The Home Guard, 1940-1944

A People's Militia?

© Dr. Stephen M. Cullen

In April 1940, German forces invaded Norway. As a result, Neville Chamberlain's government was replaced by Winston Churchill's wartime coalition. Churchill primarily concerned himself with issues of strategy and foreign policy, while domestic British politics was largely in the hands of the Labour Party, which worked closely with the trades union movement.

The war came to be known as 'The People's War'. The mass mobilisation of civilians, the increasing ideologicalisation of the war (which was presented as a crusade against fascism and totalitarianism), the central role of the USSR in the fight against Nazism, and educational campaigns among troops and civilians, all made social democratic ideas increasingly popular. In part, this culture of the People's War helped prepare the way for the Labour Party's stunning election victory in 1945, and the economic and social reforms of Clement Attlee's government, aspects of which still hold centre stage in British politics.

The Home Guard was a key part of the People's War, as were other paramilitary, volunteer organisations, like the Royal Observer Corps (ROC), and Air Raid Precautions (ARP). The ROC, for example, was an integral part of Britain's air defences, spotting attacking enemy aircraft, and reporting their movements to the Royal Air Force's fighter controllers. By 1941, there were over 30,000 men and women in the ROC, largely part-time volunteers. The ARP, the Red Cross, and other organisations, like the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS), and the Air Cadets were all essential elements in the mass mobilisation of the British people. The Home Guard, with two million volunteers having served in the force by the time it was 'stood down' in 1944, was a key part of many ordinary people's experience of making a difference, of defending their own homes against totalitarianism.

The Home Guard was created in May, 1940, following a radio appeal by Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for War, for male volunteers, aged between 15 and 55, to defend local areas in Britain against German paratroopers, potential British Fifth Columnists, and saboteurs. The response was overwhelming, with 400,000 men volunteering for the new force - called, at first, the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV) - within two weeks. Among these men were active left-wingers, who saw in this mass organisation the beginnings of a people's militia, something akin to the Republican and anarchist militias which had fought the nationalist rebels in Spain in the early part of the Spanish Civil War. These men, often veterans of the Spanish war themselves, or influenced by it and other irregular campaigns in the inter-war years, felt that they could create a new type of military force in Britain. Such a force might contain within it the seeds of a people's militia. It was not only left-wing activists who believed that such a project was possible, for, at times, both the army and MI5 thought that the Home Guard might go that way.

La Columna as ex International Brigades instructors, Osterley Park 2007

The Home Guard had been created by the government following the rapid collapse of Norway, Denmark, and Holland under the German blitzkrieg in the spring of 1940. Each of these campaigns seemed, to contemporaries, to possess new, and frightening, military and political characteristics. In the eyes of many British commentators, German forces had not triumphed by conventional military means alone. In Norway, the presence of Vidkun Quisling, and his collaborationist Nasjonal Samling (NS), seemed to indicate that native fascist support for the Germans was a key factor explaining the invaders' success. In Holland, it was believed that disguised German paratroopers were aided by Dutch Fifth Columnists. In fact, the German paratroopers needed no disguises, and Fifth Column activity had been minimal. Despite the reality of German military prowess, the fear of unconventional, politicised warfare loomed large in Britain. The unconventional nature of this perceived threat led to the desire for an area defence force which could contain any surprise attack, and combat politically motivated Fifth Column activity, until the regular army arrived. It was the stress on the unconventional, and political, nature of the threat that gave hope to the people's militia enthusiasts in the Home Guard.

By the end of June 1940, there were over one million men (and many 'unofficial' women) in the Home Guard. There was little to equip them with, either in terms of uniforms or weapons, and little in the way of formal training available. These weaknesses gave the volunteers an opportunity to take matters in their own hands, and they seized that opportunity, bringing a sense of initiative and enthusiasm to the force that characterised it throughout its life. By the autumn of 1940, the Home Guard was largely uniformed, and was fairly well equipped, with 800,000 Springfield rifles from the USA, American Thompson sub-machine guns, Lewis machine guns, and simple anti-tank weapons. The Home Guard also manned anti-aircraft guns (140,000 Home Guard gunners by 1944), and coastal defence artillery. In addition, a secret underground guerrilla force - the Auxunits - had been established, largely composed of Home Guards, ready to fight behind enemy lines if Britain was invaded. The Home Guard was, therefore, a large force, and the Army had clear views on how it should be used, views that were not often shared by the Home Guards themselves, and certainly not by the people's militia enthusiasts among them.

