‘Prepared To Make a Fine Fuss’: Civil Society’s Contestation of the Environmental Impact of Britain’s Long Second World War, 1936–46

J.B. Priestley, writing in ‘Our Nation’s Heritage’ in 1939, observed that the cost of the war-time effort was very often borne by the very rural areas that supposedly defined the nation. From 1936 onwards, hundreds of new military-industrial sites were constructed across Britain to manufacture weapons, munitions, aircraft, and other war-related materials.  The majority of them were located on green-field sites, some in the middle of rural areas, but others in peri-urban areas on the perimeter of towns and cities – or what the Labour Government now calls “the grey belt”; and the military-industrial sites often generated air and water pollution.  Elements of civil society were highly active in contesting the war’s impact on Britain’s environment, and this presentation will identify the major players – particularly the Council for the Preservation of Rural England – and analyse their activities in this previously unexplored aspect of the Home Front. 

He is currently working on his first book for Bloomsbury Academic on the military-industrial enclosure of Britain’s countryside during the Second World War.

This session is a hybrid session and in-person tickets are limited.