Worktown: The Astonishing Story of the Project that Launched Mass Observation

by David Hall

The astonishing story of the project that launched Mass Observation

In the late 1930s the Lancashire town of Bolton witnessed a ground-breaking social experiment. Over three years, a team of ninety observers recorded, in painstaking detail, the everyday lives of ordinary working people at work and play - in the pub, dance hall, factory and on holiday. Their aim was to create an 'anthropology of ourselves'. The first of its kind, it later grew into the Mass Observation movement that proved so crucial to our understanding of public opinion in future generations.

The project attracted a cast of larger-than-life characters, not least its founders, the charismatic and unconventional anthropologist Tom Harrisson and the surrealist intellectuals Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings. They were joined by a disparate band of men and women - students, artists, writers and photographers, unemployed workers and local volunteers - who worked tirelessly to turn the idle pleasure of people-watching into a science.

Drawing on their vivid reports, photographs and first-hand sources, David Hall relates the extraordinary story of this eccentric, short-lived, but hugely influential project. Along the way, he creates a richly detailed, fascinating portrait of a lost chapter of British social history, and of the life of an industrial northern town before the world changed for ever.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

320 pages, Hardcover

First published August 13, 2015

About the author

An awkward interview
'So here's your opportunity to promote yourself. Go sell yourself to the readers.'
'Umm...I'm not good at that chest pumping stuff. I'm British.'
'Okay. Well, you don't have to 'chest pump', just tell us a little about yourself. Who is David Hall?'
'He's British.'
'Yesss, you've mentioned that. Anything else?'
'Such as?'
'Well, like where do you live?'
'In Britain.'
'Hmm, you're not really helping the reader to get a sense of you as an author. Tell us about the types of stories that you like to write.'
'Oh that's easy. Anything. well, almost anything. Nothing gory, I don't have the stomach for it'
'Right. But you must have a preference for a genre.'
'Oh you mean like ticky boxes... I see... then in that case, I like to write romantic-comedy-suspense stories. Short stories. Yes, definitely romantic-comedy-suspense short stories.'
'Okay, now we're getting somewhere. So that latest book of yours...err...what's it called again?'
'Love Line.'
'Love Line. Of course. Why should readers buy Love Line? What are they missing out on?'
'They are missing out on a romantic-comedy-suspense story. Sorry, short story.'
'Right. But isn't it a bit odd a man writing in the romantic genre?'
'No stranger than you asking that question in 2015.'
'Alrighty then, is that the time? We really need to wrap this up. Anything else you want to say to your readers?'
'Yes. Love Line will make you laugh, probably reach for a glass of wine, and give you goose-bumps with a delightful twist. I am not responsible for you spilling your wine at that time. Thank you.'
'There, that wasn't too bad.'
'Hmmm.'

Reviews

[Bfisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the late 1930s, a comprehensive community study was undertaken of the Lancashire mill town of Bolton, called Worktown by Tom Harrisson, the major mover behind the study. This extraordinary project was the beginning of Mass-Observation, the detailed observation of British life by a corps of mostly unpaid observers.

Hall’s book recounts the background and motives of the key participants in Mass-Observation, and the life of the Worktown project. It is rich in details, drawn from the Mass-Observation archives, of the lives of ordinary working-class Britons trying to survive in the emerging Rust Belt of 1930s Lancashire. The information was collected mainly by young middle-class southerners, treading water in the 1930s economy and in breaks in their education, supplemented by local volunteers. Many of the outside observers were interested in the lives of working-class people, and had their first real contact across class during the study. As Hall notes, not all participants were enamoured with that contact, notably the realist artists Graham Bell and William Coldstream.

The book includes a number of wonderful photographs by Humphrey Spender. The photographs taken by Spender for the Worktown project were maintained by the borough of Bolton, and many are viewable here:
http://boltonworktown.co.uk/

Orwell’s The Road To Wigan Pier (published in 1937 by Gollancz, also the main financial supporter of Mass-Observation) was one of the rare attempts other than the Worktown project to describe working class life in Britain. Together with that, this book provides a useful description of what life was like for working class Britons in the mill towns of the 1930s, and the story of a rare contemporary attempt to understand what life was like for the industrial working class.

