大象传媒

I have chosen the date as the beginning of January 1938 -that is when I joined the Town Clerk's office, West Bromwich as an assistant solicitor. I had done my training at Wolverhampton with the Town Clerk there and I had met a Mr. George Francis Darlow, who was the Deputy Town Clerk. I liked him and I got on with him. In 1937 he left Wolverhampton and became Town Clerk of West Bromwich when the previous Town Clerk (Alfred Wickham) retired. I completed my training and all my examinations by October 1937 and was looking for a job. Apparently Mr. Darlow was looking for an assistant solicitor and he rang me up to enquire if I had secured a job. I replied that I hadn't yet, and he asked if I would like to go and work for him. That was very, very good news indeed because I knew I would get on well with him. So there I was at West Bromwich early in 1938 very busily engaged on legal work.

Way back in 1937, Parliament passed the Air Raid Precautions Act. I think it passed unnoticed so far as many people were concerned, but the reason why Parliament was asked to pass it was that it was known in the 'upper Limits' that if we couldn't stop master Hitler doing what he was doing, then inevitably we were going to be at war. So they had been making preparations. It had been going on for several years I imagine, so the Act was passed and that laid down the basis on which we would try to protect the population. It laid down a number of foundation matters, and I have classified them for my purpose under three headings:

The first was 'The Who' The second was 'The How' and The third was 'The What'

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