Leisure and the Good Citizen

Edwards, Sian

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-65157-6_3

Leisure and the Good Citizen

Sian Edwards⁴

Chapter
First Online: 29 November 2017

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements ((PSHSM))

Abstract

This chapter examines the significance of leisure in understandings of good citizenship in mid-century youth movements. As a socially acceptable leisure form, youth organizations positioned themselves, and the countryside, as an adventurous alternative to problematic urban leisure pursuits and juvenile delinquency. However, the effectiveness of such tactics came into question following the Second World War when the growing leisure autonomy of young people challenged the relevance of formal youth organizations at this time, with notions of ‘adventure’ increasingly being seen as outdated. A study of discourses of adventure within youth movement, however, reveals that activities were often tempered by gendered social expectations.

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Notes

1.
A. Sillitoe , The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (London: Panther Books, 1985. Originally Published 1959), p. 11.
2.
Lynn Cook has identified the way in emphasis on outdoor education in the 1944 Education Act reflected growing concern about delinquency after the war and the impact that outdoor education could have on this. L. Cook (1999), ‘The 1944 Education Act and outdoor education: from policy to practice’, History of Education, 28, 157–172.
3.
The Guider, June 1934, p. 208.
4.
The Scouter, September 1933, p. 333.
5.
A. Davies, Leisure, Gender and Poverty: working class culture in Salford and Manchester 1900–1939 (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1992), p. 89; S. Todd (2006), ‘Flappers and factory lads: youth and youth culture in interwar Britain’, History Compass, 4, 715–730; D. Fowler, The First Teenagers. The lifestyle of young wage-earners in interwar Britain (London: The Woburn Press, 1995); B. Osgerby, Youth in Britain since 1945 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).
6.
S. Parker (1975), ‘The sociology of leisure: progress and problems’, British Journal of Sociology, 26, p. 94.
7.
P. Bailey (1977), ‘A mingled mass of perfectly legitimate pleasures: the Victorian middle class and the problem of leisure’, Victorian Studies, 21, 7–28; C. Parratt, (1999), ‘Making leisure work women’s rational recreation in late Victorian and Edwardian England’, Journal of Sport History, 26, 471–487.
8.
R. Snape and H. Pussard (2011), ‘Theorisations of leisure in inter-war Britain’, Leisure Studies, 32, 1–18, at p. 2.
9.
Snape and Pussard, ‘Theorisations of Leisure’, p. 2.
10.
J. Richards, The Age of the Dream Palace: cinema and society in Britain, 1930–1939 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), pp. 11–12; B. Beaven, Leisure, Citizenship and Working-Class Men in Britain, 1850–1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 187–188.
11.
MOA: Directive Respondent (DR) 2006, reply to July 1939 Directive.
12.
P. Tinkler (2003), ‘Cause for Concern: young women and leisure, 1930–1950’, Women’s History Review, 12, 238; Beaven, Leisure, p. 215.
13.
Tinkler , ‘Cause for Concern’, p. 240.
14.
For a more detailed discussion of juvenile delinquency in this period see: A. Wills (2005), ‘Delinquency, masculinity and citizenship in England 1950–70’, Past & Present, 187, 157–185; K. Bradley (2008), ‘Juvenile delinquency, the juvenile courts and the Settlement Movement 1908–1950: Basil Henriques and Toynbee Hall’, 20th Century British History, 19, 133–155; L. Jackson (2008), ‘The Coffee Club menace: policing youth, leisure and sexuality in post-war Manchester’, Cultural and Social History, 5, 289–308; G. Pearson, Hooligan: a history of respectable fears (London: Macmillan, 1984); L. Tisdall (2015) ‘Inside the “blackboard jungle”’, Cultural and Social History, 12, 502.
