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The Worst Civillian Disaster Of The Second World War:

On the evening of March 3rd 1943 the air raid sirens sounded and in Bethnal Green in London?s East End thousands of people hastily made their way into the underground tube shelter, a woman carrying a baby lost her footing on one of the wet slippery concrete steps and many more fell on top of her resulting in 173 people losing their lives including 84 women,62 children and 27 men with many more being injured.

The British goverment at the time hushed up this incident but now seventy years later a memorial has been erected to remember those who lost their lives in this tragic event..



I shot this yesterday in pouring rain in HD but had to downsize to get on youtube, apologies about the quality, if you are ever in the Bethnal Green area then do visit the memorial and pause a while and reflect that life is not so bad these days with all of our moans and groans

I was there a few days after the 3rd March anniversary.

Very sombre and fitting memorial I thought.

There had been a ceremony on the actual 70th anniversary and there were still flowers that had been placed on the memorial during that ceremony.

I went around reading the messages.

The messages were very moving.

Lots were from residents of Bethnal Green who had lost Mothers, brothers or sisters in the disaster. They were old people now but they still remember the family they lost.

A few stick in my mind.

There was one from someone whose aunt had lost two of her Children and she had taken her own life shortly afterwards in grief.

Another from a man who had lost his six year old sister in the disaster whose mother had died a few years ago. When he came to clear out his mother?s house he found a suitcase full of his sister?s toy dolls and clothes.

It made me think that although you see the statistics of those who died on the day, that?s not the whole story, there?s enormous sadness that follows.

Some background to the disaster.

What would the Uk be like if the war had not happened ? take of the rose tinted glasses and have a look - Germany lost and became a power house - Japan lost and became a power house.....we may have had the right spirit during the war but now today have we forgotten what is was all about.

If wed taken a back seat and then just rolled over when the germans came knocking who knows. we cant as we dont have the full facts to se what it would have been like, it would have been different but it wouldnt have been as we had imagined. maybe germany would have got the atomic bomb it was seeking and then razed a few of the cities to the ground. again we dont know.

Thing is we did have the war and we lost many in the struggle - this can never be forgotten as those that died died protecting a way of life. We owe them and we owe them a lot, more with every day of passing. we have our freedom and we put down the nazis.

The government is letting our armed forces slip - if ever we went though something like this again then we would stutter and at present probably fall at the fist hurdle. They say the world is a safer place that we have nothing to fear but yet we can see the arab spring - that destroyed a few countries, the balkans disintegrated and we now wait to see what will happen with the koreas and also the indian subcontinent. We have issues with Iran too lets not forget and we are meant to be safer....

The world is a dangerous place and its getting worse as the grip on peace relaxes......

If you're for one moment considering Nazi occupation and rule would be better just because you don't like how multicultural London and the UK's larger cities are these days, then you're a bigger moron than I thought.

william wrote:

> What would the UK be like if the war had not happened? Take off
> the rose-tinted glasses and have a look - Germany lost and
> became a powerhouse - Japan lost and became a powerhouse.....we may have had the right spirit during the war but
> now today have we forgotten what is was all about.
>
> If we'd taken a back seat and then just rolled over when the
> Germans came knocking who knows. We can't as we don't have the
> full facts to see what it would have been like. It would have
> been different but it wouldn't have been as we had imagined.
> Maybe Germany would have got the atomic bomb it was seeking and
> then razed a few of the cities to the ground. Again, we don't
> know.
>

There are a number of books and articles on subjects like this - called counterfactuals.

What if we har ignored Polish neutrality?
What if the Tories's first choice had become PM (Lord Halifax) instead of Churchill?
What if FDR hadn't died?
What if the July 1944 plot against Hitler had succeeded? Or indeed the much earlier Munich Beer Hall plot?
What if Hess's flight to Scotland had been successful?

I think the bombing of Clydeside would dwarf this.....miles and miles of houses and factories burnt out....

Did I say wed be a better place if the Nazi's won ? actually if you read it I was questioning those that think that wed be in a better place if they had won.....