Family Britain, 1951-1957 (34 page)

‘Lend ye a quid to go to that club? Over my dead body . . . an’ get that look out of your eye. You’re not going to the club again until ye’ve been for a new suit! If my mother was to drop dead the day ye haven’t a decent suit for the funeral! An’ she can’t live for ever poor soul.’

‘No,’ I says. ‘But she’s having a good try!’

‘What was that ye said?’

‘I said I’d have a good cry.’

‘Ye’ll do nothing of the kind. Ye’ve that much beer inside ye, they could bottle your tears an’ sell them for best bitter. I’ve warned ye though . . . ! That suit’s going on the fire, so ye’d better get out of it unless you’re thick-skinned. I don’t want my man lookin’ like a rag bag. Ye drink like a lord, so ye might as well look like one!’

Wives generally fared poorly in Thompson’s humour. ‘We got off the train at Blackpool,’ ran a favourite gag. ‘The porter says: “Carry your bag?” Aa said: “Let her walk.” ’ As for homosexuals, they seldom featured in his patter, but in real life he loathed them and once, according to his biographer, ‘finished with a theatrical agency because the partners were thought to be gay’.40

No comedian in the late 1940s and early 1950s, though, could match Halifax’s Wilfred Pickles for week-in, week-out radio popularity. His prime vehicle was the untesting, good-natured quiz
Have a Go!
, with its invariable, much-loved features: Pickles’s opening catchphrase, ‘ ’Ow do, ’ow are yer?’; the amiable chat with the mainly working-class contestants about their lives; a large round of applause if a contestant turned out to be over 60; a few questions, including one about the contestant’s most embarrassing moment; the banging of the gong by Pickles’s wife-cum-manager Mabel if the answer was wrong; Pickles’s call to the producer, ‘Give ’im the money, Barney,’ for a winning contestant; and, at the end, the buoyant, singalong theme song (‘That’s the show, Joe/You’ve been and had a go’), with piano accompaniment from Violet Carson (the future Ena Sharples of
Coronation Street
). ‘A small, slight, spruce man with slickly brushed sandy hair,’ was how the
Sunday Pictorial
in January 1947, four months after the quiz show had gone national on the Light Programme, profiled the 42-year-old son of a builder, adding that he had ‘no stomach for fussy foreign cooking’ and, of course, was ‘not interested in politics’. As for his humour, ‘there’s certainly nothing sophisticated or “smart-alec” about it’, being instead ‘of the people’ and ‘healthy, “pub” humour, the type of gag that has no basis in unkindness’.

It was not long before more than half the adult population was regularly tuning in. ‘To my mind, the most human Radio personality,’ the middle-aged wife of a waiter told M-O in 1949. ‘As a listener, I feel straight away, what a wide sense of homeliness has been created. I admire his tolerance, thoughtfulness and humble approach to one and all. His voice sounds very sincere and he has a kindly manner.’ Pickles’s sincerity does not seem to have been in question, but it was an image that he guarded carefully. ‘I had no choice,’ he explained in September 1951 about his last-minute refusal – having seen the script – to appear at the London Palladium in Tallulah Bankhead’s distinctly American
Big Show
. ‘British listeners wouldn’t have recognised me. I didn’t recognise myself. I’m just an ordinary bloke at home and enjoy myself talking to and mixing with ordinary folk. I don’t use scripts and I’m not a slick wise-cracker.’ Two months later he introduced in
Radio Times
the sixth series of
Have a Go!.
The first quiz was due to come from ‘that snug little Lancashire town Rawtenstall, where they make slippers and speak their minds’, and he declared that the programme was ‘made of people, with all their qualities and failings, their hopes, fears, ideals’. Charges of sentimentality, even of pandering to certain comfortable, mainly northern self-images, are difficult to deny. But as one of his helpers on stage, the young June Whitfield, would justifiably emphasise half a century later, the endemic stuffiness of so much of the BBC’s output meant that ‘Wilfred’s voice and unaffected ordinariness were like a breath of fresh air.’41

