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Self, Society and the Second World War. The Negotiation of Self on the Home Front by Diarist and Keighley Schoolmaster Kenneth Preston 1941-1945 Item Type Thesis Authors Krutko, Lauren K. Rights <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by- nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a <a rel="license" href="http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Licence</a>. Download date 28/09/2021 06:01:59 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10454/14631 University of Bradford eThesis This thesis is hosted in Bradford Scholars – The University of Bradford Open Access repository. Visit the repository for full metadata or to contact the repository team © University of Bradford. This work is licenced for reuse under a Creative Commons Licence. SELF, SOCIETY AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR L.K. KRUTKO PHD 2016 SELF, SOCIETY AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR The Negotiation of Self on the Home Front by Diarist and Keighley Schoolmaster Kenneth Preston 1941-1945 Lauren Kristina KRUTKO Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Archaeological Sciences Faculty of Life Sciences University of Bradford 2016 Abstract Lauren K. Krutko Self, Society and the Second World War The Negotiation of Self on the Home Front by Diarist and Keighley Schoolmaster Kenneth Preston 1941-1945 Keywords: self, community, Second World War, citizenship, masculinity, twentieth century modernity, civilian defence, voluntarism, religion, Keighley This study examines the interaction of the Second World War with the selfhood of Kenneth Preston, a Keighley schoolmaster, using primarily the exceptionally rich content of Preston’s Diary, maintained 1941-1945. In tracing Preston’s home front experience, attention is given to the ways in which the war interacted with the individual’s own self and social conceptions, as well as ways in which subjective experiences and perceptions translated into objective realities, such as in Preston’s participation in the war effort. Illuminating the personal dimensions of the war experience enabled a broad range of meanings and “webs of significance” to emerge, allowing for examination of the interplay between the conflict and understandings of class, community, gender, citizenship, social mores, and aspects of social change during the conflict. Preston’s understandings of himself and of society are intriguing contributions to the discussion surrounding active wartime citizenship, and further historical awareness of the meanings and understandings held within the British population during the era of the Second World War. In particular, the prestige the war offered to modernistic notions of science and technical intelligence is shown to have held a central place in the war experience of this particular individual and in his perception of the rise of the welfare state. With its focus on selfhood, the study is distinguished from arguments grounded in analysis of cultural products from the era; it also contributes to understandings of the causes and implications of social change, as well as the war’s personal impact on the male civilian. i Acknowledgements I am grateful to Dr Paul Jennings and Dr George Sheeran for their unfailing supervision. I would like to thank Mr Allan Preston, of Matlock, Derbyshire, for permission to use his father’s Diary for the purposes of this thesis, and for his generosity to oblige questions in regard to his family and wartime Keighley, as well as to share photos, video, and voice recordings of his family. I am indebted to the staff at West Yorkshire Archive Service Bradford, especially senior archivist Anthony Hughes, for facilitating research of the Preston Diary, other writings of Kenneth Preston, and associated documents. The Keighley Local Studies Library also facilitated the research by assisting with Medical Officer of Health Reports, microfilm of the Keighley News, and the documents archived at the location pertaining to Kenneth Preston, for which I am grateful. I am thankful also for the assistance rendered at the J.B. Priestley Library, University of Bradford, as well as within the J.B. Priestley Archive. The assistance of the staff at the Second World War Experience Centre in Wetherby is also very much appreciated. I owe a debt to the organisers of the conferences and events which allowed me to present portions of my research: Dr Wendy Ugolini and the Centre for the Study of Modern Conflict, at the University of Edinburgh, for the 2012 conference Fighting for Britain? and