

"in her arms. The two of them together, forever."

0:50:120:50:15

Incredibly, within two-and-a-half weeks of the night Bomb 187 fell on

0:50:200:50:25

Jellicoe Street, industrial output on Clydebank had largely returned to

0:50:250:50:30

pre-Blitz levels.

0:50:300:50:32

Official intelligence reports, so recently strident with alarm,

0:50:330:50:38

now sounded a different note.

0:50:380:50:40

"It was agreed by all observers that the bearing of the people of

0:50:410:50:45

"Clydebank was beyond praise.

0:50:450:50:46

"They are of a high moral and intellectual calibre.

0:50:460:50:50

"The most vital sign of the toughness of the Clydebank worker

0:50:500:50:54

"has been the desire to return to work."

0:50:540:50:57

In the eyes of the authorities,

0:50:590:51:00

the Bankies had shown which side they were on

0:51:000:51:03

and the town's industrial output during the war backed this up.

0:51:030:51:07

Over 50 naval ships were built at John Brown's alone,

0:51:080:51:12

including 36 warships.

0:51:120:51:14

Three months after Jellicoe Street,

0:51:180:51:20

the attitude of John Moore and his comrades towards the war

0:51:200:51:24

underwent a sudden and dramatic conversion.

0:51:240:51:27

With the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany

0:51:280:51:32

on the 22nd June,

0:51:320:51:33

the duty of Communist Party workers was clear.

0:51:330:51:36

Increased production of arms and munitions

0:51:380:51:41

to ensure the defeat of the Nazis.

0:51:410:51:44

For the first time since the war began,

0:51:460:51:49

loyalties to party and to country could be reconciled.

0:51:490:51:53

My father did hand his politics on to me.

0:51:530:51:56

As I've got older I've begun to appreciate what he fought for

0:51:560:52:02

and I've begun to appreciate his politics

0:52:020:52:05

and our family have always been a socialist family.

0:52:050:52:09

With the Communists on side, and Clydebank back at work,

0:52:120:52:16

you might think William Roberts would be out of a job.

0:52:160:52:19

Far from it.

0:52:190:52:21

This was from the Ministry of Information in Malet Street in

0:52:210:52:24

London, so that was the intelligence service,

0:52:240:52:27

saying that he's been appointed to the staff of the Ministry of

0:52:270:52:30

Information at a salary of £300 a year.

0:52:300:52:34

William Roberts' wartime appointment was a stepping stone to a place at

0:52:360:52:40

Oxford after the war.

0:52:400:52:42

The factory worker from Clydebank had come a long way.

0:52:420:52:45

Today, Brendan Kelly is the last known survivor from the Jellicoe

0:52:530:52:57

Street tenements at the time of the Blitz.

0:52:570:53:00

After more than 70 years,

0:53:030:53:05

he's still haunted by what happened to his friends and neighbours

0:53:050:53:09

the night Bomb 187 hit.

0:53:090:53:12

We grew up with the stories about Jellicoe Street

0:53:140:53:18

and my dad reciting those stories over and over and over again.

0:53:180:53:21

We always say that my dad had an 11th child.

0:53:230:53:26

He had ten of us children,

0:53:260:53:29

but his 11th child is Jellicoe Street.

0:53:290:53:32

-Hello.

-Hello.

-Hiya.

0:53:320:53:34

-Not bad.

-How are things?

0:53:340:53:35

-OK?

-All right. Yes.

0:53:350:53:36

-You?

-Good, good.

0:53:360:53:37

I'm going back down to Jellicoe Street again,

0:53:400:53:42

just to stand outside that close.

0:53:420:53:45

But that doesn't always make you feel good when you go to visit

0:53:450:53:48

Jellicoe Street because you've said that to me in the past.

0:53:480:53:50

But I can't, I've got to go back.

0:53:500:53:52

-I know.

-In fact, they'll say do you go to the cemetery?

0:53:520:53:56

"Not very often," I said,

0:53:560:53:57

"my head's full of tombstones." And that's no lie when I say that.

0:53:570:54:01

You'd be amazed at the people I remember.

0:54:010:54:04

There is something about the Blitz, and I don't know whether he feels

0:54:040:54:08

unsettled because he survived and other people never.

0:54:080:54:12

Or he wishes he could go back and he could make it better or he could get

0:54:130:54:19

people back that he lost.

0:54:190:54:21

Every year, on the nearest Saturday to 13th March,

0:54:280:54:33

the community comes together to remember

0:54:330:54:36

the more than 500 Bankies killed

0:54:360:54:39

in the two-night Blitz of 1941.

0:54:390:54:42

I think it's a sacred memory because it's part of folklore,

0:54:530:54:56

it's part of the collective memory

0:54:560:54:58

of the citizens of Clydebank and it's very much

0:54:580:55:01

an established, fulcrum moment where Clydebank

0:55:010:55:04

completely changed forever.

0:55:040:55:06

THEY SING "THE LORD'S MY SHEPHERD"

0:55:060:55:09

I feel it's important because what happened to the people of Clydebank

0:55:110:55:16

has never been known.

0:55:160:55:18

My granny's family was wiped out in the Blitz

0:55:220:55:25

and she made us promise that

0:55:250:55:27

we would never forget what happened, and we never will.

0:55:270:55:31

After the Blitz, Clydebank was eventually rebuilt.

0:55:340:55:37

But the hard-won gains of better pay and working conditions were

0:55:390:55:43

short-lived, as shipbuilding gradually declined,

0:55:430:55:46

with the last John Brown's ship being launched on the Clyde in 1972.

0:55:460:55:51

The Clydebank of pre-Blitz days

0:55:550:55:58

would never be seen again.

0:55:580:55:59

This town paid its price and it should never be forgotten

0:56:010:56:05

because people should be proud of this place.

0:56:050:56:08

There needs to be a pride about what we did and how we continue to

0:56:080:56:12

remember that.

0:56:120:56:13

But although the effects of the Clydebank Blitz were far-reaching,

0:56:140:56:18

ultimately the most profound legacy is deeply personal.

0:56:180:56:23

At 85, Brendan Kelly is still living with the consequences of Bomb 187.

0:56:250:56:31

The Rocks family. Ann Rocks.

0:56:330:56:35

Annie Rocks. Bessie Rocks, as we knew her.

0:56:350:56:38

Frank Rocks, James Rocks.

0:56:380:56:40

James Rocks Junior. James Rocks Senior.

0:56:410:56:43

Patrick, Tommy, Frank.

0:56:430:56:46

Two Thomases. Thomas Junior, Thomas Senior.

0:56:460:56:49

There's times when I like to be alone.

0:56:580:57:00

I just close down.

0:57:000:57:02

And my thoughts kick in.

0:57:020:57:04

Sometimes I go for a wee walk and I get a feeling of great sadness.

0:57:150:57:20

I miss them, all the Rockses.

0:57:210:57:24

I was up in the high park last night

0:57:250:57:28

and I could hear kids down in the school, football ground,

0:57:280:57:34

and I heard their noises and I thought, "Gosh,

0:57:340:57:37

"they were the noises I heard in Jellicoe Street."

0:57:370:57:39

Next time, a deadly weapon of mass destruction...

0:57:470:57:51

That's an incendiary bomb.

0:57:520:57:54

They really were killers.

0:57:540:57:56

..strikes at the very heart of Bristol.

0:57:560:57:59

That night you could say the soul of the city was wiped out.

0:58:000:58:05

But from the flames...

0:58:070:58:08

The stirrup hand pump is the best to deal with both bomb and fire.

0:58:080:58:12

We knew what we had to do.

0:58:120:58:14

..the people fought back.

0:58:140:58:15

How were the lives of Germans affected by aid raids

0:58:180:58:21

when the Allies retaliated?

0:58:210:58:23

To explore this and more, go to...

0:58:230:58:30

..and follow the links to the Open University.

0:58:300:58:32

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