Festival of Britain
The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair that reached millions of visitors throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951.
Labour cabinet member Herbert Morrison was the prime mover; in 1947 he started with the original plan to celebrate the centennial of the Great Exhibition of 1851.[1] However, it was not to be another World Fair, for international themes were absent, as was the British Commonwealth. Instead, the 1951 festival focused entirely on Britain and its achievements; it was funded chiefly by the government, with a budget of £12 million. The Labour government was losing support and so the implicit goal of the festival was to give the people a feeling of successful recovery from the war's devastation,[2] as well as promoting British science, technology, industrial design, architecture and the arts.
The Festival's centrepiece was in London on the South Bank of the Thames. There were events in Poplar (Architecture – Lansbury Estate), Battersea (the Festival Pleasure Gardens), South Kensington (Science) and Glasgow (Industrial Power). Festival celebrations took place in Cardiff, Stratford-upon-Avon, Bath, Perth, Bournemouth, York, Aldeburgh, Inverness, Cheltenham, Oxford, Norwich, Canterbury and elsewhere,[3] and there were touring exhibitions by land and sea.
The Festival became a "beacon for change" that proved immensely popular with thousands of elite visitors and millions of popular ones. It helped reshape British arts, crafts, designs and sports for a generation.[4] Journalist Harry Hopkins highlights the widespread impact of the "Festival style". They called it "Contemporary". It was:
Historian Kenneth O. Morgan says the Festival was a "triumphant success" during which people:
The Festival Pleasure Gardens were created to present a lighter side of the Festival of Britain. They were erected in Battersea Park, a few miles from the South Bank Exhibition. Attractions included:
The majority of the buildings and pavilions on the site were designed by John Piper.[27] There was also a whimsical Guinness Festival Clock resembling a three dimensional version of a cartoon drawing. The Pleasure Gardens received as many visitors as the South Bank Festival. They were managed by a specially-formed private company financed by loans from the Festival Office and the London County Council.[9] As the attractions failed to cover their costs, it was decided to keep them open after the rest of the Festival had closed.[28]
Aspects of the Festival[edit]
Architecture[edit]
The Festival architects tried to show by the design and layout of the South Bank Festival what could be achieved by applying modern town planning ideas.[29] The Festival Style, (also called "Contemporary")[30] combining modernism with whimsy and Englishness, influenced architecture, interior design, product design and typography in the 1950s. William Feaver describes the Festival Style as "Braced legs, indoor plants, lily of the valley sprays of lightbulbs, aluminium lattices, Cotswold-type walling with picture windows, flying staircases, blond wood, the thorn, the spike, the molecule."[31] The influence of the Festival Style was felt in the new towns, coffee bars and office blocks of the fifties. Harlow new town and the rebuilding of Coventry city centre are said to show the influence of the Festival Style "in their light structures, picturesque layout and incorporation of works of art",[32] and Coventry Cathedral (1962), designed by Basil Spence, one of the Festival architects, was dubbed "The Festival of Britain at Prayer".[33]
There were hundreds of events associated with the Festival,[63] some of which were:
Political responses[edit]
The idea of holding the Festival became a party political issue.[7] Although Herbert Morrison said that he did not want the Festival to be seen as a political venture,[80] it became associated with the Labour Party, which had won the 1950 general election, and it was opposed by the Conservative Party.[7] Hugh Casson said that, "Churchill, like the rest of the Tory Party, was against the Festival which they (quite rightly) believed was the advanced guard of socialism."[80] Churchill referred to the forthcoming Festival of Britain as "three-dimensional Socialist propaganda."[7]
In an essay on the Festival, 17-year-old Michael Frayn characterised it as an enterprise of "the radical middle-classes, the do-gooders; the readers of the News Chronicle, The Guardian, and The Observer; the signers of petitions; the backbone of the B.B.C.," whom he called "Herbivores". In Frayn's view, "The Festival was the last, and virtually the posthumous, work of the Herbivore Britain of the BBC News, the Crown Film Unit, the sweet ration, the Ealing comedies, Uncle Mac, Sylvia Peters." In making the Festival the Herbivores "earned the contempt of the Carnivores – the readers of the Daily Express; the Evelyn Waughs; the cast of the Directory of Directors".[81]
Some prominent members of the Labour government considered the Festival to be a Labour undertaking which would contribute to their future electoral success, and Clement Attlee, the Labour Leader, wrote to Morrison saying that an election in autumn 1951 would enable the Labour Party to benefit from its popularity. In the event, Labour lost the autumn election. Churchill's contempt for the Festival led him to make his first act as Prime Minister in October 1951 an instruction to clear the South Bank site.
Legacy[edit]
The Guide Book to the Festival described its legacy in these words: "It will leave behind not just a record of what we have thought of ourselves in the year 1951 but, in a fair community founded where once there was a slum, in an avenue of trees or in some work of art, a reminder of what we have done to write this single, adventurous year into our national and local history."[8]
While the idea of the Festival was being worked out, the government and the London County Council were at the same time planning the redevelopment of the South Bank site, including "a number of great buildings, which will form part of a co-ordinated design."[8] The first of these was the Royal Festival Hall. The Festival hastened the reclamation of four and a half acres of land from the river, which "transformed the familiar patchwork of rubble and half-derelict buildings which had for so long monopolised the propect from the North Bank".[8] The Festival site was, over the following thirty years, developed into the South Bank Centre, an arts complex comprising the Royal Festival Hall, the National Film Theatre, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room and the National Theatre.
A 1951 office building at 219 Oxford Street, London, designed by Ronald Ward and Partners (now a Grade II* listed building), incorporates images of the Festival on its facade.[82]
The Festival cost about £10.5 million (apart from the loans for the Festival Gardens),[81] with revenues of about £2.5m.[83] The net cost was £8 million (equivalent to £317 million today).
In 1953 the Festival of Britain Office was abolished and its records were taken over by the Ministry of Works.[9]
As well as the material legacy, the Festival gave rise to new traditions, in particular the performances of medieval mystery plays in York and Chester. There was an explosion of interest[84] in these plays, regular performance of which have continued in those cities ever since.
In 2018 Prime Minister Theresa May announced that the government was planning a Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, to be held in 2022.[85] The proposed festival, which was intended to unite the United Kingdom after Brexit, was widely criticised as it coincided with centenary of the Irish Civil War and risked inflaming tensions in Northern Ireland.[85] The graphic designer Richard Littler, creator of Scarfolk, created a satirical poster for the Festival based on the cover of the original 1951 guide, reimagining the profile of the nation's symbolic figurehead Britannia shooting herself in the head.[86]
Images of the Festival of Britain[edit]
Several images of the South Bank Exhibition can be found on the internet, including many released by The National Archives on the 60th anniversary of the festival.[87]
A filmed retrospective of the South Bank Exhibition, Brief City (1952), with special reference to design and architecture, was made by Richard Massingham for The Observer newspaper.[88] A film comedy, The Happy Family, was made about working-class resistance to the demolition that the festival required. The Festival is featured in the early portion of the film Prick up your Ears.
The archive of the Design Council held at the University of Brighton Design Archives includes several hundred images of the festival.[89] They can be searched via the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS).