London Responds: Wartime Defiance and Front-Line Heroism

This chapter analyses how propagandistic slogans such as ‘London can take it’ and ‘business as usual’ contributed to constructions of defiance in the Blitz myth (see also Kelsey, 2013a). But these examples also account for instances where propagandistic slogans were mentioned in a critical context that questioned the ways in which this myth was invoked. Other articles also referred to elements of anxiety in discussions of ‘fear’ or the changing behaviour of Londoners in the number of people avoiding the Tube after the bombings. Hence, this chapter considers the conflicting complexities of discourses that defined Londoners and morale after the bombings through different contextual invoca-tions of Blitz mythology. I provide a case study of the column written by Tony Parsons the day after the bombings that invoked the Blitz myth through the context of war, retaliation and the hereditary identity of cross-generational defiance and wartime spirit. I then account for those contradictory perspectives that complicated this perception of British resilience that Parsons invoked. Then, after considering how these discourses functioned in 2005, I provide some current context in reflection of the coverage and symbolic roles of Paul Dadge and John Tulloch. Dadge and Tulloch are examples of figures who functioned as symbolic victims/heroes after the bombings.