Creating the People’s War

Civil defence was the most significant voluntary organisation of the Second World War. It involved men and women of every class, generation and locality in Britain. This book examines how civil defence personnel developed local workplace communities, engaged with ideas about civil duty, and helped to create the myth of the ‘people’s war’. -- .

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Why has the ‘people’s war’ been such a durable and attractive myth? Creating the people’s war examines how civil defence personnel engaged with this narrative during the war and in the following decades to answer this question.

Civil defence was the most significant voluntary organisation of the Second World War, involving millions of men and women of every class, generation and locality in Britain. This book shows how local communities of civil defence personnel co-developed narratives about the value of their work which challenged hierarchies of war service. In their social groups volunteers wrote themselves into the ‘people’s war’ and invested it with meaning, creating national identity from the bottom up. Community was both central to these representations and vital for their production. -- .