Home Guard (United Kingdom) - Social Impact and Representations

Social Impact and Representations

Anthony Eden summarised the raising and equipping of the British Home Guard during a debate in the House of Commons in November 1940, when he was Secretary of State for War; "No one will claim for the Home Guard that it is a miracle of organisation... but many would claim that it is a miracle of improvisation, and in that way it does express the particular genius of our people. If it has succeeded, as I think it has, it has been due to the spirit of the land and of the men in the Home Guard."

The chief constable of Glasgow suggested that criminal elements joined the Home Guard in order to break, enter and loot during the blackout.

The British wartime propaganda film Went the Day Well? starring Thora Hird and made at Ealing Studios in 1942 focuses on how the Home Guard and local people defeat a German paratroop invasion.

Noël Coward wrote a song in 1943, "Could You Please Oblige Us with a Bren Gun?" that pokes fun at the disorder and shortage of supplies and equipment that were common in the Home Guard, and indeed all of Britain, during the war.

The Home Guard also played a significant part in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1943 film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. In it, the lead character, a career soldier who had retired from the active list, joins the Home Guard and rises to a leadership position in it.

The 1943 British film Get Cracking starred George Formby as a Home Guard lance corporal who is constantly losing and winning back his stripe. Formby's platoon is involved in rivalry with the Home Guard sections of the local villages Major and Minor Wallop. At the end of the film Formby is promoted to sergeant after inventing a secret weapon – a home made tank.

The Home Guard was immortalised in the British television comedy Dad's Army (1968–1977), which followed the formation and running of a platoon in the fictional south coast town of "Walmington-on-Sea", and is widely regarded as having kept the efforts of the Home Guard in the public consciousness.

The Home Guard also featured in the 1971 Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and in the 2003 "War Games" episode of the British detective series Foyle's War, which is set in Hastings during WW2. In 2010, an episode of the Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures featured Clyde Langer being transported back to the British coast during WW2, and featured the Home Guard.

In the last of his 'Old Sam' series of monologues, Stanley Holloway writes of the protagonist of the series, Sam, attempting to join the Army at the outbreak of war in 1939. In the series, Sam is a serviceman who fought at the Battle of Waterloo and in the First World War as an adult. In the monologue dealing with World War II Sam is sent to the Home Guard instead of the front line, much to his bemusement, and whilst there finds that his stories of glory are debunked by another character who turns out to be the Duke of Wellington with whom he fought at Waterloo.