Blitz: The Bombs That Changed Britain
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- Episode
- Ep3 - Jellicoe Road
- Broadcast Info
- 2017 (59 mins)
- Description
- Episode three follows a bomb that fell on Jellicoe Street in the Scottish town of Clydebank. It was a tightly knit community of ship builders and factory workers who worked hard in difficult conditions; for the children though, life in the tenements was like being part of one big family as Patrick Docherty and Jack Tasker remember.
But on the 13th March 1941 that would change forever. When the bomb fell on Jellicoe Street it destroyed number 78 killing 15 members of the Rocks family. Marion McDermid’s grandmother was a Rocks, she survived and left a harrowing account of how her family had been wiped out by this one bomb. Amongst them was 13 year-old Tommy Rocks; Brendan Kelly’s best friend. Over 70 years later Brendan is still deeply affected by the events of that night, as he says ‘I went to bed a boy and wakened a man.'
As the community reeled from the chaos, confusion and grief wrought by the bombs, there was another war being waged in Clydebank. One young ship yard worker, John Moore, was battling to secure better pay and working conditions for his fellow apprentices. Linden Moore, his daughter describes her father’s communist politics and his role in negotiating better terms for striking apprentices on the same day the Jellicoe Street bomb fell.
Rosabel Richards’s father William Roberts was also a Clydebank man. On the night of 13th March he was an ARP warden but Rosabel wants to know what he did during the Blitz that would ultimately lead him to a place at Oxford University. She meets up with her cousin in Clydebank who suggests her dad had connections to Westminster. This leads Rosabel to official records that show William Roberts was working for the government to actively counteract the influence of communists in Clydebank.
On the 14th of March the bombers returned and the town’s housing is largely destroyed. There was a mass exodus with families like Brendan’s ending up in a small village 60 miles away from their home. Despite the ongoing industrial dispute, the shipyard and the factories remained largely operational and all the workers, including Moore’s apprentices, made epic journeys to return to work even though they’d lost homes, friends and family members.
It’s that sense of community spirit amidst adversity that has endured across the generations and still resonates with the 85 year-old Brendan Kelly who will never forget the impact of that one bomb. - Genre
- History; Technology; Social Science; Psychology
How to cite this record
The Open University, "Blitz: The Bombs That Changed Britain". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/228981 (Accessed 24 Nov 2025)