10. Hymn to the Future Words and Music by Paul Clark
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The musical drama Sheltered Lives of 1983 was an evocative picture of life after the First and into the Second World War. It was inspired by interviews with Wolverton and New Bradwell residents who told of a close-knit community, of its customs and practices and of the spirit of the place in the ‘30s and ‘40s – ‘sheltered’ in some respects, ‘narrow-minded’ in others.
‘If you wanted to get on and be anybody, you had to go to Church or Chapel and ‘mind how you got on’. If a person stole or did something wrong, he might get the sack, or he might be suspended for a bit. You had to behave yourself all the time. It was a narrow-minded place. People led sheltered lives in Wolverton.’ Alice Gear Local people were largely insulated from the ordeals of the wider world: indeed, their experience of the 2nd World War was peripheral: ‘I went to the Wolverton Grammar School… We didn’t do a lot of schooling because every so often the siren was going, and we trooped downstairs and hid in the hall, and they built shelters for us.’ Doris Lown For some, it had its advantages: ‘The war done us a good turn. Because Bletchley was only a small depot, during the war there were so many troop trains, ammunition trains … because of Oxford and Cambridge, east to west. It made a lot of work at Bletchley.’ Bill Tew Even the crucial war effort at Bletchley Park was unscathed: ‘A bomb landed in the spinney and the blast moved Hut 4 on its foundations. It slid and stopped when it met the wall of the telephone exchange on the other side. It didn’t even break a pane of glass. The lads got some big railway-type jacks and a couple of sleepers and just eased it back in position... It seemed a miracle that we were never bombed as we were so near the railway station.’ (From Bletchley Park People[1]) Paul Clark’s anthemic ballad from the show ponders wide-ranging issues beyond local experience - not only the nation’s challenges during the 2nd World War, but also its hopes for the future. People had faced terrifying bombing raids: Buckinghamshire’s death toll was 33 people but over 23,000 Londoners were killed during the 1940 ‘Blitz’; and worse came in 1944: ‘Attacks on London by Hitler’s vengeance weapons, the V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets, began shortly after the D-Day landings (6th June 1944) and only ended when the advancing Allied armies overran their launch sites… The V-weapons damaged or destroyed over 1.5 million homes.’[2] Ultimately, the song rejects social inequalities that once were acceptable - the foremen with his bowler hat and his great big house – and concludes what most of the nation felt at the war’s end: We have earned the right to better health, to a better education To win the peace as well as the war, we’ll re-create this nation. Indeed, the Labour Party’s landslide victory at the 1945 General Election enabled the enactment of such national policies as the establishment of the welfare state, free to all its people… [1] Bletchley Park People by Marion Hill pub. THP, available from www.livingarchive.org.uk [2] From https://historicengland.org.uk/whats-new/features/blitz-stories/london-the-baby-blitz-and-v-weapons-1941-1945/ and https://old.buckscc.gov.uk/media/130641/WW2_bombs_over_bucks.pdf |
An aerial view of Wolverton
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