SURVIVORS of Britain’s worst wartime civilian disaster which killed 173 people are speaking about their experiences just yards from where it happened. They relive their stories at Bethnal Green on July 18 during three hours of recollections about the 1943 air-raid shelter disaster in London’s blitzed East End

By Julia Gregory

SURVIVORS of Britain's worst wartime civilian disaster which killed 173 men, women and children are speaking about their experiences just yards from where it happened.

They relive their stories at Bethnal Green public library on July 18 during three hours of recollections about the 1943 air-raid shelter disaster in London's blitzed East End.

The talks are part of a �600,000 campaign to erect a memorial in Bethnal Green Gardens, close to the air-raid shelter that is now Bethnal Green tube station on the London Underground.

One of the survivors giving a talk is pensioner Alf Morris, now 79, who was 13 when he was pulled clear from a stampede of panicking Londoners rushing into the shelter during an air raid alert on that fateful day in March, 1943.

A woman taking a pram with a baby down the narrow steps tripped and the crowd fell on top of her, causing the tragedy.