15.
H.D. Willcock, Report on juvenile delinquency (Mass-Observation) (London: The Falcon Press, 1949), p. 22.
16.
Home Office, Criminal Statistics England and Wales 1960. Statistics Relating to Crime and Criminal Proceedings for the Year 1960 (HMSO: London, 1961), Cmd 1437, p. xlvi.
17.
Changes in definitions of delinquency, shifts in police practice, legislation and perception of crime means that criminal statistics are difficult to interpret . J. Springhall, Coming of Age: adolescence in Britain, 1860–1960 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1986), p. 189. For discussion of lived experience and challenge to this narrative of delinquency see: M. Tebbutt, Being Boys: youth, leisure and identity in the inter-war years (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012); S. Todd (2012), ‘Baby-boomers to “beanstalkers”: making the modern teenager in post-war Britain’, Cultural and Social History, 9, 451–467; G. Mitchell (2013), ‘Reassessing the “Generation Gap’: Bill Haley’s 1957 tour of Britain, inter-generational relations and attitudes to Rock n’ Roll in the late 1950s’, 20th Century British History, 24, 573–605.
18.
Willcock, Juvenile Delinquency, p. 12
19.
Richards, The Age of the Dream Palace, pp. 11–12.
20.
The Guide, 20 July 1935, p. 429.
21.
C. Burt, The Young Delinquent (London: University of London, 1925), p. 149.
22.
The Guider, January 1934, p. 23.
23.
The Guider, December 1938, p. 466
24.
The Scouter, December 1934, p. 403.
25.
T.C.N. Gibbens, Trends in Juvenile Delinquency (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1961), p. 14.
26.
B. S. Rowntree, Poverty and Progress, (London: Longmans, Green, 1941), p. 456.
27.
Ministry of Education. The Youth Service in England and Wales (London: HMSO, 1960), Cmd. 929, p. 17.
28.
Beaven, Leisure, pp. 191–192; Davies, Leisure, Gender and Poverty, p. 45.
29.
The Scouter, January 1933, p. 2.
30.
The Scouter, May 1958, p. 118.
31.
B. Beaven and J. Griffiths (2008), ‘Creating the exemplary citizen: the changing notion of citizenship in Britain 1870–1939’, Contemporary British History, 22, 214.
32.
Woodcraft Folk Reports and Accounts 1937, p. 2, FH_014_01. https://heritage.woodcraft.org.uk/archive/item/woodcraft-folk-reports-and-accounts/.
33.
The Pioneer of the Folk, February 1935, p. 3, FH_009_02 https://heritage.woodcraft.org.uk/archive/item/the-pioneer-of-the-folk-vol-11-no-10-may/.
34.
Davies, Leisure, p. 278.
35.
The Folk Year Book 1931–32, p. 15, FH_013_03, https://heritage.woodcraft.org.uk/archive/item/the-folk-year-book-1/.
36.
The Guider, November 1936, p. 355
37.
For example, as Melanie Tebbutt has shown girls were observed ‘lifting one leg’ when they kissed a partner, as in the movies. Tebbutt, Being Boys, pp. 129–130.
38.
The Guider, November 1936, p. 355
39.
The Scouter, May 1958, p. 119.
40.
J. Muncie, Youth and Crime, Third Edition (London: Sage, 2009), p. 196.
41.
Such as ‘Wreck n’ Rollers at it Again’. The Times, 13 November 1956, p. 12.
42.
The Guider, April 1959, p. 100.
43.
The Guider, March 1955, p. 83.
44.
David Muggleton has summarized the key shifts in discussions of class and youth in both sociological and ethnographic studies. D. Muggleton (2005), ‘From classlessness to clubculture: a genealogy of post-war British youth cultural analysis’, Young, 13, 205–212. Osgerby outlines the class tensions of post-war youth culture in his 1992 article on youth and consumption. B. Osgerby (1992) ‘Well, it’s Saturday night an’ I just got paid’: Youth, consumerism and hegemony in post-war Britain, Contemporary Record, 6, 287–305.
45.
The Scouter, May 1958, p. 118.
46.
The Scouter, July 1958, p. 185.
47.
The Scouter, January 1951, p. 25.
48.
The Scouter, January 1960, p. 5.
