INSANITARY SHELTERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 September 1940, Page 8

INSANITARY SHELTERS

LONDONERS CROWD TUBES PRESS CRITICISMS [BY CABLE —PRESS ASSN. —COPYRIGHT.] LONDON, September 21. The “Daily Mail” says: “The slogan, ‘Get the children out,’ should be pinned up in every Ministry in Whitehall. Night after night thousands of childfen in the danger areas are suffering ilie terrors of constant bombing. Hundreds are being killed. Some have seen their parents slaughtered and have watched their world, crumble. The search for safety is a pilgrimage of • misery. Children are condemned to sleep in the humid atmosphere of stations which are unhealthy, and there is no sanitation. “These dreadful ordeals must be spared to the generation to which we look to build a brave new world after the.war. Evacuation must be speeded up. Something more vigorous is .needed than the Government gentlyurging parents to let children go. A lot of nonsense is written about the wise-cracking Cockney joking about the horrors around him. These horrors are not jokes. The average Cockney does not think them funny.” As thousands began to stream to the tube stations lest evening, it was announced that the authorities were converting a large, section of the Piccadilly line into an air raid shelter. The section is 563 yards long and varies ih depth from 95 to 135 fget. The conversion should be simple. The tracks will be boarded over. The section is already well lit, although improved ventilation will be necessary. Meanwhile London’s shelter problem is receiving increased prominence. The conditions in many of the poorer districts are pitiable. With insufficient sanitation and seating accommodation, thousands are forced to stand for hours. The Ministry for Home Security intends to speed up the work of shelter improvement throughout London. While the conversion of tubes was under, discussion, thousands again took matters into their own hands and settled down on the platforms for the night. Overcrowding was acute and the atmosphere most unpleasant. Many resorted to sleeping on the steps of escalators.

The chief new measure is understood to involve the adaptation of day-time shelters for night use by the provision of shelter marshals, sanitary arrangements, and possibly sleeping facilities. Many basements not already requisitioned will be equipped for “round the clock” use as well as those already adapted for day use only. Plans for transporting people from the more vulnerable areas where shelter provision is insufficient are Understood to include the division of night evacuation areas into groups of streets, each group having its allotted shelters in another area. From each group private coaches and buses will leave at a fixed time in the evening and return the people to their homes ih the morning. Experiments will first have to be made, however. The use of tube stations as shelters is expected to be restricted to those without alternative, accommodation.

GOVERNMENT’S NEW SCHEMES. SYSTEM OF CO-OPERATION. • RUGBY, September 22. Mr MacDonald, Minister for Health, broadcasting, described the Government’s plans for sheltering citizens who have lost their homes through the senseless brutal German air attacks. Mr MacDonald said: “The care of those made homeless, amidst the bombardment of air raids, is now a major activity of the Government. Many agencies are helping in the work. Local authorities have an important part to play, and 'countless citizens are giving assistance in one way and another, but the main responsibility for seeing those who have been ejected from their homes, quickly provided with another roof, with food, clothing and other necessities rests fairly and squarely upon the Government itself. “Generally speaking, our plans worked reasonably well through all the widely scattered raids on Britain, until the violent bombings on London a fortnight ago. Then the first day or two, that experience revealed some faults in pur plans. One important thing in the war is to preserve alert the eye and mind, detect mistakes as soon as these become apparent, correct them swiftly, and turn them to advantage. So in the past two weeks, we have greatly improved our arrangements for looking after the homeless. “Some boroughs received a heavier height of attack than others, and have at times found their centres temporarily crammed to capacity. Aid, then has come from other boroughs. There are omnibuses to take people from centres in the more hardly pressed boroughs to centres in those which have been less severely hit. In. all these movements, borough boundaries have been swept aside. Different areas are helping each other., in the London defence region, which is even wider than that of the London. County Council, and is being treated as a whole. For people who cannot find new dwellings for themselves, an official billeting officer must find billets.

REFUSALS TO LEAVE. “Here again, there are no rigid boundaries between borough and borough, country and country borough, or even between county and county. A host of people from the most heayily bombed areas in London have recently been billeted widely outside their own boroughs. This is done either by billeting people in other households, or else by putting them into unoccupied houses. All the local authorities have full powers to requisition empty houses for this purpose, and many have been exercising their powers energetically for some time. For instance, I asked the authorities of 14 London borough where there are the largest numbers of suitable empty houses, to requisition those plades up to capacity, to accommodate more than 20,000 persons. Lest that should be required, which is not the case at present, the local authority can take over furnished houses if they like, or they can requisition an unfurnished house and themselves acquire from the Government stocks; or by their own purchases, the furniture required for the use of the incoming house-

holders. My friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, foots the bill. “The migration of homeless families into these residences is now proceeding, but we must never ignore the human factors in this situation. Often those who have been turned out of house and home by enemy action, and who could be housed elsewhere, are reluctant to leave their own locality. Over and over again, omnibuses have waited to take them away, but they have declined to go. This solid refusal to budge from the danger zone is partly a reminder of the average Englishman’s deep sentiment rooting in the locality of his own home, and partly evidence of how little these nightly bombings have shaken the nerve of those who are victims of its fierce spite. Mr. Macdonald concluded: “If our armies were engaged around you with the enemy, you would not hesitate to give whatever shelter and succour lay in your power to our soldiers; but these London citizens are soldiers. They are front-line troops. They are our comrades, who have shown coolness and valour under fire. They have been in battle, like our airmen and our sailors and our men of Calais and Dunkirk. And that spirit has already inflicted defeat on the enemy. Sustain and succour tlitem. We are all in this business together, and it is by the firm union of the whole nation that our cause will prevail.”