‘I fancy that the BP [ie the British public]
en masse
is not likely to take to walking over the hills,’ was how one Tory backbencher consoled himself in 1949 about that year’s National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act, adding that ‘charabancs, main roads and pubs are what the majority of holiday-makers like’. He was right. Two years later the Peak District became Britain’s first national park, but at least until the widespread coming of the family car most people stuck to the tried and tested when it came to day outings. Rich had already noted in Coseley how organised outings run by working-men’s clubs and suchlike ‘usually go to the seaside, especially to Rhyl, Llandudno, Blackpool (especially during the “illuminations”) or Weston-super-Mare’, while in ‘Ashton’ (ie Featherstone), Dennis et al observed that ‘the people who go on the trips from Ashton clubs in fact seek out those activities in the places they visit which most closely resemble those provided in Ashton’, including a high proportion of visits to other working-men’s clubs within a 25-mile radius. Even for unorganised daytrippers, there was a high premium placed on the familiar and the popular, as on the first Sunday of June 1950, Newcastle’s hottest day of the year so far:

This is what happened.

GETTING THERE: A Newcastle Central Station ticket-collector called it ‘pandemonium’. It was, but it was good-humoured pandemonium. From noon until late afternoon, four-deep queues snaked from the platform barriers through the station and out into Neville Street. It was a non-stop queue for the coast resorts.

Buses were stampeded, too. Mothers, fathers and children swarmed into bus after bus. Always, people were left behind. But the queue philosophy says, ‘There will always be another bus – or train.’ And there was – and everybody got there in the end.

THERE: Tynemouth’s sands are golden. But yesterday they were a vivid moving mosaic of blues and reds and yellows and greens. All Tyneside was there – or so it seemed.

And Tyneside queued to enjoy itself. It queued for jugs of hot water for countless picnic teas; it queued for lemonade and candy floss; it queued for the privilege of bathing in the overcrowded swimming pool; it queued for ‘funny’ paper hats; it queued to get on the beach; it even queued to get off the beach.

‘And most of all,’ ended the report, ‘it queued for ice cream. It must have queued for hundreds of thousands of ice creams.’42

Day trips mattered, given that the nationwide Social Survey found in 1949 not only that almost half the adult population had not had a holiday away from home that year but also that for those who had not holidayed, just over half had had day trips instead – thereby leaving some 23 per cent of adults who had had neither a holiday nor a day trip during the whole year, notwithstanding the Holidays with Pay Act in 1948, which gave every employed adult a paid fortnight off. Other findings were that holiday-making was more frequent among the better-off and those in urban occupations with a tradition of paid holidays; that the 26 per cent who had not taken a holiday ‘for many years’ mainly comprised older people; that less than 2 per cent of holidays were taken abroad; that almost two-thirds of holidays were by the sea; that about two-fifths of holidays involved staying with friends or relatives; and, startlingly, that 32 per cent of holiday-makers went away entirely on their own.

Locally speaking, especially in industrial towns and cities, the annual holiday period was a momentous event, with the nineteenth-century ‘Wakes Week’ custom still strong and factories shutting down in unison. ‘Holiday-Bound Multitude Leaves City’, reported the
Coventry Evening Telegraph
on the last Saturday of July 1953:

Coventry people have been streaming away from the city in their tens of thousands during the past 24 hours.

Fortunately the clouds cleared as the factories closed down yesterday for the fortnight’s break, and perfect weather gave the holidaymakers a propitious start for their journeys. At Coventry Station, many of those who departed throughout the night were in a jolly mood, and singing, accompanied by the music of accordions, took the tedium out of the waiting period.

About 25,000 – the same number as last year – travelled by train during the rush period. There was a smooth system of queuing outside the station entrances. As each new train came into the station, its queue was admitted in an orderly crocodile on to the platform.

‘Traffic was very heavy this morning,’ added the report, ‘particularly for Llandudno and Blackpool between 6 am and 7 am,’ while ‘coaches, solidly booked up this year, were leaving Pool Meadow for all the popular seaside resorts.’ Rail had traditionally been far and away the most popular form of travel to and from holiday destinations, but by the mid-1950s visiting figures for Skegness were showing a roughly even divide between rail, coach and car, with coaches able to provide convenient pick-up and drop-off points as well as being cheaper.43

