BlightyGirl's Profile

"Every time I see this poster, I just get angry at a government telling it's citizens to keep calm and carry on whilst being bombed. Maybe I should make a "Rise Up and Overthrow" poster."

I found this thread as a result of reading another blog and I have to say that as an Englishwomen, I'm really quite offended by this attitude. Maybe that's the fundamental difference between now and 1936. We didn't all think like spoiled children who wanted the world to work their way.

We had no wish to "rise-up" as you so naively put it. Who would have replaced our government if we had done so? Hitler, most probably.

We didn't rise up, we just got on with it and endured - rationing, blackouts, air raids, our children being evacuated far away from us for years, our husbands, fathers, brothers away fighting in a war that we had no choice but to fight in.

All you could do was keep calm & carry on; get through each day, one day at a time, for six whole years, and maybe that's why we won our war. We weren't invaded, we weren't beaten, we hung in there and we believed that somehow everything would go back to the way it used to be and that our loved ones would come home safely to us.

I like the poster, it's part of my heritage and I'm proud of that. Just try to remember the context in which it was first designed.