Introduction

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Mention of the blackout inevitably brings to mind images of the Second World War, but in fact a blackout operated during the Great War too. On June 1st 1915 Blaydon U.D.C. received a letter from the Chief Constable ordering them to cease lighting their street lights immediately. The Council area had extensive street lighting -gas at Blaydon and Winlaton and electric lighting in the villages provided by the colliery companies- but the order actually had little immediate effect because at that time most street lighting was only used during what was called the "lighting season" which extended from September 1st to April 30th. A few areas, such as Chain Bridge Road at Blaydon, had lighting all year round, but like most rural areas, Rowlands Gill had no lighting whatsoever during the summer, not even on the main roads. Incidentally, because of vandalism, the usual practice was to remove the complete light fittings at the end of the lighting season; yes, vandalism was just as much of a problem then.

When the dark nights set in the Council realised just how much people had come to depend on street lighting and, moreover, they were aware that reduced street lighting was actually being allowed in Newcastle. On November 9th they wrote to the military authorities and drew their attention to the "danger from the entire absence of street lighting in this District". A reply was received on December 14th from Major-General Montgomery C.B., D.S.O., the Commander of the Tyne Garrison, which said in effect that they could introduce reduced lighting provided that it was shaded so as to be invisible from above and provided that the lamps could be switched off at a moment's notice on receipt of an "extinguishing order".

This latter requirement effectively ensured that no lighting was restored; it would have required extensive modifications to the networks. Take, for instance, the Barlow street lights which, at that time, were supplied from a generator at Lilley Drift using the same wires as those powering the Fan House at High Thornley. To switch off the Barlow lights quickly without affecting the colliery ventilation fan would have required a man based at the Fan House every night and a telephone installation there too. Similar problems affected every lighting scheme in the Council's area, and as late as November 5th 1918, six days before the Armistice, the Council resolved to write to the Gas Company and the colliery owners because none of the street lights had "yet been lit".

Domestic premises too were affected but not quite as severely as in World War Two. An order of 15th December 1915 stated: "...inside lights must be so shaded or reduced, or the windows, skylights and glass doors so screened by shutters or dark blinds or curtains so that no more than a dull subdued light is visible from any direction outside. Factories working night-shifts were apparently not subject to the restrictions but had to extinguish their lights on receipt of a telephone warning.

Although the position varied across the country, public air-raid warning systems were not at all common in World War 1; it was left to the discretion of local authorities. Some areas tried public warnings at first but stopped when they found that people tended to congregate on the streets when warnings were issued -Zeppelins were a spectacular sight and did not appear at all threatening. Other areas, like Hull, had public warnings throughout the war. London, which was subject to aeroplane as well as airship attacks, introduced a comprehensive public warning system -involving maroons and Boy Scouts blowing bugles as they were driven through the streets in cars- as late as 14th July 1917. In the North-East I can only find reference to one public warning system and that was in Gateshead. It was somewhat unusual in that it combined warning and blackout; to quote the Council handbook: "The receipt of a warning of a probable air raid will be notified to the public by:- (a) Electric lights being gradually lowered and then raised to full power and then gradually lowered until finally extinguished; (b) The stoppage of tramcars". Although it cannot be stated with certainty that other parts of the North-East had public warning systems, it seems likely that others would have existed on industrial Tyneside; perhaps, as in some parts of the country, using factory hooters or policemen cycling, around the streets carrying "Take Cover" placards and blowing whistles or shouting "Zeps..Zeps!".

In contrast to the generally poor provision of public warning facilities there was, from May 25th 1916, a very efficient national military warning organisation. During the early Zeppelin raids individual Chief Constables had been responsible for issuing warnings in their own districts. This was quite unsatisfactory in areas like Tyneside where a Zeppelin could pass over half a dozen police areas in ten minutes and no doubt this accounts for the fact that the factories in Wallsend, Willington and Jarrow which were bombed on the night of 15/16 June 1915 had not been warned and were all showing full lighting at the time. The new system, devised by Field Marshal Lord French, divided the country into eight Warning Controls which were subdivided into Warning Districts. The Controls were in towns with Trunk Telephone Exchanges and the boundaries of both Controls and Districts were governed by the organisation of the telephone system.

