To what extent are leisure tastes affected by social class in Britain?

In writing this paper the aim is to find out how the many factors controlled by social class can affect peoples’ tastes in leisure. These factors include income, education (both academically and practically) and employment. They also include many other sociological factors such as social circles, friendship groups and very importantly, interests and hobbies. Leisure has been a part of English culture for many hundreds of years with some activities being more prominent among certain classes than others. This essay will show in chronological order how leisure has evolved from the mid nineteenth century to the present day. It will show the relationship that class has with leisure patterns and how important factors affected by class such as education and income have created a certain amount of inter-dependency and association between the two systems.

The state of leisure in 1830 was, for the working class at least, very modest. The general feeling was that after what was often a twelve-hour day the average worker was too tired to partake in much recreation. By Sunday this would mean that staying in bed was required rather than desired, in order to regain physical and mental energy for the start of the next working week. In 1840 Leonard Horner, a prominent factory inspector remarked that the twelve-hour day that was now normal in textile mills left the worker “Utterly unfit for anything like mental improvement … and not very fit for much social enjoyment with his family” (P.Bailey 1978). John Fielden was a reforming manufacturer when a youth working in one the mills complained that there was “Never any time to play” (P.Bailey 1978).

By 1834 there were only eight statutory half-holidays in England, and both employers and the church had cut down the number of religious feast days and the traditional celebrations of seasonal tasks (e.g. harvest) or particular trades.

The best way round this that the workers discovered was through the aid of St Monday, a day chosen by the workers to extend the weekend. This can possibly be dated back, according to E Cobham Brewer's ‘Dictionary of Phrase and Fable’, to the time of Cromwell. While Cromwell's army lay encamped at Perth, he says, one of his ardent devotees, named Monday, died, and Cromwell offered a reward for the best lines about his death. A shoemaker from Perth presented the following, which pleased Cromwell so much that he not only gave the promised reward but also issued a decree that shoemakers should be allowed to make Monday a standing holiday:

"Blessed be the Sabbath Day/ And cursed be worldly pelf:/ Tuesday will begin the week, / Since Monday's hanged himself." (Mckie D. 2004).

St Monday continued to be custom for as long as the workers were able to make it so, which was about another century. In the 1820s the soon to be Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli commented in his novel on the ‘Condition of England’

“The social system is not an unvarying course of infinite toil. The plan is to work hard, but not always. The men seldom exceed four days of labour in the week. On ...

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"Blessed be the Sabbath Day/ And cursed be worldly pelf:/ Tuesday will begin the week, / Since Monday's hanged himself." (Mckie D. 2004).

“The social system is not an unvarying course of infinite toil. The plan is to work hard, but not always. The men seldom exceed four days of labour in the week. On Sunday the master workmen begin to drink; for the apprentices there is dog fighting without stint. On Monday and Tuesday the whole population is drunk. Here is relaxation, excitement” (P Bailey 1978). This shows how the introduction of St Monday gave leisure a gap to fill, and for many of the working class this meant sport, gambling on blood sports such as dog and cock fighting and invariably drinking. This extension of the weekend was largely a protest about having to work on Saturdays leaving little time for both leisure and recuperation. This opened up the doorways for many sports such as football, foot races, pugilism, horse racing and animal sports on days other than carnival, fairs or holydays. However with the beginnings of the industrial movement there emerged a new bourgeoisie class, which was quick to ally itself with the ruling classes and British aristocracy, and whilst they all partook in similar leisure activities on holydays, the ruling classes found that they wanted other leisure pursuits to spend their money on, which excluded the labouring masses of the population. These pursuits included the theatre, literature, seaside holidays, music halls and so on and excluded the workers simply because most could never afford this type of ‘upper class leisure’. It seemed then that in this transitional stage before industrialisation got under full swing British society was facing massive reforms in its popular culture and labouring patterns and the first clear divisions could be seen between the social classes and their corresponding leisure activities. The working class still enjoyed football, although the traditional ‘mob’ football had been reduced into something more like modern football by the government under the belief that it was unhealthy for their workers and their working patterns. They also still largely enjoyed the services offered by the public house especially as some forms of entertainment such as skittles and animal sports had been restricted to these places only.

By the 1840s the state of working class leisure was dismal compared to eighty years previously, the number of annual bank holidays had been reduced from seventeen to just four, and for the thirty per cent of the population now working in the new factories, a seventy hour, six-day week was customary for man woman and child. With Britain’s new industrial face emerging the ruling classes worked with the manufacturers to ensure that the workers spent the maximum possible time in the factories, in order to achieve the greatest production and profit. However thanks to the continuing St Monday custom the workers lived through this highly demanding generation, one MP commented in 1906,

"The average British workman ... generally is more interested in the next football match and the nearest public house than he is in his work ... some trades suffer much from St Monday."

The ruling classes however continued to separate their recreational activities from the working classes, and began to thirst for increasingly demanding or simply original things with which to fill up their time, which they had lots of. As Charles Booth fittingly put it later that century,

“The demand for amusement is not less noticeable than that for holydays, and supply follows. To ‘what shall we eat, what drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?’ must now be added the question ‘How shall we be amused?’ To this an answer has to be found. Even to the police it is a problem’

This comment shows that although manufacturers would have you believe discipline was the name of the game in Victorian Industrial Britain, it certainly was not the case. The police had difficulties controlling the crowds going to see football matches or prize fights, which were also popular at the time. One witness from the fighting pits in Warwickshire reported that

“When there is such a matter of universal interest as a prize fight most go to see it, and it is a day’s play. Upon average there may be five or six such occasions in the course of a summer.” Which left the local mills half empty, showing that the working classes still had much to protest about working hours and conditions.

From the mid to late 1800s there were several essential processes were at work underneath the more obvious expansion of leisure opportunities. Firstly was the reorientation of middle-class leisure downwards into the vicinity of the working classes. This would have caused a greater deal of social interaction between the two classes and perhaps it would have initiated a greater understanding of their positions and lifestyles in society. The second process was the expansion of local government onto the area of leisure provision and control. This shows that comments and opinions were filtering back from the working and middle classes on the importance of this matter. The third process was all about the new kind of commercialism, dependant on heavy capitalisation, mass audiences and formal licensing. This allowed large public events to be organised well in advance with the added bonus of people, police and government to know what was going on where, and how many would be attending. It also meant that extra capital could be generated quite easily, but only due to the small but widespread increase in spending power among the working and middle classes. This extra spending power was due to an increase of over 100% in wages from 1860 to the turn of the twentieth century. These factors continued to reform the class-leisure relationships but much of this was put on hold during the course of the war. These were grim times for everyone and leisure was the last thing on many peoples’ minds.

Post-war times is when things really took of for working class leisure. The ‘baby boom’ meant that by the 1960s there was an unusually large number of young people aged 16 to 20. These youths had little concept of life before the war but were keen to exploit the all-new opportunities that peacetime offered, and with increased consumerism and greater cultural influence from the US, power and respect began to make a shift from the old to the young, who were able to grasp this new age by the horns and take opportunities that perhaps only 1 in 30 of the previous generation would have even considered (Dunning. E 1990). Football continued to be the singularly most popular recreational activity among the working classes. Now that Britain’s infrastructure covered much of the country in allowed supporters and players to travel almost anywhere and leagues quickly increased in size. Football became a large part of the new leisure industry, wages increased and with them the number of devoted and paying fans. The government realised that by building football grounds in predominantly working class areas they could guarantee people would pay to go and watch matches. Music also had an enormous influence over these youths; this was in the form of pop and rock music. Those responsible for producing this music also found they had the power to transform ordinary members of the public into pop stars, which began to make the youth believe that eventually they would all be famous and in charge of vast fortunes. As industrial manufacturing was fading fast to be replaced by the beginnings of the communications and high technology age, many of the old factory workers found themselves out of work and unskilled for any other sort of job. This meant that it was mostly down to their children to bring in the bread, and so they too put hope in this age of pop stars and well paid sportsmen. Groups of youths such as the mods and rockers, known for their uniform, territorial habits and violent behaviour began to emerge. These people received much media attention, generally negative, and it was these groups of people that gave rise to the football hooligans of the 1980s and early 90s.

Leisure also had a large effect on who belonged to each class and actually caused further segregation. The ruling classes were no longer simply the people with the most money, land or aristocratic status. Power shifted to those who had taken advantage of the beginnings of the communications age. Television became a massive part of the leisure industry, and the first director general of the BBC was a very powerful man, with access to the minds of anyone who owned a television. And at the time this was the upper and middle classes as televisions were still very expensive. Power also began to shift to those who had taken fashion design as their chosen career; they dictated what was fashionable to wear and once several had established their specific styles there was further segregation between the classes.

In conclusion it seems fairly safe to say that the one leisure activity that has remained unchanged by alterations in class and social structure is the British pub and drinking culture, especially among the working classes. Although as nightclubs now exist the middle classes have also been drawn into this activity. And it still seems the case that your social class can limit your choice in leisure pursuits, just as it limits your choice of home, work and essentially consumerism. Finally however it is clear that leisure has not only altered class relationships, but has actually redefined where the borders between them actually are as we have evolved from a pre-industrial to a high technology society.

References

Bailey P. (1978) Leisure and Class in Victorian England. Routledge & Kegan UK

Clarke. J & Chritcher. C (1985) The Devil Makes Work. Macmillan Publishers Ltd UK

Clarke. J & Chritcher. C (1979) Working Class Culture. Hutchinson & Co Ltd UK

Harris. J (1993) Private Lives Public Spirit. Oxford University Press Inc. USA

Mckie D. Idle Worship of St Monday. [online] Accessed from “www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/html” Available from Guardian 08/01/04

Parker. S (1976) The Sociology of Leisure. George Allen & Unwin Ltd UK

Roberts. K (1978) Contemporary Society & the Growth of Leisure. Longman Inc USA

Wynne. D (1998) Leisure, Lifestyle & the New Middle Class. Routledge UK