All Work and No Play: British Leisure Culture and the 1947 Fuel Crisis

Abstract

The impact that the 1947 fuel crisis and the subsequent drive to increase industrial output had on the standing of Clement Attlee's first Labour government has often been understood in primarily economic terms. This article demonstrates that for many Britons these events were not only the cause of daytime power cuts and short-term unemployment, but also the source of restrictions on a host of leisure pursuits that altered the established rhythms of everyday social and cultural life. Such restrictions, which affected, amongst other things, the cinema, theatre, radio and sporting events, helped to determine the experience of the fuel crisis and thereby shaped attitudes towards the government, not least because of the emotive way in which they were reported in the press.

Keywords:

• Fuel crisis
• Leisure
• Cinema
• Radio
• Sport

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust for the award of an Early Career Fellowship which made possible my research into British leisure culture during the 1940s.

Notes

Richard Farmer has taught at University College London, where he was Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, and the University of East Anglia. He is the author of The Food Companions: Cinema and Consumption in Wartime Britain, 1939–45 (Manchester University Press), and is currently preparing a monograph on wartime cinemagoing.

  [1] On the British economy under Attlee's Labour government, see Cairncross, Years of Recovery, esp. 3–46.

  [2] See, for example, Middlemas, Power, Competition and the State, 152–79; Brooke, Reform and Reconstruction, 35–61; Cronin, Politics of State Expansion, 142.

  [3] In this period, the right-wing press (which was certainly anti-Labour, even if it was not always unquestioningly pro-Conservative) included the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Daily Graphic, the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times and the London Evening Standard; the left-wing press (which was equally, if not more, partisan in its pro-Labour leanings) comprised the Daily Mirror and the Daily Herald; the News Chronicle represented Liberal opinion (and looked upon Attlee's government in a largely favourable way); whilst The Times tried to hold itself aloof as the newspaper of record. Press partisanship in this period is discussed in Thomas, Popular Newspapers, 7–34.

  [4] Moore, Origins of Modern Spin, 102.

  [5] Quoted in Moore, Origin of Modern Spin, 103.

  [6] Horne, Jary and Tomlinson, ‘Sociological Analysis of Sport and Leisure’, 1.

  [7] Daily Express, 10 March 1947, 2.

  [8] The National Archives (TNA) PREM 8/443/1: Emanuel Shinwell, ‘Coal Position—1947/48’, 21 February 1947.

  [9] Spectator, 28 December 1945, 617.

 [10] See, for example, Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain, esp., 214–26; Kynaston, Austerity Britain, e.g. 246–9, 101–3.

 [11] The growth of feeling in favour of better welfare services is detailed in Addison, Road to 1945, e.g. 211–28 on the 1943 Beveridge Report.

 [12] The October 1941 report on the factors influencing morale is assessed in ibid., 185.

 [13] Economic Survey of 1947, quoted in Daily Mirror, 22 February 1947, 2.

 [14] Letter from J. Burton, Sheffield. Daily Herald, 18 March 1947, 4.

 [15] Picture Post, 19 April 1947, 10.

 [16] Dalton, High Tide and After, 187.

 [17] Morgan, Labour in Power, 331.

 [18] For a comprehensive analysis of causes, nature and aftermath of the fuel crisis, see Robertson, Bleak Midwinter.

 [19] Dalton claims that unemployment rose from c.2½ per cent to 15½ per cent during the crisis, peaking at approximately 2,300,000. High Tide and After, 205.

 [20] See Mass-Observation Archive: File Report 2461B—‘Who are the Fuel-Wasters?’.

 [21] B. Charles, diary entry, 19 February 1947. In Garfield (ed), Our Hidden Lives, 355. Formatting in original.

 [22] Quoted in The Times, 11 February 1947, 4.

 [23] Shinwell called this figure ‘a wild exaggeration’. Shinwell, Conflict Without Malice, 185.

 [24] The ‘We work or want’ campaign is assessed in Crofts, Coercion or Persuasion, 40–7.

 [25] Kinematograph Weekly, 2 January 1947, 3.

 [26] Sunday Dispatch, 2 March 1947, 6. Some felt that only active bodies generated enough heat to warm a room, and one dancer noticed that ‘the hall was definitely warmer when a dance was in progress even if one was sitting out. Immediately the dance stopped, the hall seemed to go cold’. George Taylor, diary entry, 22 February 1947. In Garfield (ed), Our Hidden Lives, 356.

 [27] Daily Mail, 15 February 1947, 2.

