While Comrade Professor "Bill" Winters, the "Red Ogre of Herefordshire", ponders his options, just a short post to point our VBCW players in the direction of a lengthy, learned and, gosh, would you believe it, now almost six year old post HERE from our own JP in relation the real-life "Shobdon Instructional Centre". A "labour camp" or a "brave social experiment" dependent upon your point of view, but in any event a fascinating piece of 1930's local history. [note1]
In the timeline of the Herefordshire1938 AVBCW, of course, the "Shobdon Instructional Centre" has not been re-named by HM Government, but re-purposed : surrounded now by wire and guard towers, it no longer contains the unemployed (very considerably reduced by reason of the manpower demands of the Civil War), but certain "high value" and closely guarded prisoners "internees" deemed "politically unreliable" by Edward VIII and his "Prime Minister Mosley" and now detained indefinitely under the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1937 and Regulation 18B of the notorious Defence (General) Regulations.[note2]
Note1 : and one that may well be modelled in 1/60 scale for the Spring Big Game 2019!
Note2: just another example of "real life" paralleling - or inverting - the events of the Hereford VBCW. In 1940, during the height of "Fifth Column" fears within the country, Sir Oswald Mosley and his wife, Lady Diana, were detained without trial under Regulation 18B of the Defence (General) Regulations 1939. Both remained imprisoned until late 1943, when Mosley was released by Herbert Morrison, then Home Secretary, on the grounds of concerns as to his health. There was a strong public backlash against the restoration of their freedom, with (amongst many others) even the Council of Civil Liberties arguing that the Mosleys should remain in prison. MORE HERE
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