Constructing Space for Dissent in War: The Bombing Restriction Committee, 1941–1945

Abstract

Abstract The prevailing view of the British public’s response to the RAF bomber offensive during the Second World War suggests that there was widespread and even enthusiastic support for the bombing aside from a small number of prominent individuals, chiefly the writer Vera Brittain and the Bishop of Chichester, George Bell. This article challenges the view that there was little overt dissent over the bombing campaign by looking at the origins, activity and impact of the Bombing Restriction Committee, the title given in 1942 to the Committee for the Abolition of Night Bombing founded in August 1941. The Committee undertook a wide range of activity in protest first against night-bombing, and then more generally against the RAF’s shift to area bombing in 1941–2. The article examines the network of supporters that the committee developed and the nature and extent of its propaganda, and addresses the question of why the protest against a major aspect of British strategy was allowed to continue throughout the war without serious interference. The result suggests that the ideal of a ‘democratic consensus’ in Britain was not realised on this issue; instead it can be argued that official tolerance for protest demonstrated more clearly Britain’s democratic credentials, while it allowed the Committee to keep alive the evolving humanitarian concern of sections of pre-war British society, and to sustain those concerns on into the nuclear age.