Down Our Street

The combined effort of three housewives demonstrates to the audience how everyone pulling together could help to overcome the high stakes of war.

Three women, all from one street but different class backgrounds, mysteriously congregate at one house. Their paths may rarely have crossed in pre-war society, yet the experience of war appears to have helped remove some of their class prejudices. After all, these three housewives now share a common interest, their sons all serve in the armed forces.

There is much evidence to suggest that the Second World War had a unifying effect on social attitudes in Britain, although to what extent remains a much debated issue. The notion of everyone pulling together, or a ‘people’s war’, is a theme that appears frequently in Ministry of Information films. It was also recognised that film propaganda had a role to play in maintaining a shared identity between government and ordinary people, not wanting any one section of society to feel isolated from the war effort.