Memories of Worthing "under attack" - new book

It offers an account of how ordinary people coped with the impact of the Great Depression in the 1930s and then the dangers of war in the 1940s. The book draws heavily on oral history interviews conducted with people who were living in Worthing at the time. Chris is promising a great deal of new history including material shedding new light on activities in Worthing of the British Union of Fascists and the left-wing Unemployed Workers Movement.

You can also read about the fascist who first argued the case for organic farming and the Worthing man who hid two fugitive Waffen SS men in his attic after the war. Worthing Under Attack also includes contemporary accounts of life in Worthing in 1930s seen through the eyes of the ever-vigilant columnists who wrote for the Worthing Journal. The book is now available to buy in outlets including Worthing Museum.

Chris said: “When I was a child I often heard older people talk about the war. At that time it seemed such a long time ago, the 1940s, but I was born in 1962 so actually, when I was growing up, the war was a pretty immediate memory for most people. I remember children's parties on Highdown, looking down the bunker there before it was filled in. Likewise, the shelters at Shoreham airport were still available as a children's playground. In later life, as I became interested in the history of Worthing, it was inevitable that interest would include the war years too. Between 1999 and 2001, I studied for an MA in life history at the University of Sussex, and this involved recording many oral history interviews. Since then I must have recorded some 150 interviews – perhaps more, I have never counted them – and invariably these conversations would touch on the war years, sometimes in great detail.

“Most vividly of all I recall Bernard Poland, when he was 92, telling me the harrowing account of his escape from France after that country fell to the Germans in May 1940. Also very clearly positioned in my mind are the accounts of local people who witnessed Worthing being bombed or strafed by tip and run raiders.

“On one occasion a German bomber crashed into a doctor's house in Lyndhurst Road. Several people were killed, but it could have been much worse: the plane narrowly missed hitting the Home Guard headquarters packed with sea mines waiting to be deployed. The combined explosion of the plane, its bombs, and the sea mines going off in a residential area would have certainly have killed dozens of people, perhaps hundreds

"One of the more surprising moments of my research was discovering how reluctant returning service men were to celebrate the victory or to commemorate the war. Worthing men, like men elsewhere, did not want a fuss. They didn't want a memorial and they certainly didn't want parades. They had spent six years parading and marching. Now they wanted a better society to live in. To many of these men, receiving the gift of a Welfare State and a National Health Service was all the reward required."