Dr Linda Leeuwrik and the Committee for the Study of Violence, Conflict and War, at Idaho State University, for the 2013 event In a State of Conflict: The Experience and Expression of War. The support of my husband, Eli Krutko, parents, Ted and Shirley Thompson, grandmother, Helen Hanson, and friend, Todd Sherwood, was invaluable, as was the support of fellow research student at the University of Bradford, Dr Sarah Dietz, who generously read several draft chapters of the thesis. I am also grateful to Matthew Burch of Eastern Idaho Technical College for reading a draft of the Conclusions chapter. Finally, it was my pleasure to be alerted to the existence of the Preston Diary during a class on Yorkshire history with the University of Maryland University College Europe under the instruction of Dr Sidney Brown. ii Contents Abstract i Acknowledgements ii Contents iii Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Peace—the End, or the Beginning? 1 1.2 Aims 4 1.3 Reconsidering the Home Front 5 1.4 Methods 7 1.5 Thesis Outline 16 Chapter 2 Methodology 18 2.1 Approaching the Preston Diary 18 2.2 Aims 20 2.3 Research Questions 21 2.4 Findings 22 2.5 Selfhood as an Analytical Lens 23 2.6 Context 27 2.7 Representativeness 28 2.8 The Diary as a Historical Source 29 2.9 Diarist Motivation 30 2.10 Considering Researcher Bias 36 Chapter 3 Literature Review 39 3.1 The Place of the Study within Historical Enquiry ` 39 3.2 Early Academic Histories of the Home Front 44 3.3 Changing Perceptions of the Home Front 43 3.4 Reassessment 47 3.5 The Work of Emotional History 51 Chapter 4 Pre-War Preston 58 4.1 Introduction to Yorkshire 58 4.2 Family Life 61 4.3 Influence of the Brigg Household 62 4.4 School Life 64 4.5 Religion and Religious Belief 65 4.6 His Own Person 66 4.7 Oxford, 1922-25 68 4.8 Yeovil, 1925-1927 72 4.9 Return to Keighley and Marriage, 1927-1930 73 4.10 Restlessness 78 4.11 Psychology 79 4.12 The Essayists 80 4.13 Americanisation, the Press, and Commercial Advertisements 81 4.14 ‘War Book Revival’ 82 iii 4.15 Lead Up to War 83 Chapter 5 Positioning Civilian Selfhood to War: 86 How Preston Understood What Was Being Fought for and How to Achieve It 5.1 Introduction 86 5.2 Orientation of Selfhood Towards the War 89 5.3 Preston’s Wartime Efforts 100 5.4 Keighley Boys’ Grammar School 100 5.5 Toc H 106 5.6 Justification of Efforts 108 5.7 Not Taking the ‘Soft Option’ 113 5.8 Joining with Others on the Side of Right 117 5.9 Wartime Citizenship 125 5.10 War Culture 130 5.11 Convictions 131 Chapter 6 Negotiating the Home Front: 138 Conflict and Cohesion in Selfhood and Community 6.1 Introduction 138 6.2 Fire-watching 139 6.3 Home Guard 140 6.4 Historians’ Discussion Surrounding Home Guard 141 6.5 Summons and Tribunal 142 6.6 Home Guard’s Interaction with Preston’s Selfhood 146 6.7 Preston’s Wartime Negotiation of Masculinity 151 6.8 Home Guard—Site of Social and Local Cohesion? 163 6.9 Conflict Elsewhere Within the Community 165 6.10 Middle-class Goodness 168 6.11 Conclusion to Home Guard’s Impact on Sociability, Community, 169 and Locality Chapter 7 Disjunction with Society: 172 Social Change and Preston’s Search for Personal Peace 7.1 Introduction 172 7.2 The Ascendancy of Technicality at KBGS 173 7.3 ‘Knowing’ and ‘Seeing’ as Sources of Secure Selfhood 181 7.4 Breaking Free of the ‘Natural Attitude’ 184 7.5 The Natural World 186 7.6 The Arts as Refreshing and Revelatory 191 7.7 War Weary 192 7.8 Home Life 194 7.9 The Diary 196 7.10 Humanity and Inhumanity 200 7.11 Consumerism and Pursuit of Entertainment 203 7.12 Competing Notions of Progress and the Welfare State 207 7.13 The Infeasibility of Technical-Scientific Cures for Society 207 7.14 Loss of Individuality 209 7.15 Voluntarism 210 7.16 Disdain for the Past 211 7.17 Welfare and Soviet Russia 212 iv 7.18 Transition from a Market to a Moral Economy 213 7.19 VE and VJ Day and the Enablement of the Military-Industrial Complex 214 7.20 Disjunction and Self-care 218 Chapter 8 Conclusions 223 Notes 231 References 264 v CHAPTER 1 Introduction 1.1 Peace—the End, or the Beginning? On 15 August 1945, inscribed in history forever as V-J Day, Kenneth Preston sat alone in his study, alternating between reading Aldous Huxley’s Point Counter Point and cutting clippings from copies of John O’ London’s and The Listener which he considered using for future lessons with his sixth form literature students at the local boys’ grammar school. He could hear revellers pass by his home throughout the day and he had heard reports from his wife and son who had ventured out to glimpse the atmosphere of exultation for themselves.