Chelmsford in the Second World War; this talk shows how Chelmsford with
its important industries – Marconi radar, Hoffman’s ball-bearings and
Crompton Parkinson’s electrical works – were vulnerable to targeted
Luftwaffe air attack and later random rocket attacks from V1s and V2s.
Yet some of the most damaging events came from lone bombers and the
chance jettisoning of bombs from damaged aircraft on their return journey
to the continent The town was also in receipt of evacuees from the nearby
dockland of East London (and from the less well-known evacuation from the
county’s coastal towns as invasion loomed) which presented its own
educational and social challenges. Air power was vital in this war. Grammar
School boys flocked to the RAF and were distinguished by their skill and
their sacrifice. Chelmsford’s MP 1934-44, Jack Macnamara, was killed on
the Italian front. One of a group of gay MPs who saw in the mid-1930s
what was happening to homosexuals in Dachau concentration camp, he and
other like-minded gay men became early supporters of Churchill and
rearmament. They were vilified by Neville Chamberlain’s spin doctors as
‘Glamour Boys’ but Churchill recognised their bravery and Jack’s ultimate
sacrifice.
