24 AUGUST 1945, Page 7

HOLIDAYS, 1945

By SIR RONALD DAVISON

THERE is no need to mince words about the breakdown of British holiday-making in this first summer of peace or partial peace. The whole affair has been an unseemly scramble, and the scramble continues. For good and obvious reasons, mingled with some bad ones, the foreseeable public demand has not been met ; it has been let down by the utter inadequacy of transport, of accommo- dation and of public catering, not to mention the failure of many less basic necessities. Even access to the sea-beaches was unequal to the demand at some places in the South-East. Both here and on the North-West coast tired crowds, well trained by five years of queueing in their towns, have patiently lined up for trains, for restaurants, for beds and for a chance to look at the waves.

But for all their efforts, many thousands have failed to get what they wanted and deserved. Sleeping rough (i.e., in the open) or crowding four or five to a room has been very common. The in- domitable Cockney or Mancunian on holiday bent has put up with everything short of actual starvation and death by freezing. But still more thousands who badly needed a holiday have stayed pru- dently at home, deeming the struggle to be hopeless. To say that the latter class runs into millions would be no exaggeration, judging by evidence which is beginning to come to hand ; and the point to note here is that these prudent ones ought not to be similarly deterred again ; they must be counted in the estimated consumer demand next year.

Everyone realises the current excuses for this sorry state of things in 1945. The demand has been rather sudden, before the disloca- tion, damage and requisitioning could be cleared up. From a quarter to a half of the normal hotel accommodation was not available, and there was a desperate shortage of man and woman power. Indeed, labour-supply may continue to be the real bottle-neck in this first year of transition to peace. But it is certainly possible to make far better provision for next year, if only the various authorities can be persuaded to give the holiday problem a higher place in their scale of values and priorities. At present they do not take the subject seri- ously, in spite of the proddings they have received from the news- papers, from an experienced committee of the voluntary agencies under the National Council of Social Service and from the interim recommendations of the Catering Wages Commission set up by the Minister of Labour. From now on, Government Departments (several of which are involved) and ,local authorities must be kept up to the mark by informed public opinion.

The first thing to realise is the vast scale and importance of the nation's post-war holiday needs, affecting public health and well- being from many angles. The whole matter has, indeed, entered on a new phase since 1939. Granted peace and full employment, the number of people affected (i.e., workers and their families) in 1946 will be not less than double the pre-war 'figure. This means that at least 30,000,000 men, women and children will have both the leisure and the means to pay for a holiday of a week or two weeks away from home, as compared with about 15,000,000 in 1938. One main reason is that the beneficent effects of the 1938 Holidays with Pay Act are now being suddenly revealed. Hitherto they have been masked by six years of war, but agreements under the Act have been steadily spreading, until they now cover the greater part of industry, and, in due course, they may well affect some 20,000,000 employed persons. The fact is that in a full peace year the effective mass-demand by our people for a holiday will be very much larger than that which has caused chaos in 1945. From now on the lower-income groups (with the exception of some large families dependent on one wage-earner) will be able to share the holiday habits of the upper strata of the community. It is a salutary levelling-up of social conditions that we are witnessing, and it must not be frustrated.

How is this new phenomenon in our midst to be dealt with? The holiday and tourist industries, including the non-commercial ele- ment, can probably be counted on to do their bit, if the Govern- ment will allow them sufficient staffs. But the Government must play a more active role than that. A beginning must be made with a really forceful policy of " staggering," to spread the holiday season over four or five months. Something should be done at once about the August Bank Holiday ; it could be turned into a movable feast, with the date varied by towns or groups sof towns. Leicester and Northampton have already tried an experiment of this sort. Further, some attempt might be made to secure the more even dispersal of demand. The public need guidance if they arc to know which tourist resorts are fully booked and where there is still some hope of finding accommodation. Surely this year's grim experience of local overcrowding is not going to recur annually without anybody lifting a finger to prevent it.

And this raises the most important point of all—the creation of new outlets for holiday-makers. So great is the increased demand that the too per cent. use of all our pre-war resources would still be miserably insufficient. At this point an active national policy must take two forms : —a short-term and a long-term programme. The latter, of course, involves the building of new holiday-centres or towns on suitable sites (not all of which can be on our limited free coast-line) according to careful plans prepared by the Ministry of Town and Country Planning. But permanent new building of this kind is still a distant hope. What is needed now is an emergency programme of extra accommodation improvised out of such exist- ing buildings as can be made available in any reasonably good holi- day country.

What the Catering Wages Commission have done so far is to endorse the scheme put to them by the voluntary agencies for the selection of a number of war-time buildings, such as hostels and camps, which are the property of the Government. Any necessary work of adaptation should be put in hand without delay, and the hostels, etc., should then be offered at a nominal rent to the competent voluntary organisations to be run on a non- profit basis. Surplus stock, of camping equipment should also be distributed for use on a number of controlled sites. By these means at least too,000 extra beds, at prices within the reach of humble purses, should be a possible goal for 1946. Here is a per- fectly practicable proposition, which was put to the Government Departments as long ago as November, 1944. Neither the Ministry of Labour, which asked for the report, nor the Ministry of Works, which is the main disposer of these properties, has yet shown any inclination to act on the scheme. The trouble is that, in Whitehall at present, the nation's holiday problem is nobody's child. Until one Minister of State is made definitely responsible, little progress is likely to be achieved either in the orderly use of existing facilities or in the creation of new ones.-