Wartime rebels who broke the ban to keep calm and carry on

WITH its simple five-word exhortation it has become symbolic of the British spirit of steady defiance in the face of Nazi aggression.

So much so that its Keep Calm and Carry On slogan has in recent years been reproduced on everything from mugs and coasters to tea towels.

But in fact this evocative red and white poster was banned by Britain’s wartime government and did not see the light of day until years later.

Now, however, the only known photograph has been discovered of one of the few posters which survived the government-ordered destruction.

It shows scientists working at a government weapons research laboratory in Bedfordshire with the poster hanging on the wall behind them.

Far from using it to boost the population’s Blitz spirit, civil servants had ordered the pulping of 2.5 million copies of the poster before it could be distributed.

They took the view that telling people to keep calm might be regarded as patronising or even encourage them to suspect there was in fact something serious to panic about.

Yet, as this picture shows, this group of scientists managed to salvage one of the posters and use it to stiffen their resolve in their work developing ways of beating Hitler.

It is not known how this particular poster survived destruction of most of the print run, but it may be that the laboratory technicians and scientists pictured had already been sent a copy and felt it summed up how they felt they should conduct themselves. The photograph was discovered by Paul Hooley, a retired printing firm owner and amateur historian, when he came into possession of a local newspaper’s photographic archive. The photograph was taken by the sometime after the outbreak of war at one of three possible secret locations in Bedfordshire. These were part of Military Defence 1 – known as Winston Churchill’s Toyshop – where scientists with links to the Bletchley Park listening centre worked to devise new weapons. Mr Hooley said: “They must have been sent the poster and put it up in their lab, despite orders for the copies to be pulped.” The poster found popularity after Stuart and Mary Manley, owners of second-hand book shop Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland, came across it in a job lot of wares. They framed the poster and displayed it in their shop, and demand for reproductions took off. Ironically, given its suppression 60 years earlier, the poster was soon being displayed across government departments – and even No. 10 – while being given pride of place in schools, hospitals and offices. Stuart Manley, of Barter Books, left, with an original copy of the wartime poster, which can be seen in a photo of scientists working at a secret Bedfordshire laboratory, above