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Guys, guys. Not to depress you on a Friday or put a downer on the coming weekend or anything. But you must watch Evacuees Reunited on ITV 1 on Monday (15 December) if you can. Just because I hardly ever recommend ITV programmes (Tiswas or Swap Shop? We were always Swap Shop in our house) and because it’s really quite a good programme about something we try to be blase about but which has had an enormous effect both on individuals and on two generations since who have ushered in a new style of parenting.

In the second world war almost 3m people, mostly children, were evacuated from their homes and families. Imagine any of us today packing our children off for up to five years to somewhere far away where they might not even be welcome. Tempting, perhaps, particularly in a recession. But, really, it’s not going to happen ever again, is it?

Operation Pied Piper, as it was chillingly known, was the largest movement of population in UK history and it happened just two generations ago. Today, people are displaced in other countries, not ours. Over one weekend from 1 to 4 September 1939 the first wave of evacuees were packed mostly onto trains with a luggage label, a gas-mask, a case perhaps containing one toy and a paper bag offering biscuits, condensed milk and chocolate to the host family. The chocolate rarely survived the journey, children being what children are (unconcerned with the future). Also in the bag were stamped postcards so that the children could write to their parents with their new address. Neither parents nor children had the foggiest idea where they were going or who they would be living with after waving goodbye to each other on a station platform. Often, they were moved several times during the war. The unlucky ones, including all the bed-wetters, ended up in hostels where staffing was “mixed”, in the words of the programme’s one expert. Some staff were trained, others were just taking the money and slapping the faces of those kids they didn’t particularly like. Different mores, different times.

This film from producers Leopard is full of under-statement and British stoicism. “I don’t know what it was like for the mothers. They tried not to cry,” says one former evacuee, now in her 70s. “Now that’s enough of that. Big boys don’t cry,” said a mother to her returning son as he tearfully bid farewell to the family that had looked after him for five years.

How parenting has changed and how society’s attitude to emotional trauma has changed. The three evacuees featured in the first episode don’t offer up the shower of tears we’ve come to expect from Who Do You Think You Are? Tragedy slips out in a few stray lines about the loss of two babies full-term before a woman had the daughter she’d always wanted and briefly got when housing an evacuee. Or about the sister who was separated from the two brothers she was meant to look after during their evacuation and who died herself of meningitis aged 18 at the end of the war.

As a film, it’s frustratingly low budget featuring the same clips replayed up to four times and the various stories are chopped up with the inevitable ‘Still to come…’ teasers that commercial broadcasters feel they must include to keep people watching after the break. It would be better if the individual stories were explored in more depth and more chronogically, rather than being constantly inter-cut with each other.

But the evacuation, 70 years ago next year, is a fascinating story and - unlike so-called reality TV - it has affected real lives. Presenter Michael Aspel (above left) was himself evacuated to the Somerset village of Chard, just down the road from me, but we have to wait until Monday 22 December to hear much of his story. Major downpoint? Evacuees Reunited is on at 5pm. But there’s always the online catch-up service.

Posted on December 12th, 2008 under Television • Tags: Evacuees Reunited, ITV, Michael Aspel, Swap Shop, Tiswas. • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback