The phrase ‘necking and petting’ testifies to another great cultural change wrought by the cinema – the introduction of American slang to the English streets. Nouns such as ‘bunk’, ‘dope’ and ‘baloney’ could now be heard in inner-city Manchester, while young boys in Durham threatened to ‘bump off’ each other, or at the very least give each other ‘the works’. Most youths now used the adjective ‘OK’ where they had previously said ‘all right’; many now said ‘yeah’ or ‘yep’ instead of ‘yes’, and ‘nope’ for ‘no’. To workingclass English ears, slang from across the Atlantic seemed democratic and liberating, since their own idiom signalled their lowly place within England’s rigidly hierarchical class system.
The cinema weakened the hold earlier forms of entertainment had on the population. Punch and Judy shows and barrel organs now lost their charm for children, as music halls did for adults, while provincial repertory theatres struggled to stay open. Other traditional leisure activities, however, retained their popularity. People danced just as much in the Thirties as they had during the ‘jazz age’ of the Twenties. City dance halls attracted suited and frocked customers on a Saturday night, while countless people ‘dropped in’ for a dance on their way home from work during the week. The working classes often preferred to hire venues such as mission or municipal halls, where they would only have to charge two shillings for a ticket. One eyewitness described men entering a dance hall together and lining ‘up on one side, the women on the other. A male made his choice, crossed over, took a girl with the minimum of ceremony and slid into rhythm.’ By the early Thirties, jazz had already given way to big band music, and that in turn would soon be supplanted by swing. New dances swept the entire nation for brief spells, among them the patriotic ‘Lambeth Walk’, the conga and the hokey-cokey. In the north of the England, ‘pattern’ or ‘formation’ dancing, which we know as ‘ballroom’, became the fashion.
Sport extended the wide appeal it had commanded since the late nineteenth century, despite the fact that women were still generally excluded. Few sports facilities were available for girls at state schools, and there was limited encouragement for women to attend workingclass sporting events as spectators. The Twenties had been the first decade of mass sporting crowds, with the construction of Wembley Stadium, the rebuilding of Twickenham and the expansion of Wimbledon. During the Thirties, the crowds of men swelled even further.
Yet, predictably, the particular sport depended on one’s class. The question ‘Anyone for tennis?’ was never directed at the working classes, and the cricket authorities also strove to preserve the sport’s aura of elitism. On scorecards the initials of ‘gentleman amateurs’ were printed, while only surnames were given for professional ‘players’ such as Jack Hobbs, despite the fact that he was the greatest cricketer of the age. Players had to address gentlemen either as ‘Mister’ or by their titles, while ‘amateurs’ referred to everyone by their first names. The captains of country and county teams were always amateurs – the idea of a ‘professional’ captaining England was unthinkable. While some spectators complained that an aristocratic pedigree did not guarantee runs and wickets, nothing was done to reduce the snobbery.
The most popular workingclass sports were rugby league in the north of England and football everywhere else. Both sports were exclusively male – the Football Association had banned women’s football in the Twenties. The passion for football among workingclass boys and men was universal. There were 35,000 junior football clubs in England by the end of the Thirties, while many businesses also organized teams. The great professional team of the decade was Arsenal, who won five league titles and two FA Cups. During the interwar period, sporting occasions such as the FA Cup and the Grand National were designated ‘national events’. They were reported by the BBC and often attended by members of the royal family, who presented the trophy. It was a fairy tale in which England’s aristocracy complimented its meritocracy.
Countless ‘punters’ bet on football matches. The most popular form of betting was the ‘pools’, where people predicted results and cash prizes were drawn from the entry money. ‘The extent to which the lives of so many in Liverpool centre round the pools,’ one sociologist commented, ‘must be seen to be believed.’ Many people also bet on horse racing, and you could also have a ‘punt’ on boxing, rugby league, or pigeon and greyhound racing. It is no coincidence that these sports were almost exclusively workingclass, since gambling was believed to have replaced drink as the vice of the workers. Their preference for speculation over saving was interpreted as a sign of profligacy, but it more obviously suggested a lack of faith in the future.
Other popular leisure activities of the period included hiking and cycling. The predominantly middle-class hikers looked and acted like grown-up Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, with their distinctive green shorts, long socks, rucksacks, and preparedness for any eventuality. On his solitary country rambles, the author J. B. Priestley would encounter ‘twenty or thirty people together and all dressed for their respective parts. They almost looked German, organized, semi-military, semi-athletic.’ The same writer also regularly came across cyclists, and wondered ‘exactly what pleasure they were getting from the surrounding country, as they never seemed to lift their heads from their handlebars’. According to the sociologist Richard Hoggart, ‘A sign of arrival at real adolescence’ for workingclass youths was ‘the agreement from one’s parents to the buying of a bike on the hire-purchase system. Then one goes out on it at weekends, with one of those mixed clubs which sweep every Sunday through town and out past the quiet train terminus.’
Hikers and cyclists were emblems of the decade’s contradictory relationship with the natural world. Suburbanites, whose new houses had encroached on the countryside, were eager to visit the country proper and experience the beauties and benefits of nature. But they reached it by means of transport which was harmful to its inhabitants and its landscape. An endless procession of cars, motorbikes and buses left London at the beginning of the weekend, filling the country air with petrol fumes. Having arrived at their rural destination, the suburban invaders proceeded to behave like town dwellers, in effect bringing suburbia with them. Into the early hours the tourists would sing and dance in the meadows and quiet villages.
The mania for hiking and cycling was part of a yearning for fitness and fresh air that was not unrelated to concerns about the nation’s health and military preparedness. The Health and Strength League, which boasted over 100,000 members, promoted fitness among England’s youth, in order to make it ready for another war. They successfully lobbied the parsimonious Tory-dominated government for £2 million in grants to local authorities for the construction of sports centres, playing fields, swimming pools, youth hostels and lidos.
The most characteristic leisure activity of the decade was probably the holiday. Over the course of the Thirties, the number of people entitled to paid holidays increased from 1 million to 11 million (around half of the entire working population) – the Holidays with Pay Act (1938) granted a week’s paid holiday per year to most factory, shop and office workers. This was a significant victory for the unions, who had campaigned for paid holidays for over twenty years, and a great boon for the workers. The most popular holiday destinations were seaside resorts, with 70 per cent of the population of some northern industrial cities visiting the coast over the summer. Londoners also loved to visit the seaside, with Southend among the favoured destinations. Those with more time, and money, could travel down to the English Riviera in the southwest.