Newcastle was the headquarters of a Warning Control which extended roughly from a line between Whitby and Seascale up to the Scottish border. There were four Warning Districts within Newcastle Warning Control:- District 11 which consisted of Northumberland north of a line Ashington to Gilsland; District 12 which comprised the rest of Northumberland and County Durham north of a line Easington to Middleton-in-Teesdale; District 13, the rest of County Durham and a portion of the North Riding; and District 14, Cumberland and a little of Westmorland. A Warning Controller was appointed for each Warning Control and it was his job to collect and pass on information about Zeppelin movements and to issue warnings. The man in charge of Newcastle Warning Control was the Commander of the Tyne Garrison, Major-General Montgomery. His main source of information was a network of observer posts manned by soldiers but he also received reports from the police, troops, naval stations and railway officials in his area and from Warning Controllers in adjoining areas. Reports came over the public telephone system; the code word AIRBANDIT, known to all telephone operators, ensured absolute priority over all other calls.

As soon as he was warned of an approaching Zeppelin, the Warning Controller would decide which of his Districts were under threat and inform the Trunk Telephone Exchange in his headquarters town accordingly. Trunk Exchange operators would pass the warning to each of the exchanges within the District or Districts to be warned and operators in those exchanges then worked through the telephone numbers on prearranged Warning Lists which included military, police, civil authorities and industrial premises. Different lists were used for night and day raids because in the latter case the question of extinguishing lights did not arise. Everyone on the Warning List was required under threat of legal penalties to answer their telephone within 15 seconds.

The telephone warnings passed on by telephone operators always followed one of four prescribed formulae: "Field-Marshal's Order: Warning Only", "Field-Marshal's Order: Take Air Raid Action", "Field Marshal's Order: Resume Normal Conditions" and "Field-Marshal's Order: All Clear". In some areas deemed vulnerable to sudden attack, the local military commander was authorized to issue the last three of these warnings if there was insufficient time to pass the information through the normal channels; such areas were known as Warning Sub-Districts. Within the Newcastle Warning Control area, District 13 was a Warning Sub-District under the Garrison Commander at West Hartlepool. When a warning was issued by a local commander the words, "Field-Marshal's Order:" were replaced by "Military Order:". In exceptional circumstances, such as a communications failure or the appearance of a raid in a town which had not been warned, the police could also issue warnings which would then be prefixed with the words "Police Order:". When passing warnings to the Trunk Exchange, the Warning Controller used a system of code words for the four warnings. They were GREEN, RED, WHITE or YELLOW followed by the number of the District to be warned. So the message "RED 12" would mean issue the warning "Field-Marshal's Order: Take Air Raid Action" to District 12. This code was derived from the system of coloured lights which were shown behind each Warning District on a transparent map at G.H.Q. Home Forces at Horse Guards in London to give a national picture of the air defence situation. As will be seen a similar colour code was to be used even more extensively in World War Two. G.H.Q. Home Forces was always informed by the Warning Controller about warnings issued in his Control area as were Warning Controllers in adjoining Control Areas.

The World War Two blackout began at 7.47 p.m. B.S.T. on Friday September 1st 1939, the day when World War Two effectively began, for everyone that is except the Prime Minister, who dithered until virtually blackmailed by his Cabinet late on the following day. (Of course, in 1993 we might find it hard to imagine that a P.M. could possibly dither!). Earlier in the day a message, "Street Lights Message Black" had gone out to about 3,000 gas and electricity undertakings, notices headed "Lighting Restrictions" had appeared all over the country and broadcast announcements on the B.B.C. informed the public about the regulations.

Basically, from sunset to sunrise, the householder or occupier of premises had to ensure that all lights in his building were invisible from the outside of the building. Illuminated advertisements and signs were forbidden and street lights were to be extinguished. Traffic lights were allowed but they had to be masked so that only small crosses of colour were shown. Motor vehicles of all types had to have masks over headlights, and buses, trams and trains had to dim and screen interior lights. Factories were included in the restrictions except that undertakings engaged on work of national importance could be granted exemption from the blackout for their outside lighting provided that they screened their lighting as much as possible and could extinguish their lighting immediately on hearing the sirens or, in areas not equipped with sirens, on receipt of a telephone warning.

The blackout was not a surprise to anyone; the public had been warned well in advance to make preparations. Many options were available - special blackout material on frames, very heavy curtains, cardboard or even black paint, but this last option was only employed by industrial premises. There had even been a blackout test throughout the North-East on the night of May 6/7th 1939, but it only lasted from 1.00 a.m. to 3.00 a.m. so its impact on the general public public was minimal. Its main purpose was to determine what could be observed from the air when the street lighting was off and the R.A.F. overflew the area as part of the exercise.

With the outbreak of war such overflights were repeated to see if any problems still existed and the early reports were not very encouraging. At 2 a.m. on September 4th the R.A.F. reported that all towns in the Tyne and Tees areas had odd lights visible and that Newcastle was clearly visible as a town area, and between 9.45 and 10.00 p.m. on September 14th a lot of blue mercury lights on railway sidings were spotted. Things improved with police warnings to offenders and on September 24th, when Squadron Leader Smith of 607 Squadron overflew the area at 6000 feet from 9.45 to 10.15 p.m., the report stated that the blackout was very effective and the only lights seen were four welding flashes. Continuous vigilance was essential however, and a report following a flight on the evening of October 2nd stated that a few isolated lights were again visible in Newcastle, the Pelton Coke Ovens were clearly visible and the shape of a large building at Birtley could be clearly discerned because of dim lights visible through the roof. On the following evening the report stated that 1) Several railway yards were distinctly visible, (2) Several moving points of light (cars) were seen, and (3) At the coke ovens Ackwell (obviously Axwell) Park there was a "red glow against clouds of steam". Although attempts were made to minimise the problems presented by coke ovens and, even more so, by steel works such as those at Consett, there was little that could be done short of closing them down.

Road accidents were inevitable; 3000 deaths between September and November. Indeed in many towns during the course of the war, deaths from road accidents far exceeded those from air attack, but undoubtedly, without the strict blackout, deaths from bombing would have been much higher. The risks imposed by the blackout could not be eliminated but steps were taken to minimise them. Kerbs were painted white; trees, lamp posts, pillar boxes and other street furniture had white bands painted around them; and vehicles had to have their bumpers, running boards and mud guards painted white. A 20 m.p.h. speed limit was also introduced despite opposition. White clothing helped too and luminous accessories such as armbands or buttons increased visibility even more. It wasn't only inanimate objects that were painted white; after several accidents, the New Forest ponies were given zebra-like stripes in an effort to protect them from traffic. It was not successful and the ponies were moved to a more isolated pastures.

There were other hazards for pedestrians. Few can have escaped bruises from walking into walls or other fixed objects, or at least had the embarrassment of apologising to a telegraph pole. Water too could be dangerous in the blackout and extra care was needed near docks, canals and rivers. Even well away from such obvious hazards, emergency water tanks which appeared in towns across the country could be just as dangerous.

Torches were officially banned out of doors at first, but from September 13th they were permitted as long as they were pointed downwards and were masked with two thicknesses of tissue paper. Other minor relaxations to the regulations were made in December. These allowed illuminated "Open" signs in the doorways of shops and businesses and a little shop-window lighting; the concessions being on condition that these lights were carefully screened and that they were extinguished as soon as the sirens sounded. The goverment also allowed what was known as "glimmer" or "pin-prick" street lighting. The cost of converting the fittings was high however and, moreover, despite official assurances, many local authorities believed that it would attract the enemy to their town, so it was not widely adopted.

Other efforts to limit the effects of the blackout were made. The blackout was reduced in length by one hour from November 3rd 1939, so that it ran from 30 minutes after sunset to 30 minutes before sunrise, and it was reduced by a further 30 minutes during the summer months. British Summer Time was in force when war broke out, but it was due to end on October 8th. To make the evenings lighter, however, the clocks were not put back until November 19th and they went forward again on February 25th 1940. The clocks were not altered again until May 4th 1941 when they went forward another hour, and from then until the end of the war we had "Summer" Time or B.S.T. (G.M.T. + 1 hour) between August and May, and Double Summer Time or D.B.S.T. (G.M.T. + 2 hours) between May and August. In 1945 Double Summer Time ended on July 15th with the clocks going back an hour, and they went back a further hour on October 7th. Such meddling with the clock had more extreme effects here in the North-East than it had in London - sunrise as late as 9.35 a.m. and sunset as late 10.49 p.m. - but it was even worse in the north of Scotland. As one G.I. out with his girlfriend was heard to remark; "Doesn't it ever get dark in this goddam country?".

The blackout was enforced by the police and air-raid wardens; "Put that light out" -with or without some colloquial adjective appropriate to the neighbourhood- was heard from one end of the country to the other. Serious infringements usually brought written warnings from the police, and if that was ignored, prosecution followed, the usual punishment being a £1 fine, quite a sum in those days. Some offenders should have known better; on March 4th 1941 the R.A.F. premises at 11 Victoria Square, Jesmond were reported for blackout infringements, as was the W.A.A.F. billet at 37 Eslington Terrace (on February 20th 1942) and the Headquarters of the 11th Battalion Northumberland Home Guard at 7 Graingerville South, but worst of all, with three brightly lit windows completely unscreened, was Bentinck Schools which, at the time (March 13th 1942) was occupied by the army.

In our area the blackout lasted until the evening of Sunday April 20th 1945 (on the coast it lasted until midnight on May 10th), but it had been relaxed to a "dimout" in all areas away from the south and east coasts on September 17th 1944. The "dimout" reduced the blackout to roughly World War One standards, but few people made any changes to their arrangements. At first the "dimout" was to become a blackout during alerts, but from December 9th it could continue even if the sirens sounded. Car drivers too had an easier time after December 27th 1944 when headlight masks were abolished.

The Government decided before the war started that public warnings would be given in urban areas only and by means of sirens or hooters. A wailing note (officially described as a "warble") on the sirens or intermittent blasts on the hooters would signal an imminent air attack, while a continuous note on the sirens or hooters would signal the "All Clear" or "Raiders Passed". Both signals were of two minutes duration until September 1940 and one minute thereafter. Newcastle had around 25 sirens, mostly on industrial premises, while Gateshead had seven, four of them on cinemas - the Regal, Classic, Shipcote and Coatsworth. The Wrekenton area of Gateshead and other "rural" areas like Rowlands Gill had no sirens at the beginning of the war. This was government policy and indeed one organisation in Northumberland received a severe reprimand when they sounded hooters on receipt of an official air-raid warning. With public disquiet this policy gradually changed and sirens were installed further out from urban centres. It has not been possible to establish exactly when Rowlands Gill's siren was installed but it can be narrowed down a little. It was apparently not there on January 29th 1940 but it was definitely in place by July 3rd 1940. Rowlands Gill was somewhat unusual in that the siren was on top of the Warden Post on Norman Road (where South Sherburn now joins) while most sirens in the villages were on industrial or commercial premises, often collieries, which had staff on duty 24 hours a day. At High Spen the siren was on the colliery engine-room, at Chopwell it was on the Power Station and at Highfield it was on the boiler house of the Alloy Works. Really remote areas, such as Allendale (which was actually bombed twice), never had sirens at all, the nearest one to Allendale being at Hexham and that was only just audible out of doors on a quiet frosty night. The log book of the nearby St Peter's School, Sparty Lea records that when the first air-raid alert during school hours was issued at 1.55 p.m. on Friday October 17th 1939, the local Chief Air Raid Warden took a leisurely walk up to the school to pass it on, and the school was immediately closed for the day.

The warning organisation was already in place when the war started and it had many similarities with that introduced in 1916. The country was divided into 111 Warning Districts, this was increased to 116 in September 1940 and to 157 in 1943. These districts were based on "Telephone Areas" and cut across county and even national boundaries. The Newcastle Warning District covered the areas now served by exchanges called Tyneside/Wearside/Durham (i.e. the "091" exchanges), plus the Consett, Wylam and Morpeth Charge Groups (i.e. the "0207", "0661" and "0670" exchanges). The surrounding Warning Districts were Berwick, Hexham, Bishop Auckland and Middlesborough. With the 1943 changes, the Morpeth Warning District was formed between those of Berwick and Newcastle.

The warnings were once again stereotyped; this time code words were to be used throughout the system. "Air Raid Message YELLOW" was the preliminary caution to be issued to a District when enemy aircraft were 15 minutes flying time from the District boundary. The YELLOW was a confidential warning issued only to those with a need to know -for example, police, fire service and A.R.P. premises where there was a need to man emergency control rooms- and was never to be made public. "Cancel Caution" was given as "Air Raid Message WHITE". The Action Warning, the signal to sound the public warning sirens, was "Air-Raid Warning RED" and this would be issued when enemy aircraft were 5 minutes flying time away. The Action Warning was cancelled by "Air Raid Message GREEN" and this was made public by sounding the "All Clear".

Warning Lists were compiled for each Warning District. These contained the telephone numbers of organisations which were to receive air-raid warnings. The lists were compiled by the individual Chief Constables whose areas lay within the Warning District, so the Warning List for the Newcastle Warning District had contributions from the Chief Constables of Northumberland, Tynemouth, Newcastle, Durham, Gateshead, South Shields and Sunderland, with the Chief Constable of Durham acting as coordinator. The lists were of three types; Special, Action and Supplementary. The Special List comprised organisations which were to receive the YELLOW and WHITE messages and the Action List named those who were to get the RED and GREEN messages. The organisations were given a priority rating from 0-4, the lower the number, the higher the priority. The Supplementary Lists consisted of organisations which were to receive warnings indirectly from another organisation already on the Special or Action Lists.

The Warning Lists compiled by the Chief Constable of Newcastle have survived and are reproduced on the following pages. The lists had obviously been altered many times with both additions and deletions, so not all of the organisations listed here were necessarily on the lists at the same time. It is worth noting that some organisations appeared on both the "Special" and "Action" Lists but under different categories; this occurred because organisations entitled to appear under two or more categories were listed under whichever gave them the highest priority.

Vickers Armstrongs, Scotswood Works, for instance was on the Action List as a siren operator but on the Special List as a vital factory. The Supplementary Lists require a little more explanation. The column headed source shows the police division responsible for relaying the message; "A" Division was based at the Police Headquarters which was on both the Special and Action Lists. "B" Division was based at the West End Police Station and "C" Division at the East End Police Station, both of which received air-raid messages from "A" Division. The single instance of an "F" on the Supplementary Action List refers to Fire Brigade Headquarters which passed RED and GREEN messages to the Manors Generating Station (Corporation Tramways) by means of their direct telephone line which was originally installed to carry fire calls in the opposite direction. The Special and Action Warning Lists from each Chief Constable in the Warning District were sent to the Telephone Manager at Newcastle (via the Chief Constable of Durham) and he split the combined list into individual lists for each of his exchanges.

Warning Messages for all parts of the United Kingdom were initiated by Fighter Command Headquarters at Bentley Priory near Stanmore in Middlesex. As described elsewhere, they received information from the Radar network and from the Observer Corps and, as well as initiating defensive measures, they plotted raids on a large horizontal map which showed the boundaries of the Warning Districts. To send an air-raid message to a particular Warning District, they first informed one of three designated Trunk Exchanges (London, Liverpool or Glasgow) by means of a direct line, each of these Trunk Exchanges was responisible for passing messages to about six Group Exchanges, such as that in Newcastle, and they in turn were each responible for about six Warning Districts. When the message reached the main exchange serving a particular Warning District, it was passed to all the manual exchanges in the District and operators in those exchanges cleared their boards (they literally pulled all of their jacks apart from those bearing red collars indicating priority users) and worked through the portion of the Special or Action List for their exchange. The lists were arranged in order of priority.

A warning passed through a lengthy chain from Stanmore to the individual recipients. Take the Siren Control Point at Hilton's Garage, Cowgate for example; a message to this recipient would have travelled STANMORE-LIVERPOOL TRUNK EXCHANGE-NEWCASTLE GROUP EXCHANGE-NEWCASTLE MAIN EXCHANGE-HILTON'S GARAGE. Once the message reached the Trunk Exchange in London, Liverpool or Glasgow, the entire warning chain was in the hands of G.P.O. telephone operators, apart, that is, for the last stage or two of the chain to the few recipients on the Supplementary Lists. Returning briefly to the Newcastle Supplementary Warning List, the inclusion of the 13th Fighter Group, Fighter Command right at the end of the warning chain seems, at first sight, somewhat strange because it was their task to scramble the R.A.F. fighters throughout the North of England and Scotland. However it seems that they were on the Warning List only to check that the whole warning chain had worked properly. For operational purposes they would be constantly informed of the progress of the raid by Fighter Command Headquarters, indeed reports from the Observer Corps Posts in the the Region were sent to Stanmore via 13 Group.

