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.
Butlin's chalets, 1938
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.
A parliamentary select committee was appointed, and although some employers were angry that workers could avoid a fortnight's work each year, the times were changing. By July 1938, the Holidays with Pay Act officially became law and millions of people could go on paid holidays. The campaign that pitted working families against government inflexibility and employer resistance had taken 25-years!
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.