Later Blackpool became a pleasure town. Tramway opened for business in 1885 and the Golden Mile Promenade was completed with fair-grounds, fortune-telling, snack bars and cold drink stalls, to take advantage of the passing holiday trade. Then the Golden Mile gained cabarets, amusement arcades, Coral Island, cafes and the Sea Life Centre.
Post-WW1, from 1922 on, the British starting building lidos-public outdoor swimming pools and all the surrounding facilities needed for swimming, sunbaking and water sports. These well equipped lidos opened in many city and holiday towns, and were very popular.
Union pamphlet campaigning for paid holiday for all, 1937
https://tuc150.tuc.org.uk/
So Britons had been heading for the coast for decades. By 1937 it was estimated that 15 million people, a third of the population, went away for a week or more.
The TUC had been campaigning for a paid holiday for workers for ages. Following the passing of an International Labour Convention on holidays, a committee of inquiry report was established. The committee recommended the gradual introduction of a statutory right to holidays, starting in July 1938. The Holidays with Pay Act (1938) finally gave workers, whose minimum rates of wages were fixed by trade boards, the right to one week holiday each year. The hope was a paid holiday would improve the workers’ psychological health and possibly increase their productivity as well.
To activists, this inequality was intolerable. Before WW1 they launched a campaign to force employers to give paid holidays. That campaign often barely moved, slowed by war, economic crises and official inaction. But by summer 1937, the movement had unstoppable momentum.
By 1938 24 Western countries had already granted paid holidays to workers, well before Britain did. Even so, the TUC had been calling for 2 weeks' holiday for all workers and was disappointed in the limited legislation.
But as Kathryn Ferry has shown, behind these developments lay a truth: that summer holidays were the domain of the white-collar worker! Britain’s manual workers, 14.5 million of whom earned under £250 a year, had no entitlement to paid holiday. This inequality was institutionalised: while senior local government employees were granted weeks of paid holiday a year, the physical strain of manual workers’ lives was eased only by bank holidays, for which they didn’t receive any wages.
I had expected holiday camps for working families to start only after the Holidays with Pay Act. But Ferry found a Norfolk camp that opened as early as 1906, in tents rather than huts. More Britons were choosing active hiking, cycling and camping holidays which grew in popularity. Furthermore the newly formed Youth Hostels Association went from operating a single hostel in 1930 to running 200+ inside the decade. By 1934, there were so many camps nestled along the coast between Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft, that the London and North Eastern Railway began running a special Suffolk Camp Express service.
The biggest operator was Butlin’s, which opened its first camp near Skegness in 1936. By 1938, when a second camp opened at Clacton, such was the demand for Billy Butlin’s holiday packages that he had to turn away families. Seaside towns responded to the Butlin’s challenge by building their own tennis courts, promenades and new pleasure gardens.
What was the impact of the Holiday Pay Legislation?? For the 1938 August bank holiday, resort cafes were packed, and swimming pools and their cafes were full. 300 excursion trains ran to Blackpool while at Southend 70 extra trains were booked to take 80,000 Londoners home. Yet seaside resorts actually had fewer visitor numbers after the Act.
However note that the lowest earners needed their basic weekly income just to cover their rent and food. Holidays with Pay allowed them to have a few days off work without the worry of making ends meet, but who could afford extras eg a seaside holiday?
Millions of workers remained without paid holidays, even after the law had been passed. The surge of employers offering paid holiday before the legislation was enacted had persuaded the British government that it need not compel employers to take action. And the act recommended one week’s annual paid vacation for all full-time workers in Britain, not a fortnight. Finally, in the Lancashire cotton industry, factory owners argued against the cost of this reform at a time of trade depression.
early 1950s
If everyone who received the new entitlement had gone on holiday in summer 1938, Britain’s transport and pleasure infrastructure would have been overwhelmed. Britain’s typically short summer placed pressure on seaside businesses to make their annual income in just six weeks, pushing up prices and making even cheap accommodation unaffordable to working families. Even middle-class workers found it difficult to meet the extra costs of children’s accommodation and transport.
By the time the Holidays with Pay legislation became law, c150 holiday camps were all over Britain. The Butlin’s organisation, in particular, was catering for thousands of people at a time, with a tariff covering accommodation, meals and entertainments. Alas in Sept 1939 Britain was plunged into war; the holiday revolution stopped dead.
In post-war Britain, the wages were higher, employment nearly full and paid holidays a universal reality. An extra 11 million workers and their families were now entitled to annual paid leave.
If everyone who received the new entitlement had gone on holiday in summer 1938, Britain’s transport and pleasure infrastructure would have been overwhelmed. Britain’s typically short summer placed pressure on seaside businesses to make their annual income in just six weeks, pushing up prices and making even cheap accommodation unaffordable to working families. Even middle-class workers found it difficult to meet the extra costs of children’s accommodation and transport.