49.
The Guider, July 1955, p. 213.
50.
Girls 15–21 include both Cadets and Rangers, boys 15+ includes Rovers and Senior Scouts. Does not include those in leadership roles such as Guiders and Scouters. Guide figures taken from the Girl Guide Census made available by the GGA; Scout figures provided by the Boy Scout Association (hereafter BSA), Essex.
51.
The Scouter, June 1956, p. 141; Guide Log Books, 7th Dunstable Company, 1955–1960, ST2/S4/BZ, GGA.
52.
The Scouter, February 1956, p. 44.
53.
The Daily Mirror, 29 September 1960, p. 12.
54.
The Scouter, February 1951, p. 52.
55.
The Daily Mirror, 29 September 1960, p. 12.
56.
Report of the Enquiry Committee into Lack of Progress Following the War, August 1949, YMA/WF/216, LSE, p. 5.
57.
This scrapbook was created in 1965 in response to a Women’s Institute Golden Jubilee competition aiming to produce a ‘picture of village life’. P. Jennings, The Living Village: a report on rural life in England and Wales, Based on actual village scrapbooks, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1968), p. 15.
58.
T. Wild, Village England: a social history of the countryside, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), p. 124.
59.
J. Burchardt, ‘“A New Rural Civilisation”: Village halls, community and citizenship in the 1920s’, in P. Brassley, J. Burchardt and L. Thompson (eds.), The English Countryside Between the Wars: regeneration or decline? (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2006), p. 34.
60.
MOA, FR 1995, ‘Survey of the Village of Luccombe, West Luccombe and Lea’, 6 January 1944, p. 1.
61.
The Young Farmer, December 1932 p. 173.
62.
Farmer and Stockbreeder, 2 April 1957, p. 99.
63.
Farmer and Stockbreeder, 2 April 1957, p. 99.
64.
The Young Farmer, January–February 1952, p. 37.
65.
The Young Farmer, March-April 1950, p. 82
66.
The Guider, April 1948 p. 70
67.
The Rucksack, March 1935, p. 3.
68.
The Guider, March 1947, p. 62.
69.
The Guider, September 1947, p. 203.
70.
The Scout, 9 May 1931, p. 815.
71.
The Guide, 22 June 1935, p. 307; The Guide, 1 June 1939, p. 239 & The Guide, 12 March 1948, p. 131.
72.
The Guider, April 1933, p. 161.
73.
The Guide, 2 April 1954, p. 172.
74.
The Rucksack, March 1935, p. 3
75.
See: H. Barron (2012), ‘”Little Prisoners of City Streets”’: London Elementary Schools and the School Journey Movement, 1918–1939’, History of Education: Journal of the History of Education Society, 42, 166–81; H. Barron (2016), ‘Changing conceptions of the “Poor Child”: The Children’s Country Holiday Fund, 1918–1939’, The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, 9, 29–47.
76.
Herald of the Folk, April 1930, p. 23.
77.
Little Brother Wants to Know: a pow-wow boys and girls on pioneering, Third Edition, 1929, pp. 6&7, FH_004_02, https://heritage.woodcraft.org.uk/archive/item/little-brother-wants-to-know/.
78.
The Guider, November 1934, p. 426
79.
The Guider, August 1958, p. 239.
80.
Leslie Paul , The Republic of Children, YMA/WF/357, LSE, p. 23.
81.
The Guider, April 1930, p. 14.
82.
The Folk Year Book 1931–32, p. 9, FH_013_03, https://heritage.woodcraft.org.uk/archive/item/the-folk-year-book-1/.
83.
Sillitoe , The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, p. 11.
84.
The Scout, 8 July 1939, p. 984.
85.
The Guide, 22 August 1931, p. 549.
86.
The Guide, 29 February 1936, p. 1454.
87.
The Guide, 14 February 1931, p. 1362.
88.
M. Rosenthal, The Character Factory: Baden-Powell and the origins of the Boy Scout movement (London: Collins, 1986), p. 141.
89.
The Herald of the Folk, April 1930, p. 1.
90.
The Scout, 2 September 1948, p. 56
91.
Kristine Alexander has explored photography in the Girl Guides and, in particular, the use of this photography as a source for Guiding historians. See: Kristine Alexander, ‘Picturing girlhood and Empire’, in Colonial Girlhood in Literature, Culture and History, 1840–1950, edited by Kristine Moruzi and Michelle Smith (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