 [28] Daily Mail, 21 February 1947, 3.

 [29] Daily Mail, 1 March 1947, 3; Evening Standard, 27 February 1947, 2.

 [30] Daily Mail, 8 February 1947, 2.

 [31] Kinematograph Weekly, 13 February 1947, 4. See also Daily Film Renter, 10 February 1947, 4.

 [32] Cinema, 12 February 1947, 3.

 [33] Evening Standard, 14 February 1947, 2.

 [34] Daily Film Renter, 13 February 1947, 9. The actual figures from the Empire suggest a less severe decline. In the week during which the matinee ban was introduced, patronage fell from 22,255 to 17,938—nowhere in the region of 50 per cent. Eyles, ‘Hits and Misses at the Empire’, 39.

 [35] The short-term laying off of workers was held by some exhibitors to have contributed to the downturn in takings: ‘many people who have been temporarily unemployed are chary of spending their savings on cinemas until the economic situation is straightened out’. Despite the introduction of higher rates of unemployment relief in 1946, the rates paid out to single men, for example, represented only a fifth to a quarter of their average wages. Kinematograph Weekly, 20 February–6 March 1947, 3; Robertson, Bleak Midwinter, 106.

 [36] Sunday Express, 23 February 1947, 6.

 [37] Statistics on annual cinema admissions are taken from Browning and Sorrell, ‘Cinemas and Cinema-going in Great Britain’, 134.

 [38] Daily Film Renter, 3 March 1947, 4.

 [39] Daily Film Renter, 19 March 1947, 4.

 [40] For popular attitudes to cinemagoing, see Mayer, British Cinemas, 16–143.

 [41] Cinema attendance peaked during the winter months, so using the 1946 annual total to arrive at a uniform weekly average might underestimate the potential impact.

 [42] Kinematograph Weekly, 6 March 1947, 4; Today's Cinema, 11 February 1947, 5.

 [43] Cinema, 12 February 1947, 9.

 [44] Stage, 13 February 1947, 4.

 [45] Daily Express, 15 February 1947, 2.

 [46] Briggs, History of Broadcasting, 60; Central Statistical Office, Annual Abstract, 234.

 [47] BBC Yearbook , 69.

 [48] Sunday Graphic, 30 March 1947, 6.

 [49] Daily Telegraph, 14 February 1947, 1.

 [50] Daily Herald, 15 February 1947, 1.

 [51] Cyril Osborne, Speech to Commons, 19 February 1947.

 [52] TNA PREM 8/443/2: Cabinet Fuel Committee Minutes, 25 February 1947, 6.

 [53] Ibid. That the Third Programme was not also thought a luxury speaks to the belief that the war had awoken in the British people an appreciation of highbrow (or at least middlebrow) culture.

 [54] Daily Graphic, 15 February 1947, 6.

 [55] Cooper, ‘Snoek Piquante’, 56.

 [56] Hinton, ‘Militant Housewives’, 129–30; Bracken quoted in Ramsden, Age of Churchill and Eden, 169.

 [57] Picture Post, 19 April 1947, 10.

 [58] Ian Fraser, Speech to Commons, 19 February 1947.

 [59] Letter from ‘Housewife’, Croydon. Evening Standard, 15 March 1947, 3.

 [60] Letter from Mrs B. J. Reed, Notting Hill. Evening Standard, 12 March 1947, 3.

 [61] Daily Film Renter, 27 March 1947, 8.

 [62] Daily Film Renter, 31 March 1947, 10.

 [63] Today's Cinema, 21 March 1947, 11; Daily Film Renter, 12 March 1947, 3.

 [64] Kinematograph Weekly, 27 March 1947, 35, 13.

 [65] Evening Standard, 3 March 1947, 1.

 [66] TNA CAB 195/5: Cabinet Secretary's notes, 13 March 1947.

 [67] Robertson, Bleak Midwinter, 92. See also Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 201.

 [68] Greyhound Leader, 15 February 1947, 4; Star, 14 March 1947, 2.

 [69] See McKibbin, ‘Working Class Gambling’.

 [70] Gallup International Public Opinion Polls , 147–8.

 [71] TNA CAB 129/17: John Chuter Ede, ‘Mid-Week Sporting Events’, 12 March 1947, 3.

 [72] Baker, ‘Going to the Dogs’, 99.

 [73] Although dog tracks were amongst the first sporting venues to make regular use of floodlighting, they were refused permission to hold mid-week evening meetings. On the appeal of the lights to racegoers, see Huggins, ‘Everybody's Going to the Dogs?’, 104–5.