By the time the Holidays with Pay legislation became law, c150 holiday camps were all over Britain. The Butlin’s organisation, in particular, was catering for thousands of people at a time, with a tariff covering accommodation, meals and entertainments. Alas in Sept 1939 Britain was plunged into war; the holiday revolution stopped dead.
In post-war Britain, the wages were higher, employment nearly full and paid holidays a universal reality. An extra 11 million workers and their families were now entitled to annual paid leave.
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22 comments:
Butlins still exists, but has to compete with cheap Spanish holidays. Can't guarantee the sun in Britain.
Employers have always been terrible. Married women used to get no superannuation because it was their husband's responsibility
Hello Hels, One side effect of the proliferation of British resorts were those classic travel posters, which may have come up on this blog before. Those stylized scenes, and slogans like "Skegness is so Bracing" are still memorable decades later, even to those outside of Britain.
--Jim
Paid holidays are important for an employee's goodwill and their energy levels. Plus, it creates more work for others when they head off for shore visits or other visits. I really like that photos of all the people at the travel cottages. Hope your week is going well.
Workers have never received anything without having to fight for it. Nothing has changed.
The 1938 Holidays with Pay Act was a major step toward leisure equality, granting many workers their first paid vacation, though limited in scope and affordability for the lowest earners.
It's a good idea to have the opportunity to rest after a year of backbreaking work.
jabblog
I agree about unreliable weather in the UK, but having fresh air in a holiday site in summer is far better than being stuck in the home space for 52 weeks a year. If necessary, a visitor can always wear a large, water-proof hat on the beach or in agricultural spaces.
Deb
In Australia, married women in the Commonwealth Public Service could finally accumulate and collect superannuation in the late 1960s. Till then, women had to give up their jobs once they married, so they either gave up paid work or they concealed their new marriage status :( What a disgrace :(
Parnassus
I agree. Before paid holiday leave was available in the UK, and even after, many families would not have known about the options opening to them. The travel posters were essential to attract the attention of families who had not enjoyed a long history of family holidays in the past.
Erika
The chalets looked a bit squishy out the front but even working families on a low budget could afford it. Especially since a substantial breakfast was included in the cost, right from the beginning (1936).
Andrew
every extra dollar that the workers make out of profits is a dollar removed from the pocket of the employers. So I can see why exploitation of workers made sense from that point of view. But it was a short sighted view. Without at least a fortnight of rest and recreation for workers each year, workers are going to be more exhausted and sick... and not as productive as they were.
I would add paying for 45 mins for lunch and 10 mins each for morning and afternoon coffee. But that wasn't a government law like the other employment rules. What about being paid for no-work public holidays?
roentare
agreed. The unions had been battling for so long that the 1938 Act was a very important step. But trade unions continued to campaign for better paid leave entitlements later, expanding to the range of workers covered, the number of weeks allowed, bank holidays being paid etc.
Irina
I agree with you 100%, even though I sat on my bottom at a desk for 50 years of employment. Imagine how exhausting it must be for miners, builders, factory workers, labourers on roads and railways, cleaners etc.
Since the later 19th century, unions have consistently campaigned for reasonable working hours in Australia, and the right to take annual leave. Printing workers won some paid annual leave in 1935, a victory that spread to other industries. This was significant because before then, leave entitlements were only included in awards when employers agreed to paid leave.
In 1941 union advocacy led to one week’s annual leave being implemented as the new standard, prompted by a case to the Arbitration Court brought by the Amalgamated Engineering Union which became a benchmark award for other industries. Since then an extension of this right to 3 weeks and then 4 weeks.
Interesting post Hels. Imagine the excitement of getting away for all those people at that time included in their wages, then where they stayed they put the prices up in the shops and so on, same today, it's often about money.
ACTU
thank you. I always assumed Australia was ahead, but I am not sure if and when the case you cited became Federal and State legislation.
Margaret
Unless wages keep up with inflation, those families will get further and further behind. Even if they can afford to pay for the holiday sites, they will still have to raise the money for train travel, lunch and dinner for all the family, bathing suits ..
I am _not_ impoverished, but I took my normal $55 to the supermarket today and was embarassed when my normal pile of food cost $108 :(
INR
thank you for reading the post. When did paid holiday leave come into place in India? Are more changes needed?
Interesting history on paid holidays. I have never holidayed away from home with or without the kids. Every year the factory closed for three weeks and the holiday pay stretched only as far as my normal wage did for those weeks with rent and food.
I remember Blackpool only as the place where Blackpool Rock came from, those fat pink and white sticks of hard candy that were available when I was a child in Port Pirie whenever the carnival came to town.
River
most Australian families holidayed in summer, because it was too hot to do much else. Even if the family had no money, it seemed like a good idea to sleeep next to the beach in a tent, carrying enough bread and cheese to eat enough.
For me, it was important because the paid summer holiday was the only time to spend quality time with dad. He and the boys set up the caravans and tents, and he went fishing with all the children.
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