All organisations on the Warning Lists were required to answer their telephones within 15 seconds and to identify themselves immediately; they were then given the message and had to repeat it to the operator to avoid errors. Failure to observe this procedure rigorously was treated most seriously, with immediate visits from the police and the threat of legal action. Most serious was the failure to answer the telephone; in one instance in Newcastle a firm, who were responsible for operating a siren, were accused of not answering the phone and claimed that it had not rung. Unfortunately for them, a police officer had actually heard it ringing.

The very first alert of the war was issued to the Newcastle and Berwick Warning Districts at 11.20 a.m. on Sunday September 3rd when unidentified aircraft were detected by radar (or rather R.D.F. - "Radio Direction Finding" as it was then called) just off Berwick heading south-west. Sirens sounded in Gateshead and Sunderland but I can find no references to their sounding in Newcastle or elsewhere in the area. One young man out walking in the countryside near Gateshead with his girlfriend is reported to have pushed the young lady into a ditch when he heard the sirens. Unfortunately his motives were misunderstood and apparently caused quite a row. The All-Clear sounded at 11.40.

Mistakes were made at times; one cannot help but feel sorry for the gentleman, James......, from Walbottle who was manning the siren control at the Old Social Club, Wheatfield Road, Westerhope on the night of 21/22 June 1940. His log shows that the following messages were received from the Newcastle Exchange: 2329 YELLOW, 2335 RED, 2337 RED, 0151 GREEN, 0154 GREEN, 0334 RED, 0337 RED, 0350 GREEN, 0352 GREEN, 0409 RED. Clearly he was on the Action List twice, but not surprisingly, after all the confusion, he had made a mistake. The 0409 RED was actually "Air Raid Message WHITE" , the "Cancel Caution" not the signal to sound the siren. An Air Raid Warden ran into his club and said that it must be a mistake as it was the only siren sounding. Not knowing what to do, James telephoned Newburn Police, who suggested that he sound the "All Clear" which he did. Unfortunately another genuine RED was issued at 0415, so while the Westerhope siren sounded the "All Clear" every other siren in the North-East was sounding the alert.

Other individual sirens occasionally went off at the wrong times, sometimes with no apparent explanation. At 5.00 p.m. on October 17th 1939 (three hours after a genuine alert), the siren on the Shipcote Cinema in Gateshead went off. At 12.50 p.m. on December 22nd 1939, the siren on the Nurses' Home at Newcastle General Hospital sounded (an intruder was blamed) and on January 9th 1940 a siren at Wolviston, north of Stockton, sounded twice during the morning. Hoaxers too caused occasional false alerts by telephoning control points and pretending to be the operator. Such false alarms, and they were quite common throughout the country, caused the Government to strongly discourage an arrangement used in some places whereby so-called "pick-up" sirens were sounded when a neighbouring siren was heard. Many other siren controllers, despite being on the telephone Warning Lists, unofficially adopted the same procedure -the telephone exchange could take up to two minutes to work through the Warning List and the controllers thought they could warn their neighbourhood a little earlier by sounding the alert as soon as they heard another siren. The trouble with such arrangements was that false alarms, bad enough if only one siren was involved, could be quickly spread over wide areas. In June 1940 the Government insisted that all sirens be sounded only on receipt of an official telephone warning and they urged local authorities to put their sirens under remote control from a central point wherever possible. Newcastle adopted this suggestion and, one by one, their sirens were converted to remote control with the central control at the Pilgrim Street Police Headquarters. As each siren was automated, the organisation previously operating it was removed from the Action Warning List. In November 1942 remote control arrangements were extended to include most of Tyneside -Blaydon, Newburn, Newcastle, Gosforth, Gateshead, Felling, Jarrow, Wallsend, South Shields, North Shields and Whitley Bay- with the control point for them all at Telephone House, Carliol Square, Newcastle. Thus the G.P.O. could sound the sirens throughout this area at the flick of a switch.

