‘The Invisible Chain by Which All Are Bound to Each Other’: Civil Defence Magazines and the Development of Community During the Second World War

Abstract

This article uses local collaboratively produced civil defence magazines to examine how community spirit was developed and represented within the civil defence services during the Second World War. It highlights the range of functions which the magazines performed, as well as the strategies employed by civil defence communities to manage their emotions in order to keep morale high and distract personnel from the fear and boredom experienced while on duty. The article also discusses silences in the magazines — especially around the experience of air raids — and argues that this too reflects group emotional management strategies. The significance of local social groups in developing narratives about civil defence and their workplace communities is demonstrated, and the article shows how personnel were able to engage with and refashion dominant cultural narratives of the ‘people’s war’ in order to assert their own status within the war effort.