A Tonic for the Nation
Katherine Sorrell on the Festival of Britain
HALFWAY through the 20th century, Britain was still suffering the after-effects of World War II. Bomb sites and damaged houses blighted cities. Butter, milk, tea and coal were rationed, and there were shortages of most consumer products – not that many people had money to spare.
After more than a decade of austerity, something was needed to promote a feeling of optimism, to take pride in the past, and look towards the future. The answer? A nationwide festival.
As one of the official guide books explained: “It was in 1947 that His Majesty’s Government decided that there should be displays to mark the centenary of the Great Exhibition of 1851, in the Arts, Architecture, Science, Technology and Industrial Design; so that this country and the world could pause to review British contributions to world civilization in the arts of peace.”
The idea was originally conceived by the Royal Society of Arts in 1943 as an international exhibition with an emphasis on trade. The plan was pared down (and its proposed budget cut by five-sixths) and the focus put squarely on Britain and British achievements. The Great Exhibition
Centenary Committee, led by Herbert Morrison, appointed Gerald Barry as Director General and the Festival of Britain slowly began to take shape.
It did not begin well. Hugh Casson, director of architecture, wrote: “The press, either snooty or abusive, was against it throughout. The establishment suspected it was all a smokescreen for advancing Socialism. The Left decided it was middle class; the academics that it was populist; Sir Thomas Beecham said it was imbecile; Evelyn Waugh that it was pathetic; Noel Coward that it was not worth more than a mild giggle. But Morrison and his Council stood firm, and we in the Festival office were anyway far too busy to despair.”
On 3 May 1951 King George VI declared the Festival open, saying:
“This Festival has been planned, like its great predecessor, as a visible sign of national achievement and confidence. Two world wars have brought us grievous loss of life and treasure; and though the nation has made a splendid effort towards recovery, new burdens have fallen upon it and dark clouds still overhang the whole world. Yet this is no time for despondency; for I see this
Festival as a symbol of Britain’s abiding courage and vitality . . . I declare the Festival of Britain open and wish it universal success.”
The Festival was intended to be a spectacular cultural event, both educational and fun. Morrison said: “I want everyone in Britain to see it, to take part in it, to enjoy it, I want to see the people happy. I want to hear the people sing.”
Inevitably, a large focus was on the South Bank site in London where a team of architects and designers created a new public space with wide-ranging exhibits. They were
displayed in a series of buildings and pavilions linked by piazzas and walkways, with modern art all around. Key elements included the stories of “The Land of Britain” and “The People of Britain”, the Dome of Discovery, which was the largest of its sort in the world, housing exhibitions about scientific discoveries of all kinds, the Skylon, a futuristic steel tower that became a visual symbol of the Festival, the Telekinema, a state-of-the-art cinema which could show 3D films and where many visitors saw their first TV pictures and the 2,900-seater Royal Festival Hall.
Elsewhere in London there were exhibitions of science and books in Kensington, a “live architecture” exhibition on a new housing estate in
Poplar, and pleasure gardens in Battersea, which encompassed an amusement park, dance pavilion, miniature railway and treetop walk.
Outside the capital, the Festival’s “Land Travelling Exhibition” – a fleet of 60ft lorries – took the theme of “the British people and the things they make and use” to Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Nottingham, while a Festival ship, the Campania, floated a smaller version of the South Bank story to ten coastal cities.
Glasgow had an exhibition on “Industrial Power”; Belfast showed “Farm and Factory”; Edinburgh had “Living Traditions”, and up and down the country towns and villages held festival events. For those five summer months, the Festival was impossible to avoid. But was it a success?
There had been all sorts of lastminute hitches, from builders’ strikes to shortages of vital materials, and then finally, on the day the gates to the Festival exhibition on the South Bank
were opened, it was rainy and cold. However, as word spread of the floodlit, dream-like world by the Thames where music was played on loudspeakers and where, after dark, there were fireworks, crowds poured along to see this colourful, sometimes cartoon-like escape from reality.
“People making for the South Bank begin to smile as they come close to it,” wrote the Manchester Guardian.
The police had to close the roads nearby several times, and it is said that attendants struggled to prevent people happily forming queues that led to nothing at all. The diplomat Harold Nicholson went to the South Bank on the first day with his wife, the writer Vita Sackville-West, and said they were “entranced from the first moment. It is rather a nuisance that we keep on running into the King and Queen, but nevertheless we enjoy it uproariously. It is the most intelligent exhibition that I have ever visited. I have never seen people so cheered up or amused, in spite of a fine drizzle of rain.”
Funded mostly with £8 million from the government (the equivalent of £253 million today), the Festival ran from May until September and, it is estimated, involved around half the nation. The South Bank exhibition was the most popular, attracting almost 8.5 million paid visitors, more than half from outside London. There were more than eight million visitors to the Battersea pleasure gardens and the Campania was enjoyed by almost 900,000 people.
It could be said that those who participated, on the whole, enjoyed the Festival, but the press was not so sure. A common view was that the money would have been better spent on building much-needed housing.
Country Life said that the Festival was “fearfully silly”, and The Telegraph, which had at the beginning of the year suggested that it should be abandoned, decided that it “may perhaps be likened to a moderately successful party”.
In October, with the Festival events complete and the King ill, the party
was over. Nothing was left of the Southbank site except the Festival
Hall and the Telekinema – which became the National Film Theatre, but was demolished five years later when the NFT moved to its current site. Even the Skylon was melted down for scrap metal.
The Festival did mark a distinct turning point, though, providing welcome light relief for millions of people and, intriguingly, it gave rise to a new tradition of performances of medieval mystery plays in York and Chester, which continue to this day.
It was the catalyst for an immense change to the character of the South Bank, from a site of industry to what is now Europe’s largest centre for the arts; home of the Hayward Gallery, the Purcell Room and the National Poetry Library and the Festival Hall.
The Festival had great influence on architecture and design in a wider sense, too, thanks to its talented team of young designers, among them Robin and Lucienne Day, Ernest Race and Terence Conran.