 [74] News Chronicle, 13 March 1947, 4.

 [75] Although generally described as a ‘ban’, the suspension was voluntarily instituted by sports organisations at the request of the government. This is not to say that pressure was not brought to bear; the Football Association was informed that the government was ‘prepared to introduce legislation empowering [it] to prohibit … matches’ if a voluntary arrangement was not made. TNA PREM 8/443/2: Cabinet Fuel Committee Minutes, 4 March 1947, 7.

 [76] Daily Graphic, 12 March 1947, 4.

 [77] John Boyd-Carpenter, Speech to Commons, 21 March 1947. Shinwell asserted that ‘we know that absenteeism at pits correspond with racing days in neighbourhood’, but was unable to provide proof. TNA CAB 195/5: Cabinet Secretary's notes, 25 March 1947. For statistics exploring the link between sport, absenteeism and productivity, see Griffin, ‘Going to the Dogs’.

 [78] The Times, 14 March 1947, 5.

 [79] TNA CAB 129/17: John Chuter Ede, ‘Mid-Week Sporting Events’, 12 March 1947, 3–4.

 [80] Sir Cuthbert Headlam, diary entry, 21 March 1947. In Ball (ed), Parliament and Politics, 495–6.

 [81] On the legal niceties of Saturday-only dog racing, see TNA CAB 129/17: John Chuter Ede, ‘Mid-Week Sporting Events’, 12 March 1947, 2.

 [82] Daily Herald, 12 Mar. 1947, 1. For details of the various schemes put forward as to how the season might be concluded, see also Manchester Guardian, 12 March 1947, 4; Daily Graphic, 12 March 1947, 7.

 [83] Daily Mail, 12 March 1947, 1.

 [84] Sunday Graphic, 9 March 1947, 12.

 [85] Godfrey Nicholson, Speech to Commons, 21 March 1947.

 [86] See Holt and Mason, Sport in Britain, 26, 146–8; Huggins and Williams, Sport and the English, 21–3.

 [87] Evening Standard, 14 March 1947, 2; Star, 12 March 1947, 2.

 [88] Letter from J. Burton, Sheffield. Daily Herald, 18 March 1947, 4.

 [89] Roland Robinson, Speech to Commons, 21 March 1947.

 [90] When a reader from Suffolk dared to call the ban on mid-week football matches ‘ridiculous’, the Mirror's letters editor rebuked him in no uncertain terms: ‘[Such matches] serve no useful purpose beyond entertainment tax, and that is more than offset by the loss of working hours to industry. And that applies to afternoon sport of all kinds other than Saturday’. Daily Mirror, 13 March 1947, 6.

 [91] Daily Mail, 13 March 1947, 2.

 [92] Star, 12 March 1947, 2.

 [93] Daily Express, 12 March 1947, 2.

 [94] News Chronicle, 17 March 1947, 2.

 [95] Poll taken in March 1947. Gallup International Public Opinion Polls, 153; Sunday Graphic, 16 March 1947, 12.

 [96] Letter from F. L. Piney, Kilburn. Evening Standard, 18 March 1947, 2.

 [97] Daily Mail, 13 March 1947, 2.

 [98] Letter from Harry Kerswell, Chadwell Heath. Daily Herald, 18 March 1947, 4.

 [99] Kinematograph Weekly, 20 March 1947, 4. See similar in Daily Film Renter, 19 March 1947, 4.

[100] See Daily Express, 12 March 1947, 2; News Chronicle, 17 March 1947, 2; News of the World, 16 March 1947, 4; People, 9 March 1947, 6; see also New York Times, 10 March 1947, 30.

[101] Star, 12 March 1947, 2.

[102] Evening Standard, 15 February 1947, 2.

[103] Letter from D. Gray. Evening Standard, 20 February. 1947, 3.

[104] Hodgson, ‘The Steel Debates’, 298; Dalton, High Tide and After, 205. On Conservative attempts to exploit the economic crises for electoral advantage, see Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘Rationing, Austerity and the Conservative Party Recovery’.

[105] Gallup International Public Opinion Polls, 139, 144, 151, 156. The question for May 1947 was phrased slightly differently, asking if respondents if they approved of Attlee as PM rather than if they were satisfied with him as Premier. Attlee's popularity fell again during the convertibility crisis.

[106] Letter from Edwin Prevost, Shoreditch. Evening Standard, 14 March 1947, 3.