Yesterday was the 63rd anniversary of the Bethnal Green Tube disaster. On the evening of 3 March 1943, 173 people — men, women and children — died at the Bethnal Green Tube station, the greatest loss of life of any single incident during the German bombing campaign against Britain. The tragedy took place during an air raid; the as-yet unused Underground station was one of London’s biggest deep air raid shelters. Yet the deaths were not due to bombing; in fact no bombs fell nearby. Hundreds of people were streaming down the steps into the station. The crowd panicked and surged forward, a woman holding a baby fell and tripped, and the people behind her piled into one another and were crushed to death. (The woman survived, but the baby died.)
Why did they panic? It seems that it was because a secret new anti-aircraft weapon, which fired salvos of sixty rockets at a time, was being tested in a nearby park. The rockets made a very loud roaring sound as they were launched; moreover, the sound was unfamiliar and may have been mistaken for a new type of German weapon. As one resident recalled about that night on the BBC’s WW2 People’s War site:
I had to go back to the flat for something - don’t remember what, as soon as I had entered the flat there was a horrendous roar and the place lit up. I hadn’t heard that noise before and waited for the explosions, there were none other than the local guns firing and shells bursting overhead.
When I got back to the shelter everyone was asking what the noise was?
This shows how familiarity breeds contempt, at least when it comes to air raids — civilians can cope with a lot if they know what to expect, especially if reality turns out to be not as bad as was feared. By 1943 bombing raids were routine, but the noise from the rockets was something new, and strange; for a brief moment, it caused the sort of panic that was supposed to take place during the knock-out blow.
Some useful links: an exercise at the National Archives addressing the question, why did Bethnal Green happen, including excerpts from the then-secret government report into the disaster; the WW2 People’s War article on Bethnal Green, and another near-witness’s report.
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6 March 2006 at 3:19 am
Jack
Another great post, Brett, and on an event which I’m constantly surprised is still not widely known about - even amongst the thousands who, like myself, regularly travel through Bethnal Green on the Central Line.
However, from what I’ve read on it, there are almost-intangible factors of human ‘guilt’ and ’shame’ to add to the secrecy of the government report, and the general confusion and sheer terror. The awful sense that people’s own actions - albeit _entirely_ understandable - contributed to the horrific event makes it all the more tragic.
There was a decent piece on this in The Guardian’s Saturday supplement a couple of years back (maybe for the 60th anniversary?) which you might want to look for in the Guardian’s online archive.
8 March 2006 at 12:37 am
Brett Holman
You’re exactly right about the shame/guilt, Jack! In fact I think there is a lot of that sort of thinking going on in predictions of the knock-out blow, particularly where the working classes were involved (not sure what Bethnal Green is like now, but back then it was definitely working class). It was assumed they would behave irrationally in air raids and be a major part of the problem; the government even considered cordoning off London with troops and police in order to prevent workers from fleeing in panic. The “Blitz spirit” was something of a surprise then, and a welcome one, but probably it was all too easy to slip back into the pre-war language when things like Bethnal Green happened, or maybe more that negative assumptions about the working classes resurfaced when they had a chance.
8 March 2006 at 1:20 am
Jack
Bethnal Green, or ‘Befnal Green’, as it comes out in cockney pronunciation, is still a predominantly working-class area. In fact, it still comes very close to the quintessential London ‘East End’ (and even “EastEnders”) cockney stereotype - with the welcome added factor that it is now a highly multicultural area. I had a little look around recently, as it is where The People Show, who I’ve been researching and blogging about, are based. It is also very close to Mile End, home of Queen Mary, University of London. As you know, it was the whole Bethnal Green-Bow-Mile End-Stepney Green area, i.e., the historic East End, which was hit particularly hard by the Blitz. (One stated aim of basing the 2012 Olypics in nearby Stratford is to help ‘regenerate’ this whole area…)
8 March 2006 at 9:35 pm
Alex
There is a small monument near the tube station.
9 March 2006 at 3:12 pm
Brett Holman
When I get to London I’ll have to visit Befnal Green and check it out!
3 March 2008 at 3:16 am
Sara Barratt
Does anyone know where I can get a list of names of those who died? I vaguely remember my grandmother saying she was there with her sister.
Can anyone advise me?
Thanks. Sara
3 March 2008 at 12:29 pm
Brett Holman
As it happens, I can, but only because a post by diamond geezer has just popped up with the answer in my RSS reader! There’s a group trying to raise funds to build a more striking memorial to the Bethnal Green tragedy, and they have a website with a list of names of the dead: http://stairwaytoheavenmemorial.org/.