Brighton's Warship Week and Tank Week

From the collection of

Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton collects, preserves, catalogues and provides public access to its collection of films and magic lantern slides. The collection charts the rise of screen culture in the region and the nation and captures many aspects of life, work and creativity in the South East from the late 19th century to the present day. It is available for research, screenings, creative re-use and commercial access.

Brighton's Warship Week and Tank Week

Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton
Brighton
1941-01-01
Silent
16m

A fascinating compendium of films from wartime Brighton featuring parades, fire engines, tanks, trolleybuses, Land Girls, pigs and visiting Cabinet Ministers.

A film showing various events in wartime Brighton starting with a mayoral inspection of fire-fighters and their engines after which food minister, Lord Woolton, arrives to open the Civic Restaurant. Warship Week sees a decorated trolley bus gliding along Grand Parade while pigs at a local farm, are rounded up by a pair of Land Girls. After a parade of tanks, Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, visits Brighton, to talk to locals and inspect local Fire Service and ARP teams.

Dig for Victory

Keeping the nation fed and healthy was the greatest priority of the Home Front. Women replaced absent farm workers, while ordinary Britons were exhorted to 'grow their own'.

'Dig for Victory' was perhaps the most successful official campaign of the Home Front. Britons in their millions picked up their trowels, and acre after acre of parkland, waste ground - even back gardens - was repurposed as makeshift vegetable plots. Just as the factories were constantly increasing their productivity, great efforts were made to increase agricultural yields, while the 'land girls' of the Women's Land Army enthusiastically took the place of farmworkers fighting overseas.