Sport, leisure and culture in twentieth-century britain

Flappers and Factory Lads: Youth and Youth Culture in Interwar Britain

“…13 Langhamer's study suggests that many middle-class and more affluent working-class daughters enjoyed a clothes allowance and, like young men, paid regular visits to the cinemas and dance halls that expanded in number over the interwar years. 14 The fact that most of the middle classes enjoyed an increase in earnings over the interwar years adds weight to Langhamer's conclusion. 15 Recent historiography has demonstrated that in working class communities, too, young people were, in Andrew Davies's words, 'relatively privileged as consumers of leisure'.…”

“…22 Langhamer demonstrated that many young women used 'leisure' time providing domestic assistance in the home, or engaging in non-commercial pursuits like 'Amami night', or 'bucket night' -an evening for washing hair with mothers and sisters, in preparation for the weekend. 23 Moreover, the educational reforms which meant that middleand upper-class young people remained at school until adulthood, and the emergence of a youthful labour market which gave working-class young people access to an increasing range of relatively well-paid jobs, were developments of the late nineteenth century. The emergence of youth as a distinct social group was not an interwar development.…”

“…29 Moreover, as Langhamer's work suggests, the great majority of young people continued to live outside, or on the fringes of, those post-war subcultures that became so prominent in the media of the 1950s and 1960s. 30 The historiography of interwar youth has provided an instructive corrective to the over-concentration on commercialised youth subcultures by an earlier generation of sociologists. Nevertheless, the predominance of non-commercial leisure activities, and the lack of products aimed at the youth market, such as fashions, films and magazines, which clearly proliferated from the 1950s, suggests that, as Osgerby states, the Second World War marked a watershed in the development and conspicuousness of youthful lifestyles.…”

“…33 Studies suggest that the movements found greatest popularity among the most affluent sections of the working class and in the middle class, and among younger teenagers, whose parents preferred their leisure outings to be supervised. 34 Youth movements enjoyed a resurgence in the 1920s, but by the late 1930s, their membership was declining. Fowler has shown how secular youth clubs increased in popularity against more regimented youth movements, arguing that they provided more relaxed meeting places and that their tolerance of mixed sex gatherings heightened their attraction.…”

“…Langhamer's work has traced some important similarities in the leisure activities of young working-class and lower-middle-class women, but as she notes, young women in families living in poverty tended to have less spending money and thus a reduced choice of leisure activities than more affluent peers. 42 Davies has shown that the great majority of working-class families were vulnerable to periods of poverty throughout the interwar years, and consequently, the trend identified by Langhamer marks a distinction in the lifestyles of working-class young people and their wealthier counterparts. 43 The history of youth unemployment has received rather more attention from economic historians of the interwar years than young people's waged work, despite the fact that youth unemployment was low compared to adult levels.…”