BLACKPOOL
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] • SIR,—Dash it all ! Mr. F. G. Poulton of Blackpool expects too much from a thousand word article on Blackpool holidaying if he expects a total picture, winter and summer. That will involve a full report, which is now in course of preparation, but cannot be completed until a year's observations have been completed.
I presume that his last sentence, " superficial sightseers, birds of passage who unthinkingly paint a picture which is at once untrue and misleading after a few hours spent in the town," is meant to refer to me and my colleagues ; though how anything that is untrue can fail to be misleading I do not know, so why the " at once " ? Actually, apart from the fact that I spend a lot of my time in Blackpool, where I have part of a house, this work, like all work undertaken by Mass- Observation, is not based on the ideas of any one person, whether resident or visitor. I base any remarks that I per- sonally may make on over a thousand documents, diaries, budgets, &c., sent in to our group by Blackpool holidaymakers from all over the country, and on the carefully planned research of some thirty trained observers (six of them scientists) on special visits. While the essential basis of all such survey work is the group of resident observers, several of whom are personally affected by the winter conditions of which Mr. Poulton draws such a one-sided picture, in a letter that is not conspicuous either for the self-control or the good nature which are general attributes of Blackpool as a whole.—Yours faithfully, Tom HARRISSON. 61 Shetland Road, Blackpool.
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