6 June 1944: SOCIALIST ERNEST WHEWELL BRAVELY GOES OFF TO FIGHT FASCISM

 

 

JUNE 6 1944 ‘ D DAY’

SOCIALIST ERNEST WHEWELL BRAVELY GOES OFF TO FIGHT FASCISM

Taken from BETTY TEBBS – A radical working class hero booklet and accompanying film by Mark Metcalf

The primary motivation for Britain fighting a war between 1939-1945 was not anti-fascist. Indeed, many of Britain’s leaders had looked favourably on the policies being adopted by Hitler right up until he threatened Britain’s imperial interests by looking to take over its African colonies.

However, many British people fully understood that fascism was an ideology that crushes the working class of their rights and destroys all forms of political opposition to their policies. Thousands had gone off to fight fascism when Franco sought to take power in Spain in 1936. Many were killed.

So, when war was declared, lots of anti-fascists signed up to fight fascism. Lancashire factory worker Ernest Whewell was one. He was married to Betty Tebbs and they had a baby daughter, Pat.

On 6 June 1944, he was part of the Allied Landing in France on ‘D-Day.’

Soon after returning to work, (he had suffered an injury when falling down some steel steps – ed) Ernest announced he felt that fascism had to be fought and had asked his employers to remove him from his ‘reserved occupation status’ and they had agreed. “I was upset at his decision, but his mind was made up.” His papers came in June 1940 and Ernest was required to join the Royal Artillery and report to Hereford where his training went well and he came home on leave looking much better physically.

After Ernest departed, Betty felt happier at work than being alone at home. She swapped jobs to work at a firm making ground sheets for soldiers. The pay was much better and with the additional seven shillings (35p) she was receiving from Ernest’s pay she was able to buy many things for the home.

Betty then received a government form to complete in order to work in the Mather and Platt engineering and munitions factory just outside Bolton. She began working continuous 12-hour shifts as a crane driver. There was only one week for the annual holiday and the desperate need for anti-tank guns meant that at one point there was not even any dinner time. The war in general was going badly for Britain, with many cities pounded by German bombers in the Blitz of 1940 and 1941.

When Ernest was able to get leave he persuaded his wife to abandon the earlier decision not to have a child. Betty was warned by her doctor about having a child in such difficult times but she later became pregnant. Knowing that if she informed her employers that she was expecting they would terminate her contract, Betty soldiered on. Her situation was helped by the fact she could hide her condition thanks to the large overalls she wore. It also helped that Betty could work alone high up on the crane, which she used to lift the guns and breach-blocks away.

Climbing the ladder upwards was difficult but not impossible. In the months leading up to the arrival date of her first child, Betty was transferred to a ground based job where she continued to hide her pregnancy until she had saved £50 and was only a month away from giving birth when she quit in August 1942.

Labour began on a Saturday night and lasted until 4.10am on Monday when a baby girl, Pat, was born suffering from a number of complications.

Ernest was given 24 hours’ leave and returned to see his daughter who was christened Patricia Anne. He was to see Pat just three times. Mother and baby were allowed to leave hospital after a week but it soon became apparent that the newly arrived remained in poor health and would require radiation treatment on a quarterly basis at the Christie Cancer Hospital for a chronic skin lesion at her neck base. On her visits, which lasted for eighteen months, Pat had her head clamped when the ray was administered to her damaged throat area. The infant was the first to undergo such treatment at Christie’s.

Now that she was no longer working, Betty was struggling financially. Nevertheless, she refused payment for cleaning and cooking for Ernest’s two sisters and his father. Betty saw this as repaying the family for having bought Pat’s winter clothes.

In the meantime, Ernest had been transferred to the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, a crack infantry regiment, which led to be him moving to Scotland. The couple kept in contact by regularly sending letters to each other. Betty then learned from her husband that he had gone over to France on ‘D-Day’, 6 June 1944, which started the Allied landings in Normandy in Operation Overlord. Because he did not entirely trust French farmers, some of whom had done well under German occupation, Ernest was now warily advancing through French countryside.

 The lukewarm reception received from the farmers was at odds with that which Ernest and Allied Forces found when they reached the major towns and cities where the welcome was overwhelming. In one of his letters home, Ernest said that when he had helped capture Paris, gone through Germany and helped win the war, he would be back home for a holiday of a lifetime.

Betty then began to fear the worst when Ernest’s letters stopped arriving. She dreamt he was shot running up a hill and was not comforted by crass remarks such as “No news is good news.” She was right to be worried as on returning from a visit to the doctor’s with Pat, Betty turned the corner to see that her letterbox flap was up. When she saw the On His Majesty’s Service (OHMS) letter she initially thought Ernest had been wounded.

It was much worse.

 “KILLED IN ACTION.”

Pushing her daughter in the pushchair, Betty, accompanied by her faithful black spaniel, ran all the way to Ernest’s father’s house to tell him and Ernest’s two sisters the tragic news.

She could hardly speak when she got there. She was overcome when Ernest’s family showed their own distress, which Pat quickly picked up on to become distressed herself. Ernest’s father, who was a big quiet and kindly man, never spoke for a long time afterwards and died suddenly a few months later.

After staying at her parents’ house for two weeks after Ernest’s death, Betty returned with Pat to their own home. She refused offers to go and live rent free with two elderly spinsters whom she had lived next to when she was young.

It was difficult enough coming to terms with the loss of her husband when Betty, who had already determined to work for peace from then on, received a second OHMS letter informing her that as a single woman she would receive a much reduced allowance. “This was a bitter blow. At the stage of coping with Ernest’s loss I was being virtually told by the state that they had no more use for us and could dispense with real responsibility for us.”

This injustice ignited in Betty a resentment and heightened her political interests. “Prior to the War I had not seen any connections between my work in the trade union movement and party politics.”

What Ernest feared is now emerging. DEATH TO FASCISM.

                           Cartoon by Tony Hall - copyright. 

                     Read BETTY TEBBS – A radical working class hero

https://markwrite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/6328-betty-tebbs-web.pdf

View Who’s Betty Tebbs? Produced by Francesca Platt, Tracy Hindley & Mark Metcalf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrWBJZr3I68

Listen to the children signing a song about Betty on six minutes. It is beautiful.

Tony Hall booklet at:- https://markwrite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/6328-tony-hall-booklet-2020.pdf

A plaque to Betty Tebbs is located on what was the gates to the East Lancashire Paper Mill, Radcliffe.

. Photograph is copyright Mark Harvey of ID8 photography, Sheffield