Sirens needed testing of course, especially after long periods of inaction during the "phoney war" and from mid-1943 onwards, but all the planning put into the first such test was wasted. The sirens were used on September 3rd and October 17th 1939, as previously mentioned, but in January 1940, after 3 months without alerts, it was decided to have a test throughout the area. The test was set for Monday February 5th and on January 28th letters went out to police and A.R.P. warning them not to repeat the "alert" on their whistles as was customary, and notices appeared in the press about the test. The instructions stated that the test would be cancelled if there was a genuine alert before the test date, and there was. The third alert of the war went out throughout the North-East at 10.10 a.m. on January 29th. When the Tyneside remote control system was set up, regular tests were held at 10.00 a.m. every Friday morning. For these tests each siren was manned and a report had to be sent from each to indicate that the siren had actually operated. The sirens were only operated for a very brief time, just long enough to establish that they were operating correctly.

Changes in government policy, designed to minimise the disruption to industry, were introduced shortly after the end of the "phoney war" in May 1940, and they represented a basic shift from a policy of "safety first" to one of "production first". Single enemy aircraft were only to trigger the public warning system if their intentions were obviously hostile. This policy frequently resulted in bombings without prior warning. Locally we had bombs without sirens at Barlow and near Chopwell (on May 26/27 1941) and near Consett (on September 12/13 1941), and all three attacks on Walker Naval Yard (January 6/7, January 27 and May 15/16 1941), one with fatal results, occurred without warning. Not surprisingly, the policy was never admitted publicly, the British could stand bombing but they hated being bombed without warning. The second change was made public - factory workers were asked to continue working after the sirens sounded and only to seek shelter if bombs or gunfire were heard. This unsatisfactory state of affairs was improved by putting lookouts or "roof watchers" on factory roofs with instructions to sound a bell or klaxon if attack seemed imminent. Later further improvements resulted from the appointment of "Alarm Officers" in each Civil Defence Region. Their job was to keep abreast of the minute by minute development of a raid and to pass warnings to factories when necessary. These developments certainly saved vital production time with factory workers in their shelters less frequently than the general public, but there were some exceptions. At Vickers Armstrongs Elswick Works the klaxons sent the workers to the shelters between 0710 and 0720 on the morning of February 13th 1942 and the public warning sirens never sounded at all!

The warning system was also modified quite fundamentally on several occasions. First, on July 25th 1940, a new air-raid message was introduced: "Air Raid Message PURPLE" or "Lights Warning" as it was known. This essentially replaced the YELLOW as a preliminary warning during hours of darkness and was issued to premises with exempted lighting -as an order to extinguish their lights- as well as to those who normally received the YELLOW. (The rule YELLOW during the day and PURPLE at night was not followed with any degree of consistency; often both were in force at the same time and sometimes YELLOW alone was issued at night). The introduction of the PURPLE message necessitated a second "Special" Warning List. Previously premises with exempted lighting had extinguished their lights when the sirens sounded, but with the new policy regarding single aircraft this would not have been satisfactory. At the same time "Air Raid Message GREEN" was abolished; the WHITE would henceforth serve to cancel YELLOW, PURPLE and RED -whatever happened to be in force at the time. Siren control points did not usually feature on Special Warning Lists (unless they were at police or A.R.P. premises), so they would only receive RED and WHITE messages, not YELLOW or PURPLE. They were therefore liable to receive the WHITE cancellation message when they had received no previous messages, but everyone was given clear instructions not to sound the "All Clear" on receipt of "Air Raid Message WHITE" unless they had previously sounded the "Alert". Needless to say this was beyond the comprehension of certain individuals and many a tired worker had their sleep disturbed by an unnecessary "All Clear". At 3.00 p.m. on October 28th 1941 "Air Raid Message YELLOW" was abolished because the authorities believed that it was of little practical value and not worth the effort involved in its distribution -amazingly in 1 month (October 1940) in the London Telephone Area alone, operators had passed over one million of these messages. Certainly it had been issued much more frequently than the RED (in the Newcastle Warning District in January 1941 there were 21 YELLOWs and only 3 REDs) and it could hardly be regarded by its recipients as a preliminary warning when far more often than not it was simply cancelled with no escalation to a RED. In December 1941 the distribution of the PURPLE "Lights Warning" was restricted to those premises with exempted lighting, prior to this many A.R.P. premises, such as Blaydon Report Centre, had also received this message. The exact date of this change was probably December 8th -Blaydon Report Centre received its last Purple at 10.02 p.m. on that date; apart, that is, from 3 received in error between the 16th and 20th December 1942.