92.
The Guide, 29 June 1951, p. 219; The Scouter, July 1933, p. 261; The Guide, 4 May 1954, p. 284.
93.
The Guider, September 1935, p. 369.
94.
The Scouter, May 1932, p. 162 & The Guider, May 1932, p. 185.
95.
The Scout, 2 September 1948, p. 56 & The Guide, 26 March 1932, p. 1544.
96.
The Guide, 26 March 1932, p. 1544.
97.
The Guide, 30 May 1952, p. 257.
98.
S. Mills, ‘“A Powerful Educational Instrument”: the Woodcraft Folk, indoor/outdoor nature and pedagogical practice 1925–1975’, in S. Mills and P. Kraftl (eds.), Informal Education, Childhood and Youth: geographies, histories, practices (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014), pp. 65–78.
99.
The Guide, 17 September1942, p. 448; The Guide, 19 October 1945, p. 331.
100.
The Guide, 11 May 1945, p. 152.
101.
Osgerby, Youth in Britain, p. 12. In regards to the ‘Americanisation’ of leisure in the post-war period see; A. Horn, Juke Box Britain: Americanisation and youth culture 1945–1960 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009).
102.
The Guider, October 1937, p. 402.
103.
B. Snape (2009), ‘Continuity, change and performativity in leisure: English folk dance and modernity, 1900–1939’, Leisure Studies 28, 297–311.
104.
The Guider, April 1939, p. 109.
105.
The Guider, May 1947, p. 109.
106.
The Scouter, February 1933, p. 47.
107.
The Guider, May 1947, p. 109
108.
Mary Clare Martin has undertaken important research into the relationship between Roman Catholicism and the GSA in the early 20th century. See: M. Martin (2013), ‘Roman Catholic Girl Guiding in Sussex, 1912–1919: origins, ideology, practice’, Youth & Policy, 111, 5–24.
109.
The Scout, May 9 1931, p. 815.
110.
The Scouter, October 1930, p. 393.
111.
The Guide, 31 October 1931, p. 872.
112.
The Guider, April 1947, p. 86
113.
T. Hulme (2015), ‘“A Nation Depends on Its Children”: School Buildings and citizenship in England and Wales, 1900–1939’, Journal of British Studies, 54, 406–432; J. Welshman, ‘Child health, national fitness’.
114.
The Guider, July 1939, pp. 83–85; The Guide, 6 August 1954, p. 414.
115.
The Scouter, September 1933 p. 333
116.
The Guider, April 1947, p. 86
117.
The Guider, July 1939, pp. 83–85.
118.
J. Burchardt, Paradise Lost: rural idyll and social change in England since 1800 (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), p. 10; M. Martin (2014), ‘In market, mansion or mountain: representations of disability in reading for the young in rural and urban contexts, 1850–1950’, Childhood in the Past, 7, 46.
119.
The Guide, 6 August 1954, p. 414.
120.
The Guider, March 1930, p. 95.
121.
The Young Farmer, March–April 1949, p. 82.
122.
The Guide, 1 October 1932, p. 754
123.
The Guide, July 1940, p. 320.
124.
I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska (2006), ‘Building a British Superman: physical culture in interwar Britain’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41, 601.
125.
Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘British Superman’, p. 596.
126.
I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska (2007), ‘Raising a nation of “Good Animals”: The New Health Society and health education campaigns in interwar Britain’, Social History of Medicine, 20, pp. 85–86.
127.
The Guide, 3 March 1938, p. 1479.
128.
The Manchester Guardian, 5 July 1937, p. 8.
129.
D. Matless, Landscape and Englishness (London: Reaktion Books, 1998), p. 92.
130.
The Guider, August 1938, p. 444.
131.
The Guider, April 1947, p. 86
132.
The Guide, 6 August 1954, p. 414.
133.
The Helper, November 1953, p. 11
134.
The Scouter, July 1932, p. 249
135.
Matless , Landscape and Englishness, p. 91.
136.
The Scout, 8 April 1933, p. 722.
137.
The Scout, 8 April 1933, p. 722.
