Back to Worktown
Tom HARR1SSON is not one of the British institu- tions which have changed since 1937. He still has the same bounce, the same gusto and the same curiosity. Recently he managed to get three months' leave of absence from his job in the Colonial Service in Borneo (why on earth only three months), and returned to Bolton for a glance at the 'Worktown' which Mass-Observa- tion described so well before the war. Some of the writing has the old ring to it—for example, the description of an adult baptism by Bolton's Bethel-Evangelists in a room hired, appropriately enough, over the public baths. It has a large tank in it, with a chain by the side to assist the Pastor in his black robe ruffled at the sleeves: The woman faces the right. standing waist- deep in water. The Pastor, on the side, puts his right hand on her chest, his left hand on her back. . . . With this he swishes the woman backwards, completely immersing her; then swings her up into a standing position again. . . . Throughout the ceremony, everybody strains to see it all, particularly the ducking; each person in turn gets no gentle swish of water, but a real dose of it; he or she goes back with a flop, and the sound of hitting the water carries to the back of the hall. As Charles Madge points out in his Postscript, Mass-Observation has always had a catholic attitude to human phenomena, and opposed any 'narrowing of the spectrum of scientific concern.' Not only total immersion but the fact that the price of a singlet has risen from 2s. 3d. to Gs. Gd.; that Bolton wine-merchants stock eleven types of vodka; that eight years ago lots of people thought Montgomery was dead—everything is interesting.
It was a good idea to compare the Bolton of past and present. Harrisson catalogues both change and persistence. Unemployment has gone, and people are richer. Shawls and clogs have almost disappeared, and cinemas.look like fol- lowing the pawnshops. Children play with plastic ducks and their .fathers with sailing dinghies. Houses are decorated with artificial leading, and doors have Yale locks. The men drink beer and now take their wives with them .to the pub for their Babychams, Cherry Wines and Mackesons. The schools are teaching science and further education has expanded. TombstoneS are smaller and cremations increasing. Negroes are there, and Ukrainians. But many things are the same. Today as yesterday, 'organised religion plays no more part in the everyday thought and talk of Work- town than does organised democratic politics.' Ten per cent. of people want a republic. Strange pagan rituals still go on. The accents in which people speak, local pride and the general tone of Lancashire .life are much the same as they were in I937.
It is not a wholly successful book, for three main reasons. The first is that it was obviously put together with far too much haste. Harrisson him- self does not seem to have done much more than collect together as many as he could of his gifted pre-war collaborators, and get them to repeat some of their pre-war observations. The material he had on 1960 was thin. He has had to eke it out with scrapbook stuff from 1938 by-elections, some superficial references to voting behaviour and the Coronation and rehashes of the old books. The second is that he uses figures with customary abandon. 'Counts' of women's clothes sho,w that '16 per cent.' had 'strongly floral'
designs. But how many women were counted—
ten or 200, when and where? More 'counts' were made in pubs A, B, C, D and E, but, since no details of method are given, a statement such as 'the important, and truly representative count, is E' is incomprehensible. A reduction between 1938 and 1959 in the number of women convicted of drunkenness from 7,686 to 4,842 shows that the figures have 'remained static since 1937.'
Thirdly, and most important, Harrisson does not seem to have been able to make up his mind whether to write a valedictory appreciation of M-0 and its triumphs or an account of social change in Britain. At times the book seems to be a kind of M-0 Who's Who. 'Bill Empson, author
of Seven Types of Ambiguity, also joined in the
northern study and did some refined observing, unequivocally.' Now TV star and Labour MP, then an undergraduate spending vacations from Oxford with M-0, Woodrow Wyatt specialised in' analysing our public relations impacts.' Two other well-known ornithologists have helped run Mass-Observation during times of pressure— Richard Fitter and James Fisher.' There was a little too much of this for me.
Yet the book remains a stimulating account of a fascinating town. it has one important lesson for present-day sociologists. Harrisson says, 'Perhaps the most important—and as far as I know unexploited—piece of technical equipment for any sort of social scientist is the ear plug.' The exaggeration is typical, and fortunately Ob- servers do not keep their ear plugs in all the time. But they have demonstrated what should always have been obvious, that it pays to look as well as listen. Contemporary researchers rely so much on verbal answers and verbal questions that they report not so much what people, do as what people say they do. Harrisson shows how much they are liable to miss if they keep their eyes fixed on their questionnaires.
MICHAEL YOUNG
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