The table below illustrates the frequency of YELLOW alerts as compared with REDS.

After July 4th 1941 air-raid messages were issued to Districts by R.A.F. Fighter Groups rather than by Fighter Command Headquarters. In the North that was No. 13 Group which had its Operations Room in a bunker under the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries Offices at Kenton Bar. There was a further change towards the end of 1943 when the task of issuing warnings was passed to the Royal Observer Corps Centres. The Centre which covered the Newcastle Warning District as well as those of Bishop Auckland, Hexham and Morpeth, was No. 30 Group R.O.C. Centre which was located in the back of the Post Office at Providence Row, Durham City, with an standby control room in the Castle.

There were other wartime warning arrangements worthy of note. First the arrangements employed in cinemas, theatres, dance-halls and other places of entertainment. All such establishments had been closed on the first day of the war because of the possibility of large numbers of casualties arising from air raids. However, the government quickly realised the importance of public morale and, by September 18th, most had been re-opened with some restrictions on opening times. If a public air-raid warning occurred during a show then the manager had to announce the alert personally and allow anyone who wished to leave to do so; the show, however, would continue. In cinemas this announcement was usually non-verbal - a slide, often a simple smoked-glass slide with the wording scratched on, was projected onto the screen for a few seconds. The wording varied but was typically a very short statement like "AIR RAID WARNING IN EFFECT". In practice few people took up the option of leaving to take shelter.

Secondly, there was a very useful service for listeners to the Rediffusion wired-sound services which operated over wide areas on both banks of the Tyne as far west as Blaydon Town and Newburn. Whenever an air-raid warning was issued, Rediffusion would break into both their "A" and "B" programmes and pass on the warning to their customers. This warning came from a small studio at the Jesmond A.R.P. Headquarters which was linked to Rediffusion's Blackett Street Control Room by cable. Rediffusion's warnings were often given a short time before the local siren sounded.

Most details of the post-war warning system are still classified so documentary evidence cannot yet be obtained and those involved in its operation cannot discuss it, but a few pieces of information have been published and, of course, it would be silly to regard things which we could all see -like the siren on a pole behind the old Blaydon Council Offices- as being secret. Rowlands Gill's siren was moved to the Co-op building after the war and it was there until the mid-sixties. The village has had no provision whatsoever since then. Other sirens in the area were (or are) at Blaydon Council Offices, Burnopfield School Kitchen, Shotley Bridge Gas Works, Hamsterley Colliery Lamp Cabin and Dunston Police House. Chopwell and Swalwell Fire Stations also have sirens which, as well as being part of the air-raid warning system, were used to call out part-time firemen until about 1970. As recently as 1987 a new siren was installed on one of the buildings at Marley Hill Home Office Wireless Depot which would have been easily audible in Rowlands Gill.

These sirens were all under remote control, those in our immediate area from the Pilgrim Street Police Station, using a "carrier" system whereby the control signals were carried over normal telephone wires. No additional wires were needed, any telephone line to a building could carry the control signals and still function as an ordinary telephone line. The "Carrier Control Point" at Pilgrim Street Police Station, and another 251 similar Controls around the country, also had one-way voice contact with numerous "Warning Broadcast Receivers", usually called "Grey Boxes", in police stations, fire stations, local authority offices, power stations, and other important utilities. This voice communication also utilized a "carrier" signal superimposed on ordinary telephone lines. The Carrier Control Points received their information from the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation at High Wycombe (or from Preston if High Wycombe was destroyed) over the network which also carries the Speaking Clock around the country. Now, in 1993, at a time when large parts of Europe are more unstable than at any time since World War Two, it appears that the whole of the public warning system is being dismantled as part of the so-called peace dividend -the foolish assumption that only the Soviet Union posed a threat. "Peace in our time" is a phrase we should never forget. It might well be as innaccurate in the 1990's as it was in 1938. If the warning system is ever needed again it is to be hoped that the enemy will hold back for a few months while it is re-established!

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