An increasingly popular seaside destination was the holiday camp, by now entering its heyday. In addition to the two main, highly successful ‘industrial’ chains – Butlin’s and Pontin’s, each providing almost military-style round-the-clock service and entertainment – there were the rather smaller-scale Warner’s camps and a host of family-run individual holiday camps tending to the rudimentary but homely, typified by Potter’s at Hopton-on-Sea in Norfolk. Most accounts of holiday camps (including M-O’s) have a whiff of middle-class condescension about them, playing up the ‘Hi-de-Hi’ vulgarity, but Valerie Tedder’s recollection of a respectable, tight-knit working-class family from Leicester enjoying in 1950 its first proper holiday offers a salutary corrective. Warner’s in Hayling Island was the carefully chosen venue for her parents, her little sister and her 16-year-old self, a venue that provided order, fun and a sense of camaraderie in roughly equal proportions:

We made use of the baby listening service a couple of times, but always checked on Julie every half an hour. All one had to do to alert the staff that there was a baby sleeping in the chalet, was to tie a large white handkerchief on the door knob. Any child heard crying was reported by the night staff on patrol and the message was given out over the tannoy system in the ballroom. The compère would stop the evening proceedings the minute he received a message to say, ‘Baby crying in chalet number . . .’ It was expected that a parent would return to their chalet immediately and they usually did. It was noticeable that many fathers did the honours, leaving the mothers to enjoy the evening undisturbed.

At the end of the evening the entertainment came to a close with the singing of ‘Goodnight Campers’ to the refrain of ‘Goodnight Sweetheart’, followed by the National Anthem. Quietly we left the ballroom and bars to stroll back to the chalets. Some youngsters went for midnight swims in the floodlit pool, but if there was any noise whatsoever they were reprimanded by the security patrols who kept a sharp watch on proceedings. Loud noise and shouting was banned and anyone misbehaving in this manner was warned only once. If they persisted, next morning they were asked to leave and were escorted off the premises. Rarely was there any trouble of this nature because the organisers were strict and kept their word. In addition there was always the backing of the family campers . . .

The organisers of the sporting events appeared to have thought of everything and we were encouraged to participate in the heats, playing against one another in our own time until the finals were reached on the Friday morning. Some enthusiasts, we noticed, took part in so many of the sports that they seemed to be doing nothing else all week. We restricted ourselves to the fun sports like the obstacle, sack, three-legged and egg and spoon races. Julie was encouraged to enter the children’s events. Dad and I entered the swimming gala, struggling and roaring with laughter at the antics the compère got up to while we were trying to take the races seriously . . .

Dad and I won third prizes for dressing up on Topsy Turvy night. This was for adults only, but it was all clean fun and the children were as much involved as their parents. They enjoyed watching the adults making fools of themselves in their outrageous outfits. We borrowed clothes from one another and there was a great sense of fun and friendliness. Offers to lend items of apparel were readily forthcoming . . .

Other activities they participated in included the plate-collecting competition (from the deep end of the pool), the Donkey Derby, and the fancy-hat and fancy-dress competitions – as well as happy hours by themselves on the beach. ‘The week went by very quickly and before we knew it we were saying farewell to many friends. Our first venture with holiday camps was declared a great success . . .’44

Whether for holiday camps or for British seaside resorts more generally, there was by the early 1950s an inexorably growing demand, against a background of full employment and enhanced collective bargaining power. ‘Early in 1951 the majority of workers still had a basic holiday entitlement of one week, while a minority could expect a fortnight,’ notes the historian of occupational welfare, Alice Russell. ‘The following year the proportions had been reversed.’ The result was keen competition between the resorts, and typical magazine ads in early 1954 included Blackpool (‘All the Best and Best for All’), Bournemouth (‘For Sea, Sands and Sunshine’), Ramsgate (‘Where Jolly Holidays in Bracing Air Suit Health and Pocket’), Walton-on-the-Naze (‘England’s friendliest resort’), Penzance (‘Bathed in the Western Sun’) and Fleetwood (‘For a Tonic Holiday’). Resorts were especially competitive in the area of illuminations. At Blackpool, the acknowledged market leader, the hugely elaborate display of illuminated tableaux ran each year (after their return in 1949) from early September to late October, attracting some three million visitors; at Morecambe, noted
The Times
in 1953, ‘skilful floodlighting has enhanced the natural beauty of Happy Mount Park, and there is floodlighting for three miles and a half along the promenade’; Southport and Southend each had spectacular pier illuminations; Bournemouth specialised in candlelight displays, with some 30,000 candles lit by tapers distributed among holiday-makers; and Paignton’s renowned speciality was swinging lanterns.45