The Leisure Identities of Rural Youth: Tradition, Change and Sense of Place in Lakeland, 1930 – Early 1950S. R. Andrew Phd
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The Leisure Identities of Rural Youth: Tradition, Change and Sense of Place in Lakeland, 1930 – early 1950s. R. Andrew PhD 2012 1 The Leisure Identities of Rural Youth: Tradition, Change and Sense of Place in Lakeland, 1930 – early 1950s. Rebecca Claire Andrew A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Manchester Metropolitan University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History, Politics and Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University 2012 2 Abstract Rural young people have received scant attention in the existing historiography of youth, leisure and the countryside and this thesis redresses such neglect, by examining the leisure experiences of young workers in the rural locality of Lakeland, a region in the south- eastern corner of the Lake District, between 1930 and the early 1950s. The thesis challenges the urban emphases of existing historical studies of youth and focuses on a period which is also relatively overlooked in historical work, particularly in relation to the 1940s and early 1950s. It uses the leisure experiences of young countrymen and women across these years to explore the interplay between tradition and change, highlighting the extent to which young people’s leisure in the region was shaped by a lack of commercialism and a striking level of adult supervision. It identifies the complex ways in which young people in Lakeland mediated or even rejected the influence of popular culture and negotiated adult intervention in their leisure. It also reveals the central part that young people played in the maintenance of ‘traditional’ leisure activities, which has been overlooked and under-estimated, yet which played an important part in connecting young people to a strong sense of place identity throughout the period. The thesis uses oral history testimony to explore how locally born people described their engagement with the region’s leisure culture when young, to highlight how these experiences were shaped by a strong sense of tradition and an awareness of the Lakeland landscape. It is argued that such testimony is suggestive of a broader ‘moral geography’ of the countryside which not only helped to shape ideas of Lakeland and local leisure habits as healthy, tough and ‘authentic’, but which also excluded outsiders who did not conform to this image. This sense of insiders and outsiders was particularly pertinent in a region which was so popular with tourists; the presence of outsiders and their effect on young people’s leisure habits is an important theme, which is examined in relation to growing self-consciousness about how the region’s place identity was presented to external audiences. The thesis also explores how local communities in Lakeland responded to ‘modernizing’ attempts to introduce new leisure structures which were devised according to a national agenda, as in the case of the youth service. Overall, the thesis gives new insights into rural life and identity, whilst offering a broader commentary on the significance of youth and leisure within rural communities during a period of growing anxiety about the homogenizing effects of commercial leisure culture on national identity. 3 Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Melanie Tebbutt for her insight, commitment and friendship, all of which has been invaluable throughout the writing of this thesis. A special thank you must go to both my parents and my partner, Aren, whose support and encouragement in so many different ways has been much appreciated. Finally, I would like to thank the Manchester and European Research Institute (MERI), for their generous financial support. 4 Contents List of Abbreviations 6 Introduction 7 Chapter One Research Methods and Historiography 42 Chapter Two Social Dancing 86 Chapter Three Annual Community Events 136 Chapter Four Sports and Outdoor Pursuits 180 Chapter Five Voluntary Organizations and a Rural Youth Service 228 Conclusion 286 Appendices 298 Bibliography 308 5 Abbreviations AOHG Ambleside Oral History Group BBC British Broadcasting Corporation DYC District Youth Councils GFS Girls’ Friendly Society HLL Home Listening League KAC Kendal Archive Centre NA National Archives NFC National Fitness Council NFYFC National Federation of Young Farmers’ Clubs POW Prisoner of War RA Royal Academy RASC Royal Army Service Corps RCA Royal College of Art YFC Young Farmers’ Clubs YHA Youth Hostels Association 6 Introduction The Scope of the Study This thesis analyses the leisure experiences of rural young people in Lakeland between 1930 and the early 1950s and in doing so, explores the interplay between tradition and change within these experiences, highlighting the extent to which young people’s leisure in the region was shaped by a lack of commercialism and a striking level of adult supervision. It also reveals the central part that young people played in the maintenance of ‘traditional’ leisure activities, during a period when the leisure habits of young urban workers were routinely