Dan Snow's History Hit - Saving Bletchley Park with Sue Black

Episode Date: October 17, 2020

Dr Sue Black is a British computer scientist, academic and social entrepreneur. She has been instrumental in saving Bletchley Park, the World War II codebreaking site. Her book documenting this vital task is 'Saving Bletchley Park: How #SocialMedia Saved the Home of the WWII Codebreakers'.

Hello, everybody. Welcome, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Once a week, we dig back into the archive and we find an old episode from years ago that most of you won't have heard and we hope you might enjoy. This is an interview I did with Sue Black. She's a British computer scientist, academic, entrepreneur, all sorts of amazing things. And she's instrumental in having saved Bletchley Park, a site of Second World War code-breaking that you all know about, where Enigma was broken by people like Alan Turing, among others. This week, Facebook announced a large donation of money to help save Bletchley through and beyond the COVID crisis. And previously, when Bletchley was in danger of closing,

of being lost to the nation, Sue Black stepped in and helped launch a national campaign to raise awareness and money. She's an inspirational, remarkable person. So this is my interview with her from 2016. You can go onto History Hit TV, it's my digital history channel, it's like Netflix history, and watch several documentaries on there about Bletchley Park. We've got people that served there. We've got tours around there. We've got a description of the Enigma machine and the primitive bomb proto-computer that helped break the German codes.

That's all there on History Hit TV. They're some of the most popular documentaries we've ever made on there, actually. So please go and check that out. If you use the code 10661066, you can get a month for free and then three months for just one pound euro or dollar for each of those first three months so go and check that out after listening to sue black sue thanks for joining us today you're very welcome and thank you what a lovely introduction. Well, you're a total hero. You've won all sorts of awards, including Inspiration Awards and stuff.

Rightly so. Let's start with your interest in World War II, code-breaking and all that kind of stuff. Well, actually, as a kid, I guess I was a bit of a tomboy. My favourite films that I watched when I was like seven, eight, nine were Second World War films. So stuff like, well, I guess like the Great Escape stuff, also some of the British films. Sue, there's nothing tomboyish about that. I'm currently in New York. My daughter's beside me drinking her morning milk. And we're about to go to the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid for a day of carrier-borne strike aviation. So it's going

to be great. So what kind of history do you like the best? Vikings. Vikings, you see, so she's a big Vikings fan. So there's nothing unusual about that. But what is unusual is the extraordinary lengths that you went to preserve some of our history well how did you get particularly into world war ii code breaking well i guess i am so my background i'm a computer scientist so i was invited up to a meeting at bletchley park in 2003 um as part of the british computer society and i i went to the meeting and at that time i think all I knew about Bletchley Park was that code breaking happened there and in my mind I think it was like maybe 50 old blokes kind of sitting around wearing tweed jackets and smoking pipes whilst sort of doing a bit of code breaking and doing the times crossword on the side was kind of how I that's just what I had in my head about Bletchley Park I don't know where that came from and so so I went to a meeting there. And after the meeting, I went for a walk around. And I walked into one of the blocks there

and saw these guys who it turned out were rebuilding Turing's bomb machine. And they're about halfway through rebuilding that. So I had a chat with them and found out all about that, but also found out that more than 10,000 people worked at Bletchley Park during World War II, and also that more than half of them were women. So being a woman in computing myself, I got very excited about the fact that there were more than 5,000 women working there, and I'd never heard about it at all. So that kind of piqued my interest right at the beginning. right at the beginning. And then, so I went away from that meeting and eventually raised some funding because what I wanted to do was to record the memories

of the women that had worked there for posterity. So I went away and managed to raise some funding to run a project called the Women of Station X Project, which was an oral history project. And we interviewed 15 women about what they'd done there at Bletchley Park during the war. And then it was at the launch of that project in 2008 that I found out that actually Bletchley Park were, well, in the words of the director at the time, teetering on a financial knife edge. So I found out that Bletchley Park were having financial difficulties. And I think it was then that I found out that the work that was done there was said to

have shortened the war by two years. And at that time, 11 million people a year were dying. And so the work that was done at Bletchley Park had potentially saved 22 million lives. And I thought to myself, and this place might have to close that's ridiculous so basically that kind of was when I started a campaign. It's a campaign where you unleashed the power of the internet to save Bletchley Park and we'll talk about that in a second but in the meantime Bletchley Park has been so mythologized hasn't it I mean what can you tell me a bit more about what went on there during the war and just how well just how important to talk about the, what role did these women have?