[Stephen Tubbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can relate to Bolton in that I was born in Bradford (NE England) which was also a heavy industrial city (Woolens) and lived there from 1946 to 1958. Although a child I can remember the inside of the mills, the clothing of my parents who both worked in the industry, living in a back to back terraced house, washing day, bathing in a tin bath before a coal fire, outside toilet, smog, dirty snow, football matches, Saturday Morning cinema and having little money (although we didn't realise this at the time) etc.

The living and working conditions described for those in Bolton in the late 30's sound spot on to me and the photographs support this view.

[Derek Collett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been interested in Mass-Observation (that hyphen's important!) ever since I first heard about it via the medium of George Orwell, which was probably more than 30 years ago, but I haven't taken any steps to find out any more about it until now. This book therefore fills an important gap in my knowledge and I'm grateful to its author for that.

This volume starts with descriptions of the principal players involved in the setting up of M-O and I found this section to be of the highest interest. The irascible anthropologist Tom Harrisson and what Hall describes as "the surrealist intellectuals" Charles Madge and Humphrey Jennings are all fascinating characters and worthy of the space that Hall gives them as he explains how the organization came into being and began to function. Other more minor figures, such as the painters Julian Trevelyan and William Coldstream and the photographer Humphrey Spender (brother of Stephen), also deservedly get their share of the limelight.

After this necessary introduction, Hall arranges most of the rest of his material thematically. This is logical when one thinks that M-O accumulated a vast mass of data over the course of many years, much of it almost comically trivial, and one needs to try to make sense of it somehow. My favourite example of the arcane studies carried out by M-O concerns one involving the collection of samples of graffiti from the walls of public lavatories. In this connection, Spender was asked by Harrisson to "go into public lavatories and take pictures of people peeing". No wonder M-O's observers were frequently denounced as snoopers and spies. Inevitably, the thematic approach means that some chapters are more interesting than others. I wasn't much taken by the one on religion for example but there are compensating attractions in the shape of chapters about the pub, the cotton mills and art.

I think Hall has done an excellent job in assembling and structuring his material, which can't have been an easy job. Much of the information presented is absolutely fascinating and gives a real insight into what life was like in Bolton (M-O's 'Worktown') in the late 1930s. But on the other side of the coin, although it is intriguing to discover that M-O observers used to follow people into shops such as Woolworth's and Marks and Spencer's, observe their shopping habits closely and record, for example, how long they spent deliberating over each purchase, reading raw transcripts of these 'follows' is not particularly riveting. For me, the background to M-O, and the information about the lives of the people who were instrumental in its success, was more interesting and enjoyable to read than actual details of M-O records.

Sadly, I spotted about three or four places in the book where material was repeated from earlier on. To give one instance, on p. 286 we are told that "Biddy Clayton's house was a meeting place for people involved in theatre, journalism, art and antiques". And yet on pp. 282/3 we have already been informed that "Her [i.e. Biddy Clayton's] Ladbroke Grove house was a meeting place for people interested in or active in the theatre, journalism and the arts". A sharper-eyed copy-editor (i.e. me) would have spotted and amended such a faux pas. In the eight-and-a-half-page introduction I came across at least seven or eight typographical errors, which was also very disappointing. Finally, while I have my editorial head on, there is also a worrying lack of commas throughout the book, which makes many of the sentences quite a trial to read. One gets used to this glitch after a while, but it still grates with this reader. Shame on Orion for not having performed better editorially but then sadly that is what commercial publishers are like these days.

Well written, informative and lively, 'Worktown' is a welcome addition to the ranks of books about 1930s British social history and I warmly commend it.

[Adam Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve had a long interest in the social research of Mass-Observation, but had read more about their wartime work. This was a fascinating insight into their ambitious early project in Worktown (Bolton), where an eccentric team chaotically amassed a huge amount of random data through obsessive people-watching and eavesdropping. Tom Harrison believed this “objective” study of the “cannibals of Britain” would close the gap between the working classes and the political elite, although it was far less successful than he had hoped. But it was still an important and foundational project, and David Hall tells this story brilliantly, both in terms of the work itself and the relationships within the team. It was also interesting to read some of the Observers’ reflections on the ethics of their research methods (which would often not be considered ethical today!), especially from the photographer Humphrey Spender, recounting his embarrassment at attempting to take covert photos in Bolton’s pubs. An excellent book.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book, eye opening and very interesting!