CO129-589-18 Complaints against evacuation scheme 23-11-1940 - 24-10-1941 — Page 31

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The bitterness is unquestionably due

principally to what they regard as discrimination

last year, by means of which the womenfolk of

many people of position were able in one way or

another to escape being evacuated, and secondly

to some cases of avoidable hardship which

occurred during the execution of the compulsory

order. These are points with which I did not

deal in my broadcast and they are the principal

objects of this letter: I tried in the former

to keep to the fundamental objections to

evacuation which were

(a) that the evacuation was made compulsory

at all, and

(b)

that so many women were exempted from the

order.

There is no question that dilatoriness

on the part of the local Government was the cause

of much of the harsh treatment which so many

people received and of the discrimination which I

have mentioned. A scheme had been prepared, as

you know, about October 1939 which provided for

an exempting committee, one member of which was

to be a soldier whose function would have been to

stiffen the committee, and every European British

woman who failed to get an exemption from this

Committee, or who was not automatically exempted

by belonging to medical or A.R.P. services, would

have gone.

I discovered shortly before I left

that the register was badly in arrear and I gave