Were they allowed access to all the jobs that the men were doing? Yeah, I mean, as far as I know, I think it was a time when, you know, everyone was so desperate and so worried, of course, you know, about what was happening during the war that kind of any kind of hierarchies went out the window, I think. of any kind of hierarchies went out the window I think so you know some of the women uh would code breakers for example Mavis Beatty uh was uh 19 when she worked there and she was she ended up being uh one of the major code breakers she worked out what was happening around the battle of Cape Matapan and um I think you know that was one of one of the major naval victories of World War II that we kind of got wind of because of Mavis's code breaking. So more than 5,000 women doing all sorts of jobs, most of them, I think, between the ages of 18 and 25. So young women, too. And some of them straight from school or coming from university and doing all sorts of jobs all around the site.

But lots of them were operating the machinery, you know, basically like the bomb machines, which industrialized the code breaking process. So many of the women were operating the bomb machines. So young people, men and women, both sexes must it must have been so exciting incredible place to work you were doing something incredibly important and you were free from parental control and the sort of pre-war conservatism i mean when you've done these oral histories was it do you get a sense of what it was like to work there yeah well absolutely i mean i i think you know there were some things that were probably very good and some things that were very bad in terms of um you know kind of being a young person away from home for the first time.

So sort of on the bad side, I guess, was, you know, because no one was allowed to talk about what they were doing. Everyone had to sign the Official Secrets Act the first time they arrived there. they arrived there. And we, you know, we had some of the veterans talking about the fact that when they went in and had to sign the official secret tax, there'd be a soldier with a gun in his hand. And they, you know, they were, it was made very clear to them that if they said anything, they'd be shot. So, you know, that's probably quite scary if you're an 18 year old girl away from home for the first time. And also the fact that they couldn't talk about anything during the whole time that they were there. So, you know, just imagine going to work, doing your work, you know, eight hour shifts around the clock. So working for eight hours, not being able to talk to anybody about what you're doing at all,

you know, apart from kind of receiving instructions on what to do. And then possibly, you know, being billeted out with maybe a family in Bletchley Village. And so going home to them on your own and not being able to tell them what you're doing either. So, you know, I think some people had really difficult times. But I think it was more fun for the women that were billeted out at Woburn Abbey because then, you know, there were a whole group of them, lots of them together. And I think, you know, that they had a lot more fun because they were, you know, they could organize parties or whatever, or, you know, just kind of hang out

together and chat about things, not about what they were doing at work, but, you know, at least they'd have people around to talk to. And, you know, I've heard stories of some of the people that were on their own, or particularly like the younger men and women that are on their own with families um becoming depressed you know and there was kind of hints of you know that might some people might have committed suicide too um because just imagine if you just can't tell anyone what you're doing at all at any point in the day it's it's just going to be very hard for you given that i spend most of my day telling people what I'm doing on the ridiculous amounts of social networks we've got these days, that's a very different life. I can

hardly imagine. Oh yeah, absolutely. Now listen, you're a computer scientist. I've got you here. Let's talk about this. What is the Enigma machine and why was it so brilliant? Well, you'll get better explanations online than from me. If you Google Enigma machine, you'll be able to see them in action and someone who really knows what they're talking about. But so basically the Enigma machines are the machines that look a bit like old school typewriters. And they were used by the German army to send messages to each other, so to encrypt messages. And so I think there were something like 20,000 Enigma machines being used during World War II and basically you you typed in your message and what the Enigma machine does is it encodes each letter as another letter so you so you would

type in your message after having set up your machine the same way as everyone else who's got an enigma machine and then everyone else that that had the correct codes for the day would be able to to read your message and i think that it's i think the figure is that it's uh the probability of being able to crack enigma is 158 million million million to one so that's one thing I do remember is the number and so you know the German military were all sending each other messages using Enigma and in the UK the code was cracked but with the help from the three Polish mathematicians who I think had done about 20 years work on cracking enigma before the second world war and so they gave their findings to the people at Bletchley Park to help them during the

second world war. Land a viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive but to conquer whether you're preparing for assassin's creed shadows or fascinated by history and great stories listen to echoes of history a ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week did they break enigma because they were the most unbelievable mathematicians, the Poles, the Brits, other people, and sort of computer scientists in the entire universe?