The Home Guard had been a political creation from the outset, and Winston Churchill took a close, and personal, interest in its activities. As a reporter in the Boer War, Churchill had seen how irregular forces - the Boer 'Commandos' - could effectively fight larger, regular, forces. Churchill saw the Home Guard as, potentially, being in this tradition, just as he saw Army and Navy commandos, and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) as being ways of carrying the war to the Germans by irregular means. For Churchill the Home Guard was a morale-boosting irregular army, defending Britain against invasion, while commandos and SOE agents were to 'set Europe ablaze'. But the Army was unsure about the Home Guard. It was not really under the Army's control, and, importantly, members of the Home Guard were not subject to military discipline. Nonetheless, the Army quickly developed a role for the force. In the Army's eyes, the Home Guard existed to release regular soldiers from guard duties, to provide an early-warning force against airborne troops, and to act as a static, local defence force to delay an attacking enemy, giving the regular forces time to manoeuvre into position. This last role was seen to be essential by the army. But it would have led to very high casualties for the Home Guard, and it was not how many of them saw their role - whatever the army thought.

It is difficult to say that there was a single Home Guard view of their proper role. It was too big and diverse an organisation. But, in some respects, it did see itself as being a very different military force from the regular army. The Spanish Civil War, the Russo-Finnish War of 1939-1940, and, earlier, the Irish War of Independence, the Irish Civil War, the Russian Civil War, and Lawrence of Arabia's famous campaigns, had made the idea of small, irregular forces fighting bigger armies with guerrilla tactics a familiar one. Many Home Guard did not like the army's idea of a static defence role for them. Instead, they wanted to be more aggressive, offensive, and, crucially, independent of the army's tactical vision for them.

This type of Home Guard thinking was favoured by leading, and well-known, left-wing members of the force, men like Tom Wintringham, George Orwell, J.B. Priestley, Major John Langdon-Davies, and John Brophy. These men were, characteristically, not only experienced in military matters, but were also writers, and effective publicists. John Brophy had been an under-aged volunteer in the First World War, and had written a best-selling novel, The World Went Mad, about the Great War. His books were popular, and he was associated with left-wing figures, like fellow Great War volunteer, feminist, (and Second World War pacifist), Vera Brittain. J.B. Priestley (also a Great War veteran) was one of the most popular authors of the day, and through his radio programmes, did much to create the sense that Britain's war was a People's War. George Orwell was not as well known a writer as Brophy and Priestley, but, thanks to his social commentary, and journalism, was familiar to many left wing activists. Further, Orwell had fought in the Spanish Civil War with a real people's militia in Catalonia. Major Langdon-Davies had fought in the Great War and was a journalist in the Spanish Civil War, and had been, furthermore, a reporter on the mass-circulation, pro-Labour Party newspaper, the News Chronicle. Tom Wintringham, too, was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, having commanded the British Battalion of the International Brigades for a short period in 1937, and he quickly came to the fore in the movement to make the Home Guard something different from that envisaged by the army generals.

Wintringham was crucial in the setting up of the key Home Guard training school at Osterley Park, outside London. Wintringham gathered fellow Spanish Civil War veterans together to staff the training camp. And, like Brophy, he also wrote about irregular warfare, and the new way of fighting. Wintringham used the immensely popular, centre-left magazine, Picture Post to get his message across. In addition, he published a highly successful Penguin paperback, called New Ways of War. In this way, tens of thousands of Home Guard were exposed to ideas about war that stressed unconventionality, irregular fighting, and informal organisation. This was not war the way the hierarchy of the army saw it, this was warfare which matched the ideas of many Home Guards, stressed individual initiative, and promoted self-confidence among the force.

