MHS - Ministry of Home Security

The Ministry of Home Security was a British government department established in 1939 to direct national civil defence (primarily tasked with organising air raid precautions) during the Second World War. The Ministry for Home Security was headed by Sir John Anderson the Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security. The Ministry's responsibilities covered all central and regional civil defence organisations (such as air raid wardens, rescue squads, fire services, and the Women’s Voluntary Service). It was also responsible for giving approval to local ARP schemes, and providing public shelters.

The Ministry (run under the auspices of the Home Office) produced hundreds of leaflets that were delivered to the population advising on how to deal with the impending air raids. It also managed propaganda poster campaigns to encourage, amongst other things, the carrying of gas masks and for volunteers to join civil defence groups like the Fire Guards.

In October 1940, Sir John Anderson was replaced by Herbert Morrison in a reshuffle precipitated by Chamberlain's resignation over ill-health. Anderson became Lord President of the Council and full member of the War Cabinet.

With the Allied victory in Europe the Ministry was disbanded in May 1945.
.......
John Anderson, 1st Viscount Waverley, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, PC, PC (Ire), FRS (8 July 1882 – 4 January 1958) was a British civil servant and politician who is best known for his service in the Cabinet during the Second World War, for which he was nicknamed the "Home Front Prime Minister". He served as Home Secretary, Lord President of the Council and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Anderson shelters are named after him.

.......

Herbert Stanley Morrison, Baron Morrison of Lambeth, CH, PC (3 January 1888 – 6 March 1965) was a BritishLabour politician who held a variety of senior positions in the Cabinet.

During the inter-war period, he was Minister of Transport during the 1929-31 Labour Government, then, after losing his seat in Parliament in 1931, became Leader of the London County Council in the 1930s. Returning to the Commons in 1935, he was defeated by Clement Attlee in the Labour leadership election that year, but later acted as Home Secretary in the wartime coalition.

In 1940, Morrison was appointed the first Minister of Supply by Winston Churchill, but shortly afterwards succeeded Sir John Anderson as Home Secretary. Morrison's London experience in local government was particularly useful during the Blitz, and the Morrison shelter was named after him. He made radio appeals for more fire guards in December 1940 ('Britain shall not burn').

Morrison had to take many potentially unpopular and controversial decisions by the nature of wartime circumstances. On 21 January 1941, he banned the Daily Worker for opposing war with Germany and supporting the Soviet Union. The ban lasted for a total of 18 months before it was rescinded.

The arrival of black American troops caused concern in the government, leading Morrison, the Home Secretary, to comment "I am fully conscious that a difficult social problem might be created if there were a substantial number of sex relations between white women and coloured troops and the procreation of half-caste children." That was in a memorandum for the cabinet in 1942. In 1942, Morrison was confronted with an appeal from the Central British Fund for German Jewry (now World Jewish Relief) to admit 350 Jewish children from Vichy France. Although Case Anton ensured the scheme's failure, Morrison had been reluctant to accept it beforehand, wanting to avoid provoking the ‘anti-foreign and anti-semitic feeling which was quite certainly latent in this country (and in some isolated cases not at all latent)’.

In 1943, he ran for the post of Treasurer of the Labour Party but lost a close contest to Arthur Greenwood.
......
During the Second World War Jacob Bronowski worked in operations research for the UK's Ministry of Home Security, where he developed mathematical approaches to bombing strategy for RAF Bomber Command.

War Ministries WW2 ..