Or did they break Enigma because they found the code books, they found the Enigma machine on that U-boat that the Americans made a terrible film about? Did they crack Enigma or did they just luckily sort of get the hang of it thanks to captured stuff? So they, as far as I can remember, they cracked Enigma based on the work done by the Poles. But then what happened was a new Enigma machine came in, in, I think it was 1940 or 41, and which I think had an extra rotor and some other added complications. And so it was then that it needed to be rescued from a submarine. And I think there were there were three guys that, you know, it's such a shame that we didn't grow up hearing all the stories and learning the history of Bletchley Park when we were at school,

hearing all the stories and learning the history of Bletchley Park when we were at school, because all the people that were involved in some really, really major and very brave events during World War Two, which enabled the people at Bletchley Park to do what they did. We don't know any of their names. And that's really sad. But there were three guys that went into, three British guys that went into a submarine which kind of sank as they were getting everything out of it. And I think one guy went down with the submarine and two escaped. But yeah, so the film U-571 is a kind of fictionalised account of what happened there.

And of course it was Brits that did it and not not americans yeah tragically it was it was um hms bulldog i think it was a destroyer which intercepted u-110 or something and and it was absolutely amazing they clambered on board a sinking new boat to rescue it's a wonderful story perhaps we'll do another podcast about that another time everybody if you're interested in that then talk to me about what why is the enigma machine what as a computer scientist why do you why is it important for you guys because the code breaking side of it there's the incredible intelligence but what is it with turing and programmable computers how does that come into it as well well so so turing did other work i think at bletchley park and then

following on from bletchley park after the war and And so he came up with the idea of a universal machine, which has, I guess, kind of given ideas for the basis of computers as we know them now. But I think that it's interesting, really, because I just find it very interesting in the way that we as humans work out how to take things to the next level, I suppose, because there were several people around in different parts of the world at the same time, not knowing that each other existed, coming up with ideas for basic computers around this kind of time,

like late 30s, early 1940s. So there was Conradrad zusa in germany and i think it's a tanasov in bulgaria i think and and various people around the world coming up with ideas for how computers should work and and you know reasonably similar ideas but you know it's like now we can chat to people around the world so it doesn't seem such an amazing thing. But I just think in those times, I don't think they really knew what each other was doing. So how did they come up with almost the same ideas at the same time? How did you then mobilize this fantastic campaign to save Bletchley Park?

Well, so first of all, after out uh that they were having financial difficulties i i then i was head of department at the university of westminster and i was on an email list for all the heads and professors of computing in the country so i emailed all of them with a photo of uh hut six as it was then with a kind of a blue tarpaulin over one end and said to everyone you know we need to save Bletchley Park, told them the story and pointed them at a petition that was on the 10 Downing Street website at the time saying we need to save Bletchley Park. And I was amazed when quite quickly lots of professors of computing from around the country that had kind of written

the textbooks that I'd studied as a student started signing the petition. So that, you know, I just thought, oh, wow, that's really great because if all of these guys think that it's a good thing to do, I don't know, it just really gave me confidence that it wasn't just me that thought it was an outrage. And then we decided to write a letter to The Times and 97 heads and professors of computing signed it. And then I thought, I need to get more publicity for this.

So I contacted all the journalists that I knew, which at the time actually was only about four. But luckily, one of them was Rory Keflin-Jones from the BBC. And so he interviewed me at Bletchley Park and got that on BBC News and on Today programme. That was in 2008. And so there was a massive kind of splash in the news. I got lots of emails the know, it was a massive kind of splash in the news. I got lots of emails the day that it was on. But, you know, I'm an academic computer scientist. I'm not a marketing or a PR person. So I had loads of people contacting me that day. But then, of course,

a week later, that was it. You know, there wasn't any more interest kind of coming in. So I was kind of looking around for ages, speaking to everyone that I knew about Bletchley Park but also trying to work out how to get lots of people interested in Bletchley Park to know how important it was and to try and kind of get them working together to to save Bletchley Park so it was about six months later I think in January I did like December 2008 January 2009 when I started using Twitter, and then quite quickly realised that this was very exciting. And here was a way, or kind of a tool that I could use to reach as many people as possible, and get them to know about Bletchley Park. And if they did know about Bletchley Park, to get them to campaign for Bletchley Park. And so it kind of took off from

there, really. really I mean because Twitter works through search you know you you can put the term Bletchley Park into Twitter and you can find everyone that's talking about Bletchley Park everywhere in the world uh you know like in a few seconds and that's amazing for campaigning because it means you can find everyone or as many people as possible that are interested in the thing that you're interested in. So I quite quickly kind of got in touch with lots of people that were interested in Bletchley Park. And then basically the campaign just kind of took off, I guess. I mean, I was always looking for people to talk to about Bletchley Park,

looking for people to help Bletchley Park, looking, you know, kind of promoting Bletchley Park and getting people to visit because the main revenue that Bletchley Park got at that time was through people visiting and paying on the gate. So we needed to get visitor numbers up. We needed to increase people's awareness of Bletchley Park. We needed to help people to know how important it was in our winning of World War II. And, you know, just such a kind of fundamental place in our history that was written out of history, really.

But I mean, because it had to be kept secret. But I guess my aim was to try and get it written back into history. And, well, I think it's worked, actually, thinking about it. Sue, I'm so full of admiration. And I'm also jealous. I want to lead a campaign on Twitter. This is is so exciting let's find something else to say and what state is is betsy parkindale i haven't been there for about eight years so what's oh wow if i go today what's it what's it look like is it in good health yeah you need to go back well so so um the huts

have been renovated so uh i don't know if you remember like hut six one with the blue tar pulling over i was in there last week and and hut six one with the blue tarpaulin over it i was in there last week and and hut eight where turing worked they've all been renovated there's kind of like audio i don't know what's what the technical term for like the museum term for it is but you know when you walk into the huts there's audio playing of you know like someone uh having a conversation a 1940s type conversation and, you know, like the type, typing on the typewriter. And it's very kind of evocative.

You know, you walk in and just kind of people, you can't see people, but you can hear them talking. And obviously stuff that's kind of related to what actually happened in those huts. There's loads and loads of information in the huts about what happened there. There's more kind of like interactive displays and stuff there within the huts the the mansion house was having terrible problems with their roof so one of the first things to get fixed actually was the mansion house roof because it was

leaking and i think it had 100 different um parts to the roof so it was a very complicated thing to fix and so you know like from the beginning of the campaign the money was going into things like repairing potholes and repairing the roof but latterly especially with 4.1 million that came in from the Heritage Lottery Fund a few years ago then the huts have been renovated sort of tastefully renovated and there's a new visitor centre. So one of the blocks that was derelict right near the entrance is now the new visitor center. So there's just so much there. There really is.

I mean, honestly, I've probably been about 50 times and every time I go, I learn several new things that I just didn't know before. It's just incredible. Well, Sue, what is incredible is this isn't even your day job that's the thing that i find hardest to believe you've managed to save a national treasure an international treasure what really should almost be a world heritage site i expect it will be one day and you uh also have a day job so i'm i'm in awe how do people get involved in the ongoing

campaign bletchley park what what websites Twitter handles do you want to throw out there? Well, so I've now written a book about the campaign. So if people are interested in that, my book's called Saving Bletchley Park. And the Twitter handle for that is at Saving Bletchley. And that tells a lot of the history of what happened there. And kind of the two stories from the 1940s and the history are and today's story with the campaigning are kind of interweaved throughout the book so there's two kind of narratives running through the book of like the the 1940s and the present day and the

campaign um so that's available now on amazon and all good bookstores. My Twitter ID is at DrBlack, so I'd love to hear from anybody who's interested in Bletchley Park. I would really, really encourage everyone to go and visit if they can, because as I was just saying, you know, there's just so much to see there. It's a 26-acre site. You know, it was fundamental in our winning of the war.'s so many amazing um exhibitions and and just the thing i still love the most is to just walk through the park and just kind of imagine what it was like in the 1940s and and just think about those thousands and thousands of people that work there all that time and um i just kind of because it's you know lots of times you go to museums and museums are great. I love museums, but most of them aren't in the actual place where the history happened.

You know, so it is like walking back into the 1940s. And I just find that incredible. And the fact that there's the National Museum of Computing on site, too. So anyone with any interest in computing, the National Museum of Computing is on site at Bletchley Park. And that's incredible because that takes you a walk through the whole history of computing too. So there's just so much there. Sue and History Hit, thank you very much.

Thank you. Hi everyone, it's me, Dan Snow. Just a quick request. It's so annoying, and I hate it when other podcasts do this, but now I'm doing it, and I hate myself. Please, please go onto iTunes, wherever you get your podcasts, and give us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps, and basically boosts up the chart,

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