characterised as synonymous with modern and often ephemeral crazes (such as dance styles, music and fashion). It is argued here that this dimension of rural experiences played an important part in fostering a strong sense of place and identity in local young people throughout the period. The thesis therefore contributes fresh insights into rural life and identity, whilst providing a broader commentary on the significance of youth and leisure within rural communities during a period of growing anxiety about the homogenizing effects of commercial leisure culture on both a local and national level. Its aim is to redress the neglect of young countrymen and women in the existing historiography of youth, leisure and the countryside and challenge the urban emphases of existing historical studies. Despite the array of historical studies that have examined young people and the countryside separately in the years between 1930 and 1950, few have considered the links between the two either in any depth or outside of agricultural developments, although there are interesting connections between how the countryside was discussed 7 during this period and debates about the state of contemporary youth.1 Much of the discourse which emerged in relation to the countryside and youth, focussed on the use of leisure. This theme provides the context for the thesis, which examines the changing leisure identities of rural youth in Lakeland between the 1930s and early 1950s, focussing particularly on ideas of modernity, tradition and sense of place and explores how these fed into wider debates regarding the use of leisure, tradition and the countryside.2 Lakeland was chosen as an appropriate survey area in which to base this study of rural youth for a number of reasons. An initial but thorough literature search on the current historiography of young people and leisure highlighted a wealth of material on urban youth and their leisure culture but little to nothing on their rural contemporaries. Most existing studies concentrate on large urban and industrialized areas.3 Mitterauer is 1 For accounts of agricultural and rural history, see J. Lowerson, ‘Battles for the Countryside’, in F. Gloversmith, Class, Culture and Social Change: A New View of the 1930s (Brighton: Harvester, 1980); B.A. Holderness, British Agriculture Since 1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985); H. Newby, Green and Pleasant Land? Social Change in Rural England (London: Hutchinson, 1979); H. Newby, Country Life. A Social History of the English Countryside (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1987); G.E. Mingay, The Rural Idyll (London: Routledge, 1989); G.E. Mingay, A Social History of the English Countryside (London: Routledge, 1990); A. Howkins, Reshaping Rural England: A Social History 1850-1925 (London: Routledge, 1991); G.E. Mingay The Death of Rural England: A Social History of the Countryside Since 1900 (London: Routledge, 2003), which have examined agricultural developments and the social history of the countryside, but not young people in any depth. Studies by J. Springhall, Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998); C. Langhamer, Women’s Leisure in England, 1920-60 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000); D. Fowler, The First Teenagers: The Lifestyle of Young Wage-Earners in Inter-War Britain (London: Woburn Press, 1995); A. Davies, Leisure, Gender and Poverty: Working-Class Culture in Salford and Manchester (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1992), among others, have analysed young people in detail but only in an urban setting. More recently David Fowler in his examination of Irish youth, gives some consideration to experiences in rural districts: Youth Culture in Modern Britain, c.1920-1970 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), Ch. 4. 2 Young people are for the purposes of this thesis, categorized as those aged between school leaving age and 24. This is the age-range adopted by Selina Todd, who points out that the average age of marriage for young women did not fall below 25 before 1939: S. Todd, ‘Young Women, Work, Leisure in Inter-War England’, The Historical Journal, 48, 3 (2005), pp. 789-809; p. 791. From the 1930s, school leaving age denoted the start of paid employment for young members of the working-class and a substantial increase in their access to commercialized leisure. Available Census date also suggests that most young people in Lakeland certainly married later than 21. 3 Manchester and London especially have attracted the most attention from historical studies of young workers’ leisure. See for example, A. Davies, Leisure, Gender and Poverty; Fowler, The First Teenagers; 8 one of the few academics to consider rural young people from an historical perspective, yet his study is limited in some ways, as its broad geographical range, which spans a wide time period, provides only an overview of the development of a youth culture.4 A secondary survey of agricultural and rural historical writing in relation to Britain, suggested that although the social history of the countryside was growing as an area of enquiry, young people received scant attention.