138.
The Scout, 8 April 1933, p. 723.
139.
The Scout, 22 April 1933, p. 764.
140.
C. Adams, ‘Rural education and reform between the Wars’, in P. Brassley, J. Burchardt and L. Thompson (eds.), The English Countryside between the Wars: regeneration or decline? (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2006), p. 36.
141.
H. Sheeky Bird, Class, Leisure and National Identity in British Children’s Literature, 1918–50 (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 6.
142.
D. Rudd, Enid Blyton and the Mystery of Children’s Literature (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000); M. Bunce, The Countryside Ideal: Anglo-American images of landscape (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 67.
143.
The Guide, 22 August 1931, pp. 542–546.
144.
The Scout, 8 April 1933, p. 723.
145.
The Scouter, July 1933, p. 269.
146.
The Scouter, July 1933, p. 269.
147.
The Guider, August 1930, p. 283.
148.
The Scouter, February 1951, p. 52.
149.
The Scouter, November 1941, p. 170.
150.
The Guide, 11 January 1930, p. 1169.
151.
The Guide, 1 March 1930, pp. 1392–1393.
152.
The Guider, January 1935, p. 12.
153.
The Scouter, May 1933, p. 185.
154.
The Scouter, September 1933, p. 337.
155.
The Guider, October 1949, p. 213.
156.
The Guider, February 1935, p. 68.
157.
C. Langhamer, Women’s Leisure in England (Manchester: Manchester University Press: 2000), p.136.
158.
The Guide, 25 March 1930, p. 1502.
159.
J. Welshman, ‘Child health, national fitness, and physical education in Britain, 1900–1940’ in M. Gijswijt-Hofstra and H. Marland (eds.) Cultures of Child Health in Britain and the Netherlands in the Twentieth Century (New York: Editions Rodopi B.V, 2003), p. 67.
160.
The Guider, July 1935, p. 287.
161.
Proctor . ‘Gender, Generation’, p. 45.
162.
The Guide, 22 March 1930, p. 1493.
163.
E. Blyton , Five on a Hike Together (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1997. Original work published 1951), pp. 29–30. The gendered nature of the Famous Five books has been noted by a number of scholars see for example, L. Coetzee (2011), ‘Empowering girls? The portrayal of Anne and George in Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series’, English Academy Review: Southern African Journal of English Studies, 28, 85–98; D. Rudd (1995), ‘Five have a gender-ful time: Blyton, sexism , and the Infamous Five’, Children’s Literature in Education, 26, 185–196.
164.
T. Proctor, On My Honour: Guides and Scouts in interwar Britain (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002), p. 3.
165.
The Guide. 16 May 1931, p. 98.
166.
The Guide. 16 May 1931, p. 98.
167.
Thomson, Lost Freedom: the landscape of the child and the British post-war settlement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 6.
168.
The Guider, January 1952, p. 3.
169.
The Guider, August 1951, p. 159.
170.
The Scouter, July 1955, p. 186–187; The Scouter, February 1955, p. 44–45; The Scouter, January 1954, p. 3.
171.
The Guider, April 1959, p. 108.
172.
The Guider, July 1955, p. 213.
173.
See a discussion of this problem in The Scouter, January 1956, p. 8.
174.
Jim Gledhill has explored the ways in which the Guide organization dealt with this very problem in the 1960s. J. Gledhill (2013), ‘White Heat, Guide Blue: The Girl Guide Movement in the 1960s’, Contemporary History, 27.

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Department of History, University of Winchester, Winchester, UK
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Edwards, S. (2018). Leisure and the Good Citizen. In: Youth Movements, Citizenship and the English Countryside. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65157-6_3

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65157-6_3
Published: 29 November 2017
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