La Columna portraying the Instructors at Osterley pretending to be a German Glider attack force, Osterley Park 2007

At Osterley Park, Home Guard members were taught all sorts of unconventional ways of fighting. Students learnt how to live off the land, field craft, ambush techniques, methods of sustaining a guerrilla campaign, using booby-traps, unarmed combat, and weapon handling. Many of these skills would have been of little use if the Home Guard had been used in the static role envisaged by the army. Clearly, Home Guards themselves did not share that view of their role in defending Britain. But Osterley Park was not the only Home Guard school. Wintringham's idea spread, by the journalistic efforts of Wintringham and those like him, and by word of mouth among the Home Guard. Schools were set up, largely by Home Guard members themselves, right across Britain. Almost every county contained several schools. Surrey, for example, contained a number of schools, the most successful being at Denbies, Epsom, and Reigate. They might not have been infused with the socialist spirit of Osterley Park's Spanish Civil War veterans, but some elements of that view may well have been present, not least because of the journalism of the people's militia enthusiasts.

La Columna reading Tom Wintringham's article in Picture Post prior to giving a lecture on explosives at Osterley Park 2007

To the army hierarchy, and to elements within the War Office, Osterley Park represented a potential threat. The authorities were not in full control of the school - which had been, from the outset, a private initiative. The military, and political, implications were problematic for this group, and Osterley Park was gradually run-down by the army, it being eventually replaced by a smaller Home Guard school, at Dorking. Significantly, this school was run, not by ex-Spanish Civil War veterans, but by a regular army officer. However, Wintringham's ideas lived on, in the thousands of Home Guard men who had attended courses at Osterley Park, and at similar schools, and in the popular journalism of left-wing enthusiasts for the Home Guard. The Home Guard did not take on any type of political role, as some, like George Orwell, thought it might, in the turbulent, dangerous summer of 1940, but many Home Guard volunteers nonetheless saw themselves as a nascent guerrilla force, different from the regular army, and the very essence of the People's War.

As Churchill clearly saw, the Home Guard was important, especially in 1940, in maintaining national morale. Fairly quickly, the Home Guard also became an effective part of Britain's defences against invasion, and, if the German defence of Berlin (which saw German home guard troops in action) in 1945 is any indicator, the Home Guard may well have been more formidable than some have suspected. The Home Guard also helped release some 100,000 regular troops for the invasion of Europe in June, 1944, and provided a constant watch on vital local areas - power stations, railways, telephone exchanges and the like. The Home Guard did not, however, become, as men like Wintringham, Langdon-Davies, George Orwell, and John Brophy would have liked, a people's militia. Nonetheless, it was an organisation which was essential to the mobilisation of Britain's civilian population. The very strong sense that ordinary British people were vital to the war effort is graphically evidenced in John Brophy's best-selling tribute, Britain's Home Guard (1945). Brophy's resounding farewell to the Home Guard was lavishly illustrated by the famous war artist, Eric Kennington. In a series of portraits, Kennington presents Home Guard members from across the entire United Kingdom. The men are frequently portrayed in a way that stresses not only their Home Guard service, but their working lives, and their local communities. So, for instance, Corporal Melvin Jones of the Monmouthshire Home Guard is shown in two portraits - one in his Home Guard uniform, the other at the coal face, with the caption 'Melvin Jones, Miner'. And Melvin Jones is joined by Sergeant Stokes, portrayed in his agricultural working clothes, and Company Sergeant-Major Waters, from the Lancashire Home Guard, who gazes out of a window at dockyard cranes, and factory chimneys. This clear sense that the survival of Britain depended on ordinary people not only continuing their working lives, but also actively playing a part in the defence of the country, may well have fostered the values that helped the Labour Party to win in 1945, and led to the long era of the social democratic consensus, which lasted into the 1970s.

Further Reading:

Addison, P. (1994 edition) The Road to 1945; British Politics and the Second World War, Pimlico.
Calder, A (1992 edition) The People's War; Britain, 1939-45, Pimlico.
Mackenzie, S.P. (1995) The Home Guard, A Military and Political History, Oxford University Press.

La Columna at Osterley 2007